> From: Philosophy in Europe [
[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Ruth Irwin [
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> Sent: 04 October 2014 21:24
> To:
[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Good conduct in philosophy: in defence of mockery
>
> I wonder just what purpose mockery serves. If its an attack ad hominem, that can't be good. Does mockery further the debate
> in any way? Does it offer new ideas, or build on tangents? I doubt it. Mockery seems to
me to simply serve to confirm the normative
> position that has been around for thousands of years. All the 'experts' quoted to support mockery - Socrates, Russell etc. are all men,
> and all claimed by a very narrow division of philosophical thought. So mockery seems to be a tool to confirm and entrench the
> dominance of that particular position.
>
> Not admirable in my view.
>
> Ruth Irwin
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Talking of confirming normative positions, is there any reason to suppose that mockery is confined to male philosophers (or to men more generally?). Do Socrates, Russell, et al., stand out from all all their well-known female philosophical contemporaries who were nurturing, positive, gentle, and all the
other qualities in the usual feminine stereotype (as opposed to the slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails of the horrid men)? Or, perhaps, the mockery-free alternatives to whichever is the "narrow division of philosophical thought" that claims Socrates and Russell (a pretty broad narrow division one would have thought) could be cited?
In common with most people on the List, I suspect, I've seen mockery used constructively and destructively, in both ways by men and by women. I don't know of a division of philosophical thought in which it's unknown, but I'm open to education on that. Mockery can be useful, for example, when used to puncture... well, to puncture what needs puncturing. I've been known to use it in that way myself.
Peter J. King