From: Robin Brouwer (rsbrouwer@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Apr 17 2005 - 13:35:51 BST
>Robin,
>
>Robin said:
>If we would now look at the current philosophers we can see that some
>present their ideas as a universal truth, mostly based on history and by
>quoting persons that bear authority in a certain field.
>
>Matt:
>Actually, I think you have it backwards again. The major turn away from
>(human) authority was the Cartesian turn in the 17th century. To get away
>from scholastic problems that the Christian philosophers were focused on,
>Descartes focused his attention completely on the ability of ascertaining
>episteme, or complete certainty. To do this, he created his famous method
>of doubt. This was to have the effect of enshrining epistemology as the
>first field of philosophy since we must now have some method of gaining
>absolute certainty before making any metaphysical claims (or just claims).
>Its precursor is Plato's dialectic. Descartes set the motif for modern
>philosophy by (supposedly) draining away all history from his epistemology:
>it was a method that relied nothing upon previous beliefs.
Robin
You might be right here, in those lines i wrote my mind was still stuck in
the creativity bit.
>We can see this motif running all the way into the 21st century. The
>universalists (who you would call philosophologists) want a dehistoricized
>method to achieve some sort of certainty and the historicists don't think
>such a method possible. Now, the _writing style_ of either party cuts
>_across_ the historicist/universalist distinction. You can find people in
>both camps for the most part. Jurgen Habermas would count as a
>universalist, but he has one of the keenest eyes towards history. Donald
>Davidson wrote very technical, history-depleted articles, but he busted
>some of the most major universalist resurgencies in the philosophy of
>language.
>
>This is why I don't think we can resurrect the philosopher/philosophologist
>distinction around either a focus on writing style or originality. Those
>things cut across our cross-section of philosophers. There's (almost) no
>way a philosopher would make it very far if they didn't "believe that there
>idea has a high value, but they are open to the ideas of others because
>through conversation a new idea of possibly even higher value might be
>formed." All good, honest philosophers want to find the best ideas. But
>being conversable, again, cuts across our selection.
Robin
The distinction I wanted to make that some philosophers want to find a
better way, others want to find the eternal truth.
>I think authority cuts across universalism and historicism, too. For the
>universalists, the thing that confers authority is the universal truth
>(that we have to somehow find). For historicists, the thing that confers
>authority are good, honest conversationalists and inquirers, i.e. other
>people.
For some reason you changed my philosopher/ dynamic thinker and changed him
into a historian that is searching for authority.
My idea of a philosopher was someone who used thought to form ideas and
sometimes dialogue to find new material to think about. He does this to form
his own ideas about the world to make his own insight higher, he is however
not doing it to gain an authority over others.
>Your main move, though, was to shift focus away from writing style and
>originality to universal/static truth v. "dynamic truth." I don't think
>this works either. For one, I do think it moves us further away from
>Pirsig's position, insofar as the philosopher/philosophologist distinction
>is concerned. I'm not sure there's much textual evidence to support your
>claim via the philosophologist issue,
Robin
But why would I want to support my claim via the philosophologist issue, it
seems to me that you desperatly want to be a philosophologist and since you
keep searching for a philisophologistic way to explain the ideas of people.
though your interpretive device (linking
>universal with static and historicist with dynamic) in general does have
>initial plausibility and provocativeness. But still, I think the issue of
>whether the philosopher's self-image has him looking for universal truth or
>"dynamic truth" cuts across whether he writes with an eye towards history
>and/or is creative and original.
The philosopher i was talking about has an eye inwards towards his own
thought, his eye is certainly not towards a history.
>The problem is the practice of these philosophers. In practice, even if a
>philosopher believes in a Universal Truth that will be found by a Universal
>Method, he will follow his nose along the path that will (God-willing) lead
>him there. The problem is that, despite what some people will tell you,
>philosophy has changed a bit since Socrates and Parmenides and almost all
>of the "important" philosophers believed in a Truth to be found by a
>Method.
Robin
The philosopher that believes in a universal truth does not nececarily use a
universal method. Remember i don't know much about philosophic history so my
comments or ideas were not based on them. You sound here as if i just read a
book and but those thoughts in writing, and it feels like your throwing
another book at me to prove me wrong.
I people keep thinking for themselves and choosing from the various methods
ideas presented to them or created by them philosophy will always be
dynamic.
>Philosophers followed their noses, which, I would think, is as good a
>description of dynamic truth as you'd need.
Robin
I agree and its a good time we live in with so many people beeing open for
new ideas and methods.
But in my opinion any philosopher that can get mad at someone for not beeing
willing to believe his ideas because he believes they are universal and
unchangeable is a philosophologer.
Regards
Robin
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