Philosophy as Affectation

Gertrude Stein made the remark shown at the head of this post in connection with the death of the dancer/choreographer Isadora Duncan.  Duncan loved to wear long, flowing scarves.  She was wearing one while driving on September 14, 1927.  The scarf became entangled in one of the wheel wells of the car she was in (the wheels were open-spoked), pulling her from the car and breaking her neck (even, it seems, decapitating her or nearly doing so).  Gertrude Stein could be sardonic.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, "affectation" is "a. speech or conduct not natural to oneself: an unnatural form of behavior meant especially to impress others" or "b. the act of taking on or displaying an attitude or mode of behavior not natural to oneself or not genuinely felt."

It isn't clear to me that wearing long scarves is an affectation according to that definition.  It may be conduct intended to impress others, but I don't think it may properly be called "unnatural."  Still, we can infer what Gertrude meant in making her rather gruesome witticism without concluding wearing scarves of any sort is somehow an unnatural form of behavior.

I've remarked before in this blog that I'm annoyed by the metaphysical and epistemological efforts of some philosophers to question what is "real" and what we can "know."  Perhaps it would be kinder to describe those efforts as attempts to ascertain how or whether we can determine what is "real" and what can be "known."  It may be kinder to do so, but I think those efforts would in that case be no less annoying.

I think the fact that the claims of these philosophers are without merit has been shown by other philosophers, such as Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin.  But here I address the annoying nature to those claims; I propose that we may, reasonably, characterize their thought as irksome affectations. 

The source of my annoyance arises from a simple fact.  These philosophers, while spending their time and that of others foolish enough to read their works debating what is real and what can be known, and in creating and entertaining arguments in support of the position that we can't know anything, and in particular can't know if anything is real, blithely conduct themselves and interact with others and things in the world, treating them just as they would if they were, in fact, real and known by them.  Their conduct belies their claims, in other words.

I've always thought them to be in some sense disingenuous or dishonest as a result.  "I don't know if this chair exists" I imagine them saying "but I'm sitting on it and sit on it every day, just as I would if I knew it exists.  But I don't.  And in fact can't."  It seems rather harsh to call them brazen hypocrites, though.  We usually reserve that term for those who claim certain conduct is wrong and nonetheless engage in it all the time.  The philosophers I refer to probably aren't acting dishonestly or immorally.  

But, I think it's clear that they're saying, and behaving, in an unnatural manner.  "Unnatural" because the claims they make are plainly at odds with what they do, think and say naturally, as human beings, in the course of their lives.  For the same reason, their speech and conduct is not genuine.

I think it's also clear that their speech and conduct in this respect are intended to impress others.  After all, they purport to tell us all that we can't know what's real, or can't really know anything.  They seek to encourage doubt of things with which we interact at every moment.  They maintain, in other words, that we're foolish to think and act as we do, and we would understand that if only we were as intelligent as they are.

This kind of philosophy, which purports to doubt what is real and what can be known, is therefore an affectation.  And would be dangerous, if anyone actually took it seriously.