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Emerson on Travel

February 20, 2009 in Education | No comments

Emerson talks a lot about travel in Self-Reliance; he’s clearly skeptical of travel to really educate or to help indivdiuals “find themselves”:

It is for want of a self-culture that the superstition of Traveling . . . retains its fascination for all Americans. . . The soul is no traveler, the wise man stays at home . . . Traveling is a fool’s paradise.

Emerson doesn’t want us shackeled to our own land.  He doesn’t have a problem with travel for “art, study, and benevolence”, but before we travel we must be “domesticated” and “not go abroad with the hope of finding something greater than he knows”.

Not very much like Descartes, eh?

Descartes on Travel

January 27, 2009 in Writing | 3 comments

I have been kicking around the idea of writing something about the philosophy of travel or the importance of travel to education.  Santayana has an essay called “The Philosophy of Travel”.  I had forgotten that Emerson talks about travel in “Self-Reliance” until I was reviewing it today (it’s in the Core course reader).  And there’s this bit from Descartes (Part I in A Discourse on Method):

For to hold converse with those of other ages and to travel are almost the same thing.  It is useful to know something of the manners of different nations, that we may be enabled to form a more correct judgment regarding our own, and be prevented from thinking that everything contrary to our customs is ridiculous and irrational — a conclusion usually come to by those whose experience has been limited to their own country.

I am not sure where this work will end up.  I know it will take awhile, as I don’t have much scholarship time this semester, but I think it will be fun.

Anyone know of any other philosophical works on or mentioning travel?

Some Thoughts on Travel

November 20, 2008 in Books, Education, Writing | 4 comments

I may have mentioned that I am reading Walking the Bible, by Bruce Feiler.  This morning, I came across this passage:

As much as he [Bruce's guide named Avner] knew about the Bible, he seemed to know more about the nature of travel, about how to go places, leave a bit of youself behind, take a bit of the place with you, and in the process emerge with something bigger — an experience, a connection, a story.” (p 192 in the hardcover edition)

This, well, gets it right.  The best sort of travel is a transaction between you and a foreign place.  In this transaction, you have to give some things up (security, preconceptions, time, comfort, energy) to get some things (memories, friends, photos, conversations), but it’s not the things you get that make the travel worthwhile.  It’s the experience that is constructed out of that transaction that matters; it’s the stories you tell yourself and others that, in a deep sense, makes travel.

My way of framing it is influenced heavily by Dewey’s aesthetics.  One of my many ideas for projects is some writing on the philosophy of travel and philosophy of education via travel.  What does everyone think?  Does anyone know of any literature on the philosophy of travel or the philosopy of education that includes travel?

The Moral Sense Test and X-Phi

October 28, 2008 in Education | No comments

Recently, I took the Moral Sense Test.  “Test” is a bit of a misnomer, since you aren’t scored or assessed in any way.  It’s actually a survey of sorts, designed to solicit responses to moral situations.  The situations, while artificial (how many of us will have to push someone out of a boat in order to save another five people who are drowning?), seem to mirror common delineations within moral philosophy.  I won’t say too much more, because knowing a lot about the test will skew the data.

What’s interesting to me is that the Moral Sense Test is part of a hip new thing in philosophy — experimental philosophy, or “X-Phi”.  I know it’s hip and new because it has a cool name.  The idea is that the problems of philosophy can be informed through experimental data, such as that gathered by the Moral Sense Test and brain scans.  In other words, when considering problems of ethics, philosophers might be informed by seeing how people actually think about ethical problems or seeing how the brain works when considering ethical dilemmas.

While I think this is kind of neat, part of me sees nothing really new or exciting in all this.  Likely, my background in American pragmatism and educational philosophy that makes me underwhelmed.  From the beginning, pragmatism has been interested in the “problems of men” as Dewey put it.  William James started modern psychology and Dewey was always interested in psychology, sociology, and public policy.  Philosophers of education often use insights or data from those social sciences and have to reckon with issues of practice.  It seems as if contemporary philosophy is just now coming around.