Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [29]
Marx objected to capitalism because of what it does to people. It harms their relations to themselves and others by denying them the capacity for self-
expression through free, conscious activity. People need to be recognized for what and who they are, and wage labor doesn’t provide that. But the need doesn’t go away just because it is unfulfilled, it manifests itself in other behaviors. When our work is unsatisfying we compensate with other ways of being recognized and belonging, ways that ultimately culminate in a culture industry selling worthless goods that are poor substitutes for true self-realization and meaningful relationships. Marx may be an easy target when it comes to everyday conversations. He’s demonized most often by those who know nothing about him. So stick to Seuss if you must. The Once-ler and McBean are notorious characters, and we’re surrounded by them. We read our children Seuss and tell them to be individuals, to be themselves, but then we send them off to school where we tell them to “play the game.” They continue on to college where we pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to buy them MBAs hoping they’ll become the next Once-ler. We do this while lamenting our jobs, the result of doing the same thing we now ask them to do, only hoping maybe they’ll make a little more money so they can have a little more stuff. Should we? Criticism serves the purpose of making the status quo justify itself by measuring it against what could or ought to be. Doing so helpfully makes us a little bit wiser. And if you can teach a Sneetch, we can’t be far behind.
CHAPTER FOUR
Socratic Seuss: Intellectual Integrity and Truth-Orientation
Matthew F. Pierlott
Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.
—U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN, 1991–2002)1
If philosophy is concerned with anything, it is concerned with developing and maintaining intellectual integrity in ourselves and others. Philosophy doesn’t aim only to further knowledge and to assess knowledge claims. It also aims to orient individual characters toward the truth and promotes self-reflection on philosophical practice itself in order to best guard against the disintegration of its methodology. It does so because it understands being oriented toward the truth as a component to living well. Why is the truth valued? First, it seems by nature we generally desire the truth for its own sake, even though at times we might fear the pain associated with knowing a particular truth. We are curious, and oh, the places we’ll go to satisfy that curiosity. Second, we certainly desire the truth for its instrumental value. Knowledge helps us navigate the world so that we can live as we wish. Think of Gertrude McFuzz being happy with one feather once she comes to understand the implication of having too many. So the philosophers within us want the truth, and intellectual integrity is an essential component of the properly philosophical character.
What is intellectual integrity? However one eventually defines it after philosophical debate and reflection, it will probably involve all of the following
aspects: (1) being open to different ideas; (2) carefully considering the strength of the support for those ideas; (3) drawing out the implications of those ideas, including their coherence with other plausible ideas; (4) reflecting on the limits of one’s ability and methods to carry out the previous two tasks; and (5) honestly representing the results of the previous three tasks both to others and oneself. While there may be more to include and philosophers have and will explore complications even with these components, these aspects serve as a basis for beginning to