The Fragmentation of the Humanities

I love reading the MIT Press's Philosophy brochure that I get in the mail every once in a while, because of the extreme contrast between its first and second halves. The first half covers recent releases by their subsidiary Bradford Books, which focuses mostly on analytic philosophy that's heavily informed by contemporary cognitive science. The second half covers recent releases by their subsidiary Zone Books, which focuses mostly on cultural studies that's heavily informed by continental philosophy. Don't get me wrong: I don't think that those two traditions are mutually exclusive; it's the MIT Press brochure that treats them as such. But in reading their brochure from cover-to-cover, one experiences a drastic change from the extremes of one culture to the extremes of another. And it's all presented in the same font and layout, which makes for an experience similar to walking from Epcot Center's fake-French village to its fake-Incan pyramid.

That said, check out this summary of a new book published by Zone Books, Adi Ophir's The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals:

"What remains of moral judgment when truth itself is mistrusted, when the validity of every belief system depends upon its context, when power and knowledge are inextricably entangled? Is a viable moral theory still possible in the wake of the postmodern criticism of modern philosophy? ... Ophir forges a new perspective for thinking about what it means to be a moral being: to be moral, he argues, is to care for others, and to be committed to preventing, at all costs, their suffering and distress."

The complex questions that they start with aren't even the best part. What I really like is his radically new perspective on what it is to be a moral being. Why hadn't anyone thought of that before? Caring for others by preventing their suffering and distress? That's so po-mo! No mere modernist could have even conceived of such a thing.