Mini-Heap


Here’s the latest Mini-Heap!
(Philosophy-related links for your consideration.)

  1. Life in academia can be great. So can life outside of it. — on being encouraging to grad students in philosophy while being realistic about job prospects
  2. Steven Pinker’s “silly interpretation” of Nietzsche is a lesson on the value of the humanities — Robert Crease (Stony Brook) in the WSJ
  3. When was a word first used in print? What words were first used the year you were born? — check out Merriam-Webster’s new “Time-Traveler”
  4. Podcast discussions with philosophers, economists, and others interested in altruism — at 80,000 Hours
  5. PhD Students, a show on CBC Radio wants to turn your research into a 54-minute episode — well, maybe yours.
  6. Virtual reality, sympathy, and empathy — Erick Ramirez (Santa Clara) on what the technology can and cannot do
  7. “If anything, our current post-truth moment is less a product of Latour’s ideas than a validation of them.” — a lengthy and interesting NYT profile of Bruno Latour and discussion of his ideas, philosophy of science, and “post-truth”
  8. CEU is likely moving from Budapest to Vienna — Tim Crane (CEU) explains why in a Twitter thread
  9. A wine bar named for Diogenes will be opening next month in London — one wonders how closely the staff will follow his example
  10. “I am a sexist!” proclaims one philosopher — George Yancy (Emory) says to other men: “We need to tell the truth about ourselves.”

Mini-Heap posts appear when about 10 new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, the ever-growing collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers.

The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thanks!

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sahpa
sahpa
5 years ago

That Yancy op-ed is pitiful in a variety of ways, frankly. I could barely finish it. For one thing, trying to start a #IamSexist hashtag movement, besides being inherently pitiful (a hashtag movement? against sexism? really?), is just *begging* to be co-opted by the alt-right, redpill community, etc.

More generally, I refuse to make sexism the hereditary sin of mankind. (And that’s what this op-ed is trying to do—how else are we to explain Yancy’s assertion [not argument, despite his claim to the contrary] that men are all “collectively complicit with a sexist mind-set and a poisonous masculinity”?) It isn’t even clear what it would accomplish, except to aggrandize and elevate some class to men to become the ascetic priests of whatever this new thing is—no less depraved than other men, but worthy of attention, clout, and money in virtue of wallowing in their depravity. Well, here’s something else it might accomplish: completely obliterate responsibility (in any ordinary sense of the word) for sexism per se on the part of men who actually perpetrate sexist acts. After all, hey, all men are sexist, they can’t help it, they’ve been “programmed” from birth to be so (bell hooks said so!), and they’re sexist whether or not they actually do things like discriminate or harass.

Daniel Kaufman
Reply to  sahpa
5 years ago

Yeah, it was cringe-inducing to read. Such naked, unabashed, virtue-signalling. Want not to be a sexist. Treat the women you encounter in your daily life with civility and respect. But rending your garments in public … it reminds me of Jimmy Swaggart bursting into tears on television and crying, “I’ve sinned against you my lord!”

The whole thing is really puke-inducing.

Jen
Jen
Reply to  sahpa
5 years ago

I agree that what Yancy says goes too far. But I disagree that it’s trying to make sexism a hereditary sin of all men. Instead, I think, Yancy is overgeneralizing. As I understand what he writes, he is inferring from his and others’ experiences (i.e., those of men similar to him–perhaps men who grew up in a certain time/place and in a certain social position) that all men think and act as he did and does. The inference is dubious to say the least. Making it is very strange. This, however, is not the same as trying “to make sexism the hereditary sin of all mankind.”