Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 09:50:08 -0700 From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net> Subject: Re: Foucault and Lyotard jon roffe wrote: Foucault was a trenchant critic of this idea of a philosopher, and if we take Lyotard's remarks about the failure of metanarrative, then we must move beyond looking for Superman, and start doing microphilosophy ourselves, start being specific intellectuals ourselves, rather than global prophets for emancipation and other profoundly problemmatic modernist notions. $~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~$~ Thanks Jon, For a serious reading of the item I posted. When I compare your words (above) with mine: "I just hope that somewhere, somehow, some philosopher will pick up the threads of such speculations and explore them in the context of the current social disasters round the globe." It seems there is more similarity than difference in our respective statements. Labels are often troublesome and misleading. When I say "philosophers", I think of Foucault and the Archeology of Knowledge, not a bad idea. History is what the living say it is, constantly being revised and it exists only in living tissue. We are constantly digging up an conversing about artifacts, most of them words. In this context, I think of Rorty, Barrett, and Lyotard, who wrote books (not many) that went beyond name-dropping and explaining what a voice from the past "really meant". They became, perhaps, "specific intellectuals", interested in "ideas". I was looking for specific intellectual comment every time I tried (unsuccessfully) to find what those who put blips on this screen think/feel/intuit when they read Lyotard re: justice and the mysteries of language and obligation. I don't understand "microphilosophy". Scientists immersed in "reductionist" theories seem to chop matter into finer and finer bits until it becomes indescribable - maybe just a prejudice. Philosophy, for me, has to do with the pursuit of wisdom, or how one lives a life, and perhaps assists children and others in living theirs. Our species-consciousness seems to be a series of overlapping lifetimes; chains of humans (like inchworms) measuring their spans, emerging from, and exiting to, the void of not-being. Approximately six billion. No emancipation in sight! Cheers, ~hugh~
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