Blog 582 French fingerprint

 The development of CP radicalises in the later thread of French philosophies preluded by Nietzsche, of: Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida, and Rorty, though the latter is not French, and Sartre, with the nihilistic extreme of Baudrillard. But where do we fit Hume, who preluded much of the French scepticism?

 A ’fingerprint’, summary of characteristics, of the French thread is as follows:

1.    1.   Rejection of ‘totalising’, ‘logocentric’, universalist theories with a stable, fixed foundation. Theories are just ‘language games’. No ‘grand narratives’, just ‘little’ ones

2.     2. No ‘presence’, fixed identity, of anything: people, words, meanings are subject to flux and change.

3.     3.  Respect and defence of irreducible difference between people, words, and meanings.

4.      4. No static, conceptual or social structure, which is seen as inevitably authoritarian and suppressive.

5.     5. Interdisciplinarity.

6.      5. Pragmatism. 

 I agree with most of these points, but concerning number 1, I maintain science and theory, but grant that those are limited, temporary, partial, and depend on background knowledge that cannot fully become explicit, and depends on perspective and context. I disagree  with number 4. Structures are inevitable, with more or less authority, which is not necessarily suppressive. In its radicalism, this line of CP threatens to lose its pragmatism. No theory means no policy analysis, no ethics blocks social coherence.

 Habermas militated against point 2, claiming that in communicative interaction people seek equality, bridging difference. But I object that  there can be similarity without identity, with communication building on what is similar and profiting from what is different, with what I call ‘cognitive distance’, and ‘crossing’ it. Without difference, communication would lose its dynamics, innovativeness.