display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
23 ideas
| 19579 | The history of philosophy is just experiments in how to do philosophy [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The history of philosophy up to now is nothing but a history of attempts to discover how to do philosophy. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 01) | |
| A reaction: I take post-Fregean analytic metaphysics to be another experiment in how to do philosophy. I suspect that the experiment of Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida etc has been a failure. |
| 20455 | Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: The pre-Socratics are interesting, but philosophy really begins in drama; it's a competitive discourse to tragedy. Which is why Plato's 'Republic' excludes the poets: they're the competition; gotta get rid of them. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 6) | |
| A reaction: That's an interesting and novel perspective. So what was the 'discourse' of tragedy saying, and why did that provoke the new rival? Was it too fatalistic? |
| 19583 | Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: All philosophy begins where philosophizing philosophises itself. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 79) | |
| A reaction: The modern trend for doing metaphilosophy strikes me as wholly admirable, though I suspect that the enemies of philosophy (who are legion) see it as a decadence. |
| 22026 | Philosophy is homesickness - the urge to be at home everywhere [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is actually homesickness - the urge to be everywhere at home. | |
| From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 45) | |
| A reaction: The idea of home [heimat] is powerful in German culture. The point of romanticism was seen as largely concerning restless souls like Byron and his heroes, who do not feel at home. Hence ironic detachment. |
| 19588 | The highest aim of philosophy is to combine all philosophies into a unity [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: He attains the maximum of a philosopher who combines all philosophies into a single philosophy | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 31) | |
| A reaction: I have found the epigraph for my big book! Recently a few narrowly analytical philosophers have attempted big books about everything (Sider, Heil, Chalmers), and they get a huge round of applause from me. |
| 19598 | Philosophy relies on our whole system of learning, and can thus never be complete [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Now all learning is connected - thus philosophy will never be complete. Only in the complete system of all learning will philosophy be truly visible. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 39) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is evidently the unifying subject, which reveals the point of all the other subjects. It matches my maxim that 'science is the servant of philosophy'. |
| 19586 | Philosophers feed on problems, hoping they are digestible, and spiced with paradox [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher lives on problems as the human being does on food. An insoluble problem is an indigestible food. What spice is to food, the paradoxical is to problems. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 09) | |
| A reaction: Novalis would presumably have disliked Hegel's dialectic, where the best food seems to be the indigestible. |
| 20446 | Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: I claim that philosophy begins in disappointment, and there are two forms of disappointment that interest me: religious and political disappointment | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: You are only disappointed by reality if you expected something better. To be disappointed by the failures of religion strikes me as rather old-fashioned, which Critchley sort of admits. Given the size and tumult of modern states, politics isn't promising. |
| 6848 | Humour is practically enacted philosophy [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Humour, for me, is practically enacted philosophy. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198) | |
| A reaction: This may be overstating it, as the funniest jokes may be the least philosophical, and remarks may be faintly amusing but very profound. Lear and his Fool make up a single worldview together. |
| 6847 | Humour can give a phenomenological account of existence, and point to change [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Humour provides an oblique phenomenology of ordinary life; it is a way of describing the situation of our existence, and, at its best, it indicates how we might change that situation. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198) | |
| A reaction: The trouble is that this leads us to relentlessly political standup comedians who aren't very funny. Critichley may have a problem with remarks which are very funny precisely because they are so politically incorrect. I sympathise, though. |
| 19587 | Philosophy aims to produce a priori an absolute and artistic world system [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy ...is the art of producing all our conceptions according to an absolute, artistic idea and of developing the thought of a world system a priori out of the depths of our spirit. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments II [1798], 19) | |
| A reaction: A lovely statement of the dream of building world systems by pure thought - embodying perfectly the view of philosophy despised by logical positivists and modern logical metaphysicians. The Novalis view will never die! I like 'artistic'. |
| 7068 | If infatuation with science leads to bad scientism, its rejection leads to obscurantism [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: If what is mistaken in much contemporary philosophy is its infatuation with science, which leads to scientism, then the equally mistaken rejection of science leads to obscurantism. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Clearly a balance has to be struck. I take philosophy to be a quite separate discipline from science, but it is crucial that philosophy respects the physical facts, and scientists are the experts there. Scientists are philosophers' most valued servants. |
| 6844 | Scientism is the view that everything can be explained causally through scientific method [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Scientism is the belief that all phenomena can be explained through the methodology of the natural sciences, and the belief that, therefore, all phenomena are capable of a causal explanation. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.196) | |
| A reaction: He links two ideas together, but I tend to subscribe fully to the second idea, but less fully to the first. Scientific method, if there is such a thing (Idea 6804), may not be the best way to lay bare the causal network of reality. |
| 20449 | Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: One of the problems with the scientific worldview is that it leads human beings to have an overwhelmingly theoretical relationship to the world. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: Critchley is defending phenomenology, but this also supports its cousin, existentialism. I keep meeting bright elderly men who have immersed themselves in the study of science, and they seem very remote from the humanist culture I love. |
| 7075 | To meet the division in our life, try the Subject, Nature, Spirit, Will, Power, Praxis, Unconscious, or Being [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Against the Kantian division of a priori and empirical, Fichte offered activity of the subject, Schelling offered natural force, Hegel offered Spirit, Schopenhauer the Will, Nietzsche power, Marx praxis, Freud the unconscious, and Heidegger offered Being. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001]) | |
| A reaction: The whole of Continental Philosophy summarised in a sentence. Fichte and Schopenhauer seem to point to existentialism, Schelling gives evolutionary teleology, Marx abandons philosophy, the others are up the creek. |
| 7069 | The French keep returning, to Hegel or Nietzsche or Marx [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: French philosophy since the 1930s might be described as a series of returns: to Hegel (in Kojève and early Sartre), to Nietzsche (in Foucault and Deleuze), or to Marx (in Althusser). | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: An interesting map. The question might be why they return to those three, rather than (say) Hume or Leibniz. If the choice of which one you return to a matter of 'taste' (as Nietzsche would have it)? |
| 6835 | German idealism aimed to find a unifying principle for Kant's various dualisms [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: In his Third Critique Kant established a series of dualisms (pure/practical reason, nature/freedom, epistemology/ethics) but failed to provide a unifying principle; German idealism can be seen as an attempt to provide this principle. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.187) | |
| A reaction: He cites 'subject', 'spirit', 'art', 'will to power', 'praxis' and 'being' as candidates. This is a helpful overview for someone struggling to get to grips with that tradition. |
| 6837 | Since Hegel, continental philosophy has been linked with social and historical enquiry. [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: In continental philosophy from Hegel onwards, systematic philosophical questions have to be linked to socio-historical enquiry, and the distinctions between philosophy, history and society begin to fall apart. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.188) | |
| A reaction: I have a strong sales resistance to this view of philosophy, just as I would if it was said about mathematics. It seems to imply a bogus view that history exhibits direction and purpose (the 'Whig' view). There are pure reasons among the prejudices. |
| 6836 | Continental philosophy fights the threatened nihilism in the critique of reason [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: If reason must criticise itself (in Kant) how does one avoid total scepticism? In my view, the problem that has animated the continental tradition since Jacobi (early 19th cent) is the threat of nihilism. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.188) | |
| A reaction: As an outsider to 'continental' philosophy, this is the most illuminating remark I have read about it. It is not only a plausible account of the movement, but also a very worth aim, which should be taken seriously by analytical philosophers. |
| 6838 | Continental philosophy is based on critique, praxis and emancipation [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: The basic map of the continental tradition can be summarised in three terms: critique, praxis and emancipation. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.189) | |
| A reaction: I wince at 'emancipation', which seems to take freedom as of unquestionably high value, instead of being one of the principles up for question in social philosophy. There are more presuppositions in Marxist than in analytical philosophy. |
| 6845 | Continental philosophy has a bad tendency to offer 'one big thing' to explain everything [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: In continental philosophy there is a pernicious tendency to explain everything in terms of 'one big thing', such as the 'death drive' (Freud), 'being' (Heidegger), 'the real' (Lacan), 'power' (Foucault), 'the other' (Levinas), or 'différance' (Derrida). | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.197) | |
| A reaction: From a fan of this type of philosophy, this is a refreshing remark, because if pinpoints a very off-putting feature. Each of these 'big things' should be up for question, not offered as axiomatic assumptions that explain everything else. |
| 6846 | Phenomenology is a technique of redescription which clarifies our social world [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology (as in the later Husserl) is for me a way of assembling reminders which clarify the social world in which we exist; it is a technique of redescription. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if I can identify with this as a target for philosophy, but it is interesting and sound worthy of effort. Critchley offers this as the best strand in 'continental' philosophy, rather than the big explanatory ideas. |
| 20448 | Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology is a philosophical method that tries to uncover the pre-theoretical layer of human experience and redescribe it. | |
| From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would be delighted if someone could tell me what this means in practice. I have the impression of lots of talk about phenomenology, but not much doing of it. Clearly I must enquire further. |