Somehow, figuring things out and finding a path forward got combined with scoring points, with winning and losing. Our legal system, our political process, our academic publishing industry are all children of that unhappy marriage.
It can't have been this way very long, in the evolutionary history of humans. We have been hunter/gatherers, most of our history, and a little band can't afford to sacrifice 49% of its members.
As we see demonstrated, every four years, how far partisan debate takes us away from any plausible picture of reality and how far partisan jockeying for power takes us away from an viable foreign or domestic policy, we realize what must be happening in every corner of a controversy-dominated society. In corners everywhere -- plea bargain sessions in the courts, informal gatherings of old friends at the American Philosophical Association, private discussions among senior bureaucrats in Washington -- people work out compromises, accomodate, try to paint the big picture. The world wouldn't work otherwise.
Philosophy is a tradition of humility in the face of large questions. Systems introduced with great fanfare as the last word on all interesting issues litter its junkyard history. Philosophy is partly the record of the historical experiment of people learning to listen to each other, to take seriously the contributions of different perspectives and experiences. It is for that reason important.
Posted by shea0017 at October 28, 2004 10:09 AM