Monsters Are Our Friends...and philosophy can prove it!
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- hpseaton
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Some parents are greatly distressed that zombies, monsters and vampires are so much with us. Not so Stephen T. Asma of Columbia College Chicago.
In a Halloween essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the philosophy professor says the creatures serve a valuable function today even though many would consign them to a darker past:
Believers in human progress, from the Enlightenment to the present, think that monsters are disappearing. Rationality will pour its light into the dark corners and reveal the monsters to be merely chimeric. A familiar upshot of the liberal interpretation of monsters is to suggest that when we properly embrace difference, the monsters will vanish. According to this view, the monster concept is no longer useful in the modern world. If it hangs on, it does so like an appendix—useful once but hazardous now.
I disagree. The monster concept is still extremely useful, and it’s a permanent player in the moral imagination because human vulnerability is permanent. The monster is a beneficial foe, helping us to virtually represent the obstacles that real life will surely send our way. As long as there are real enemies in the world, there will be useful dramatic versions of them in our heads.
After all, Asma concludes, “things don’t strike fear in our hearts unless our hearts are already seriously committed to something (e.g., life, limb, children, ideologies, whatever). Ironically then, inhuman threats are great reminders of our own humanity.”
Or, put another way, that ghost you see may be the friendliest ghost you know.
In a Halloween essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the philosophy professor says the creatures serve a valuable function today even though many would consign them to a darker past:
Believers in human progress, from the Enlightenment to the present, think that monsters are disappearing. Rationality will pour its light into the dark corners and reveal the monsters to be merely chimeric. A familiar upshot of the liberal interpretation of monsters is to suggest that when we properly embrace difference, the monsters will vanish. According to this view, the monster concept is no longer useful in the modern world. If it hangs on, it does so like an appendix—useful once but hazardous now.
I disagree. The monster concept is still extremely useful, and it’s a permanent player in the moral imagination because human vulnerability is permanent. The monster is a beneficial foe, helping us to virtually represent the obstacles that real life will surely send our way. As long as there are real enemies in the world, there will be useful dramatic versions of them in our heads.
After all, Asma concludes, “things don’t strike fear in our hearts unless our hearts are already seriously committed to something (e.g., life, limb, children, ideologies, whatever). Ironically then, inhuman threats are great reminders of our own humanity.”
Or, put another way, that ghost you see may be the friendliest ghost you know.
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remanns
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You do have to have something to lose, to fear loss. Twu!
- 2 years ago
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remanns
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sugarlilly
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"because human vulnerability is permanent." oh but it doesn't have to be! this also is completely up to interpretation...“things don’t strike fear in our hearts unless our hearts are already seriously committed to something (e.g., life, limb, children, ideologies, whatever). Ironically then, inhuman threats are great reminders of our own humanity.” in my brain, this isn't blatantly cause & effect like it implies.
- 2 years ago
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sugarlilly
