- Joined
- Feb 27, 2003
- Messages
- 2,369
Once upon a time there was some serious give and take, on this forum. I believe that it advanced the state of knife making art.
Alas, it was a bit too controversial for some and the forum has since slid into a banal coma, but enough of my mean spirited criticism!
Substitute the words "pipes and pipe smoking" with "knives and knife making". Read and hopefully enjoy the article below.
Your comments, thoughts and criticism are welcome.
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The Place of Criticism in Our Hobby by Christopher Stevens
Neills blog entry of October 14th, Address to the Richmond CORPS Pipe Show: Crucible Moments, sparked debate among A Passion for Pipes members. Views encouraging the idea that serious and sustained criticism of pipes and tobacco be given a more visible place in our hobby typically do. I believe it important that we understand why this is so. For only then will we be equipped to fairly judge arguments in favor of the idea.
I am a professional philosopher who has taught courses in the philosophy of art at the undergraduate and graduate levels for ten years on two continents. So I am intimately familiar with the issues Neill discusses in the post. Theyre also close to my heart. This is not only because Im a logician and relish the making of distinctions, but because pipes and pipe smoking matter to me.
There are some common misunderstandings that should be immediately done away with: (1) those in favor of reasoned criticism are necessarily elitist or anti-egalitarian; (2) aesthetic judgments are necessarily subjective; (3) there is no existing body of literature addressing these issues; (4) criticism kills a practice.
If one operates under the mistaken belief that (3) is true, he might well believe (1), (2), and (4). There is, however, a literature. It extends at least as far back as the 18th century with Immanuel Kant and David Hume, two philosophers central to the canon. There was a time when an education in the humanities would have been thought incomplete without ones having read them. But due to the belief that education per the canon is oppressive because it is critical, todays student is instead lucky to come across them. Both were concerned to show that aesthetic judgments can be objective. Hume in particular was concerned with the role of critics in understanding what objectivity in aesthetic judgment amounts to.
So, tragically, a failure to give criticism its due role in education, i.e. a specific failure, leads to a widespread failure to understand the role of criticism generally. And this has political ramifications. Many believe that criticism, because it supposedly cannot be based on objectively true claims, and because it supposedly merely parades as objective, is oppressive and elitist. One point is this: even with respect to education, failure to give criticism its due place undermines the very practice.
Criticism doesnt kill education; it is integral to it. The poet and cultural critic T.S. Eliot famously claimed that the maintenance of a tradition requires continual critique of it. Surprisingly, critique doesnt undermine but imparts stability. A group whose members are devoted to excellence becomes a brotherhood. We are, I would have thought, brothers of the briar.
Kant and Hume were concerned to resolve an inconsistency between two intuitions, both of which many of us have, and which pull in opposite directions: the intuition that there may be something to the multitude of differing aesthetic judgments we encounter in discussion with others, and our inclination to believe that some works are objectively better than others. An inference is often made from the fact of widespread differences in judgment to the claim that aesthetic judgments are subjective. That is a non-sequitur. Difference of opinion does not imply that theres no fact of the matter. Two scientists may disagree prior to strong confirmatory evidence, but this doesnt imply that both are correct, or neither is, or one is. Disagreement can coexist with unknown fact.
The point of reasoned disagreement is to eventually arrive, together, at agreement as to what is most reasonably believed to be the truth. Reasoned disagreement is, in that sense, one mark of what it means to be civilized. A civil society, even a small one like our pipe community, if robbed of the capacity for its members to engage in well-intended argument, risks the integrity of the society. This is because human beings have a natural inclination to seek excellence with respect to what they care about, we are social creatures, and we therefore naturally also seek the company of others with similar cares in an effort to determine the marks of the excellent through reasoned and, yes, critical dialogue.
But some whom we count as friends in the hobby unfortunately believe the critical attitude to involve intolerance. A popular subjectivist strategy, in fact, involves an inference from the value of tolerance to what is supposedly required for it, namely subjectivism about other kinds of values, aesthetic or otherwise. But that is a non-sequitur, since one can be tolerant without being a subjectivist. That is, there are plenty of tolerant, respectful, and friendly folks with strong opinions about some subject matter. They may care enough about the subject matter to have worked through reasons for and against some particular view about it. The desire to want to share these reasons with others having similar interests is a natural one. In sharing our views and the reasons we believe them true, we further both understanding and the hobby itself.
We are lucky to live in a golden age of artisan pipe making and tobacco blending. If were to make the most of what weve been given, well repay those artisans by engaging in a critical dialogue, complete with reasons for any verdict offered, so as to recognize their talents and progress and continued excellence. Gratitude would ask this of us.
Alas, it was a bit too controversial for some and the forum has since slid into a banal coma, but enough of my mean spirited criticism!
Substitute the words "pipes and pipe smoking" with "knives and knife making". Read and hopefully enjoy the article below.
Your comments, thoughts and criticism are welcome.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Place of Criticism in Our Hobby by Christopher Stevens
Neills blog entry of October 14th, Address to the Richmond CORPS Pipe Show: Crucible Moments, sparked debate among A Passion for Pipes members. Views encouraging the idea that serious and sustained criticism of pipes and tobacco be given a more visible place in our hobby typically do. I believe it important that we understand why this is so. For only then will we be equipped to fairly judge arguments in favor of the idea.
I am a professional philosopher who has taught courses in the philosophy of art at the undergraduate and graduate levels for ten years on two continents. So I am intimately familiar with the issues Neill discusses in the post. Theyre also close to my heart. This is not only because Im a logician and relish the making of distinctions, but because pipes and pipe smoking matter to me.
There are some common misunderstandings that should be immediately done away with: (1) those in favor of reasoned criticism are necessarily elitist or anti-egalitarian; (2) aesthetic judgments are necessarily subjective; (3) there is no existing body of literature addressing these issues; (4) criticism kills a practice.
If one operates under the mistaken belief that (3) is true, he might well believe (1), (2), and (4). There is, however, a literature. It extends at least as far back as the 18th century with Immanuel Kant and David Hume, two philosophers central to the canon. There was a time when an education in the humanities would have been thought incomplete without ones having read them. But due to the belief that education per the canon is oppressive because it is critical, todays student is instead lucky to come across them. Both were concerned to show that aesthetic judgments can be objective. Hume in particular was concerned with the role of critics in understanding what objectivity in aesthetic judgment amounts to.
So, tragically, a failure to give criticism its due role in education, i.e. a specific failure, leads to a widespread failure to understand the role of criticism generally. And this has political ramifications. Many believe that criticism, because it supposedly cannot be based on objectively true claims, and because it supposedly merely parades as objective, is oppressive and elitist. One point is this: even with respect to education, failure to give criticism its due place undermines the very practice.
Criticism doesnt kill education; it is integral to it. The poet and cultural critic T.S. Eliot famously claimed that the maintenance of a tradition requires continual critique of it. Surprisingly, critique doesnt undermine but imparts stability. A group whose members are devoted to excellence becomes a brotherhood. We are, I would have thought, brothers of the briar.
Kant and Hume were concerned to resolve an inconsistency between two intuitions, both of which many of us have, and which pull in opposite directions: the intuition that there may be something to the multitude of differing aesthetic judgments we encounter in discussion with others, and our inclination to believe that some works are objectively better than others. An inference is often made from the fact of widespread differences in judgment to the claim that aesthetic judgments are subjective. That is a non-sequitur. Difference of opinion does not imply that theres no fact of the matter. Two scientists may disagree prior to strong confirmatory evidence, but this doesnt imply that both are correct, or neither is, or one is. Disagreement can coexist with unknown fact.
The point of reasoned disagreement is to eventually arrive, together, at agreement as to what is most reasonably believed to be the truth. Reasoned disagreement is, in that sense, one mark of what it means to be civilized. A civil society, even a small one like our pipe community, if robbed of the capacity for its members to engage in well-intended argument, risks the integrity of the society. This is because human beings have a natural inclination to seek excellence with respect to what they care about, we are social creatures, and we therefore naturally also seek the company of others with similar cares in an effort to determine the marks of the excellent through reasoned and, yes, critical dialogue.
But some whom we count as friends in the hobby unfortunately believe the critical attitude to involve intolerance. A popular subjectivist strategy, in fact, involves an inference from the value of tolerance to what is supposedly required for it, namely subjectivism about other kinds of values, aesthetic or otherwise. But that is a non-sequitur, since one can be tolerant without being a subjectivist. That is, there are plenty of tolerant, respectful, and friendly folks with strong opinions about some subject matter. They may care enough about the subject matter to have worked through reasons for and against some particular view about it. The desire to want to share these reasons with others having similar interests is a natural one. In sharing our views and the reasons we believe them true, we further both understanding and the hobby itself.
We are lucky to live in a golden age of artisan pipe making and tobacco blending. If were to make the most of what weve been given, well repay those artisans by engaging in a critical dialogue, complete with reasons for any verdict offered, so as to recognize their talents and progress and continued excellence. Gratitude would ask this of us.
