EROS AND EDUCATION: I know this is ridiculously late, but I’ve been distracted and all August humid-hazy in the brain. Here are some clarifying comments I made to X. Trapnel of Books Do Furnish a Room, about our brief dust-up. (Me, him, me.)

1) “I totally agree [that it’s still possible for people with radically divergent premises and even languages/definitions to pursue truth together], and I’m sorry this particular approach to meta-discussion didn’t highlight that agreement. BUT–and this is why so much philosophy goes so wrong–good debate on morals & politics (I still prefer ‘virtue’ as the word for this stuff) can only take place when there’s a rich context of story and persona. If I want to talk about marriage (to use the easiest example to hand) I need to talk about the Song of Songs, not just more abstract nouns, and I need to create some sense of my persona in your mind.

“That’s necessary b/c persuasion is leadership. We need to create some kind of relationship in order for you to understand what I’m saying. Huckabee (or the rhetorical strategy I’m calling ‘Huckabee’!) fails here b/c he basically rejects any attempt to create a relationship with people who don’t already share his conclusions. That’s ridiculous, it’s retreat, just the opposite of leadership.

“This is why a) good philosophical dialogues are superior to good philosophical treatises, and b) just about all of the work that has to be done to ‘resurrect’ virtue-talk must be done at the level of culture, not politics as such. (So Huckabee/’Huckabee’ was already quite handicapped.)”

2) “I think we disagree on what aesthetics is, and where its limits are. Possibly I can clarify by saying that I’m talking about aesthetics as a philosophy of love, not a philosophy of taste? [edit: Should be, not solely as a philosophy of taste.] I mean, I disagree with you about ‘de gustibus’ anyway, but I think you can keep believing that and still end up on my side here.”

[note: Of course it’s possible to dispute taste! The guys at Project Rungay do it all the time, and often convince one another or their readers.]

[and here I say that leadership is not only about showing people something new to love, but also about revealing the secret identity of the beloved for whom they’re already longing:] “I’m very OK with showing people how their own longings (aesthetic!) are answered by my worldview.”