Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Melvin Fitting, Roger Scruton and Georg W.F.Hegel

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy
Truth does not appear by asserting reasons and then counter-reasons [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is not difficult to see that the way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.28), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.100
     A reaction: This is a pretty good description of the way Plato and Aristotle do philosophy, so this idea, which must be a founding idea for the 'continental school', is extremely radical. Personally I identify rationality with believing things for good reasons.
We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §80Z p.115), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
     A reaction: This sounds like a combination of Nietzsche and later Wittgenstein, and may be one of the ideas that launches 'continental' philosophy. Recent French thinkers talk continually of 'liberation'.
Two marxist ideas have dominated in France: base and superstructure, and ideology [Scruton]
     Full Idea: Two tenets of classical Marxism have played a decisive role in French culture during our century: the theory of base and superstructure, and the concept of ideology.
     From: Roger Scruton (Upon Nothing: Swansea lecture [1993], p.7)
     A reaction: It is striking how marxist attitudes permeate even the least political of French philosophical writings, to the point where you wonder if they are even aware of it any more. They largely have marxism and reaction, with liberalism passing them by.
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 6. Deconstruction
On the surface of deconstructive writing, technicalities float and then drift away [Scruton]
     Full Idea: Deconstructive writing has a peculiar surface, in which technicalities float on the syntactic flood and vanish unexplained downstream.
     From: Roger Scruton (Upon Nothing: Swansea lecture [1993], p.2)
     A reaction: Not even the greatest fans of deconstruction can deny this, and Derrida more or less admits it. At first glance it certainly looks more like the ancient idea of rhetoric than it looks anything like dialectic.
Deconstruction is the last spasm of romanticism, now become hopeless and destructive [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The subversive patterns of thought in deconstruction are a last spasm of romanticism: one that has given up hope of an otherworldly redemption, and set out instead to destroy the illusions in which other still believe, the source of their power.
     From: Roger Scruton (Upon Nothing: Swansea lecture [1993], p.29)
     A reaction: It seems to be strongly connected with the failure of marxism in Europe, but it also seems to inherit all the values of the Dada movement.