7 ideas
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. |
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 Kojčve 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)? |
23688 | Noncognitivism tries to avoid both naturalism and mysterious morality [Hacker-Wright] |
Full Idea: Noncognitivism is an attempt to avoid the alleged problems of naturalism without the mysteries of Moore's non-naturalism. | |
From: John Hacker-Wright (Philippa Foot's Moral Thought [2013], 1) | |
A reaction: R.M. Hare is the best example of this approach. Moore's Open Question argument was said to prove the Naturalistic Fallacy, which imagined that morality could be a feature of nature. It led Moore to platonism. I prefer Philippa Foot. |
7067 | Food first, then ethics [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Food first, then ethics. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], 8857) | |
A reaction: This is not a dismissal of philosophy, but a key fact which ethical philosophers must face up to. See Mr Doolittle's speech in Shaw's 'Pygmalion. It connects to the debate c.1610 about whether one is entitled to grab someone's plank to avoid drowning. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |