"I have to issue a warning. And the warning is this: to read these books in this way, as an exercise in self knowledge. To read them in this way carries certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of political philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know. There's an irony. The difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange.
[...] "Philosophy estranges us from the familiar. Not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. But, and here's the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it's never quite the same again. Self knowledge is like lost innocence. However unsettling you find it, it can never be unthought or unknown. What makes this enterprise difficult, but also riveting, is that moral and political philosophy is a story and you don't know where the story will lead, but what you do know is that the story is about you. Those are the personal risks."
[...] "Philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions and from settled beliefs. Those are the risks. Personal and political. And in the face of these risks there is skepticism."
Showing posts with label Michael J. Sandel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael J. Sandel. Show all posts
