Worst Debater: Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton is a well-respected English author and philosopher. As of today, he has written several best sellers such as Essays in Love and Status Anxiety. During the debate, Botton argued against the resolution “Be it resolved humankind’s best days lie ahead”. Although each debater brought valid arguments and unique perspectives to the resolution, out of the four, I believed that Botton’s debate was the weakest of all for a number of reasons.
Botton starts off his debate by summarizing what he called the “4 main themes where optimists think they will make the largest gains” and proceeds to dispute them. His debate, although eloquent, and well organized, lacked strong evidence and support. Instead, it was more of a collection of questionable pieces of evidence, inapt analogies, and fallacies which ultimately led to its fauilure.
One of the biggest reasons why Botton’s debate was so weak as compared to the other debaters’ is because of the perspective that he took. Botton based his arguments on a liberal arts perspective which consisted of mainly philosophical standpoints. In a nutshell, his main argument was that are genetically flawed creatures and because of these flaws we will never reach perfection and thus humanity’s best days cannot lie ahead. He believes in the “philosophy of pessimistic realism” and the “philosophy of wisdom”. Having a liberal arts perspective on the debate only weakened his stand against his opponent who took
Another four years another presidential debate. Before I go on to the current debates let me state a few facts about past ones. The Lincoln and Douglas debate was in important because it started Lincoln presidential career. The Debates lasted from August 21 -- October 15. There where seven of them, with two days to two weeks in between. Each debate lasted three hours; first candidate spoke for one hour; the second for one and a half hours; the first replying for a half hour. Candidates alternated going first. The topics involved where primarily slavery and the Union. Other important debates were the '48 and '57. They were the only debates before 1960; there were no presidential debates between 1960 and 1976. In
In his essay, “Freedom and Resentment”, Strawson aims to prove human freedom by evaluating two opposing viewpoints, the optimist and the pessimist toward determinism, and discrediting various ideas within each argument in order to arrive at his own conclusion. It is necessary to understand that the basis of Strawson’s argument focuses on human psychology. He believes that innate tendencies engrained in our dispositions develop our subjective reactive attitudes and we are too attached to interpersonal relationships to consider changing all attitudes to objective ones. While I find Strawson’s points to be relevant and compelling, there are flaws in his argument that cannot be ignored.
The movie, The Great Debaters, takes place in the 1930s and explores the struggles of three students from Wiley College’s debate team. The first character introduced is the youngest student from the team, 14 year old, James Farmer Jr. He is an ambitious young man who strives to live up to his father’s expectations. James struggles with fear throughout the movie. He is sheltered and does not understand the severity of the racial conflict of the time. This trait is evident in the film in two key scenes. The first is when his family is out for a drive and his father accidently hits a white man’s pig. James’s father is very cautious during this interaction and James witnesses the incident from the car. This interaction has a major impact on James and gives him a greater understanding of the racial conflict. The second incident occurs when James is unsuccessful in his first debate. When given other opportunities to debate, he questions himself and fears failure. This fear plays a role in the debate team’s future competitions.
Although the fundamentals of existentialism can be applied to numerous works throughout history, existentialist thought, which places emphasis on authenticity and the ability to control one’s own growth, largely rose to prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable among these works are Voltaire’s Candide, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Although all three texts span dramatically different time periods, the themes of existentialism and free will remain consistent in opposition to the despair and pessimism that life ultimately imposes on us all. According to The Second Sex and Candide, we must work towards our happiness and fundamentally seek it out on our own, while Coates claims in
Through the steady adversity faced by Candide, Voltaire brings up important questions about how the nature of optimism appears to commoners. Pangloss's philosophy of "the best of all possible worlds" - an example of the misleading
This motion film is called “The Great Debaters.” The movie which was released in 2007 is based on a true story but does not trumpet that fact in an opening caption, takes place on the campus of Wiley College during 1935. The movie is Directed by Denzel Washington and Produced by
Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to the effects of actions on general happiness, I admit or rather earnestly maintain.
Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for the promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.[MillJS:1863]
The latest book by Matt Ridley entitled The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves presents a deep and amazing argument regarding the reason behind the expectation of life getting better and better with the passage of time. According to Ridley (2011), optimism revolves around several aspects of networks, globalization, cooperation, exchange, trade and specialization. Readers belonging to the domain of philosophy consider the book to be highly stimulating. Ridley (2011) has actually synthesized and expanded some of the ideas most readers are already acquainted with. These ideas are reminders of different books and certain connections and patterns exist between them (Easterly, 2010). The discussion based on interplay of ideas is a reminder of Steve Johnson and Frans Johansson. Nick Schulz and Arnold Kling also come to mind after seeing his discussion on evolving modern prosperity. He resembles Tyler Cowen when he discusses about why globalization results in huge creative gains. Gregg Easterbrook also comes to mind at the point where he stresses why we are still pessimistic despite the good news. His discussion pertaining to non-zero sum global cooperation takes readers and researchers to the world of Robert Wright. The foundational work of Adam Smith can be further recalled when he mentions his basic theses regarding exchange and trade (Easterly, 2010; Casnocha, 2011).
Strike and Soltis claim that nonconsequentialist and consequentialist views are not sufficient. Kenneth A. Strike and Jonas F. Soltis also mention how happiness promotes growth. According to
Solnit criticizes the attitude of “treat[ing] desire as a problem to be solved” instead of reveling in the uneasiness of yearning. We tend to be goal oriented and can often overlook the process in favour of the result, sprint to the finish and overlook the middle. It is easy to forget that not everything requires an ending, and not everything gets an ending. Throughout life, there is a guaranteed level of ambiguity. Stitched into our thought processes is the obsession with closure and finality: and, therefore the lack of such can be unsettling in the extreme.
“The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers becomes kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands, while the many natures now content to follow either to the exclusion of the other are forcibly debarred from doing so. This is what I have hesitated to say so long, knowing what a paradox it would sound; for it is not easy to see that there is no other real road to happiness either for society or the individual.”(The Republic, 376de)
In Wednesday, APR. 13 at Winona State University I attended a lecture that is part of the CLASP Lecture Series. The lecture was about “Bruno Latour and the Parliament of Things: The Modern Crisis of Representation” by Dr. Jim Armstrong. Dr. Armstrong represents himself in the begin of his lecture and show us some picture for him when he was in Germany in 1997, which explains some of his achievements. Then he read to us a poetry that he wrote. Then he explains what the relationship between American poets and united health of nature. And he gave a definition about the majority. Then he talked about the experimental method. It is asking questions that nature could answer it. In his studies, He was very scared and frustrated because he want to
In an ironic way, the optimism of the vast majority is the greatest inhibitor of satisfaction. Both the future and the past are born of the present mind; the now is interminable. For some reason, humanity seems to possess an unwavering insistence on running, so to speak, to an illusory end that is really nothing more than a product of momentary dissatisfaction.
The first way is to know what seems to be related to the word of optimist. The answer is positive. So make friends with the positive. It does not mean you ignore every difficulty you face actually. It is about finding the positive within an understanding. You need to believe if there will always an opportunity around the problem to stay in positive thinking.