Random thing I was thinking about: In the era of Plato and Aristotle, philosophy encompassed (among its many topics) rhetoric, law, aesthetics, psychology, the natural sciences and mathematics. Philosophers were the learned individuals in society who genuinely loved knowledge. With the maturation and professionalization of the sciences, philosophy has increasingly splintered itself away into a husk containing mostly metaphysics and an obsession with word definitions and symbols. With Pragmatism's rejection of even metaphysical vagueries and Karl Popper's objection to the infinite definition dilemma toward the beginning and middle of the 20th century, philosophy became the discipline of nothing. This discipline became a series of rules of action, as if mankind was to descend into a land of automatons, reacting in predictable patterns to predictable stimuli. Naturally, the existentialists decided to one-up the pragmatists by removing even rules, and entirely disconnect philosophy from objective reality.
Are we to say that philosophy is now solely the exploration of logically consistent viewpoints of life? Is it the glue that holds everything together? If so, how can a modern individual call him/ herself a "philosopher" without attempting to reclaim science and seeking to understand everything? Can a philosopher legitimately be crappy at math and science and still claim some level of philosophical legitimacy? If philosophy loses the study of logic to professionalization, I think continued philosophy is as good as dead. Honestly, what else is left for philosophy? -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
