Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 01:30:00 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: Integrating Philosophy & Everyday Life


I'll respond to a few misunderstandings, point by point, below.

At 07:51 PM 1/26/2003 -0800, Gary E Davis wrote:
>But what IS "our time" such that philosophy is legitimate?
>What makes philosophy "legitimate in our time"? Your answer
>is, more or less, your sense of what's Hegelianor, as you
>say in the end, "[t]he conception of philosophy [that
>is]...the full, self-confident unfolding of the powers of
>the human intellect, described by Fichte and Hegel."

An inaccurate characterization of my position.  There are two relevant 
references apiece to Fichte and Hegel in my essay: (1) quotations prefacing 
my essay, concluding a long sequence of quotations, (2) affirmation of 
these quotations at the very end, contrasting them to a dumbed-down 
conception of popular philosophy, which perpetuates the division of the 
universe of knowledge between specialists and amateurs, and holds back the 
latter by sentimentalizing them and thus insulating them from the 
appropriation of the sum total of human knowledge.  I did not endorse 
Hegelianism as the one true path.  The quotation from Hegel makes clear 
what I am specifically endorsing--in this one quote.  I selected the quote 
from Fichte as an illustration of the confidence that comes from developing 
the ability to think philosophically, i.e. integrally.  One thing I hope 
would be obvious about a collage of quotations.  Prefatory quotations are 
generally perceived as aphorisms, not full self-contained and complete 
arguments in themselves, but provocative distillations of ideas to be 
contemplated and whose purpose or relevance may be revealed in conjunction 
with the text that follows.


>Philosophical teaching can look a lot like questions from
>the bench (thinking of the tutorial, rather than the
>classroom). But philosophical teaching isn't *largely* or
>*basically* analogous to the juridical stance of
>impartiality (prior to judgment), since teaching---at its
>ideal "point" of tutorial---is interested in developing the
>thinking, not just, so to speak, doing archaeology (e.g.,
>the early parts of a psychoanalysis); and teaching has no
>interest in definitive judgment, unlike the court.

But advancing one's own thinking is based on neither the legal/debate team 
model nor the allegedly impartial classroom model.  Development is always 
partisan and goal-directed.


>  But one's own development is more or less fated to
>more or less exemplify one of the exemplars, at best, such
>that one's development would be radically advanced by
>becoming a student of the exemplar (rather than pretending
>that philosophy begins with one's own wonder--while it
>really *does*, in a sense; see the work of Matthew Lipman
>and his Philosophy for Children movement). Plato "lives"
>because every Western teenager is likely at heart a
>Platonist, before entering into the pathway of
>developmental thinking called philosophy.

As a teenager, I was mortally opposed to Platonism.  But I do not pretend 
that one develops an original position leapfrogging past thousands of years 
of human development, beginning from scratch.  Didn't I make that clear?

>A professional philosopher might genuinely believe s/he's
>far beyond, say, Plato (as, say, an Analytical philosopher,
>i.e., a practitioner of inquiries in the 20th century
>Analytical tradition) only to be one day exposed as a
>closet Platonist. How this happens is that, in one's way
>through the history of philosophy, one meets Plato relative
>to one's own self-formative interest (and its stage of
>conceptual self-formation) that affords a *representation*
>of what Plato thinks, which justifies (through critique or
>critical appreciation of "Plato") a passage of thinking
>beyond "Plato" which turns out to have been basically a
>genuine passage of one's development beyond that
>*representation* of Plato, which remained nonconsciously
>Platonic at heart.

OK.

>So, indeed, one comes to hope that, as you say,
>"[c]onscious philosophy enables a person to penetrate
>beneath phenomenal appearances and ideological smokescreens
>to uncover the underlying essence of any phenomenon or
>picture of reality," but it turns out that searching for
>"the...essence" of the "picture" perpetuates a reflection
>of the searcher whose searching is thereby destined to
>remain basically "conscious" in that sense, i.e., as a
>searching for some essence of itself searching. Of *course*
>we want to frame the phenomenality of appearances so as to
>understand them fundamentally. But what that fundamentality
>IS has been understood in other ways than as an essence
>(the fundamentality of searching may outgrow essentialism).
>To say that philosophy "is a quest for insight into
>objective reality beyond appearance" is just to declare a
>stance that *conceals* other modes of reality.

Subjective idealist horseshit!

>Habermas, you may know (having endured subscription to the
>HAB list for some time, you noted last March),
>distinguishes objective reality from its intersubjectivity
>and subjectivity, as does Hegel (though JH makes the
>distinctions on a different basis: *cognitive-linguistic*
>differentiations of world relations, based in "formal
>pragmatics"), so your objectivist stance isn't yet nearing
>Hegel's, though you seem to idealize absolute reflection.

I never claimed to be a Hegelian.

>Meanwhile, the history of philosophy has progressed
>throughthus evolvedfundamentalities, what Heidegger calls
>"stemmings" in "the history of Being," which culminate in
>the 20th century phenomenological/deconstructive critique
>of metaphysicalism (i.e., in a phrase, the aspiration to
>disclose the essence of highness), which gave Europe the
>mandarin Kantian intellectual culture of post-WWI Germany
>(cf. _The Genesis of Heidegger's *Being and Time*_,
>Theodore Kisiel, 1993) which turned into Zarathustrian
>support for Nazism (cf. _The Heidelberg Myth_, Steven P.
>Remy, Harvard UP 2003), whose essence (having sought
>essence) was, according to Heidegger (in his Nietzsche
>lectures of the 1940s), "the spirit of revenge."
>
>But that's the extreme. The domestication of this shows in
>the romance of The Concept, longing for some awe-inspiring
>integration of abstraction that then patronizes the common
>folk in terms of its charitable vision of the heights, as
>it mediates its achievement with the people--which tends
>toward so-called (by deconstructionists) "logocentrism".

All drivel.

>For example, to believe, as you say, that "for me the heart
>of philosophy consists of ontology, epistemology, and
>logic" accords with logocentrism in philosophy, as does an
>attitude toward ethics as "possible laundry list[] of
>concrete assertions about this and that" (i.e., ethics is a
>lowly derived mode of systematics).

Pure obscurantism and subjectivism.

>But I agree with you that "the development of abstract
>reflection and deep intuition are both indispensable," yet
>the evolution of thinking indicates that the "and" of
>reflection and intuition is, fundamentally, beyond
>systematics. Or so I would argue.

Beyond systematics?  meaning what?

>I could emphatically agree with you that "[n]ot only can
>philosophy [without quote marks - G] illuminate everyday
>life, but everyday life and social practice may
>supply...nourishment" for reflection. But dailiness is not
>sufficient, of course; so I can't agree that it may supply
>"the nourishment and discipline" for reflection, nor can I
>subscribe to a notion of reflection which is basically
>"abstract reflection."

But I did not advocate dailiness.  We are talking here about the 
relationship between abstract thinking and pre-reflective experience.  Has 
any human being ever lived on the former alone?


>It is dangerous, after the 20th century, to presume to
>refer substantively to "the formal philosophical heritage
>of the human race," since aspiration "to develop one's
>capacities" belongs to all, whatever their conditions of
>life

You're very good an name-dropping.  You've been well -trained.  But you are 
a inattentive reader, rather typical of formally educated 
footnote-whores.  It's a skill, but not a profound one.  I believe I stated 
explicitly that developing capacities belongs to all.  The formal 
philosophical heritage--which includes by the way Indian and China as well 
as Europe--is what we can draw upon, not being able to invent everything 
from scratch.

>Also, Ralph, the spirit of revenge is obvious in your
>relations to others. Though you write that "I do not seek
>to...devalue...the capacity of various people to think,"
>this claim is starkly undermined by your communicative
>practice.

Yet your obtuse and lazy reading habits reveal you to be the consummate 
narcissist.  All "tolerant" people are like this; they are completely mired 
in self-serving, self-regarding ideology, yet they pretend to be 
fair-minded, when they are no such thing.

>Yet it's true that "the inept application of abstract
>thought just creates more confusion and static," but "all
>the bad philosophy that surrounds us" reflects your overt
>contempt for what doesn't reflect your aspiration to be a
>German Idealist, and there's no need to be contemptuous of
>other's lack of interest in 19th century idealism.

I'm not a German idealist.  I am a materialist, actually, or I try to be.


>So, the emancipatory interest of knowledgeso integral to
>Habermas's _Knowledge and Human Interest_should not be
>overlooked, for philosophy is not only a means of
>enlightenment, but also (as Wittgenstein famously
>advocated, and the Ordinary Language school of analytical
>philosophy advanced) philosophy can also be
>therapeutic--maybe even in a *psycho*therapeutic sense.

I'll get back to Habermas shortly.  Wittgenstein: BS.

>For example, anyone who has a grandiose sense of
>self-importance AND believes that he or she is "special"
>and unique and can only be understood by, or should
>associate with, other special people AND is interpersonally
>exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve
>his or her own ends AND lacks empathy: is unwilling to
>recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
>AND shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes, THEN
>that person exhibits five of the nine traits of
>narcissistic personality disorder required for that
>diagnosis (http://www.psychologynet.org/npd.html).

But you are a lazy and obtuse reader, a shallow name-dropper.  Cultural 
capital, name-dropping and footnote-whoring substitute for clear thinking 
and attentive reading.  In actual fact, you are a narcissist down to your 
toenails, a condescending little hypocrite.


>  From a philosophical perspective (the interest in the
>conceptuality of one's self-formative interest), one might
>be concerned about the intellectualizing of someone with
>that disorder, e.g., the conceptual *crudeness* of one's
>contempt for others who don't satisfy one's needs, as
>exhibited by a moderately-toned writing that suddenly turns
>nasty whenever it refers to others, as you do in your
>postings, and as you do at points in your essay under
>discussion.

Politeless is aggression by other means.

>Habermas' explicates the emancipatory interest
>philosophically, as a critique of Nietzsche in Freud, who
>developed the emancipatory interest in his discovery of
>psychotherapy (albeit as very long-term psychoanalysis).
>Nietzsche, of course, had an epochal sense of narcissism,
>in his Zarathustrian longing.
>
>You *have* read some Habermas, haven't you?

Name-dropping is not reasoning.  Nothing is more narcissistic than your 
writing.  And if this childishness is all that academia is capable of 
turning out, then it's time to wrest this knowledge away from parasites 
like yourself and put it to constructive purpose.  I'm through with you, 
but perhaps someone who won't waste my time will come along to pursue a 
conversation.

Coincidentally, though, I am reading Garbis Kortian's METACRITIQUE: THE 
PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT OF JURGEN HABERMAS.  It is an extremely condensed 
calibration of Kant-Hegel-Marx-Critical Theory 
(Horkheimer/Adorno)-Habermas, with heavy reference to KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN 
INTERESTS. It's quite interesting, but there's a lapse.  Just as I thought 
when I read KHI many years ago, Habermas has Marx all wrong, and I think 
his correlation of interests with different conceptions of science is 
completely bogus.  This is where Habermas goes askew, and the logic of the 
progression that Kortian adumbrates does not convince me.  Perhaps Kortian 
will give Habermas enough rope to hang both Habermas and Kortian.  We shall 
see.



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