Thought and Judgment

I think the criticism of American thought is not so much that it is derivative -- everything is -- but that it is not properly to be seen as "theory" in the sense of providing a vision of a new way to live but more a handbook on a specific way to govern.

Me? I think this is good. Most people that feel strongly about how other people should live (see below for qualifications) are assholes and when those assholes live in places with weak institutions and few competing centers of power and large numbers of disaffected people willing to listen to them they move from the "asshole" category to the "murderer" category.

I thought a lot about judgment of the political system of others while in Russia -- especially at the times when I had to describe our own -- and came away with the very boring conclusion that judgment must take place -- I think we are incapable of living in a world without praise or blame or comparison -- but it needs to be open to surprise. So, for example, it is facile to say in Russia "this is bad -- this is bad we do this better" but it is equally facile to say "Everything is really the same everywhere". Of course there is corruption here in the US but it is different in scale, content, and effect -- so the word "corruption" is used in both places but mean different things -- and judgments must be made or we cease to think.

If you want to read more about my impressions of my Russian visit my Russian Trip Blog.

Hi everyone,
So this was the first APD meeting outside Amherst. We hope there will be many more.
All the best to you all,
Catherine & Ilhem

On classes and such

Good to be back.

I was kind of shocked (well, at least surprised) to read that some of your colleagues are blind to the all-American Presidency. Yes, of course American thought (and art, and customs, and so on) was influenced by that of Europe... how could it not? But here is the thing: all later thought is derived from earlier thought. Not to derive it in some way would be a slap in the face to all the effort humanity has put into constructing and developing. Just as Locke could sit, have a cigar and care about Property -even if it includes life- only BECAUSE Hobbes had dealt with Safety/Order (whichever you prefer - that is a whole other topic that at least in our University is still controversial) before him.

America could very well have instituted a Parliamentary system and be done with the matter. But it did not. It came up with a different type of Constitutional Democracy that later other (not very important - I will give your colleagues that: mostly Latin American) countries followed or copied or imported. And even if that creation was rooted on practicality it has gone far beyond it. (We may need to be reminded that the very figure of the English Prime Minister started out because a German Dude needed a primus inter pares among his Ministers who, unlike him, spoke English - also very practical if you ask me). Even contemporary European theorists such as Sartori analyse how the American and European systems can (and did) give birth to a third type of government (and Catherine should be able to help me out here), what he calls a Semi-Presidency.

All that may not be the strongest argument, but I still think it is valid (particularly at 6.55 am...). And I believe that specially when it comes to these topics one cannot take things out of context. European countries have been around longer, it was Europeans that arrived in the US and started out a new home away from home. Things learned and taken into consideration are not, to me, simply "derived". As I see it, there are degrees of complexity that need to be thoroughly considered to speak of such derivation. One could argue that everything is derived from something else... but that does not explain much, now does it?

One thing that really sounded familiar to me was the "approach" issue. I have found that I could not get the best results possible using a thematic approach with first-year students (I would say Freshmen, but then it would get complicated - we have a 5 to 6 year program to get a degree in Poli Sci). This last semester I tried to illustrate a point using the 1982 Falkland War with England as an example... and found many of my students consider it ancient history. That is one problem. The other big bump along that road, in my experience, is that in order for students to understand and be able to cross-compare concepts throughout different historical contexts they need to have a good grounding in history. Sadly, most don´t. So they end up making an huge effort to get their time lines right, they try not mix up dates and periods and by the time they get to concepts they are worn out and confused - a few years ago I ended up postponing everything they had to learn just to teach them some basic history. Fifth- or 6th-year students, however, have already been through several history classes so they actually enjoy using previous knowledge to question and discuss certain topics.

And that is just what has worked for me: I take freshmen by the hand and walk them through the different periods, so they can see how A led to B and so on and leave the thematic approach for the older students.

Topics

Every three semesters I teach a course called "American Political Thought". I love to teach the class because I always rethink things -- not as much as I would like but I try. The first thing I rethink is the nature of the course. I teach American politics not theory but this is, in effect, a theory course. Some of the theorists in our department don't believe there is such a thing as "american political thought" arguing either a) it is all derived from european political thought or b) american politics has always been a practical enterprise.

So the first thing I try to deal with in the course is:

1) What is the importance of "thought" in general
2) What is "american"
3) what is "politics"

The second level is "where are such things to be found"
Philosophers (dewey, croly, rorty, james, pierce)
Legal cases and scholars (holmes, posner, supreme court case)
Magazine/Journal articles
Practical politicians (jefferson/hamilton/lincoln/progressives/new left/feminist writing etc)

The third question I grapple with is pedagogy -- do I teach "historically" -- which means starting with the puritans and going as far as I can or "thematically" creating some themes (power, citizenship, participation, authority, democracy, freedom v equality etc) and track how such questions across periods for comparison purposes.

I have my own notions of course -- thought does matter and it is worth it for students to examine the answers to political questions that their own nation has put forward. I also always want to teach "thematically" but find that students with no grounding in history (when was the civil war?) get confused.

Since this is an "APD" post I wonder if other people confront these questions; teach similar classes etc.

Ramble away, I say...

Glad to see some interaction!!

If it becomes necessary we can always start new blogs (like apd2005-domestic, apd2005-intl… whatever) and link to them from this page (that’d make this a "home" page). I’m not sure it’d be very wise to start other web pages until we know how this one goes, and what people post. If one person or a group decide to start a separate blog for a specific thing, we can also link to that from here... The thing is that if we end up with a lot of pages I don't believe that people will have the time or will to check them all... I don't know. What do you think, Mike?

I want to hear about what’s going on in everybody’s country, but I also wanna know about their personal or professional lives or whatever they feel like sharing. At one point I even thought that we could have a ‘topic of the week/month’ about a certain country, academic topics, American or Int’l politics and so on, but again, it’s way too early for that. I do, however, want to hear what YOU think of all this Mike, being the program Admin Director and all…

2006

Thanks to Hudson for starting this. It is better than the discussion boards on the APD and indonesian web sites. Hudson, how do you envision this blog? Personal news, American/World political news? Links to curricula and teaching materials? Or can we ramble on about any old thing?

Happy 2006!

All right, here we are. Now this will be a short post so we can get started. There are a few (very few indeed) links on the right, but that list will keep growing over time. Be patient and email me about any links you want added. Make sure you check out the Video... funny as hell.