Book: Continental Philosophy

nativeastral said:
sheesh sorry snoop didn't realise how long that was till l just scanned it again!
Click to expand...

I got it down to about a dozen pages as a word doc. Anyway, it's worth it. :)

Thanks for your comments and more :eek: links!!


[btw l find his jargon difficult too!]
Click to expand...
Rudolf Carnap reckons it's meaningless but what does he know ;) (just read the next chapter). It is difficult but worth the effort IMO. To me, it is just the opposite, ie meaningful, serious and important. Some of the points in the article could have come from a text on Buddhism, too, I would say.

s.
 
Snoopy said:
I got it down to about a dozen pages as a word doc. Anyway, it's worth it. :)

Rudolf Carnap reckons it's meaningless but what does he know ;) (just read the next chapter). It is difficult but worth the effort IMO. To me, it is just the opposite, ie meaningful, serious and important. Some of the points in the article could have come from a text on Buddhism, too, I would say.

s.
Click to expand...

Does Critchley say much about Shopenhauer as he did study Indian texts and obviously was influential pre the existentialists and Nietzsche [promoting the 'will to live']?

Avi, l checked out the 'mock him' site an lo and behold there was a picture of..you guessed it! whats this forum turning into? some anarchist underground den of disillusionist nihilists:D
 
nativeastral said:
Does Critchley say much about Shopenhauer as he did study Indian texts and obviously was influential pre the existentialists and Nietzsche [promoting the 'will to live']?
Click to expand...

Only three brief references, including the one earlier about "European Buddhism" - the "pessimism of Schopenhauer."

s.
 
A Case Study in Misunderstanding: Heidegger and Carnap

This is worth looking at because much of the misunderstanding between analytical and Continental philosophy can be traced back to this “stand-off”.

Heidegger is concerned with being: the question of being that precedes any actual beings or entities. This is the question at the heart of Aristotle’s philosophia prote (first philosophy), but it has become side-tracked over the centuries into concern with the nature of specific classes of being. For Heidegger, philosophy IS this question of being - but it is not a question that can be addressed by scientific enquiry or logical analysis.

Contrary to this, the “Vienna Circle” – analytical philosophers such as Carnap – see the sole purpose of philosophy to logically clarify the world as expressed through empirical science. For Carnap, philosophy is an under-labourer to science. Carnap is concerned with the verification (or not) of empirical propositions which can then be determined as meaningful therefore (or not).

For Carnap, Heidegger’s philosophy is, literally, meaningless.

For Heidegger, analytical philosophy is the mistaken side-track that philosophy has taken since Aristotle.

Thus this gulf between the two men is a definitive expression of the stalemate between scientism and obscurantism.

s.
 
nativeastral said:
or the logical and the psychical!
Click to expand...

I can see perhaps that you mean a logical result of their respective "outlooks" (if that's what you mean) but what do you mean by the psychical, in this respect?

s.
 
Scientism versus Obscurantism: Avoiding the traditional predicament in philosophy


For CP, scientism in philosophy ignores the critical and emancipatory function of philosophy; it is a failure to see the complicity between a scientific conception of the world and nihilism – science and technology are responsible for the alienation of humans from the world. This it does because it turns the world into a causally determined realm of objects that stand against the isolated human subject and by turning these objects into commodities to be surveyed or traded with indifference. The critique of scientism comes from the belief that the scientific model cannot, and should not, therefore be the model for our primary or most significant access to the world.

In this regard, Critchley recommends “Knowledge and Human Interests” by Jurgen Habermas. Habermas describes scientism as “the conviction that we can longer understand science as one form of knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science.”

The other end of the spectrum is the danger of anti-scientific obscurantism, the rejection of causal scientific explanations for causal occult explanations, something that Critchley describes as the X-files complex. Each episode of this TV series is essentially a choice between a scientific and an occult explanation of a paranormal phenomenon.

Critchley believes that a distinction needs to be made between explanation and clarification as discussed by Max Weber. According to Weber natural phenomena require causal explanation whilst social phenomena require clarification (in terms of motives). Without this the stand-off between CP and AP will remain. It is summarised in a quote by Hilary Putnam:

“I think that Aristotle was profoundly right in holding that ethics is concerned with how we live and human happiness, and also profoundly right in holding that this sort of knowledge (‘practical knowledge’) is different from theoretical knowledge. A view of knowledge that acknowledges that the sphere of knowledge is wider than the sphere of ‘science’ seems to me to be a cultural necessity if we are to arrive at a sane and human view of ourselves and of science.”

s.
 
Snoopy said:
I can see perhaps that you mean a logical result of their respective "outlooks" (if that's what you mean) but what do you mean by the psychical, in this respect?

s.
Click to expand...

just meant that AP went down the road of using logic to try and explain the human sciences which heidegger for instance refuted in his concept of dasein which was always in a particular context [worldhood] that cannot be deduced logically in any formal structure. Though heidegger himself has his theory [the question of being] so trying to generalise, it is based on phenomenology which is a subjective first person account of consciousness, totally at odds with the so called objective third person 'armchair' point of view; the difference between theoretical 'know that' knowledge and practical 'know how' knowledge. psychical in that both body and mind are a unit [and heidegger includes the world here].
 
Sapere aude: The exhaustion of theory and the promise of philosophy

Critchley contends that philosophy is currently marked by an exhaustion of paradigms. He goes on to say that philosophers must dare to think for themselves rather than be constrained by the greats of the past. Kant summarised the project of the Enlightenment as “sapere aude” which, liberally translated means just this: dare to think for yourself.

The sectarian divide has, in his opinion, led to a weakening of philosophy’s critical and emancipatory functions. Consequently it has become marginalised in much of society and culture.

Critchley begins to see the emergence of non-sectarian philosophers (such as Richard Rorty), tied neither to CP or AP.

Philosophy must build on the past, not be enslaved by it, we must do something with philosophy, not merely use it to sharpen our intellectual skills.


s.
 
I don’t see how there can be a reconciliation of AP and CP as described in this book. They seem like two disciplines founded on mutually opposed viewpoints. AP is the “under-labourer to science” (not that I think it needs one) whereas CP is concerned with the emancipation of man (and views science, to a large degree as part of the problem). How, therefore, can the two be brought under one roof?

Anyhoo, here endeth my summary of this book. And most interesting it was too. In future when people make reference to “philosophy” I shall ask them to which philosophy they refer! ;)

s.
 
hi snoopy, l had missed that last post which mentioned Rorty and pragmatism as a possible marriage [had an over long article by him, Richard Rorty's Platonists, Positivists, and Pragmatists], which, on looking up pragmatism on wiki [more of a u.s. phenomenon] brought me to Mike Sandbothe who has something to say about this divide. Certainly l would agree with Critchley that the 'industry' of philosophy with some of its never solved 'problems' are dead ends which further nothing but the same rehashed mental gymnastics which are meaningless masturbations [l'm just jealous l'm not mathematical and so too dum to understand logic! let alone heideggers obscurations but havent given him up yet].

Mike Sandbothe: Davidson and Rorty on Truth
Mike Sandbothe: Review
 
nativeastral said:
hi snoopy, l had missed that last post which mentioned Rorty and pragmatism as a possible marriage [had an over long article by him, Richard Rorty's Platonists, Positivists, and Pragmatists], which, on looking up pragmatism on wiki [more of a u.s. phenomenon] brought me to Mike Sandbothe who has something to say about this divide. Certainly l would agree with Critchley that the 'industry' of philosophy with some of its never solved 'problems' are dead ends which further nothing but the same rehashed mental gymnastics which are meaningless masturbations [l'm just jealous l'm not mathematical and so too dum to understand logic! let alone heideggers obscurations but havent given him up yet].

Mike Sandbothe: Davidson and Rorty on Truth
Mike Sandbothe: Review
Click to expand...

Thanks for these links and your ever-interesting contributions, NA.



s.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top