Had There Been No Plato, The Christians

Philosophers Get Attention Only When They Appear To Be Doing Something Sinister - Corrupting The Youth, Undermining The Foundations Of Civilization, Sneering At All We Hold Dear. The Rest Of The Time Everybody Assumes That They Are Hard At Work Somewhere Down In The Sub-basement, Keeping Those Foundations In Good Repair. Nobody Much Cares What Brand Of Intellectual Duct Tape Is Being Used.

Truthfulness Under Oath Is, By Now, A Matter Of Our Civic Religion, Our Relation To Our Fellow Citizens Rather Than Our Relation To A Nonhuman Power.

[walt] Whitman And [humanist Educator John] Dewey Tried To Substitute Hope For Knowledge. They Wanted To Put Shared Utopian Dreams - Dreams Of An Ideally Decent And Civilized Society - In The Place Of Knowledge Of God's Will, Moral Law, The Laws Of History, Or The Facts Of Science.... As Long As We Have A Functioning Political Left, We Still Have A Chance To Achieve Our Country, To Make It The Country Of Whitman's And Dewey's Dreams.

I Think You Can Have A Left That Isn't Culturally Conservative Talking About Lunch-bucket Issues.

Complaints About The Social Irresponsibility Of The Intellectual Typically Concern The Intellectual's Tendency To Marginalize Herself, To Move Out From One Community By Interior Identification Of Herself With Some Other Community - For Example, Another Country Or Historical Period... It Is Not Clear That Those Who Thus Marginalize Themselves Can Be Criticized For Social Irresponsibility. One Cannot Be Irresponsible Toward A Community Of Which One Does Not Think Of Oneself As A Member. Otherwise Runaway Slaves And Tunnelers Under The Berlin Wall Would Be Irresponsible.