Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 12:49:09 -0800
Subject: Re: PKF: New Book - History of philosophy in Australia



just a note: 

thomas moore's book 'Dark Eros: The Imagination of Sadism' discusses the 
relationship between teaching & the corruption of innocence at some 
length.  i recommend it to anyone w/out an aversion to jungian analysis 
(which might exclude just about everyone on this list, lol!).

cheers

jonathan poff
christchurch
new zealand





Rafe Champion wrote:

>Comments on James Franklin, "Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy
>in Australia", Macleay Press, Sydney, 465 pages, hardback, illustrated,
>index.
>
>Sometimes people need to be reminded of the scholarly purpose of
>universities which is to provide the milieu for writing books like his. One
>would hope that a university press would have justified its existence by
>publishing the book, however it was taken up and then dropped by two of the
>leading university presses in Australia (Melbourne and UNSW).
>
>Jim Franklin, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of New
>South Wales, has pursued a monumental research project and  provided the
>fruits of his labours in good humoured, somewhat understated and very
>readable form. David Armstrong suggested in his launching speech that such a
>book could probably never be written again. That was a surprising thing to
>hear until the truth was revealed in the massive bulk of the footnotes. It
>clearly took a very effort undertake this work that has gone into this book.
>
>Another reason why this book could never be written again is that Professor
>John Anderson will cast a shorter shadow in future histories because his
>influence was almost entirely exerted by personal contact and he retired in
>1958 which means that the youngest students who remember him would now be on
>the verge of retirement themselves.
>
>The story is told in three parts. First an overview under the heading "John
>Anderson's Sydney and Alternatives". This signals that Australian philosophy
>assumed its most distinctive (and corrupting ) form in the critical realism
>and materialism that was expounded by Anderson from 1927 to 1957.  Some fine
>philosophers passed emerged from Anderson's department (John Passmore,
>Mackie, Perc Partridge, David Armstrong) but they had to leave Sydney to
>blossom. Anderson established a record of appointing and promoting
>mediocrities while discouraging people from publishing or from assimilating
>influences from abroad. He never tried to swim in a bigger pond and he disco
>uraged his associates from doing so. The result
>is that Andersonian philosophy rated only  a footnote in Passmore's "Hundred
>Years of Western Philosophy".
>
>More on Anderson can be found at this link.
>http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/oztexts/andersback.html
>
>Anderson's critical/skeptical way of thinking is sometimes described as
>giving rise to a distinctive "Sydney Line" which is promulgated by a web
>site. The Macleay Press, house journal of the Sydney Line, published
>Franklin's book.
>
>http://www.sydneyline.com/About.htm
>
>Philosophy at the University of Melbourne (the second university in
>Australia) did not assume such a distinctive form, allowing more diversity,
>albeit as an outpost of overseas trends such as positivism, linguistic
>philosophy and Marxism, in various combinations. Tasmania, the third
>university in the nation but now one of the smallest, gets a mention on
>account of Sydney Sparkes Orr, a mediocre scholar who
>fluked a chair in Hobart and was dismissed after alleged sexual involvement
>with a student. He attracted support from the academic community worldwide
>and the Tasmanian chair was declared "black" for some years until the late
>1960s.
>
>The role of the Catholic Scholastics receives generous attention in the role
>that they played in the (Roman) Catholic education system as does the
>activity of Archbishop Gough, the Anglican Primate of Australia, in
>challenging the alleged corrupting influence of Professor Anderson from the
>pulpit of the Cathedral. This provided the basis for a lot of sensational
>press cover in the early 1960s.
>
>The second part treats the wider sphere of philosophy. A chapter on the
>Sydney Push depicts the Andersonians downtown as "critical drinkers". They
>branched in two directions when the conservative Andersonians enlisted on
>the correct side in the Cold War and the radicals took on Marxism and
>Anarchism, an unlikely combination.
>
>Another chapter describes the local contribution to the materialist theory
>of mind which became known as "Australian  materialism" due to the work of
>Place, Smart and Armstrong . The third chapter in this section is the
>longest in the book and it is not concerned with the corruption of youth,
>quite the reverse, it describes various ways that were explored to inspire
>youth in the pursuit of virtue - school lessons in civics, Boy Scouts,
>cadets, team sports, surf lifesaving, the Empire, the heroes of ancient Rome
>(Horatius on the bridge), the Anzac legend, the Romantic poets (my spirits
>bark is driven...), improving literature and F R Leavis. Singly and
>collectively these are likely to arouse mirth in progressive circles but
>Franklin is correct to write "The story of the spread of restraint in the
>first half of the twentieth century, when great sections of society pulled
>themselves out of the cycle of poverty, violence and alcohol addiction
>through intense effort devoted to temperance, thrift, self-control and hard
>work, has yet to be told".
>
>The third part is devoted to special interests including the travails of the
>philosophy school at the University of  Sydney which at one stage had to be
>split in two to accommodate traditionals and radicals, David Stove's
>counter-attack on the idols of progressivism in the philosohy of science,
>environmentalism, the invasion of  French fashions, the various liberation
>movements and the emergence of Peter Singer as Australia's best known
>philosopher. The part of the book which I find most in need of criticism is
>that on David Sove and his criticism of Popper's views on the methods of
>science and the theory of conjectural knowledge  but  this disagreement has
>been treated elsewhere.
>http://www.the-rathouse.com/AnythingGoes.html
>
>Does philosophy have to be a corrupter of youth? Plato dreaded independent
>thought and his philosopher kings  had to undertake a long and rigorous
>training. The British idealistic movement of the late 1800s had potential
>but it was recruited to justify the expansion of State power. R G
>Collingwood considered that the "minute philosophy" which replaced idealism
>emptied moral philosophy of content and paved the way for the disasters of
>the Thirties.  Logical positivism discarded discourse on morals as literally
>meaningless, existentialism - a matter of taste, Marxism - a tool of class
>interest, Freudianism and Andersonianism - the prejudices of prudes.
>
>Maybe there is an answer along the lines of critical rationalism in science
>and ethics, not a cut and dried answer to any particular problem, but an
>answer in terms of method and procedure. Perhaps scientific theories and
>moral/political principles can be subjected to appraisal in terms of their
>capacity to solve problems and stand up to criticism. Theories and
>principles alike are human constructs but they are not arbitrary, they can
>be regarded as objective and subjected to rational criticism, held as a
>matter of critical preference
>(in favour of other theories and principles) and they can be modified or
>discarded on the basis of evidence and arguments. As it happens, Franklin
>himself favours an objectivist approach to ethics, though this is not
>spelled out in the book and he should not be expected to defend the
>aforementioned views.
>
>In conclusion, this is equally admirable as a work as scholarship and a fine
>piece of writing. It deserves a wide readership in Australia and overseas as
>well, for those with an interest in the history of ideas and the interaction
>of town and gown.
>
>Rafe Champion
>Sydney, Australia
>Critical Preference in science and ethics
>http://www.the-rathouse.com/popcritpref.html
>
>
>
>
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