Well said. I might add that Peterson decided to teach the course and as a substitute for the section that included Plato he designed a section on academic freedom that would include the university system policy as one of the readings. We need more little acts of resistance.
Interesting approach. I hope the students are sympathetic. Rural Texas isn't exactly fertile ground for progressive protest, but the university's approach is egregious enough that the students can likely be persuaded to listen.
Well, there is that – but the totalitarianism was an intellectual one, where the most learned people were ruling. That's pretty opposite to these folks.
I was exasperated by the various haughty dismissals of classical thought by le wokisme and its predecessor, 90's Political Correctness (or at least the excesses of each), and I have no more patience with this stupidity from the (so-called) conservative right. I do think "progressivism" bears some responsibility for making this kind of thing part of the standard playbook again. I hope that when the pendulum (not, alas, "inevitably") swings in the other direction, the nominal Left will take a moment to reflect and not just start chopping right-adjacent names from the syllabi. But to me it just confirms that academe is well on the way to being no home for philosophy in any case. I'd love to be wrong.
I'm afraid I'm not going to disagree with you, in the American context anyway; this is a reason I find it ever more important to seek out non-academic venues for philosophical writing. I do think, though, that the censorships left *and* right are doing less overall harm to academic philosophy than the managerial conception of universities as job training, and the price tag that makes it prohibitive to pursue a university education for anything *but* job training.
Agree with the sentiment, although the Texas treatment of Plato is relatively mild compared to what happened to Socrates.
Yes. Philosophers have always been unsettling to the establishment.
Well said. I might add that Peterson decided to teach the course and as a substitute for the section that included Plato he designed a section on academic freedom that would include the university system policy as one of the readings. We need more little acts of resistance.
Interesting approach. I hope the students are sympathetic. Rural Texas isn't exactly fertile ground for progressive protest, but the university's approach is egregious enough that the students can likely be persuaded to listen.
On the other hand, Plato was a book-burning totalitarian....
Well, there is that – but the totalitarianism was an intellectual one, where the most learned people were ruling. That's pretty opposite to these folks.
I was exasperated by the various haughty dismissals of classical thought by le wokisme and its predecessor, 90's Political Correctness (or at least the excesses of each), and I have no more patience with this stupidity from the (so-called) conservative right. I do think "progressivism" bears some responsibility for making this kind of thing part of the standard playbook again. I hope that when the pendulum (not, alas, "inevitably") swings in the other direction, the nominal Left will take a moment to reflect and not just start chopping right-adjacent names from the syllabi. But to me it just confirms that academe is well on the way to being no home for philosophy in any case. I'd love to be wrong.
I'm afraid I'm not going to disagree with you, in the American context anyway; this is a reason I find it ever more important to seek out non-academic venues for philosophical writing. I do think, though, that the censorships left *and* right are doing less overall harm to academic philosophy than the managerial conception of universities as job training, and the price tag that makes it prohibitive to pursue a university education for anything *but* job training.