Agnes Callard: belief

Transcript context

…Than might be many other philosophers. I think many reasons, but one of them that pops to my head is that often in philosophy, we’re trying to theorize some phenomenon. Say we’re trying to theorize aspiration, trying to give a theory of it, or weakness of will. The way we do it as philosophers is, we often use example at least to lay out the problem: “Here’s an example of such and such.” The problem with examples, though, is that they can collapse under theoretical pressure. There’s a constant impulse to rewrite the example and to say, “Oh, well, what was really going on was . . .” Essentially that impulse comes from the fact that there are certain changes you could make to the example that would make it theoretically easier to analyze. There’s a need, I think, for examples that are going to be a bit tough in response to that kind of pressure. One, it helps if you didn’t make the example, and two, it helps if the person who did really understood the thing that they’re talking about. I think literature gives us that. Maybe the third most common question I receive is, what is my — Tyler’s — best defense for reading, and indeed rereading, classic works rather than the latest book that just came out, some kind of smart nonfiction? What would you say is your best defense of reading and rereading the classics? Apart from your own professional reasons.…

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