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16415
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Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber]
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Full Idea:
Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like.
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From:
Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)
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A reaction:
He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up.
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8210
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Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions behind them [Derrida]
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Full Idea:
To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time determine what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making itself into history by this motivated repression.
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From:
Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.5)
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A reaction:
All of this type of philosophy is motivated by what I think of as (I'm afraid!) a rather adolescent belief that we are all being 'repressed', and that somehow, if we think hard enough, we can all become 'free', and then everything will be fine.
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8211
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The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our language [Derrida]
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Full Idea:
The movement of 'différance', as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture etc.
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From:
Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.7)
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A reaction:
'Différance' is a word coined by Derrida, and his most famous concept. At first glance, the concept of a thing which is the source of all differentiation sounds like a fiction.
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