If you don't mind, I'm going to leave all this. It's already getting into the quagmire I was complaining about. There's nothing wrong with words being used to represent features of reality (or what we think is reality), but when they themselves are accorded a status all of their own, then we're in trouble. Or at least I'm in trouble. When you write: <<Surely you know that existentialism is an antithesis of "linguistic philosophy">>, I don't know. You may be right. I've tried to read and understand Sartre many times when I was young, as of his principal interpreter in England, Iris Murdoch, and just as much registered with me as any of the other modern philosophers, linguistic or otherwise -- that is, nothing. As I think I've mentioned before, I believe that Kant got to the edge of what is possible, or permissable, by way of philosophy using words. If you like, he 'Godelised' philosophy in the same way as Godel did for mathematics. If there is one philosopher of the past (besides Kant) who intrigues me it is Maimonides who said one or two tantalising things about information which, to my mind, anticipates quantum theory.
Keith Hudson
At 07:08 28/07/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Quoting Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> At 22:01 27/07/2003 -0400, you wrote: > >Keith Hudson wrote: > > > >[snip] > >>And then, French scholarship and culture is not as cracked up as it's > > >>supposed to be. The French complain about the heavy dose of American > >>films on their TV channels, but where are their own films? As for > books, > >>the French still have good novelists but where are their books of > >>scholarly value? I can't recall a single one in the last 10 or 20 > years. > >>They are still quoting Sartre and his reprehensible existentialism. > >[snip] > > > >I would nominate Pierre Hadot, for one author, and Jacques Ellul > >for another. (I don't read much French stuff.) I think > >the film Mon Oncle d'Amerique was 1990. Gerard Despardieu > >is, I think, still working his craft. > > I'll grant you that this is a good film. But it's one of only a dozen or > so > good films in my lifetime. I've heard of Ellul but have no idea of what > he > stands for.
I forgot Cornelius Castoriatis ("Socialism or barbarism"...), and Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is so seriously ethical that one of the challenges he has to address in his philosophy is whether it is ethical to be (i.e., whether it is ethical for me -- or thee -- in the "first person", i.e., as "I", to live!).
> > As for Sartre and his existentialism, it's a good example of the mess > > that linguistic philosophy
I have NEVER heard this criticism of Sartre or of any existentialism. I was afraid you were attacking Sartre's late *Marxist* writings, which I do not know and therefore cannot defend -- but, no, you did not make the "move" in our present language game which would have put me on the defensive.
Surely you know that existentialism is an antithesis of "linguistic philosophy": existentialism is always concerned with the first-person-at-risk, with issues such as authentically engaging with my (your...) death, or with alienation, etc.
Sartre was, I believe, active in "the resistence". Existentialism was well characterized by my teacher Juhn Wild, who complimented me once in contrast with most of his graduate students, who, Wild said, just shuffle philosophy jargon words around instead of engaging with real life issues.
If you don't like Sartre, there is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and, of course, Albert Camus.
I respectfully submit you must be thinking about somebody else, and some other philosophy -- maybe second order predicate calculus, which has an "existence" operator [the backward capital "E"], but is not concerned in any way with personal human existence.
> gets itself into (and, in particular, French > > philosophy). The author strikes a pose, and then, because he's good with > > words, proceeds to spin a mighty web around it with little reference to > > reality outside it (or what passes for reality via our perceptions, > anyway). He despises reason and leaves his disciples in a complete mess > > unless they parrot his words in scriptural fashion. Sartre was > thoroughly > irresponsible and unreliable because he had no duty of care towards his > > readers. Existentialism was pretty well the last throw of intellectual > chicanery against scientific methodology. At least Ayer had the honesty > to > say just before he died that everything he and his contemporary > linguistic > philosophers had been writing during his lifetime was complete nonsense. > > Sartre didn't have that sort of honesty.
Would you also say that Heidegger was doing "linguistic philosophy" -- by which I presume you mean shuffling words around with no connection with reality? Existentialists have always been (to borrow one of their French words and possibly mis-spell it: "engagee" AKA *engaged*. Sartre said -- and I presume this is the kind of meaningless and irresponsible word shuffling you are talking about:
To not act is to act.
(I.e., to not act is to will what will happen if you don't raise a finger, e.g., if you let the "invisible hand" do its thing to the workers of the world without trying to stop it. As Castoriadis put the alternative: "socialism of barbarism"). Oops -- sorry -- Castoriadis was a humanist Trotsykite, not a word-shuffling existentialist.
Please tell me where Sartre was irresponsible (at lesast before his late Marxist writings). And if Sartre was irresponsible toward his students, that doesn't make him good, but it certainly does not make him any worse than just about every other temnured professor on both sides of the Iron Curtain -- with a few exceptions, of course, like John Wild.
What you wrote is not "unthinkable" to me (because I try not to be self-righteous), but it was surprising....
"Yours in word shuffling...."
\brad mccormick
> > KH > > > > >"Sartre and his reprehensible existentialism" -- Please specify > >what is REPREHENSIBLE about it. > > > >\brad mccormick > > > >-- > > Let your light so shine before men, > > that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16) > > > > Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) > > > ><![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >----------------------------------------------------------------- > > Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ > > > > Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England >
-- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ surprising
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
