Philosophical Inquiries: An Introduction to Problems of Philosophy

摘要

founding of the state of Texas, and yet “this is the perspective eagerly accepted andnpromoted by Tom Dunson [i.e., Wayne’s character]; it is his epic-heroic view ofnhimself, and those who share that point of view” (p. 29, emphasis Pippin’s). Thus, anynattempt to understand what is going on in the fi lm must take into consideration thenproblem of the unreliable narrator; this problem appears again when considering ThenMan Who Shot Liberty Valance . This chapter emphasizes the problem of the extra-legalnfounding of a legal order, familiar to readers of Schmitt, Derrida, and others, and thenimportance of “mythology, or more prosaically in this context, untruth and fantasy, innthe creation of a political world and in its psychological ‘health’” (p. 83). The chapternon The Searchers uses the problem of racism and the passion most deeply connected tonit, hate of others (or, one might say, The Other), to bring to light the important observationnthat political psychology as Pippin understands it “will require a subtlety, tentativeness,nhermeneutical fi nesse, and exploratory approach that can be frustratinglynincomplete and very diffi cult to deal with in theory” (p. 133). This is due to the complicatednstate of a political actor’s intentions and motives in light of his or her own understandingnof those intentions and motives. Comprehending this is, for Pippin, both ancentral task of political psychology and a problem that, the book argues, The Searchersndemonstrates exceptionally.