Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/27/2013 05:11 PM Report

Advance the interview to 31:10 and listen to what he says about torture and Dick Cheney (would you torture the innocent daughter of the terrorist to save the many) and virtue (Aristotle) is just desserts to a person which means the recognition and rewards given from a society.

learnerWP  01/29/2012 11:56 PM Report

I agree with much of what REMant said. I'm going through professor Sandel's class as an open course. I like it, and I find it valuable; but I also think that too many of the propositions are too simple—although I wouldn't quibble about hypotheticals like steering wheels and whistles on trolley cars, for that defeats the purpose of the argument, which is a contrived incident by necessity.

One thing that really struck me though during the conversation, Charlie, was that you didn't seem to connect the fact that your show IS what Sandel was talking about. No one else has an hour long program that goes into the depth and variety of ideas that yours does. It's unfortunate that—for instance—in the more than two years that have passed since REMant made his comment, I'm the only one to leave one.

It would be nice to have a forum set up where people interested in Socratic discourse could discuss issues. Sandel has the forum, but it doesn't receive nearly the amount of attention and comments that it merits. I wonder if you did a live show with him sometime in that theater whether it would help both of you to garner more comments and discussion. You have the great conversations, but they unfortunately end once you sign off.

REMant  01/13/2010 02:28 AM Report

I once sat through Sandel reading a paper, or perhaps a chapter of a book, on civic virtue, nodding off in an overheated auditorium. The most popular course in my undergrad years was taught by a psychologist, who began it pointing to various students and accusing them of masturbation. Got their attention, I suppose. But I never took the class, nor anything from that professor, tho I was a major, and I think I made the right decision.

While I certainly applaud a teacher trying to employ the Socratic method, I don't think you can do it adequately in a class of 1115, particularly in Sanders, and I'm afraid I don't think there's much Socrates here either, rather it is more St Thomas Aquinas, or Jesuitical casuistry, more akin to Socrates' sophistical opponents. We do not need to know WHAT TO DO, but to know WHY THINGS HAPPEN. What to do will then come as a matter of course. Like theirs' his approach to morals is artificial, a matter of relative will, not of anything conceived as natural. Casuistry such as this has seen some renewed popularity with an attempt to bend pragmatism towards shoring up liberalism, and a revival of rhetoric. Incidentally, virtually everyone in the founding generation in this country condemned this approach, mostly because they were old-fashioned Protestants, not Catholics, or liberal evangelicals. Harvard started down this road when it abandoned the New England Theology and any sense of sin.

I, too, found the ethics class I took first semester sophomore year laid the basis for what I was looking for in college. I believe we read Aristotle, Bishop Butler, Paley, Hume, Kant, Mill, and G E Moore, the last of whom wrote in Principia Ethica: "Casuistry is the goal of ethical investigation. It cannot be safely attempted at the beginning of our studies, but only at the end."

I think you can get a much better instruction in both ethics and political philosophers by reading them in the original, and in historical context, and I would advise students to take good history classes instead of political science, which has NEVER understood anything about political philosophy, or even courses in the philosophy department itself, which in recent years has gone completely off the tracks. From listening to him, I am afraid, too, that he, himself, does not know the historical context, surprising, because his teacher was Charles Taylor, who I do think knows better.

BTW, the engineer should turn the train onto the siding, because there is more likelihood that one person will react fast enough to avoid harm than five, even tho by doing that he is altering the hand of "fate." However, they make whistles just for situations like this, and I wonder just how many locomotives have steering wheels in the first place.