Professional Responsibility

Definitions

William E. Kennick, writing about the teaching of philosophy, observes that sooner or later "one may feel in need of a definition of philosophy. As I advise my students, however, when one feels such a need, it is generally best to lie down until the feeling passes. Definitions have their uses, but they are useless for telling someone what philosophy is." [William E. Kennick, "Teaching Philosophy," in Teaching What We Do: Essays by Amherst College Faculty 163 (Amherst, Massachusetts: Amherst College Press, 1991)]

"We are inclined to begin a subject by asking how crucial terms can be explained or defined, and that approach in turn leads to a separation of understanding and doing, between comprehension and motivation. What we need is a better way to begin." [Elizabeth H. Wolgast, The Grammar of Justice 201 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987)]

"What I mean by the ethical criticism of narration . . . cannot be nicely confined in any preliminary definitions; it will be shown more by what I do than by anything I can say." [Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction 8 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)]

"The common meanings blunt the proper meanings of each word. The words of each person become the words of everyone only by losing their intention, by being progressively degraded, as new and shiny money once put into circulation grows dull. Instead of coinciding with value, the word is now only its label. . . . Thus the sedimentation of being into having becomes possible, that decline which empties speaking of its substance and efficacy, thereby making any revolt justifiable. Because he who takes language as coin of the realm is carried by speech toward non-existent values, he will be the dupe of whoever manipulates him, and his good faith having been seduced, he will now only see bad faith all about him." [Georges Gusdorf, Speaking (La Parole) 42 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965)]