Belatedly, re Keston's helpful vvv post:
> But Harold, I wonder if "global capitalism" could ever "stand idly", and
> if therefore it might not be distracting even to imagine such autonomous
> discredit? Many things could be argued to leave phenomenology in ruins,
> and possibly in that way to gain for it intellectual tourists. The point,
> for me at least, is not -whether- a discipline could be argued to have
> been discredited, but whether we are able usefully to acknowledge the
> results of discredit such that the process of counterargument can be
> productive (within e.g. poetry). The same old dialectic, which
> (presumably) Wittgenstein would find less interesting than the terms of
> his own arguments.
I meant "stand idly by" with a certain irony; I'm not so easily
distracted. But I meant to emphasise that I think a kind
of "autonomous discredit" is possible (and important) in
philosophy and in other, more disciplined (i.e. more
suitable to be taught from a textbook) disciplines.
I believe it is possible to advance arguments, demonstrations,
refutations that are not simply epiphenomena of a power
structure or totality or march of reified History. By the
way, I haven't observed that when a point of view (e.g. Logical
Positivism or the programme of Principia Mathematica)
is felt to be discredited in philosophy that flocks of Minolta-
wearing tourists generally gather. Dust more likely.
There's as much danger in the post-Adornian raised-
eyebrow reflex, ever so patrician and withering, always
glancing away at the social nexus that supposedly
compromises everything we say, as there is in ignoring
that nexus. One need never critically master
any particular intellectual discipline, since all of these are
"always already" compromised. Whether you would
grant Wittgenstein's iterative worrying over the same
basic questions from slightly different, and very concrete,
angles the honorific "dialectic" I don't know, but it shouldn't
be ignored in any case.
> What do you mean by "neo-Cartesian"? Is it the concept of a reductive or
> "first" philosophy per se that you object to? ... the very concept of
> "first" philosophy is compromised by history, by the fact that we are
> never at the first point of our thinking and caring, that we are never
> able to reduce the -predicament- which sustains our thinking ...
Briefly, it seems to me that Husserlian notions like "eidetic reduction"
and "bracketing" are fundamentally problematic because they
take for granted a roughly (and explicitly, Husserl's case)
Cartesian position of the epistemological, and hence fully
general, primacy of starting from what can be "observed"
in the privacy of one's mind. And I don't know how these
procedures can be formulated without recourse to a
"private language" and "private ostensive definition". It
is these latter concepts, along with much else concerning
bodily sensation etc. that were re-problematised by
Wittgenstein in an entirely fresh and powerful manner.
I haven't yet got round to reading Merleau-Ponty, so
can't say whether he successfully outflanks the weaknesses
of a Husserlian position. You might say that the later
Wittgenstein is concerned with "modes of activity"
rather than modes of thought or production as a starting
point in philosophy.
> But one which requires absolutely
> that we focus upon the material environment of our own dispositions,
> insofar as those dispositions might be expected ever to appear legitimate.
How do you see the "of" functioning above? Are you saying
that our dispositions constitute a material environment?
And what becomes of the notion "legitimate" in a "materialist"
view?
> -globalization- is the principal fact or predicament within
> which any credible argument is now sustained.
Globalisation presumably means the physical extension
of a mode of production from a part of the earth to other parts
of the earth. If you wish to assert a concomitant extension
to all realms of human behaviour and thought in those parts of the
earth from which the affliction originally stemmed, that needs
to be distinguished, and perhaps further explained. I fail
to see that credibility of arguments is in general a
determinate function of globalisation.
> -- but really I tend more and more to think
> that Olson was a braggart who skimmed through Whitehead more to excerpt
> fashionable concepts than to comprehend his philosophy
I'm not much of an Olson fan. From what I've seen of
his prose, I think it unlikely that he was capable of mounting
a philosophical argument (or any other kind).
Thanks for the very useful comments on Prynne's views.
I'll take a look at The Numbers and his essays (if I can get hold
of the latter). Looking forward to your Prynne book.
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