December 14th, 2012
I can’t be sure, but I think this guy is really just trolling Ross Douthat:
I have been explicitly told three times over the past year, by young philosopher parents, that there are philosophical insights that one simply cannot have without living through the fundamental experience of parenthood. That such an expression of pronatalist normativity exactly mirrors the sort of bias philosophers are by now so well trained not to express, about other quodlibetal forms the intimate life can take, is something that is surely in need of explanation. I suspect it has something to do with the recent, massive success of the campaign, which I support, to deheterosexualize the idea of parenthood. Once this goal was largely reached, at least within pockets of our society, the academics who found it desirable felt comfortable reverting to an evidently innate sort of conservatism. The family unit has been shaken up a bit, and the role of fathers reconceived, but in the end the nearly compulsory philosopher-dad-with-kid pictures that now clutter the faculty profile pages of departmental websites are every bit as conventionally pro-family as the ‘at home’ pictures on the now-defunct Romney-for-President website. They send the message that to be a philosopher is largely, even principally, to be invested in the bringing up of the next generation, to be doing it all ‘for the children’.
It gets awesomer. Worth wading through the comments, too.
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I am in favor of pro-ingestionism.
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I know Ross wants to be taken seriously by people like Justin. But, seriously. Justin tries to hard to be both an intellectual and a hipster.
Justin’s blog piece reminds me what Nietzsche once wrote:
“There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for wants to deal with it”
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Sweet fancy Moses, if that dude even thinks about getting avuncular with my kids … It is, however, nice to know that the fat-to-be-trimmed in the academy is so willing to identify itself. Cough *douche* cough.
Ben December 14, 2012 at 4:45 pm
The comments are fantastic.