History of Philosophy – Maverick Philosopher

Heidegger, Carnap, and Das Nichts

A Substack entry wherein I diagnose Rudolf Carnap’s Heidegger Derangement Syndrome. Rudi was down with a very bad case of it. Thanks to him it spread to a crapload of analytic bigots. Excerpt:

One of the reasons I gave my weblog the title Maverick Philosopher is because I align neither with the analytic nor with the Continental camp. Study everything, I say, and drink from every stream. “Nothing human is foreign to me.” (Terence)

Reverting to the camp metaphor, when did the camps become two? In dead earnest this occurred when Heidegger burst onto the scene in 1927 with Being and Time. I agree with Peter Simons: “Probably no individual was more responsible for the schism in philosophy than Heidegger.” (Quoted in Overgaard, et al., An Introduction to Metaphilosophy, Cambridge UP, 2013, 110.) It is not as if Heidegger set out to split the mainstream whose headwaters were in Franz Brentano into two tributaries; it is just that he started publishing things that the analytic types, who had some sympathy for Heidegger’s main teacher Husserl, could not relate to at all.

If I were were to select two writings that best epitomize the depth of the Continental-analytic clash near the time of its outbreak, they would be Heidegger’s 1929 What is Metaphysics? and Carnap’s 1932 response, “On the Overcoming of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language.” (In fairness to Carnap, let us note that his Erkenntnis piece is more than a response to Heidegger inasmuch as it calls into question the meaningfulness of all metaphysics.)

Chariots of Philosophical Fire

The University of Oxford dominated philosophy in the twentieth century. Three new books examine the brilliant if eccentric minds nurtured there.

Excerpt:

Parfit was another maniac who came to possess a religious fervor for philosophy. As Edmonds affectionately details, Parfit would read while brushing his teeth, and he’d read—naked—while riding on his recumbent exercise bike. He’d take meetings at 3 a.m. Some philosophical discussions could last six hours. It was not unusual for Parfit to return 50 pages of comments on a draft paper written by anyone, whether a tenured professor or a visiting student. Parfit once followed Bernard Williams to his car and stood in the rain, pounding the hood of the car trying to convince Williams that morality had an objective foundation. Williams ignored Parfit and drove off, leaving him in a storm.

I have the Edmonds bio. It is superb.

Every once in while I will get the notion to send 'fan mail' to a philosopher whose work I am reading and for whose work I am grateful. But I am sometimes too late. The search for an e-mail address turns up an obituary. The last time this occurred was when I wanted to congratulate Robert C. Coburn for his excellent The Strangeness of the Ordinary. I tell the story here and reproduce the obit.

The other day, Ronald Bruzina's Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology 1928-1938 (Yale UP, 2004) arrived. It's a stomping tome of 627 pages. But it reads like a novel to this old Husserl man who spent a year (1976-1977) in Freiburg im Breisgau where he studied unpublished manuscripts in the Husserl archive there. Every morning I read a few pages of Bruzina's book hugging myself with mental delight as I am reminded of so many details, people, and places.

I wanted to say to Bruzina, "You have written a wonderful book, man, quite obviously a labor of love, and I am having a blast with it."

But too late again.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to friends and strangers alike who have enriched our lives, wittingly or not, in this way or that. Say it and pay it now if you are so inclined.

Heute rot, morgen tot.

Husserl and Heidegger

Husserl seems to think that everything can be brought into the light of adequate, indeed apodictic, evidence. The dark and hidden get their revenge in his most distinguished student, Heidegger.

On Continental Philosophy: Response to a German Reader

This is an edited re-post (re-entry?) from 21 February 2017 to satisfy current interest. Against my better judgment, I am allowing comments.

………………………….

The following from a German sociologist (my comments are in blue):

Perhaps you know the old joke: Analytic philosophers think that continental philosophy is not sufficiently clear; continental philosophers think that analytic philosophy is not sufficient.

Having just reread the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, I don't see Kant as an analytic philosopher. Hegel and Nietzsche certainly belong to the continental tradition. And none of the philosophers of the 20th century, who really matter to me, can be called an analytic philosopher. Doesn't "analytic" simply mean after Wittgenstein and in his tradition?

BV: As I see it, there was no analytic-Continental split before the 20th century. So classifying Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche in terms of that split is only marginally meaningful. But it is safe to say that Kant is more congenial to analytic philosophers than Hegel and Nietzsche are.

When did the split come about and what is it about?

If I were were to select two writings that best epitomize the depth of the Continental-analytic clash near the time of its outbreak, they would be Heidegger's 1929 What is Metaphysics? and Carnap's 1932 response, "On the Overcoming of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language." In fairness to Carnap, let us note that his Erkenntnis piece is more than a response to Heidegger inasmuch as it calls into question the meaningfulness of all metaphysics. And in fairness to Heidegger, we should note that he thinks he is doing something more radical than metaphysics. Metaphysics for Heidegger is onto-theology. Metaphysics thinks Being (das Sein) but always in reference to beings (das Seiende); it does not think Being in its difference from beings. The latter is Heidegger's project.

The following are widely regarded as Continental philosophers: Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, Kasimir Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Ortega y Gasset, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus. And of course there are others that are so regarded.

Note that the above are all Europeans. But being European is not what makes them 'Continental.' Otherwise Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Rudolf Carnap would have to be lumped in with them. And of course there are Continental philosophers who do not hail from Europe. So what makes the above authors 'Continental' as opposed to 'analytic'?

It is not easy to say, which fact supplies a reason to not take too seriously talk of 'Continental' versus 'analytic.'

Note that all of the Continentals I mentioned engage in analysis, some in very close, very careful analysis. (Ever read Husserl's Logical Investigations?) And please don't say that they don't analyze language. Ever read Brentano? Gustav Bergmann accurately describes Brentano as "the first linguistic philosopher." (Realism, 234) Roderick Chisholm's paraphrastic approach was influenced significantly by Brentano. No one would lump Chisholm in with the Continentals.

Will you say that the Continentals mentioned didn't pay close attention to logic? That's spectacularly false. Even for Heidegger! Ever read his dissertation on psychologism in logic?

Perhaps you could say that the Continentals mentioned did not engage significantly with the ground-breaking work of Frege, widely regarded as the greatest logician since Aristotle. I think that would be true. But does this difference suffice to distinguish between Continental and analytic? I don't think so: there are plenty of philosophers who write in a decidedly analytic style who do not engage with Frege, and some of them oppose Frege. Take Fred Sommers. You wouldn't call him a Continental philosopher. And while he engages the ideas of Frege, he vigorously opposes them in his very impressive attempt at resurrecting traditional formal logic. And yet he would be classified as analytic.

A Matter of Style or of Substance?

According to Michael Dummett,

What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained.

[. . .]

On my characterisation, therefore, [Gareth] Evans was no longer an analytical philosopher. He was, indeed, squarely in the analytical tradition: the three pillars on which his book [The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, 1982] rests are Russell, Moore and Frege. Yet it is only as belonging to the tradition — as adopting a certain philosophical style and as appealing to certain writers rather than to others — that he remains a member of the analytical school. (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Harvard UP, 1993)

For Dummett, then, what make a philosopher analytic is not the style in which he writes: clear, precise, careful, explicitly logical with premises and inferences clearly specified, free of literary pretentiousness, name-dropping, rhetorical questions, and generally the sort of bullshitting that one finds in writers like John Caputo and Alain Badiou. Nor is it the topics he writes about or the authorities he cites. What makes the analytic philosopher are the twin axioms above mentioned.

The trouble with Dummett's criterion is that it is intolerably stipulative if what we are after is a more or less lexical definition of how 'analytic' and 'Continental' are actually used. An approach that rules out Gareth Evans and Roderick Chisholm and Gustav Bergmann and Reinhardt Grossmann and so many others cuts no ice in my book. (How's that for a mixed metaphor?)

A Matter of Politics?

I don't think so. Look again at my list. Sartre was a decided leftist, a Stalinist in his later phase. And Camus was on the Left. But everyone else on my list was either apolitical or on the Right. Heidegger was a National Socialist. Latter-day Continentals, though, definitely slouch Leftward.

A Matter of Academic Politics?

This may be what the Continental versus analytic split comes down to more than anything else. As Blaise Pascal says, with some exaggeration, "All men naturally hate one another." To which I add, with some exaggeration: and are always looking for ways to maintain and increase the enmity. If you are entranced with Heidegger you are going to hate the Carnapian analytic bigot who refuses to read Heidegger but mocks him anyway. Especially when the bigot stands in the way of career success. Although so many Continentals are slopheads, there is no asshole like an analytic asshole. That's been my experience.

A Matter of Religion?

No, there are both theists and atheists on my list. And of course there are plenty of analytic philosophers who are theists. Most of them, however, are not.

A Matter of Attitude toward Science?

This has something to do with the split. You can be a Continental philosopher and a traditional theist (von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, et al.) and you can be a Continental philosopher and a conservative (Ortega y Gasset), but is there any case of a Continental philosopher who is a logical positivist or who genuflects before the natural sciences in the scientistic manner? I don't think so. I am, however, open to correction.

Interim Conclusion

Talk of 'analytic' and 'Continental' philosophy is not particularly useful. It would be better to speak of good and bad philosophy. But what are the marks of good philosophy? That's a post for another occasion.

Back to my correspondent:

I see philosophy more in terms of art than in terms of science. This is not saying that some arguments are not better than others or that one cannot distinguish different degrees of plausibility. But the overall conception (what Heidegger calls "Seinsverständnis) is more – and something essentially different – than the sum of of plausibilities or the logic consistency of the argumentation. There is, or so it appears to me, a 'channelling' of truth that resembles more the mystical experience than the scientific recognition. Of course I've read Wittgenstein, but why should I spend precious life time reading, say, Gilbert Ryle or Saul Kripke, when I can read Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik?

BV: As I am sure my reader knows, Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik (Science of Logic) has been dismissed as Begriffsdichtung, conceptual poetry. So I am not surprised that he sees philosophy more in terms of art than in terms of science. His attitude is defensible: why read Kripke who is of interest only to specialists in logic and the philosophy of language and who has no influence on anything beyond those narrow precincts when you can read Hegel and come thereby to understand the dialectical thinking which, via Marx and Lenin, transformed the world?

There is also the problem that the various attempts to bring philosophy onto the "sure path of science" (Kant) have all failed miserably despite the Herculean efforts of thinkers such as Edmund Husserl. He attempted to make of philosophy strenge Wissenschaft, but he could not get even one of his brilliant students to follow him into his transcendental phenomenology. (I don't consider Eugen Fink to be a counterexample.) There is no reason to think that philosophy will ever enter upon the sure path of science. This is a reason to content oneself with the broader, looser, fuzzier approach of the Continentals.

Only if philosophy could be transformed into strenge Wissenschaft would we perhaps be justified in putting all our efforts into this project and eschewing the satisfaction of our needs for an overarching and spiritually satisfying Weltanschauung; we have no good reason to think philosophy will ever be so transformed; ergo, etc.

When [Theodor Wiesengrund] Adorno was in Oxford, he wrote in a letter home: "Here it's always just about arguments." Most of his colleagues there did not even understand what he was missing. And that's the divide!

BV: That is indeed a good part of what the divide is all about.

Well, of course this ignorance of the analytic tradition has in my case also to do with cultural nationalism. The philosophical departments here are more and more forgetting about the great German tradition. Thinkers like Hegel or Schelling, let alone Heidegger, are hardly taught anymore. I'm against this, I'm Deutsch and proud of it. Actually I want – and for me that's another reason to be against illegal immigration – Germany to become again a hotspot of art and philosophy!

BV: I agree! When as a young man I spent a year in Freiburg im Breisgau, I was there to study Kant and Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. To my romantic young self Germany was, in the words of Heinrich Heine, das Land von Dichter und Denker, the land of poets and thinkers. You Germans can be justifiably proud of your great tradition. Without a doubt, Kant belongs in the philosophical pantheon along with Plato and Aristotle. It is indeed a shame that the analysts are suppressing your great tradition.

As for illegal immigration, if looks from here as if Angela Merkel is a disaster for Germany. Language, borders, and culture are three things every nation has a right to protect and preserve. There is nothing xenophobic or racist about it.

Husserl, Knight of Reason

Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859. How do we honor a philosopher? By re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically, yet critically. Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas.

Ich muss meinen Weg gehen so sicher, so fest entschlossen und so ernst wie Duerers Ritter, Tod und Teufel.

"I must go my way as surely, as seriously, and as resolutely as the knight in Duerer's Knight, Death, and Devil."

Edmund Husserl, Persönliche Aufzeichnungen, tr. MavPhil

Note the castle on the hill, the hour glass in the devil's hand, the serpents entwined in his headpiece, and the human skull on the road.

Time is running out, death awaits, and a mighty task wants completion. An Adversary stands in the way with temptations galore.

Husserl, like Ludwig Wittgenstein, was a serious man. I have no time for the unserious. Something is at stake in life, difficult as it is to say what it is. Related: What I Like About Wittgenstein.

My Husserl category.

Of Coulter and Kant, Screwed Pooches, and Milked He Goats

Ann Coulter:

Everyone who screwed the pooch on this one better realize fast: All that matters is immigration. It's all that matters to the country, and it's all that matters for winning elections.

She's right: read what she has to say.

What caught my eye, however, was the expression 'screw the pooch.' I now send you to Slate for an explanation of its meaning, thereby proving that that site is good for something.

The irrepressible Coulter also avails herself of the expression, 'milk a he-goat':

We'll have to watch helplessly as "establishment Republicans" fight "anti-establishment Republicans" over the right to milk a he-goat. Both sides will lose, and Democrats will sweep Congress and destroy our country.

Now that's a very old expression; I first encountered it in Kant in a particularly delightful form at A 58 = B 83 of his Critique of Pure Reason:

To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight. For if the question is absurd in itself and demands unnecessary answers, then, besides the embarrassment of the one who proposes it, it also has the disadvantage of misleading the incautious listener into absurd answers, and presenting the ridiculous sight (as the ancients said) of one man milking a he-goat while the other holds a sieve underneath.

The true Kant aficionado will of course know that Kant invoked this simile already in his pre-Critical period in his 1770 Latin Inaugural Dissertation, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis. See, for the Latin, Daniel S. Robinson, "Kant and Demonax–A Footnote to the History of Philosophy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 10, No. 3 (Mar., 1950), pp. 374-379.

Below, Professor Robinson misspells Norman Kemp Smith's name. In an age of literary irresponsibility we need more pedants like me. Or maybe not.

Continental Philosophers I Respect and the ‘Continental-Analytic Divide’

From the mail bag:

I'm a new reader of your blog and about two years into my own layman's study of philosophy. By that I mean I'm just reading whatever strikes my fancy as best as I can and building up a sort of mental repertoire. It's equally exciting and frustrating. Are there any so-called 20th century Continental philosophers you like?

Although some commentators would consider some of the following philosophers to belong to the 19th century, they and their influence extend into the 20th. Here then is my list of (some) 20th century Continental philosophers who are well-worth close study.

Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, Kasimir Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus.

What is a Continental Philosopher Anyway?

Note that the above are all Europeans. But that is not what makes them 'Continental.' Otherwise Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Rudolf Carnap would have to be lumped in with them. And of course there are Continental philosophers who do not hail from Europe. So what makes the above authors 'Continental' as opposed to 'analytic'?

It is not easy to say, which fact supplies a reason to not take too seriously talk of 'Continental' versus 'analytic.'

Will you say that the Continentals mentioned didn't pay close attention to logic? That's spectacularly false. Even for Heidegger! Ever read his dissertation on psychologism in logic?

Perhaps you could say that the Continentals did not engage significantly with the ground-breaking work of Frege, undoubtedly the greatest logician since Aristotle. I think that would be true. But does it suffice to distinguish between Continental and analytic? I don't think so: there are plenty of philosophers who write in a decidedly analytic style who do not engage with Frege, and some of them oppose Frege. Take Fred Sommers. You wouldn't call him a Continental philosopher. And while he engages the ideas of Frege, he vigorously opposes them in his very impressive attempt at resurrecting traditional formal logic. And yet he would be classified as analytic.

A Matter of Style or a Matter of Substance?

According to Michael Dummett,

What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained.

[. . .]

On my characterisation, therefore [Gareth] Evans was no longer an analytical philosopher. He was, indeed, squarely in the analytical tradition: the three pillars on which his book [The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, 1982] rests are Russell, Moore and Frege. Yet it is only as belonging to the tradition — as adopting a certain philosophical style and as appealing to certain writers rather than to others — that he remains a member of the analytical school. (Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Harvard UP, 1993)

For Dummett, then, what make a philosopher analytic is not the style in which he writes: clear, precise, careful, explicitly logical with premises and inferences clearly specified, free of literary pretentiousness, name-dropping, rhetorical questions, and generally the sort of bullshitting that one finds in writers like Caputo and Badiou. Nor is it the topics he writes about or the authorities he cites. What makes the analytic philosopher are the twin axioms above mentioned.

A Matter of Politics?

I don't think so. Look again at my list. Sartre is a decided leftist, a Stalinist in his later phase. And Camus is on the Left. But everyone else on my list is either apolitical or on the Right. Latter-day Continentals, though, definitely slouch Leftward.

A Matter of Academic Politics?

This may be what the Continental versus analytic split comes down to more than anything else. As Blaise Pacal says, with some exaggeration, "All men naturally hate one another." To which I add, with some exaggeration: and are always looking for ways to maintain and increase the enmity. If you are entranced with Heidegger you are going to hate the Carnapian analytic bigot who refuses to read Heidegger but mocks him anyway. Especially when the bigot stands in the way of career success. Although so many Continentals are slopheads, there is no asshole like an analytic asshole.

A Matter of Religion?

No, there are both theists and atheists on my list. And of course there are plenty of analytic philosophers who are theists.

A Matter of Attitude toward Science?

Interim Conclusion

Can Anyone Recommend a Good History of Philosophy?

A graduate student in philosophy asks about histories of philosophy:

Suppose I wanted, over time, to work through a text or series of texts. Which ones are worthy of consideration? I've heard good things about Copleston's 11 volumes. There's also Russell's history of western philosophy and Anthony Kenny has done a history as well. Do you recommend any of those (or perhaps another)? I should say that any history text will not supplant primary sources; it would be an addition to them.

While Bertrand Russell is entertaining, I can't recommend his history. He wrote it for money, or rather he dictated it for money. (When he was asked why he wrote a blurb for a certain book, he said that he had a hundred good reasons: the author paid him $100.) For a taste, consider the following passage from Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1945), p. 427. I found it here, but without a link and without a reference. So, exploiting the resources of my well-stocked library, I located the passage, and verified that it had been properly transcribed. Whether Russell is being entirely fair to the Arabs is a further question. In fact, I am pretty sure that he is not being fair to Avicenna (Ibn Sina) who played a key role in the development of the metaphysics of essence and existence.

Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and in chemistry; in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and in many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance, which must not be underrated, is as a transmitter. Between ancient and modern European civilization, the dark ages intervened. The Mohammedans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West when it emerged from barbarism; the Mohammedans chiefly in the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In each case the stimulus produced new thought better than that produced by the transmitters — in the one case scholasticism, in the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also).

Copleston is good, and you might also consider Hegel. He will broaden you and counteract the probably excessively analytic atmosphere which you now breathe. But the Swabian genius is quirky and opinionated just like Lord Russell. When he comes to the medieval period in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, he puts on his “seven-league boots” the better to pass over this thousand year period without sullying his fine trousers. (Vol. III, 1)

Summing up the “General Standpoint of the Scholastics,” he has this to say: “…this Scholasticism on the whole is a barbarous philosophy of the finite understanding, without real content, which awakens no true interest in us, and to which we cannot return.” “Barren,” and “rubbishy” are other terms with which he describes it. (Vol. III, 94-95) The politically correct may wish to consider whether the descendants of Hegel should pay reparations to the descendants of Thomas Aquinas, et al.

ComBox open for anyone with recommendations.

Is Hegel Guilty of ‘Epochism’?

In these politically correct times we hear much of racism, sexism, ageism, speciesism, and even heterosexism. Why not then epochism, the arbitrary denigration of entire historical epochs? Some years back, a television commentator referred to the Islamist beheading of Nicholas Berg as “medieval.” As I remarked to my wife, “That fellow is slamming an entire historical epoch.”

The names of the other epochs are free of pejorative connotations even though horrors occurred in those epochs the equal of any in the medieval period. Why then are the Middle Ages singled out for special treatment? This is no mean chunk of time. It stretches from, say, the birth of Augustine in 354 anno domini , or perhaps from the closing of the Platonic Academy in 529 A. D., to the birth of Descartes in 1596, albeit with plenty of bleed-through on either end: Greek notions reach deep into the Middle Ages, while medieval notions live on in Descartes and beyond.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) counts as an epochist. When he comes to the medieval period in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, he puts on his “seven-league boots” the better to pass over this thousand year period without sullying his fine trousers. (Vol. III, 1) Summing up the “General Standpoint of the Scholastics,” he has this to say: “…this Scholasticism on the whole is a barbarous philosophy of the finite understanding, without real content, which awakens no true interest in us, and to which we cannot return.” “Barren,” and “rubbishy” are other terms with which he describes it. (Vol. III, 94-95)

The politically correct may wish to consider whether the descendants of Hegel should pay reparations to the descendants of Thomas Aquinas, et al.

Addendum A, 9/17:

Dennis Monokroussos quips:

If Aquinas had any descendants, you’d owe them reparations for slandering his good name at the end of your post. (Then again, if he had descendants, it wouldn’t have been slander.)

I know: you mean philosophical progeny. It’s a funny question though, about reparations. I kind of like the idea of having postmodern “philosophers” having to pay a sum to (actual) philosophers for having taken so many of their jobs since the 1980s.

That's a good one, Dennis. As you may know, I don't much cotton to the notion of reparations, one of my arguments against which is here. (WARNING: at the end of the hyperlink there lies (stands?) a post so exceedingly politically incorrect that leftists and their fellow travellers are hereby issued a strong Internet travel advisory.)

Addendum B, 9/17:

The Swabian genius tells us that "Scholasticism . . . is a barbarous philosophy . . . to which we cannot return."

Judgments in the history of philosophy of the form, There will be no return to X, are parlous.

There was an amazing resurgence of scholasticism, Thomism in particular, in the 20th century, and not just in sleepy Jesuit backwaters. Toward the end of that century, mirabile dictu, mainstream analytic philosophers joined in the renascence. Surely there are more scholastic philosophers at work today than Hegelians, especially if we subtract those whose interest in Hegel is merely historical and scholarly. I'll go further. The School is alive and kicking with young hotshots; but how many proponents of The System are there?

Gilbert Ryle once predicted with absurd confidence, "Gegenstandstheorie . . . is dead, buried, and not going to be resurrected." (Quoted in G. Priest, Towards Non-Being, Oxford, 2005, p. vi, n. 1.) Ryle was wrong, dead wrong, and shown to be wrong just a few years after his cocky prediction. Variations on Meinong's Theory of Objects flourish like never before due to the efforts of such brilliant philosophers as Butchvarov, Castaneda, Lambert, Parsons, Priest, Routley/Sylvan, and Zalta, just to mention those that come first to mind. And the Rylean cockiness has had an ironic upshot: his logical behaviorism is dead while Meinongianism thrives. But Ryle too will be raised if my converse-Gilsonian law of philosophical experience holds.

Etienne Gilson said, famously, "Philosophy always buries its undertakers." I say, rather less famously, "Philosophy always resurrects its dead."

With the example of Ryle in mind, we should approach the following quotation from Paul Guyer with some skepticism:

Kant radically and irreversibly transformed the nature of Western thought. After he wrote, no one could ever again think of either science or morality as a matter of the passive reception of entirely external truth or reality. In reflection upon the methods of science, as well as in many particular areas of science itself, the recognition of our own input into the world we claim to know has become inescapable. In the practical sphere, few can any longer take seriously the idea that moral reasoning consists in the discovery of external norms—for instance, objective perfections in the world or the will of God—as opposed to the construction for ourselves of the most rational way to conduct our lives both severally and jointly. (Paul Guyer, "Introduction: The Starry Heavens and the Moral Law," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], 1-25, at 3)

Guyer quotation lifted from the weblog of Keith Burgess-Jackson.

Addendum C, 9/17:

A quotation from Russell that the shade of Hegel would approve of:

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. (Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, p. 463)

I will comment on this passage and its spirit in a later entry.

Addendum D, 9/18:

D. M. adds, "Anthony Kenny had a nice quip in reply to the Russell quote. On page 2 of his edited work Aquinas, A Collection of Critical Essays (London, 1969) (cited in Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 19), he says that the remark “comes oddly from a philosopher who took three hundred and sixty dense pages to offer a proof that 1 + 1 = 2.”

Thank you for reminding me of that Kenny riposte. It hits the mark.

It is certainly false to say that, in general, it is unphilosophical or special pleading or an abuse of reason to seek arguments for a proposition antecedently accepted, a proposition the continuing acceptance of which does not depend on whether or not good arguments for it can be produced. But if we are to be charitable to Lord Russell we should read his assertion as restricted to propositions, theological and otherwise, that are manifestly controversial. So restricted, Russell's asseveration cannot be easily counterexampled, which is not to say that it is obviously true.

As we speak I am working on a longish post on this very topic.

Kripke’s Misrepresentation of Meinong

In "Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities" (in Philosophical Troubles, Oxford UP, 2011, pp. 52-74) Saul Kripke distances himself from the following view that he ascribes to Alexius Meinong:

Many people have gotten confused about these matters because they have said, 'Surely there are fictional characters who fictionally do such-and-such things; but fictional characters don't exist; therefore some view like Meinong's with a first-class existence and a second-class existence, or a broad existence and a narrow existence, must be the case'.²³ This is not what I am saying here. (p. 64)

Footnote 23 reads as follows:

At any rate, this is how Meinong is characterized by Russell in 'On Denoting'. I confess that I have never read Meinong and I don't know whether the characterization is accurate. It should be remembered that Meinong is a philosopher whom Russell (at least originally) respected; the characterization is unlikely to be a caricature.

But it is a caricature and at this late date it is well known to be a caricature. What is astonishing about all this is that Kripke had 38 years to learn a few basic facts about Meinong's views from the time he read (or talked) his paper in March of 1973 to its publication in 2011 in Philosophical Troubles. But instead he chose to repeat Russell's caricature of Meinong in his 2011 publication. Here is what Kripke could have quickly learned about Meinong's views from a conversation with a well-informed colleague or by reading a competent article:

Some objects exist and some do not. Thus horses exist while unicorns do not. Among the objects that do not exist, some subsist and some do not. Subsistents include properties, mathematical objects and states of affairs. Thus there are two modes of being, existence and subsistence. Spatiotemporal items exist while ideal/abstract objects subsist.

Now what is distinctive about Meinong is his surprising claim that some objects neither exist nor subsist. The objects that neither exist nor subsist are those that have no being at all. Examples of such objects are the round square, the golden mountain, and purely fictional objects. These items have properties — actually not possibly — but they have no being. They are ausserseiend. Aussersein, however, is not a third mode of being.

Meinong's fundamental idea, whether right or wrong, coherent or incoherent, is that there are subjects of true predications that have no being whatsoever. Thus an item can have a nature, a Sosein, without having being, wihout Sein. This is the characteristic Meinongian principle of the independence of Sosein from Sein.

Kripke's mistake is to ascribe to Meinong the view that purely fictional items are subsistents when for Meinong they have no being whatsoever. He repeats Russell's mistake of conflating the ausserseiend with the subsistent.

The cavalier attitude displayed by Kripke in the above footnote is not uncommon among analytic philosophers. They think one can philosophize responsibly without bothering to attend carefully to what great thinkers of the tradition have actually maintained while at the same time dropping their names: Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Brentano, Meinong. For each of these I could given an example of a thesis attributed to them that has little or nothing to do with what they actually maintained.

Does the cavalier attitude of most analytic philosophers to the history of philosophy matter? In particular, does it matter that Kripke and plenty of others continue to ignore and misrepresent Meinong? And are not embarrassed to confess their ignorance? This depends on how one views philosophy in relation to its history.

At this point I refer the reader to a somewhat rambling, but provocative, essay by the late Dallas Willard, Who Needs Brentano? The Wasteland of Philosophy Without its Past.

Avicenna’s God and the Queen of England

For a long time now I have been wanting to study Frederick D. Wilhelmsen's hard-to-find The Paradoxical Structure of Existence. Sunday I got lucky at Bookman's and found the obscure treatise for a measly six semolians. I've read the first five chapters and and they're good. There is a lack of analytical rigor here and there, but that is par for the course with the old-school scholastic philosophers. They would have benefited from contact with analytic philosophers. Unfortunately, most of the analysts of Wilhelmsen's generation were anti-metaphysical, being logical positivists, or fellow travellers of same, a fact preclusive of mutual respect, mutual understanding, and mutual benefit Imagine the response of a prickly positivist to one of Jacques Maritain's more effusive tracts. But I digress.

Wilhelmsen (1923-1996) must have been a successful teacher: he has a knack for witty and graphic comparisons. To wit:

Avicenna's God might be compared to the Queen of England, to a figurehead monarch. No law in England has validity unless it bears the Queen's signature. Until that moment the law is merely "possibly a law." But Parliament writes the laws and the Queen signs them automatically. Avicenna's order of pure essence is the Parliament of Being. Avicenna's God gives the royal signature of existence; but this God, like England's majesty, is stripped of all real power and liberty of action. (Preserving Christian Publications, 1995, p. 43. First published in 1970 by U. of Dallas Press.)

Neglected Philosophers

It is unfortunate that a philosopher like Heidegger receives a vast amount of attention, and indeed more than he deserves, while a philosopher such as Wolfgang Cramer is scarcely read at all. I have German correspondents who have first heard of Cramer from me, an American. I admit to being part of the problem: I have published half a dozen articles on Heidegger, but not one on Cramer, or on Maurice Blondel, or on Constantin Brunner, or on Brand Blanshard.

Jacques Derrida is another philosopher who has received an excess of attention. (Because he out-Heidegger's Heidegger?) Why read him when you can read Blondel or Blanshard? Just because he has made a big splash and people are talking about him? Are you a philosopher or a fashionista?

Form your own opinion. Try this. Set a volume of Derrida side by side with a volume of Blanshard. Read a few pages back and forth. Then ask who you are more likely to learn something from. But being as perverse as we are, we often prefer the far-out, novel and radical, even when incoherent, to the boringly solid and sensible.

Our aim ought to be the true, not the new.

Siger of Brabant on Why Something Rather Than Nothing

London Ed offers this quick, over-breakfast but accurate as far as I can tell translation from the Latin (available at Ed's site):

For not every being has a cause of its being, nor does every question about being have a cause. For if it is asked why there is something in the natural world rather than nothing, speaking about the world of created things, it can be replied that there is a First immoveable Mover, and a first unchangeable cause. But if it is asked about the whole universe of beings why there is something there rather than nothing, it is not possible to give a cause, for it's the same to ask this as to ask why there is a God or not, and this does not have a cause. Hence not every question has a cause, nor even every being.

Ed comments, "I'm not sure how Siger's reply falls into the categories given by Bill." Note first that the question that interests me is in the second of Siger's questions, the 'wide-open' question: not the question why there are created things, but the question why there is anything at all. To that wide-open question Siger's response falls under Rejectionism in my typology of possible responses. Siger rejects the question as unanswerable when he says, idiosyncratically to our ears, "it is not possible to give a cause," and "not every question has a cause." That could be read as saying that not every interrogative form of words expresses a genuine question.

Ed also mentions Wittgenstein and suggests that he "had a go" at the Leibniz question. I don't think so. We must distinguish between 'Why is there anything at all?' as an explanation-seeking why-question and the same grammatically interrogative formulation as a mere expression of wonderment equivalent to 'Wittgenstein's "How extraordinary that anything should exist!" Wittgenstein was not raising or trying to answer the former. He was merely expressing wonder at the sheer existence of things.

I would be very surprised if someone can find in the history or philosophy, or out of his own head, a response to the wide-open explanation-seeking Leibniz question that cannot be booked under one of my rubrics. (Credit where credit is due: my catalog post is highly derivative from the work of N. Rescher.)

Category: History of Philosophy