Sellars claimed to be trying to move analytic philosophy from its "Humean phase" to its "Kantian phase". Brandom takes the next step, and wants to move analytic philosophy to its "Hegelian phase". The next logical step would be: Kierkegaard phase. Which is presumably when we start making fun of the very idea of analytic philosophy, and recognize that the very attempt shows that there's something wrong with us. (Rorty clearly saw this coming. Brandom also mentions McDowell's remark about grafting "perfectly healthy pragmatist organs" onto the corpse of analytic philosophy in the afterword to his Locke Lectures, where he defends his attempt to keep the beast alive. I need to find a copy of that so I can finish the afterword. Incidentally, the Amazon reviews for that book are crazy.)
I'm not sure who comes after Kierkegaard. I suppose Heidegger lifts more than he acknowledges from Kierkegaard, so maybe we synch up with the Continentals. (First as tragedy, then as farce.) I for one look forward to analytic philosophy's Derrida Phase.
Recent posts at The Valve are what brought Kierkegaard to mind. Incidentally, I just tracked down a copy of "The Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity" this afternoon. It is apparently Valve Nostalgia Week.
02 December 2008
An Idle Thought on the History of Analytic Philosophy
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13 comments:
Why does it have to go 'Continental.' In response to Hegel can't in have a Russellian phase? Or are we already in that? Great that means the Wittgenstein phase is up!
Wait, why are we recapitulating 19th century philosophy?
now that you've said it, it'll happen...
increasingly, i see the ancient greek view of history as cyclical is probably correct, if only because we keep supposing we'll bring that cycle about. someone said, 'remember plaid?' three years ago, and now it's reincarnated on shoe tongues and visible underwear...
incidentally, if, say, the positivists were hume, sellars was kant, mcdowell was (perhaps) fichte, and brandom was hegel, i would think we should be on the lookout for the next schelling or holderlin or schopenhauer. or at least, this is what i like to study...
Those who can't prove something--like the existence of the "synthetic a priori" (much less a soul)--can always invoke Heritage. One could ala Nietzsche (and Marx, to go back a few centuries, Hobbes) in fact interpret the history of metaphysics as an escape from historical and economic reality, from "nature red in tooth and claw." Positivists themselves were not always supportive of materialism (the logicism of Frege and early Russell, and St. Witt of TLP offered a platonic revival in a sense).
You see this even in some valve bitchfest: Holblo vs Klotsko! H. the positivist accountant-"philosopher" vs. K the idealist-leftist (tho' Klotsko can't even repeat the Hegel and Marxian (and Zizekian) errors correctly)
"Why does it have to go 'Continental.' In response to Hegel can't in have a Russellian phase?"
Kierkegaard is next because he's a decent critic of Hegel, while Russell attacks a strawman. It also lets us not skip a generation; we'd need a Bradley/Green/Bosanquet phase before a Russell phase, at the least. And nobody wants that.
We are recapitaulating 19th century philosophy because it's what comes after 18th, naturally. S'only proper.
Schopenhauer gets the shaft again. Typical.
(self-promotion)
Keep making little jokes, Danny Lindstein, and hangin with the zionists schmutz. Yr texas preacher agrees.
Im about 200 pounds, bench press like 400 LB.s nearly perfect shape. Verstehen..?
You don't know fuck about Russell either, like benji-pup.
yr the faggot around here, benji, you phony little piece of dreck, like yr buttboy kotsko. everyone knows dat.
You'll never teach in any classroom ever, little pup
verstehen zee, satanists? Don't invoke Kant or Hegel when yr little bugs on the face of the earth
"Schopenhauer gets the shaft again. Typical."
Well it wouldn't be a proper repetition otherwise.
And of course Schopenhauer fully deserves the shaft if for nothing else then his incomprehensible metaphysics and his deep misogyny. I suppose the centrality of classical music should redeem him somewhat.
Also, the continental phase is, at least somewhat, already here. See Dreyfus, Sean Kelly, Taylor Carman, Evan Thompson etc. Admittedly they have a somewhat different take on phenomenology than some of it's more continental progenitors, but they're still doing it.
Kierkegaardian hypocrites (and their little phonie palsies) get the shaft, routinely.
Invoking heritage: the usual frat-boy brownshirt technique. You're no Freges either: for one, he opposed idealist windbags of all types.
Lord Russell:""""Hegel believed in a mystical entity called Spirit, which causes human history to develop according to the stages of the dialectic as set forth in Hegel's Logic. Why Spirit has to go through these stages is not clear. One is tempted to suppose that Spirit is trying to understand Hegel, and at each stage rashly objectifies what it has been reading....."
Heh heh. That said, you're even too provincial to understand Hegel's romantic power (mistakes and all), s-Dan. As far as a technical critique of Hegel, BR offered many: the point on Hegel's confusions--mostly Aristotle-- regarding the copula and predicative use of "is" just one (also include the entire problem of necessity: Hegel at once wants to avoid dualism, and uphold Spinozaistic type determinism, and retain some "Freedom" (Kant via Fichte windbagism), along with his own bizarre process-theology (itself anti-evolutionary, and teleological).
All of Hegel's theo-naturalism runs into the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the rest of physicalistic modern science as well (at least Marx whacks Spirit, and theological problems, but has similar problems: the dialectic itself can hardly be demonstrated in any tangible form)
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