Journalist and author; host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS
The Wall Street Journal editorial page, most of the time an intelligent and essential voice in American political life.
Sean Illing, Vox, “9 questions” series, 20 May 2017 source ↗
The question
Whose work do you read even when you disagree with them?Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
Vox used this as one of nine fixed questions in its 2017 series on intellectual habits.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Journalist and author; host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS
The Wall Street Journal editorial page, most of the time an intelligent and essential voice in American political life.
Sean Illing, Vox, “9 questions” series, 20 May 2017 source ↗
Firstly, Bob Aumann is a very special man. I disagree with him about his political views – he is a right-wing person. I disagree with him about his current position on “what game theory is about”. From time to time he expresses views – about politics for example – backed with the authority of the great game theoretician. I don’t like those statements. In spite of this fact, I admire him for his academic work and personality.
I’ve read Cheney’s and Bush’s autobiographies. Books by Sarah Palin and Anne Coulter. I read articles on Breitbart.
This strikes me as the most hilarious question, given that I’m a philosopher. Philosophy is all about respectful disagreement, and learning from disagreement. No decent philosopher simply parrots some other philosopher, so there must be disagreements somewhere in every case. I disagree less with J.S. Mill than with any other major philosopher, but I still disagree with Mill a good deal. Aristotle is insightful on some matters, not so insightful on others. As for Plato, Kant, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Rawls, my disagreements are larger, but still compatible with thinking that in some very major ways they were on the right track. I would not say that about Lord Devlin or James Fitzjames Stephen, but I still teach both, in order to learn from their arguments. If I didn’t disagree with a philosopher it would hardly be worth engaging with him or her, because there would be nothing to learn.
Well, I almost never agree with anything anyone in the current administration says, but I read their press releases and interviews and late-night tweets regularly, because I need to stay informed.
Wasting time reading blogs, magazines, newspapers. They have their place but they can become an addiction. And the real ways to gain understanding about issues are reading books and traveling.
Antulio J. Echevarria II, John Gray, Ariel Rubinstein, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Wolfson, Jessica Henwick
Search the directory for somebody in particular.