display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |