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Shalom: but Chomskey is not a philosopher, but a propagandist for a certain view of foreign policy that depends on shoddy scholarship, and Sagan was not a philosopher, but someone who claimed to have a special insight into important public matters due to his scientific training. The "match" analogy, for example, though a figure of speech, also purports to be a fanciful expression of the facts. Anyway, as you may have observed, I know a lot of stuff, and have read a lot. I cannot know, or read, everything. I have to make judgments all of the time about who is worth paying attention to, and who is not. I cannot afford to be uninterested in the source, because I have to perform a kind of triage, and decide what is more or less likely to reward my patience...Sometimes, as with Hegel, I get pretty far, and then reach a limit (mine was "The Science of Logic", from "The Philosophical Encyclopedia"). Sometimes, I am initially dismissive, and then have the leisure to look into something, and am sorry I didn't take it more seriously, for example, when I finally got around to reading Hermann Hesse in college, after thinking him too hippy- dippy for me to bother. But always, I am having to make choices about how to spend time and energy, often based upon the person's reputation....Should I feel obliged to study Mme. Blavatsky because some people whom I find otherwise inane swear by it? |
