Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Science and Method', 'Lectures on the History of Philosophy' and 'Foucault: a very short introduction'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / d. Nineteenth century philosophy

21943	Since Kant, self-criticism has been part of philosophy [Gutting]
	Full Idea: Philosophy after Kant has involved a continuing critique of its own project.
	From: Gary Gutting (Foucault: a very short introduction [2005], 6)
	A reaction: I'm struck by many modern philosophers in the analytic tradition who write as if Kant had never existed. I don't know if that is a conscious decision, but it may be a good one.

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 3. Philosophy Defined

21757	Philosophy is the conceptual essence of the shape of history [Hegel]
	Full Idea: Philosophy is the supreme blossom - the concept - of the entire shape of history, the consciousness and the spiritual essence of the whole situation, the spirit of the age as the spirit present and aware of itself in thought.
	From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the History of Philosophy [1830], p.25), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
	A reaction: This sees philosophy as intrinsically historical, which is a founding idea for 'continental' philosophy. Analysis is tied to science, in which the history of the subject is seen as irrelevant to its truth. Does this mean we can't go back to Aristotle?

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 4. Linguistic Structuralism

21944	Structuralism describes human phenomena in terms of unconscious structures [Gutting]
	Full Idea: Structuralism in the 1960s was a set of theories which explained human phenomena in terms of underlying unconscious structures, rather than the lived experience described by Phenomenology.
	From: Gary Gutting (Foucault: a very short introduction [2005], 6)
	A reaction: Hence the interest in Freud and Marx, and Foucault's interest in history, each offering to unmask what is hidden in consciousness. The unmasking is a basically Kantian project. Cf. Frege's hatred of 'psychologism'.

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 2. Geometry

10245	One geometry cannot be more true than another [Poincaré]
	Full Idea: One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.
	From: Henri Poincaré (Science and Method [1908], p.65), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics
	A reaction: This is the culminating view after new geometries were developed by tinkering with Euclid's parallels postulate.