7:31pm May 19, 2014

Unpleasantly reminded of why I switched from being interested in philosophy

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Philosophers, in the historical context, like to use medical problems as thought experiments. Descartes does a lot of stuff involving what reality would be like if you lost sight. Plato pulls out all the stops in by having Socrates in The Republic with saying that those with ‘lingering illness’ should be put to death because they can’t be productive workers. There’s a HUGE recurring theme of ‘madness’ and ‘insanity’ in place of ‘not thinking logically’ within philosophic works (I’m thinking of Dostoevsky here). Then of course there’s Camus discussing the futility of life, absurdism, and suicide (which I find oddly inspirational. I’m okay with Camus, the class discussions can be infuriating).

I’m okay with the thought experiments in the context of the essay or narrative, but jeeze, it’s HARD to sit in a class and hear my classmates debate what their understanding of reality would be like if they lost sight, if they had an incurable illness, or if they went “mad” in the hypothetical. ‘Cause that stuff happens. Plato’s republic? Ha. Right okay. I always feel like “is this what people think about me?”

I really really wonder how those discussions would occur if I had a visible illness, because you’ve never pondered the futility of life until you’re immobilized and in pain for a long period of time.

yeah, this happened to me recently when i went to a friend’s barbecue with some anthropology graduate students. they were discussing getting “old” and having their body begin to fail or stop working, being in pain, and how they wouldn’t be able to deal with it & how much they pity the people they see going through it.

i really don’t understand why philosophers always have such a hard time believing that disabled people can have fulfilling lives. like even modern philosophers say shit like this constantly and don’t even realize it. it’s why i never really take philosophy too seriously—i love reading it, i’ve read a lot of it, but my reaction is mostly just to laugh at a lot of it since they literally have no idea how human minds work under those conditions.

Another one for me is the concept some philosophers have come up with of a body without a soul, and how that plays out in disability contexts. It makes my blood boil because they’re basically taking it as a premise that this sort of thing is either possible, or at least something you should be trying to imagine.

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