From: "John McCaffrey" <mrmccaffrey96-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: PKF: Paper Feyerabend
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 02:40:39 +0000


I found the review interesting - though I've read the book anyway. What I'm 
curious about is the following passage;


.>=93I agree that if discourse is defined as a sequence of clear and
>distinct propositions (actions, plans, etc) which are constructed
>according to precise and merciless rules, then discourse has a very
>short breath indeed. Such a discourse would be often interrupted
>by "irrational" events and soon be replaced by a new discourse for
>which its predecessor is nonsense pure and simple. If the history of
>thought depended on a discourse of this kind, then it would consist
>of an ocean of irrationality interrupted, briefly, by mutually
>incommensurable islands of sense.=93  
>
>[5]
>What Feyerabend disowns in this passage is of course precisely
>what some have read as his position.

If Feyerabend here disowns 'what some have read as his position' then what, 
I feel inclined to ask, actually IS/was his position? Personally I never 
took this interpretation of his ideas, rather I saw a far more radical 
stance in his writings. It seems to me that PKF  saw ONLY 'an ocean of 
irrationality'...with NO 'islands of sense' at all (certainly he seems to 
lean towards this view in his later works). After all, he doesn't just 
attack one form of 'reason' - his lines of argument tend towards showing 
that ALL forms of reason are as 'irrational' as each other. I believe that 
in a 'letter to the reader' (featured on the Karl Jaspers Forum) he invites 
said reader to see chaos where before they perceived order (or something 
like that). A true anarchist?
John McCaffrey

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