Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 15:25:44 -0800 (PST)
From: Paul Bryant <levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Dialectics


TMB--

TMB--

This strikes me as a very narrow view of critique.  How are you
conceptualizing the notion of critique such that you are led to this
conclusion?  What would it mean for a critique to have purely negative
consequences?  Which is to say, what would it mean for a critique to
have no positive outcome?  The distinction I'm making is between
argument and critique, though it would be incorrect to say that
critique involves no argument.  As I see it, argument plays an all or
nothing game whereby one attempts to show that a position reduces to
some sort of logical absurdity or contradiction, thereby allowing them
to dismiss the position altogether.  On the other hand, critique
attempts to determine the conditions and limits embodied in a certain
position, thereby making room for an entirely different realm of
thought.  This has been the standard definition of critique since
Kant, and has continued on in one form or another through both
analytic philosophy and continental thought.  For instance, Foucault
can be seen as engaged in a form of critique insofar as he attempts to
determine the conditions under which a certain form of discourse
arose.  Similarly, Quine is engaged in a form of critique when he
attempts to dissolve the analytic/synthetic distinction, thus bringing
about the so-called "web of belief".  In the absence of that
definition, I'm at a loss in trying to describe this sort of practice.
 But if you prefer to define terms arbritrarily in terms of what you
hear in your ear, then by all means do so; but please, tell me what it
is that you're hearing.

Paul



---TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> Eh. Critique doesn't necessarily make room for anything; if there is
room
> made that depends on the outcome of the critique. Critique is:
bringing
> something to *crisis*, by pushing, emphasizing, testing,
questioning, etc.
> What happens on the basis of that crisis all depends. Even "making
room"
> may not be adequate, since it implies a kind of simple spatiality and
> "fitting in", whereas when something "finds room" it may be due to
> paradigmatic shift, difference, qualitive shift, etc., which
completely
> exceeds the notion of "room, within a given thing". 
> 
> TMB
> 
> 
> On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 Unleesh-AT-aol.com wrote:
> 
> > In a message dated 1/21/99 10:32:06 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> > levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com writes:
> > 
> > << Critique
> >  isn't the negative task of destroying something, but the positive
task
> >  of making room for something else. >>
> > 
> > Nicely put.
> > 
> 
> 

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