on being situated

From Thomas McCarthy's Ideals AND Illusions:


"Interpreters inevitably bring with themselves the perspectives and concerns of their own culture; they cannot avoid relying upon the taken-for-granted assumptions built right into the language and practices that comprise their own form of life. In the case at hand that means we can distance ourselves from certain of our cultural practices only by taking others for granted. We can never be ourselves without at the same time being participants."


So, what does it mean to "participate" in a culture; to be, in turn, profoundly shaped and molded by one? How do we go about determining objectively what part of our opinion reflects "the truth" and what part is hopelessly impregnated by all those variables we do just take for granted...or are not even consciously aware of?

Take Kant, for example [I'm reading a biography of him]. He was born into a particular historical era, into a particular set of ethnological relationships. He popped out of the womb [just like the rest of us] and was immediately in the clutches of all that was "other". Then for the course of a dozen years or so, they told him Who He Was.

Four thousand three hundred and eighty days, one hundred and five thousand, one hundred and twenty hours is a very long time to have an "identity" hard wired into your brain by other people, right? How many 12 year old do you know who can see through all that, deconstruct everything he or she has been taught since birth and then reconstruct a new reality from his or her own "truer, more authentic" point of view?

Or:

What books did Kant read and not read? What people did Kant meet and not meet? What experiences did Kant have and not have? What emotional and psychological traumas and afflictions did Kant endure and not endure? What additional cultures did Kant visit and not visit? In fact, his entire world revolved around the parameters of one small town in one small corner of the world.

How, in other words, did the existential parameters of his actual trajectory [as opposed to the nearly infinite number of other potential trajectories] come into play in producing this philosophy rather than that one? How might he, in turn, have been influenced by a Nietzsche or a Schopenhauer or Wittgenstein or a Russell or a Sartre or a Rorty?...by the astonishing achievments and horrors of the 20th century?...by the phenomenal explosion of scientific discovery?

Or, most importantly of all, of course, by me? ; )


Randall Patrick