Peter Singer: belief

Transcript context

…What do you think of Freud as a philosopher? I don’t think Freud was a great philosopher. I think that if he were a great philosopher, he would have been more open to different ideas. Clearly, he was highly authoritarian in his thinking. He had a set of ideas and wasn’t really prepared to brook opposition to them. That’s why my grandfather broke with him, along with Alfred Adler. When the split between Freud and Adler occurred, my grandfather — this is what my mother and aunt told me — my grandfather acknowledged that Freud was, in some sense, the greater genius, but just really didn’t like the way he behaved and how authoritarian he was, and therefore sided with Adler. I think if Freud had been more open to ideas, he wouldn’t have treated dissent — whether Adlerian or other forms of dissent — in the way he did. Why does so much of professional philosophy today seem so boring? It’s my subjective opinion, but I meet many philosophers who, to me, don’t seem philosophical at all. Not at all the case with you or the other guests we’ve had on the show, but what has gone wrong? Or do you challenge my premise?…

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