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  3. A piece by Cambridge philosopher Simon Blackburn in the current issue of the Society of Authors journal addresses the difficult

A piece by Cambridge philosopher Simon Blackburn in the current issue of the Society of Authors journal addresses the difficult

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问题     A piece by Cambridge philosopher Simon Blackburn in the current issue of the Society of Authors journal addresses the difficult question of whether philosophy ought to be accessible to the general reader. "The great philosophical writers of the past wrote for humanity," Blackburn begins, enumerating Plato, Aristotle etc. The rot set in, according to him, during the 20th century, with the academicising of the discipline.
    It seems a reckless bet at best to portray Plato as "writing for humanity", when the philosophers in his ideal state are to be kings—that is, not just good at what they do, but rulers over the rest in a hierarchically ordered, rigidly unified polity.
    But is "writing for humanity" such an obviously helpful ideal? Most people don’t expect to be able to understand other kinds of specialist discourse. The lay person would understand little or nothing of micro-electronic engineering, has no interest in doing so, and is content to leave it to the initiated. But philosophy is about the world we live in, and our lives in it, Blackburn objects, waving the flag for the enriching humanities against the sterilities of technology. Therefore everybody should be able to understand it. On this view, what differentiates philosophy from science is the fact that it poses questions about the world we live in and our perceptions of it, and even makes suggestions as to what we ought to do in our lives. Neither of those approaches is absent from theoretical science, though. What would be the point of researches into the causes of obesity or the effects of climate change if they didn’t tell us, or at least strive to tell us, what we ought to do about such matters?
    The point is that philosophy is as much a technical discipline as these other sciences are, and as little capable of being diluted down to words of one syllable. One of the reasons for this is that philosophy isn’t necessarily just a set of conclusions. To many of the most recent western thinkers, it is first and foremost a methodology, rather than an attempt to arrive at a fixed theory. The Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno declared, "The crux is what happens in it, not a thesis or a position. . . Essentially, therefore, philosophy is not expoundable. If it were, it would be superfluous; the fact that most of it can be expounded speaks against it. "
    In a final somersault, Blackburn states that making philosophy accessible should not be a question of simplifying it but of bringing people up to its level. So the problem turns out to lie after all not with the attempt to interpret the world, but with the faculties of those who want to hear it interpreted.
The second paragraph suggests that Plato wrote for______.
选项 A、the general reader
B、an elite audience
C、the rulers of his times
D、his ideal philosophers
答案B
解析 第二段是在反驳第一段所述布莱克本观点“伟大哲学家为人类而作”。
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