[C] [Wittrs] Re: question for ABoncompagni
- From: J DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 14:49:56 -0800 (PST)
AB,
I am so glad you replied. And please, no more putting down your English. No
one would know you were not a native speaker save for your use of "inheritage"
where the English word would be "inheritance" (I mention this only because the
isolated mistake stood out amid otherwise perfect English.)
I really like this: "it's like a medicine, or better: a vaccine."
Is that your own? It is so right! I think that often the notion of
"philosophy as therapy" along with "philosophy as illness" seems to suggest the
idea that what Wittgenstein has done is only of value to people who have
already gotten entangled in these nets (to use a metaphor from his discussions
of set theory). If we believe that, then the answer would be to abolish the
study of philosophy completely, since it is only "sophistry and illusion"
(Hume), stop those philosophers from spreading their disease, quarantine them.
But the disease(s) aren't unique to philosophers and they cannot be stopped so
easily.
"We keep hearing the remark that philosophy really does not progress, that we
are still occupied with the same
philosophical problems as were the Greeks. Those who say this however don't
understand why it is so. It is
because our language has remained the same & keeps seducing us into asking the
same questions. As long as there
is still a verb 'to be' that looks as though it functions in the same way as
'to eat' and 'to drink', as long as we still have
the adjectives 'identical', 'true', 'false', 'possible', as long as we continue
to talk of a river of time & an expanse of
space, etc., etc., people will keep stumbling over the same cryptic
difficulties & staring at something that no
explanation seems capable of clearing up." (CV)
A vaccination involves deliberately infecting someone with a weakened strain of
a pathogen in order that they may develop their own resistance to a more
harmful form. And in those terms, the idea of deliberately studying ideas that
may be harmful makes perfect sense.
Regarding the status quo as it relates to Wittgenstein, I'll say this: critique
too is part of our form of life. Criticism is a language game as much as any
other, so to stifle that would not be "leaving everything as it is."
"The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is what makes
him into a philosopher." (Z455) I take it that a "community of ideas" is not
the same as "form of life", which would be absurd since of course a philosopher
shares our form of life. I take "community of ideas" to be more a group of
individuals united by an ideology. And a "citizen" is not merely a member but
someone with a civic duty to protect and defend their community.
A philosopher has no such duty. She is not a partisan. But this means she is
no more a partisan of reaction than a partisan of revolution. She is not out
to uphold the status quo or to overturn it. Or rather, she is not out to
defend the ideas of one faction or the other. She does her best to examine all
their ideas without favor.
Practice is another matter. A philosopher may vote Labor and even urge her
students to do so, as Wittgenstein did. She may even take up arms, as
Wittgenstein also did, or support her country in other ways. She may
expatriate for various reasons, including seeing value in another nation's way
of life, as Wittgenstein did and considered doing again.
But she is not a polemicist or apologist for any ideology. She is not a
propagandist.
George Thomson's remark about Wittgenstein views on Marxism, "He was opposed to
it in theory, but supported it in practice," likely has some truth in it. In
this era of "Theory", especially in academia in the US, we have "feminist
theory", "critical race theory", "queer theory", and so on. My suspicion is
that Wittgenstein would have assessed various aspects of theory, sorting
nonsense from dubious claims from sound research, without regard to the agenda.
But the idea of a field of study whose conclusions seem to be dictated by a
social or political agenda would have been anathema to him. But he might
support the substantive goals themselves wholeheartedly (or not, as the case
may be).
JPDeMouy
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