Damian Penny quotes a Jerusalem Post piece by Edward Alexander about intellectuals and philosophers and their moral justification of Palestinian terrorism. The article highlights examples of people from academia who have become the intellectual voices of suicide bombers.
This particular form of atrocity has not only failed to disturb the equanimity of our heavily petted professors but has elicited from many of them a stream of rhapsodic admiration, sympathetic identification (with the murderers, not their victims), and high-toned apologia. A few examples, among many–a philosopher, a literary critic, and a theologian–should illustrate the pattern.
The article gives examples. Ted Honderich, who actually said that Palestinian Arabs have a “moral right” to blow up Jews. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who claimed that the 9/11 attacks were a justifiable response to “state terrorism”. And Karen Armstrong, who tosses out the comparison of Israelis to Nazis like it was water.
Needless to say, reading some of these quotes made me sick to the stomach. But Damian’s reaction was “Why I hate philosophers”, and I’m not quite ready to go that far.
Sure, I’d be more than willing to say I hate these particular people who call themselves philosophers. But anyone can bang out chopsticks on the piano; that doesn’t make us all Mozart. Similarly, anyone can use words and twisted rhetoric to justify heinous acts of murder. They might even get hired by a university and given a vehicle for these views. But that doesn’t make them philosophers.
To write off the entire field of philosophy – which, at its core is a basic search for truth, meaning, and values – because of a few bad apples is unfair, at best. It is precisely when people stop thinking that our world falls apart.
I am convinced that there is a special place in hell for these “philosophers” and assorted academics. It is scary how the propaganda these people spew is affecting young minds.
There is another “philosopher”, Mark Lance of Georgetown University who started an organization called SUSTAIN. It stands for Stop US Tax-Funded Aid for Israel Now. The good professor is full of all the hysterical invective against the Jewish state so common nowadays among the “learned classes”. Well at least he is coherent enough to put together a catchy acronynm.
Maybe I’m just jaded and cynical, but I’ve always had the impression that “philosophers” are just people who have no goal other than to justify what people inherently know is wrong.
But that’s just me.