![]() Fish ought to know that these are two rather different senses of the term "interest." But he doesn't. Notice, however, how Fish uses that broad analytical sense of interest to make the more narrow claim that one must vote for one's identity interests. The last claim–there is no alternative to voting on the basis of interest–has that "analytical" ring to it. Not only is there nothing wrong with such a calculation – it is both rational and considered – I don’t see that there is an alternative to voting on the basis of interest. It is based on the assumption (itself resting on history and observation) that because of his or her race or ethnicity or gender a candidate might pursue an agenda that would advance the interests a voter is committed to. (I say “usually” because it is possible to argue that the election of a black or female president, no matter what his or positions happen to be, will be more than a symbolic correction of the errors that have marred the country’s history, and an important international statement as well.) The second form of identity politics is what I call “interest” identity politics. And that, I agree, is usually a bad idea. The first I have already named “tribal” it is the politics based on who a candidate is rather than on what he or she believes or argues for. We should distinguish, I think, between two forms of identity politics. In his column in the New York Times he makes a similar point: Having said all that, let's return to Stanley Fish. So on one reading, the Socratic position plays on a semantic ambiguity in order to claim that "doing the good" is a "definitional" or "analytic" truth. He said this view "contradicts the plain phenomena." People do all the time what they know they shouldn't be doing. It's the good because all actions aim at the good. Even if its bad, you view it as the good. You will always do, Socrates seems to say, what you view as the good. Let me draw on one for the purposes of illustration. They will also notice that there might be any number of plausible interpretations of Socrates's position. Those in philosophical land will recognize this as the problem of akrasia. If you don't do the good, you don't know what it is. Some minutes later, even after another caller had spoken about a different issue, Stanley Fish returned to make the point that it's just false that you cannot vote your own "interests." It's impossible, in other words, not to vote your interests.įor those familiar with a little bit of Plato and Aristotle, this sounds a lot like the following: it's impossible, so said Socrates, to know the good and not do it. I heard him do this the other day on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." Near the end of the section a caller had made the claim that one ought not to vote narrowly on his or her own interests. It's more parlor trick than intellectual move. This game consists in solving a real philosophical problem by erasing or denying some of its critical semantic and conceptual distinctions. Stanley Fish often plays the equivocation game.
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