Not familiar with that brand, Schick works well for me. Weak attempt at humor intended. Des Cartes, yes, very much needed, but then he left us with a legacy of intellectual dualism that we have been trying to make right ever since. Let's face it, the medievals were lawyers of thought, not always, but far more often than not. Everything must be deductive. Everything must follow from the law codes / religious texts. If you want empirical philosophy in that era you need to turn East. To the Buddhists like Dignaga and Dharmakriti. Also the Hindu Nyaya logicians. And the ever-practical Chinese Confucians / neo-Confucians. Well, not everything is OK and Good and Valuable, but at least there is some actual light in the darkness. If you want some brainfood, let me recommend a 2 volume set : Buddhist Logic by Th. Stcherbatsky Dover publications / 1962 No idea what the "Th" stands for, it is never spelled out. But he was a Russian scholar / Orientalist. The original ( in Russian ) dates to ca 1930. Far as I know there has never been anything like this set, in all the years since. It is monumental if you have an interest in Asian philosophy for the pre-modern era. Not to be misleading, there decidedly are some of pretty much the same kinds of issues you get with European Christians, but, regardless, a lot of fresh outlooks and helpful logical explorations. Foundational for a lot of later-era Buddhist philosophy. You could also make a case that some of this is "proto-Zen." Shingon starts from different premises, more like Vico, but for another time.......... Billy =============================================== 11/17/2011 1:40:06 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
But medieval philosophy was built on unstable ground- an attempt by Plotinus to merge Aristotle and Plato, and then subsequent attempts by others to merge those with Catholicism. It wasn't until Descartes cleared the deck entirely of the resulting scholasticism (a Frankenstein monster, imo) that we were finally able to begin an empirical study of the world again. It was a necessary destruction that allowed for ingenuity and openness in philosophy again. I don't mean to entirely trash scholasticism, though: I use Occam's razor on a daily basis. -- 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 -- 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
