Dear Stefan,
Interesting. One rarely ever hears of a student of Simmel.
Despite widespread appeal as a lecturer in Berlin, Simmel was denied
a regular professorship for decades because of anti-semitism. He was
Privatdozent at Berlin from 1885 to 1901, then Ausserordentlicher Professor
until 1914 when he finally (good news) got a professorship at the
University of Strassbourg, (bad news) on the eve of the first world war. He
died in 1918, and turned to Lebensphilosophie in his last work.
In his essay, "The Conflict of Modern Culture," he applied the Kantian
distinction between form and content as that of form and life, arguing that
history can be seen as a dialectic of new forms encapsulating formless
life. He saw in the emergence of twentieth-century culture a seemingly
unviable paradox that the emerging form was life itself; that is, that
formless life would be the new form for culture in the 20th century.
Artistic expressionism was one of his interesting examples.
But Simmel also saw pragmatism as an example, criticizing it for
elevating life over objective truth:
"The repudiation of the principle of form culminates not only in
pragmatism, but also in all those thinkers imbued with a modern sense of
life who reject the coherent systems in which an earlier age, dominated by
the classical notion of form, saw its entire philosophical salvation."
Though not naming him, Simmel seems to have in mind William James as
the basis for his characterization of pragmatism. Clearly Peirce's
pragmatism does not fit that characterization. And pragmatism more broadly
as a philosophical movement, including Dewey and George Herbert Mead,
allows both sociality and biosemiosis to nature in ways that undercut the
rigid confines of Simmel's neo-Kantian dichotomizing of nature and culture,
life and form.
Gene Halton
On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 4:33 PM, sb <[email protected]> wrote:
> John, Kirsti, List,
> for those interested in the philosophy of stories and able to read german
> i recommend:
>
> - Wilhelm Schapp (2012) In Geschichten verstrickt. Zu Sein von Mensch
> und Ding. 5. ed. Klostermann.
> - Wilhelm Schapp (1981) Philosophie der Geschichten. 2. ed.
> Klostermann.
>
> His academic teachers were Rickert, Simmel and Dilthey. He got his PhD in
> 1910 in Göttingen from Husserl. His Doktorarbeit "Beiträge zur
> Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung" is one of the classic texts of german
> phenomenology. He didn't pursue a career as an academic and worked his life
> long as a lawyer. His phenomenology of stories is strongly influenced by
> his work as a lawyer.
>
> Schapps style is lucent and clear. He is fun to read and the absolute
> opposite of Husserls dry turkey books.
>
> Best,
> Stefan
>
> P.S: http://www.wilhelm-schapp-forschung.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/
>
> Am 10.11.16 um 14:51 schrieb [email protected]:
>
> John, list,
>
> Most important points you take up, John. Time-sequences between stories
> do not apply. - The big-bang is just a story,one on many just as possible
> stories.
>
> Time-scales are just as crucial with the between - issue as are storywise
> arising issues. There are no easy ways out ot the time-scale issues.
>
> Best, Kirsti
>
> John F Sowa kirjoitti 9.11.2016 21:25:
>
> Edwina, Kirsti, list,
>
> ET
>
> I wish we could get into the analysis of time in more detail.
>
>
> I came across a short passage by Gregory Bateson that clarifies the
> issues. See the attached Bateson79.jpg, which is an excerpt from p. 2
> of a book on biosemiotics (see below). Following is the critical point:
>
> GB
>
> thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds
> whether ours or those of redwood forests and sea anemones...
> A story is a little knot or complex of that species of
> connectedness which we call relevance.
>
>
> This observation is compatible with Peirce, but CSP used the term
> 'quasi-mind' to accommodate the species-bias of most humans:
>
> CP 4.551
>
> Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further
> be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs
> require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-
> interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind)
> in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign
> they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact
> of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical
> evolution of thought should be dialogic.
>
>
> Re time: We have to distinguish (1) time as it is in reality
> (whatever that may be); (2) time in our stories (which include the
> formalized stories called physics); (3) the mental sequence of
> thought; and (4) the logical sequence (dialogic) of connected signs.
>
> ET
>
> The question is: Are the Platonic worlds BEFORE or AFTER the so-called
> Big Bang? I read them as AFTER while Gary R and Jon S [not John S]
> read them as BEFORE. In my reading, before the Big Bang, there was
> Nothing, not even Platonic worlds.
>
>
> This question is about time sequences in different kinds of stories:
> the Big Bang story about what reality may be; and Platonic stories
> about ideal, mathematical forms.
>
> The time sequence of a mathematical story is independent of the time
> sequence of a physical story. We may apply the math (for example,
> the definitions, axioms, and proofs of a Platonic form) to the
> construction of a physical story.
>
> But that application is a mapping between two stories. The term
> 'prior to' is meaningful only *within* a story, not between stories.
>
> In short, our "commonsense" notion of time is an abstraction from
> the stories we tell about our experience. The time sequences in two
> different stories may have some similarities, but we must distinguish
> three distinct sequences: the time sequences of each story, and the
> time sequence of the mapping, which is a kind of meta-story.
>
> JFS
>
> Does anyone know if [Peirce] had written anything about embedding
> our universe in a hypothetical space of higher dimension?
>
>
> KM
>
> I am most interested in knowing more on this.
>
>
> David Finkelstein, p. 277 of the reference below:
>
> Peirce seems to have included geometry in his evolutionism, at least
> in principle... [He] seems not to have responded to the continuously-
> evolving physical geometry of Riemann and Clifford... nor to Einstein's
> conceptual unification of space and time.
>
>
> In any case, I think that the notion of time as an abstraction from
> stories -- imaginary, factual, or theoretical -- provides a way of
> relating different views. It also allows for metalevel reasoning
> that can distinguish and relate different kinds of stories that
> have independent time scales and sequences.
>
> John
> ____________________________________________________________________
>
> From Google books:
>
> _A Legacy for Living Systems: Gregory Bateson as Precursor
> to Biosemiotics_ edited by Jesper Hoffmeyer, Springer, 2008:
> https://books.google.com/books?id=dcHqVpZ97pUC&pg=PA246&lpg=
> PA246&dq=Order+is+simply+thought+embodied+in+arrangemen
> t&source=bl&ots=DQUnZlvOYu&sig=X8bH0YAG597uwjyedB4dSf2BuC
> 0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizyZD88JrQAhVENxQKHeEeBwoQ6AEIHTAA#
> v=onepage&q=Order%20is%20simply%20thought%20embodied%
> 20in%20arrangement&f=false
>
> David R. Finkelstein, _Quantum Relativity: A Synthesis of the Ideas
> of Heisenberg and Einstein_, Springer, 1996.
> https://books.google.com/books?id=OvjsCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA277&lpg=
> PA277&dq=peirce+relativity&source=bl&ots=0rc7kjxqIJ&sig=
> Hsgtu9_LwZAoDxH7kbVgvWmAfiI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihk4SzpZ
> zQAhWF3YMKHR1kA5wQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=peirce%20relativity&f=false
>
>
>
>
>
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