Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Symposium', 'talk' and 'Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro'

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6 ideas

1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism

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.

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy

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)?

6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 10. Constructivism / a. Constructivism

9916	Convention, yes! Arbitrary, no! [Poincaré, by Putnam]
	Full Idea: Poincaré once exclaimed, 'Convention, yes! Arbitrary, no!'.
	From: report of Henri Poincaré (talk [1901]) by Hilary Putnam - Models and Reality
	A reaction: An interesting view. It mustn't be assumed that conventions are not rooted in something. Maybe a sort of pragmatism is implied.

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / f. Ultimate value

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.

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / h. Fine deeds

5845	Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon]
	Full Idea: Niceratus said that his father, because he was concerned to make him a good man, made him learn the whole works of Homer, and he could still repeat by heart the entire 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'.
	From: Xenophon (Symposium [c.391 BCE], 3.5)
	A reaction: This clearly shows the status which Homer had in the teaching of morality in the time of Socrates, and it is precisely this acceptance of authority which he was challenging, in his attempts to analyse the true basis of virtue