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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

some questions « Previous | |Next »
October 20, 2005

Just how does analytic philosophy understand modernity? As a continual process of enlightenment towards the truth and freedom?

It is committed to the project of the Enlightenment is it not? If so, then how does it deal with Weber's iron cage of modernity? Surely it no longer pretends that society doesn't exist and that everything can be reduced to the entities of mathematical physics? Surely it now acknowledges that it, as a particular historically formed school, exists in a liberal capitalist society in the 20th century?

I guess what the school denies is that the history and development of the tradition of analytic philosophy has not been affected by the history of late modernity.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:09 AM | | Comments (6)
Comments

Comments

The question is valid. Isn't the core issue here the inability of analytical philosophies to conceive of history as something other than external to its discipline? They don't even discard history - how can they when they know not what it is?

Cue Habermas: he, too, has difficulty bringing history (and the project/question of modernity) into his project.

That is not correct; it's more like a positivistic view of facts and of statements about facts (i.e historical record) lacks the sort of hegelian splendor that college-boy leftists enjoy, and use to puff up their egos. Analytical philosophy at its best is closer to say programming than it is to Kant or Hegel; it's operational, pragmatic, functional. Why not attack the computer science department as well.

And the humanist moralism which hides behind the PoMo facade is quite evident in these comments. The last 80 years of human history are ineffably tragic and bloody; neither PoMO nor logic will be able to indicate that tragedy (newsreels and photos do better than words anyways). As fas a diagnosis I think Freud's Civilization and its Discontents is a better guide than any postmodernist texts I have perused.

Tom,
I concur. There is a great divide between history and philosophy in the analytic tradition. It defines itself as different from continental philosophy and it understands that developed as a school in the early 20th century.

Yet is does use this difference to examine its presuppositions. They are --eg.,the ahistorical conception of reason --taken as a given.

Hence we have the myth of the given.

MT,
I don't get the bit about the 'positivistic view of facts and of statements about facts.'

The analytic philosophy that I know is a scientific realism with a rich conceptual structure of natural science which is on the pathway to Absolute truth.

That has nothing to do with college boy leftists---it is defended by conservatives who detest marxism and poststructuralism with a passion.

Nor can I see 'the humanist moralism which hides behind the PoMo facade is quite evident in the above comments' about the entities of mathematical physics and the iron cage.

As I've argued previously, poststructuralsim is not a humanism. It is a crtique of humanism in its liberal and socialist forms.

"That has nothing to do with college boy leftists---it is defended by conservatives who detest marxism and poststructuralism with a passion."

Russell was not in that camp, and he is one of the AP big guns. I don't think Quine approved of Marxism, but he was a materialist and atheist, and a democrat, so I've heard. Besides there is much to detest about applied Marxism: perhaps you've heard of Stalin. I don't think the Vienna Circle was that conservative: not exactly Marxist but still sort of Social Democrat.

Rawls is considered sort of an ethicist in the analytic tradition and he was quite liberal and progressive. So who are you really referring to? It is the poststructuralists btw who are being picked up by the Christians: not the analytics.

analytic philosophy is not just Russell or Quine. I talked in terms of scientific realists which developed out of logical postivism.

What has Staalin to do with scientific realism?