https://thecritic.co.uk/must-we-cancel-plato/
This is secretly a news story about an incompetent philosophy professor who decided to publicly show their incompetence.
A philosophy professor ought to know how to make arguments that follow from the facts.
In this case, a specific module in a specific course was revoked from a (presumably federally funded) university because of a ban on advocating for race or gender ideology.
The professor is quoted as saying "to bar a philosophy professor from teaching Plato is unprecedented."
If a philosophy professor made such an argument, they should probably be fired, because it's a poor argument and someone trained in philosophy should simply know better.
By the way, some ancient Greeks might have been gay, and that's ok. You'll see why I mention this later.
There's lots of things you're not allowed to teach in universities. Good luck teaching hardcore white supremacist racism in a university. Try to teach 4 elements theory as fact and see how far that gets you in a university classroom. Critically analyze the darker parts of the Talmud or Quran, find out how long you're a professor there for.
Many of these things could involve reading ancient greeks, but to be stopped from teaching them does not follow as not being allowed to teach plato, it's not being allowed to teach these things.
If one is asking about proportionality, the problem isn't that the professor was wrong. People are wrong all the time. It's that he was wrong, loudly wrong, and then made it an international spectacle of being wrong. Sorry, that's not a good career move. Don't go to the press with your petty grievances unless you're actually in the right, because if you're embarrassingly wrong then you're probably going to have to find a new job.
And if you're progressive and disagree strongly with my post, well I CANNOT BELIEVE that a progressive would NOT ALLOW ME TO SAY IT'S OK TO BE GAY!
See? Looks stupid, doesn't it?
I hope you understand, the point is that I'm implying that by disagreeing with my post you disagree specifically with the one thing in it and therefore I can act outraged that you don't agree with that little thing. Obviously a prog who doesn't like my post is going to be disagreeing because I'm defending a policy about not having racial or gender politics in class, not specifically arguing against the idea that it's ok to be gay.
A is included in B, B isn't good, therefore A isn't good, but that's not necessarily true. Maybe A was the only good part of B which overall wasn't good. Again, anyone with a high school level understanding of logic should understand that.
I could have a module on "Hitler was right" and then have Plato show up in it (and you could, there's stuff in The Republic that could suggest Hitler was correct in certain ways), and guess what? The administrator would go "Get that module about Hitler out of there".
Even worse, I'm just a dumbass on the Internet. If it's this clear to my 79 IQ ass, it should have been crystal clear to a philosophy professor.
This is secretly a news story about an incompetent philosophy professor who decided to publicly show their incompetence.
A philosophy professor ought to know how to make arguments that follow from the facts.
In this case, a specific module in a specific course was revoked from a (presumably federally funded) university because of a ban on advocating for race or gender ideology.
The professor is quoted as saying "to bar a philosophy professor from teaching Plato is unprecedented."
If a philosophy professor made such an argument, they should probably be fired, because it's a poor argument and someone trained in philosophy should simply know better.
By the way, some ancient Greeks might have been gay, and that's ok. You'll see why I mention this later.
There's lots of things you're not allowed to teach in universities. Good luck teaching hardcore white supremacist racism in a university. Try to teach 4 elements theory as fact and see how far that gets you in a university classroom. Critically analyze the darker parts of the Talmud or Quran, find out how long you're a professor there for.
Many of these things could involve reading ancient greeks, but to be stopped from teaching them does not follow as not being allowed to teach plato, it's not being allowed to teach these things.
If one is asking about proportionality, the problem isn't that the professor was wrong. People are wrong all the time. It's that he was wrong, loudly wrong, and then made it an international spectacle of being wrong. Sorry, that's not a good career move. Don't go to the press with your petty grievances unless you're actually in the right, because if you're embarrassingly wrong then you're probably going to have to find a new job.
And if you're progressive and disagree strongly with my post, well I CANNOT BELIEVE that a progressive would NOT ALLOW ME TO SAY IT'S OK TO BE GAY!
See? Looks stupid, doesn't it?
I hope you understand, the point is that I'm implying that by disagreeing with my post you disagree specifically with the one thing in it and therefore I can act outraged that you don't agree with that little thing. Obviously a prog who doesn't like my post is going to be disagreeing because I'm defending a policy about not having racial or gender politics in class, not specifically arguing against the idea that it's ok to be gay.
A is included in B, B isn't good, therefore A isn't good, but that's not necessarily true. Maybe A was the only good part of B which overall wasn't good. Again, anyone with a high school level understanding of logic should understand that.
I could have a module on "Hitler was right" and then have Plato show up in it (and you could, there's stuff in The Republic that could suggest Hitler was correct in certain ways), and guess what? The administrator would go "Get that module about Hitler out of there".
Even worse, I'm just a dumbass on the Internet. If it's this clear to my 79 IQ ass, it should have been crystal clear to a philosophy professor.
- replies
- 0
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 1