We hope to be dipping back to more Ancient Greeks (e.g. the Pre-Socratics, more Plato, more Aristotle, the Stoics and Skeptics) in some future episodes, at least one of which will come very soon.
If you have done graduate work in this area and are the type of guy that memorizes the various Greek words for all the important concepts, and would be interested in coming on the show for an episode, please drop me a line. -Mark Linsenmayer
Uh-oh, unconscious (?) philosophy gender bias alert. Come to think of it where are all the women philosophers? Past and present?
‘Guys’ can refer to men or women i.e people. However ‘guy’ is usually used to refer to a male. ‘The type of guy’ seems to refer to an individual of a set so it seems all politically correct to me.
It’d be interesting to think what you guys thought of Frantz Fanon too.
I agree that using the phrase “you guys” can be gender neutral, but to say “if you’re the type of guy”, then I think it’s generally meant as a reference to a male, though I know Mark is not consciously specifying that he’s looking only for a male.
When I was an undergrad, many years ago, the philosophy department faculty was entirely men. I just checked out our local university’s philosophy department and of the 20 faculty only one is a woman.
My first wife graduated from a major university with an undergrad degree in philosophy, she was the only woman in her department. At one point, feeling somewhat isolated, she wanted to leave the program but the department head begged her to stay, telling her that she was the only woman to join in years.
I did a quick (not thorough) search and apparently there is still quite a gender bias in philosophy departments, at least in the universities in the states. Some of the blogs by women indicate a frustration with the male dominance in philosophy. Complaints ranged from sexual harassment (I know that’s not isolated to philosophy departments) to dealing with subtle, and not so subtle, put downs by male philosophy professors.
I never thought I’d be commenting about this here, I’m no expert, by any means. Marks “type of guy” request sparked my curiosity. Maybe it’s appropriate though as he is looking for an expert in ancient Greek philosophy and it seems that the ancient Greeks thought women incapable of serious philosophy. They thought they were inferior to men, a trend that continued for centuries.
I doubt very much that Mark thinks as the Greeks, regarding women, and maybe his comment was merely out of habit, by being, it seems, surrounded by males in the world of philosophizin.
This issue can actually run pretty deep, and when you write a book, it often leaves you scratching your head about how to say something. You don’t want to violate grammar as you would, for example, if you used “their” as the possessive pronoun when your subject was singular. One also doesn’t want to use “one” all the time because . . . doesn’t it sound a little pretentious? Once one goes down that road, one can end up with some pretty horrific sentences. One tends to sound like a butler from the English countryside. Sometimes it just sounds better if you just go ahead and always use the feminine pronoun instead of the masculine one, but how would that be any better?? I was perusing this article and at first glance it seemed pretty fair. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-language/
I’m the type of guy who can be can be called a “guy” in all contexts, but sadly not the type of guy who can help out here. But I do participate at LibriVox and we have people there with all kinds of backgrounds and interests. I’ll drop a link to this post and see if anyone there is interested and qualified to help out.
actually, i think you can use “they” and “their” to refer to a singular person of unspecified sex (so: a person/they/their; “each to their own”), without violating grammar.
That said, the dictionary cautions me on its use with singular nouns (“ask a friend if they could help”) as being a use not widely accepting in formal contexts — i guess a book is a formal context.
(And, pray, what is wrong with the English countryside butler?)
I agree — “they” and “their” are increasingly being used as neuter singular indefinite pronouns, and the grammar books will soon catch up to usage.
Did something come of your plans for an episode on stoicism? I’d love to learn more on that subject.
Yes, episode 124 on Epictetus has been recorded!