@fresco,
fresco wrote:
Ostensibly fair points.
Thanks?
fresco wrote:However
1. I specifically don't quote Husserl because my preferred "phenomenologist", Heidegger, was a reactionary with respect to him. In that sense Heidegger might be said to be agreeing with Wittgenstein with respect to "established phenomenology". As I understand it, that reaction focused on the very rejection of a continuous extant "ego" that could contemplate "the objects of consciousness". Rather, "the self" and "the world" co-evoked each other and were co-extensive.
It's true, your preferred phenomenologist, Heidegger was a
reactionary...in many ways, including but not limited to both his philosophical response
and actual treatment of Husserl, his mentor. (I'm not-so-subtly referring to the fact that he joined the Nazi party, became university chancellor, and then fired Husserl (for being Jewish) from the same university where he had attended the latter's lectures, just in case that wasn't clear. [ i know that it was, but i have a deep-seated need to be an asshole about it].)
When you made the statement:
fresco wrote:The word "ego" plays no part in phenomenological descriptions because that word is embedded in other philosophical paradigms such as "naive realism".
You deliberately excluded the originator of the pertinent modern use of the term "phenomenology" (obviously Hegel used it first, in a very different context),
because the word "ego" was deeply embedded within the phenomenological paradigm from the beginning.
If Heidegger's first important work,
"Being and Time" was about anything, it was about "self" as "world". If you read it, the ego is still present -- it just exists in a "self-world". However, Heidegger did eventually disabuse himself of the use of the "ego" or self, when he attempted to realize that the self could be dissolved in a national movement, like Nazism, as part of a larger
"destiny" (see his "Introduction to Metaphysics").
After Nazism crumbled, Heidegger experienced a "Kehre", or turn, in which he realized that individual perceptions are insubordinated (neologism copyrighted) by an historical, a-personal disclosure of truth. Time just happens, and the self and the world are co-eval products of that happening.
Weird how that revelation removed any responsibility from him for his actions.
All that being said (and i haven't addressed Merleau-Ponty's story, which is more complicated, but not less fraught with historical peril -- nonetheless, he was actually a decent thinker), at no point would Wittgenstein have endorsed Heidegger's position. Wittgenstein regarded language primarily as a tool set with a practical purpose. He largely regarded philosophy as a misguided use of language, an attempt at making sense of of our existential situation that didn't make much sense. He doubted language's (particularly philosophy's use thereof) descriptive capacity, and was utterly skeptical of its explanatory power.
Heidegger thought that our metaphysics could be reduced to a complicated philology. Wittgenstein thought that the majority of metaphysics was nonsense, and philology a waste of potential leisure.
fresco wrote:2. As for "misrepresentation of Kant", a reading of Derrida (for example) suggests that there is no such thing as a "static position" even for the originators of texts themselves. Texts are produced against ephemeral backgrounds that can never be re-created. So irrespective of your own views on Kant's position, other sources suggest that what Kant did was to open the floodgates for assorted holistic paradigms whether he intended to or not.
Quote:In terms of culture, Kant's early views may be placed in a Eurasian rather than a purely Western context. Recent research suggests that key ideas of Kant's natural philosophy also have sources in Taoist and Confucian thought, which were disseminated in continental Europe by Jesuits based in China, popularized by Leibniz and Wolff, and further developed by Wolff's Sinophile student Bilfinger.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
i explained exactly how i defined a misrepresentation of Kant -- Kant would not have supported or defended a particular interpretation of his works.
"Texts are produced against ephemeral backgrounds that can never be re-created. So irrespective of your own views on Kant's position, other sources suggest that what Kant did was to open the floodgates for assorted holistic paradigms whether he intended to or not."
Here's what i'm hearing you say: i can take statements from X philosopher, and if i can place them in the right context, i can make them say whatever i want.
Regardless of the floodgates he might have opened, i was giving you my best guess about how Kant would respond regarding his position. i agree, the consequences of his statements, not to mention evens he couldn't begin to imagine, requires us to re-interpret Kant's writings, but that re-interpretation does not erase the evidence of his own intent and social context. Historical revision is at its best when it exposes new information juxtaposed with the old, not when it merely substitutes one fact for another,
