[lit-ideas] Re: Die Grenzen der Sinnlichkeit
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:32:34 EDT
In a message dated 7/13/2009 12:17:47 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Given the little in the quote, I think Strawson has Kant quite wrong.
Agree with the sentiments Strawson expresses? Absolutely not!
----
I think that's the general sentiment. That Strawson Kant Kant.
---- Of course I disagree.
But in any case, the problem of 'God' should be tangential to the whole
project.
It is said that Strawson found Kant appealing -- not just because he HAD
to teach him
at Oxford -- and he kept the notes and turned them into a book (Grice was
also surprised
at the speed Strawson would publish. Grice never published a book in his
whole life).
Strawson found Kant appealing, they say, as a way to understand the Vienna
circle and positivism.
Grice had criticised Ayer -- fresh from Vienna -- for having denied the
'importance' of
qualia ('The Causal Theory of Perception', 'Some remarks about the senses',
etc.).
But Strawson was _never_ intersted in qualia or the philosophy of
perception. He was
rather into big-sized objects -- spatio-temporal continuants.
So he found Kant's ideas of the Phainomenon and the Noumenon (rejected)
congenial.
He noted that the Sinnlichkeit marking the Grenzen was even better than
much of the
twaddle by Wittgenstein about _Language_ being the bounds of our "World".
So, instead of assuming an Aristotelian metaphysics ('descriptive
metaphysics' as Strawson calls it versus 'revisionary'), he went "Ariskantian"
--
he shows the Kant provides a transcendental ARGUMENT (that Strawson adored)
about WHY 'spatio-temporal
continuants' is all we should care about it.
Note that before "The Bounds of Sense" he had published "Individuals: an
essay in descriptive metaphysics".
This is "Strawson-for-the-masses" though. A deep study of Strawson needs to
take into consideration his many essays -- and the festchrift by Straaten
--, e.g. those collected in "Freedom and Resentment and other essays",
"Logico-Linguistic Papers" or "Entity and Identity and other essays" (my
favourite collection). And then he died.
--- In the collection of essays one sees the _serious_ Strawson, arguing in
detail with specimens of ordinary language he knew so well (as per his
seminal first book, Introduction to Logical theory, 1952).
In "Bounds of Sense" he _Has_ to be 'didactic' and some readers miss the
whole point of the Strawsonian enterprise.
Strawson, like Grice, never TOUCHED the topic of "God". Strawson _had_ to
mention God in passing since, well, Kant was confused about this (regulative
idea) and he needed to educate his tutees -- in case any of them would
commit the gaffe of dropping from the Lit. Hum. programme -- although himself
was a PPE programme -- and turn into a Doctor of Divinity who'd grow little
wings and an 'aureola' after death -- and be referred as a 'saint'.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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