Daily Inspiration Quote by Morris Raphael Cohen

Philosophy likes to cosplay as neutral investigation, and Cohen is calling the costume out. He’s pointing to a rhetorical sleight of hand: the “method of exposition” makes philosophers look like dispassionate detectives, dutifully trailing premises to whatever conclusion happens to be waiting at the end. The performance is tidy, almost procedural, and that’s precisely the problem. It invites readers to believe the writer has no stake in the outcome, when in fact the choice of premises, the framing of the question, and the very definition of what counts as “logical” are already saturated with commitments.

Cohen’s intent isn’t to sneer at logic; it’s to expose how logic can be used to launder values into inevitabilities. Present the argument as a pure inquiry and you smuggle in a conclusion with the authority of necessity rather than the messier authority of judgment. The subtext is almost journalistic: beware of any voice that sounds too serenely objective, because serenity often signals power - the power to set the terms of debate while claiming you’re merely following them.

Context matters. Writing in an era when analytic rigor and scientific prestige were becoming philosophy’s gold standard, Cohen is registering anxiety about professional style: a discipline that gains legitimacy by sounding like science may also inherit science’s myth of value-free method. He’s warning that the clean chain of reasoning is never just a chain; it’s also a leash, tugging readers toward conclusions that were wanted all along.