β Scribed by M. I. Berger
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Modern analytic philosophy with its highly technical nature, its neologisms, and its very special esoteric problems must puzzle many people. But often the puzzlement comes not from failing to understand the philosophical method but rather from not seeing the point. In the good old days when one read philosophy, even if there were technical, logical problems which the reader found impenetrable, he could always enjoy the work at another level of meaning. Plato's works could be read, for better or for worse, as literature, the poetic embodiment of grand ideals; that is, if one did not elect to read the dialogues as, for example, difficult exercises in the relationship of particulars to universals. But today that popular, public appeal of philosophy is often missing. Either one sees the technical nature of the argument or one does not, that is all there is to it. 1 Sometimes seeing the technical point being made: is illuminatingclarifying meanings, eliminating dilemmas, exposing pseudostatements. But at other moments in analytic philosophy, even when the entire logical exercise is understood, puzzlement remains. For what we seem to have at the end of our trouble is an exercise which had no point at all-yielding not even esthetic or emotive satisfaction. In short the argument seems to have no pertinence.
Pertinence, I mean to contend, is an important consideration in any philosophical study, but most particularly in philosophical studies of educational concepts. It is with this general idea in mind that I wish to consider B. Paul Komisar's article, "Teaching: Act and Enterprise. ''2 I shall examine his argument making :!-Of course this is an over simplification and there are many exceptions. Reading a modern philosopher like John Wisdom on "Other Minds" is a delight not only because of what he says but the way he says ir Philosophers like Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Hampshire also have this felicity of style. But there are many others who are much more deadly serious.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES