Blog 584 After philosophy
Philosophy on the move
Saturday, August 12, 2023
Saturday, August 5, 2023
583. Irony of philosophy
Continental Philosophy (CP) seems to be saying that nothing is fixed. I have finished a book on that, with the title ‘Coherence of Continental Philosophy’.
The turbulence, out there and in here, implies that for over 2000 years philosophy has been chasing illusions of ultimate, fixed meanings, ideas, theories, logics, mathematics, identities, laws of nature, and truths. If that is true, what a waste of talent and effort!
Saturday, July 29, 2023
Blog 582 French fingerprint
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.
Saturday, July 22, 2023
Blog 581 dynamics
Friday, July 14, 2023
580 Identity
The French philosophers whom I discussed in the preceding items in this blog also militated against what the called ‘presence’, which I take to mean a well-delineated, stable nature of any entity: person, narrative, fact, meaning, interpretation. They maintain that every entity is different from any other, partly hidden and in ongoing transformation, flux. Hume had already said that. This is related to the ‘difference’ discussed in a previous item in this blog.
However, one can have an identity that develops, within the boundaries of its potential, along a path of life. A moving car is still a car. A car can stall or crash or receive another colour paint. A human being also has no fixed identity, and develops within its constraints of inherited talent, upbringing and education, along its path of life.
If identity has been seen as an object, this is due to the ‘object bias’, discussed earlier. We used to play with marbles, but now have lost them
Saturday, July 8, 2023
Blog 579 Structure
On the rebound from earlier philosophies that tried to erect systems, such as those of Hegel and Marx, the continental philosophers discussed in the previous item in this blog, militate against any structure, of organisation, politics, scientific theory, language, because, they claim, it is inevitably authoritarian and repressive, Hence this stream of philosophy is called ‘post-structuralist’. I think they are misconstruing their case.
All systems have elements to which the system as a whole adds things that the elements do not have, but for this the elements have to surrender some of their freedom of action, And indeed, this requires some form of authority, but that is not necessarily authoritarian and repressive. Power can be positive, in yielding options and new choices.
Each system has some form of homeostasis, keeping variables within bounds of viability.of the system. A human being, for example, has bodily limits of blood pressure, temperature, salinity, oxygen, and psychological limits of anger, fear, hatred, jealousy, maintained by streams of blood, hormones, and electrical currents through neurons.
Thus I agree that social systems carry more or fewer limitations of freedom, to enable the benefit of the whole. The challenge is to impose minimal constraints, leaving as much freedom as possible, avoiding authoritarian systems. That is the task of democracy, which is full of conflict, precisely in balancing coordination and freedom. The full, unlimited freedom that the continental philosophers in this stream seek, is an illusion. To deny any form of system is not helpful, and threatens to make philosophy irrelevant.
Saturday, July 1, 2023
Blog 578 Difference