File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0111, message 240


Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 11:54:35 +0000
Subject: Re: Farmyard Frolics
From: "Michael Pennamacoor" <pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net>


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Foxy Jud recently in unfroliksome mood:

"Ostensible philosophical enigmas concerning existing, truth and citation are actually
puzzles concerning the connotations that identify them.  Resolve meaning, (by rigorous
linguistic and semantic examination) and the problems of delusive 'Continental' type
'philosophy' will melt away overnight with them, leaving the arena free and uncluttered of
dead ideas, enabling our universities and colleges to concentrate on human science and
analytical philosophy to push the boundaries of thought ever outward, and the poor
taxpayer to get his/her moneysworth. "

You know what, me hearty, this sounds very similar to the effective manifesto of the
so-called 'ordinary language' philosophers (e.g., Austin, Ryle, Hare, Cavell, et al), who,
following rather prosaically the Wittgenstein of the 'Philosophical Investigations', also
sought to dissolve traditional philosophical problems by some kind of linguistic analysis
(based proximately upon the premise that some kind of 'ordinary language' can be divined
in both ordinary and extraordinary linguistic situations (writings, dialogues,
conversations, etc), and that such situations can be fully described in terms of such
linguistic analysis (itself, of course, an extraordinary venture: why would anyone in any
ordinary circumstance feel the compulsion to analyse their speech?). Although I could if
asked at length, I prefer at this venture to abstain from displaying the utterly
nihilistic consequences of such a position: the result of such interminable speech about
speech (in order to dissolve philosophical problems) is a curiously noisey silence and
ultimately the very dissolution of humanity itself: the questions thinking raises are an
essential part of what it means to be fully (in the sense of superior) human at all, and
their dissolution (even if possible) is a prerequisite of an exquisitely painful
positivist nightmare that would put nuclear war in the shade (and, of course, makes it
more likely)).

And equally interesting is that the positivist philosopher (oxymoron, anyone) who might
hold such a position is precisely the epigone of the very "'Continental type' philosophy"
(later Wittgenstein) that our brother-in-thought above wishes would "melt away". A strange
xenophobic mood holds sway here as if some kind of (anglo-amerikan) purity of thought was
under "Continental" attack. Woe betide...

let us sway

michaelP


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HTML VERSION:

Re: Farmyard Frolics Foxy Jud recently in unfroliksome mood:

"Ostensible philosophical enigmas concerning existing, truth and citation are actually puzzles concerning the connotations that identify them.  Resolve meaning, (by rigorous linguistic and semantic examination) and the problems of delusive 'Continental' type 'philosophy' will melt away overnight with them, leaving the arena free and uncluttered of dead ideas, enabling our universities and colleges to concentrate on human science and analytical philosophy to push the boundaries of thought ever outward, and the poor taxpayer to get his/her moneysworth. "

You know what, me hearty, this sounds very similar to the effective manifesto of the so-called 'ordinary language' philosophers (e.g., Austin, Ryle, Hare, Cavell, et al), who, following rather prosaically the Wittgenstein of the 'Philosophical Investigations', also sought to dissolve traditional philosophical problems by some kind of linguistic analysis (based proximately upon the premise that some kind of 'ordinary language' can be divined in both ordinary and extraordinary linguistic situations (writings, dialogues, conversations, etc), and that such situations can be fully described in terms of such linguistic analysis (itself, of course, an extraordinary venture: why would anyone in any ordinary circumstance feel the compulsion to analyse their speech?). Although I could if asked at length, I prefer at this venture to abstain from displaying the utterly nihilistic consequences of such a position: the result of such interminable speech about speech (in order to dissolve philosophical problems) is a curiously noisey silence and ultimately the very dissolution of humanity itself: the questions thinking raises are an essential part of what it means to be fully (in the sense of superior) human at all, and their dissolution (even if possible) is a prerequisite of an exquisitely painful positivist nightmare that would put nuclear war in the shade (and, of course, makes it more likely)).

And equally interesting is that the positivist philosopher (oxymoron, anyone) who might hold such a position is precisely the epigone of the very
"'Continental type' philosophy" (later Wittgenstein) that our brother-in-thought above wishes would "melt away". A strange xenophobic mood holds sway here as if some kind of (anglo-amerikan) purity of thought was under "Continental" attack. Woe betide...

let us sway

michaelP

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