But in exhorting its audience to care to use one of those teased-apart concepts for some practical purpose, instead of endlessly seeking answers to the uselessly confused and so perpetually unanswerable question that they may be irrationally attached to as some kind of important cosmic enigma, philosophy must instead use the tools of the rhetorical arts. — Pfhorrest

I agree with you in some ways. The more time I've spent with philosophy, the more I find some of the less experienced forum philosophers (and my own earlier incarnations as a self-crown philosopher) to be chasing their own tails, prisoners of a vocabulary that they take for granted, even as they flail about ever so critically within that vocabulary. IMV, this philosophy is sub-normal, inferior to a common sense that sniffs something bogus without being able to articulate just where things go wrong.

In some ways your approach continues to wave them away. The 'important cosmic enigmas' are also known as or at least entangled with issues of prime concern. Of course philosophy can retreat from these difficult issues into a kind of bland technicity, but that's a long way from Socrates, for better or worse.

I agree that the art of rhetoric is important, and I suggest that it's always been central. The quasi-technical arguments that a certain kind of philosopher relishes occur within 'irrational' paradigms or dominant images that set the terms for more detailed debate. The philosopher/sophist dichotomy is hardly itself technical and indeed shamelessly rhetorical or a piece of 'sophistry. '

I think it is frequently not by solving but by dissolving an apparently intractable problem, showing it to actually be a conflation of several different problems. — Pfhorrest

I like the dissolving approach too, though I think of it in terms of shining light on the contingency of a 'vocabulary' or paradigm that is enacted unwittingly as necessary. For this reason and others, I suggest that 'anything goes' is a less wrong approach. As philosophers we are always trying to constrain or dominate the future within our current, fragile vocabulary. We can't see the 'assumptions' that currently blind or constrain us, because they aren't explicit and because they have not yet been articulated. Such articulation is how future philosophers will liberate themselves from our prejudices in order to enjoy their own.

And all of this applies to 'my' own attempt to dominate the future which is already dated, already canonical 20th century philosophy.

I think it is frequently not by solving but by dissolving an apparently intractable problem, — Pfhorrest

I agree that the art of rhetoric is important, and I suggest that it's always been central. — path

I think that if we analyse what Socrates was doing in the 5th century BC we will find a straight line with the philosophy of the 21st century: to analyse and criticise language. Dissolving problems, if you will. What language? Any language, but especially the language of the search for meaning. Against the ontological pretensions, I believe that the foundations of philosophy lie in a basic question: What to be done?

Continuing with Socrates, I believe that the main method of philosophy is not rhetorical but dialectical. Large discourses with persuasive rhetorical intentions - in a sophistic way - are the negation of philosophy. Any book on philosophy that manipulates opposing ideas to improve its own is a false philosophy. An honest philosopher always dialogues with his rivals, concedes their points and tries to criticise his thesis with the same rigour as those of others.

What methods do we use to do philosophy? — Pfhorrest

In (by) analyzing concepts and teasing them apart from each other.... — Pfhorrest

If that, then the synthesis of them should follow, or, the synthesis of them and something else subsumed under them, in order to complete a method.

For the most part....agreed. Although it must be said,

endlessly seeking answers to the uselessly confused and so perpetually unanswerable question — Pfhorrest

is a natural proclivity of reason itself, the search for the unconditioned, the bottom line, the terminus of infinite regress. But even so, you’re correct, insofar as practical reason curbs the irrationality of pure reason taken to promote impossible human experiences.

The 'important cosmic enigmas' are also known as or at least entangled with issues of prime concern. Of course philosophy can retreat from these difficult issues into a kind of bland technicity, but that's a long way from Socrates, for better or worse. — path

I don’t mean to suggest we turn away from “cosmic enigmas”, just that we don’t mistake our own confusion for those profound depths in need of plunging.

I believe that the main method of philosophy is not rhetorical but dialectical. Large discourses with persuasive rhetorical intentions - in a sophistic way - are the negation of philosophy. — David Mo

I don’t mean “rhetorical” in a sense that implies sophistry or opposes dialectic. I just mean it as in caring about the style and presentation and other non-rational aspects of communication, above and beyond just being technically correct in your logic. To quote myself:

I like to use an analogy of prescribing someone medicine: the actual medicinal content is most important of course, but you stand a much better chance of getting someone to actually swallow that content if it's packaged in a small, smooth, sweet-tasting pill than if it's packaged in a big, jagged, bitter pill. In this analogy, the medicinal content of the pill is the logical, rational content of a speech-act, while the size, texture, and flavor of the pill is the rhetorical packaging and delivery of the speech-act. It is of course important that the "medicine" (logic) be right, but it's just as important that the "pill" (rhetoric) be such that people will actually swallow it. — “The Codex Quaerentis: On Rhetoric and the Arts”

If that, then the synthesis of them should follow, or, the synthesis of them and something else subsumed under them, in order to complete a method. — Mww

I’m not sure what you mean here. If we’re teasing apart concepts that had been wrongly confused with each other, what then would synthesizing them back together again (in a better way?) be like?

If we’re teasing apart concepts that had been wrongly confused with each other, what then would synthesizing them back together again (in a better way?) be like? — Pfhorrest

The only way to analyze concepts is with other concepts; the human representational system knows no other way. If it be granted the definition validates the conception (experience or logic validates the synthesis of conceptions; reason validates the synthesis of conceptions to other representations in a transcendental system), then analyzing the definition usually distinguishes the application of conceptions, rightens the wrongly confused. It becomes a valid judgement that the object a posteriori, or thought a priori, belongs to the conception under which it is subsumed. The object “wing”, e.g., does not belong to the conception of a “dog”; the thought of “blue” is not qualitatively necessary to the conception of “triangle”.

I don’t think we’d normally synthesize back together conceptions we’ve already analyzed as being mutually contradictory with respect to a singular object. We could, I suppose.....hey!! I’m here to tell you there’s a dog in the outer reaches of Mongolia (innermost inaccessible Peru....whatever) that has wings. Not altogether impossible, but chances of knowledge of it is vanishingly small. On the other hand, there is historical precedence: the object “man” was once contradictory to the conception “walking on the moon”.

I don’t mean “rhetorical” in a sense that implies sophistry or opposes dialectic. I just mean it as in caring about the style and presentation and other non-rational aspects of communication, above and beyond just being technically correct in your logic. To quote myself: — Pfhorrest

Right. And I agree with you in many ways. But my issue would be that there's no clean break between form and content. Roughly speaking, I think the philosophy/sophistry distinction is itself a piece of sophistry, at least when taken beyond ordinary loose talk.

I don’t mean to suggest we turn away from “cosmic enigmas”, just that we don’t mistake our own confusion for those profound depths in need of plunging. — Pfhorrest

Fair enough, but this touches the first point. Some of us are invested in a certain image of the intellectual. It's in our interest to interpret issues in one direction or another. Figuring out what is confusion and what is a genuine enigma is the hard part, and it's hard for me to see it as a technical an objective issue. We get something like objectivity within a speech community that has already agreed on standards.

Loosely, 'strong' philosophy is abnormal discourse that makes a normal discourse possible. This might also help you see where I'm coming from.

Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey are in agreement that the notion of knowledge of accurate representation, made possible by special mental processes, and intelligible through a general theory of representation, needs to be abandoned. For all three, the notions of "foundations of knowledge" and of philosophy as revolving around the Cartesian attempt to answer the epistemological skeptic are set aside. Further, they set aside the notion of "the mind" common to Descartes, Locke, and Kant — as a special subject of study, located in inner space, containing elements or processes which make knowledge possible. This is not to say that they have alternative "theories of knowledge" or "philosophies of mind." They set aside epistemology and metaphysics as possible disciplines. I say "set aside" rather than "argue against" because their attitude toward the traditional problematic is like the attitude of seventeenth century philosophers toward the scholastic problematic. They do not devote themselves to discovering false propositions or bad arguments in the works of their predecessors (though they occasionally do that too). Rather, they glimpse the possibility of a form of intellectual life in which the vocabulary of philosophical reflection inherited from the seventeenth century would seem as pointless as the thirteenth-century philosophical vocabulary had seemed to the Enlightenment. To assert the possibility of a post-Kantian culture, one in which there is no all-encompassing discipline which legitimizes or grounds the others, is not necessarily to argue against any particular Kantian doctrine, any more than to glimpse the possibility of a culture in which religion either did not exist, or had no connection with science or politics, was necessarily to argue against Aquinas's claim that God's existence can be proved by natural reason. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey have brought us into a period of "revolutionary" philosophy (in the sense of Kuhn's "revolutionary" science) by introducing new maps of the terrain (viz., of the whole panorama of human activities) which simply do not include those features which previously seemed to dominate. — Rorty

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/rorty/

An honest philosopher always dialogues with his rivals, concedes their points and tries to criticise his thesis with the same rigour as those of others. — David Mo

I agree with you. I'd just say that this image of the honest philosopher was not given to us from on high. It is itself one of the results of dialogue, a kind of sediment. It become a part of our somewhat overlapping identities as philosophers.

At the same time, it's somewhat platitudinous. The devil is in the details. I wager that we will never be done figuring out what we mean by 'rational' or 'critical.' Individually we'll probably always have people who think they have it all essentially figured out, which is perhaps the driving fantasy after all. People will wear that mask with more or less irony and playfulness, more or less genuine openness to threatening alternative vocabularies and perspectives. What I dislike about the pejorative use of 'sophistry' is it's one way we might hide ourselves from such perspectives. It's in our interest to keep our network of beliefs and desires sufficiently stable. We all need some rhetoric at times to protect our fragile identity from the gaze of other who won't play by our rules and see us as we see ourselves.

The pejorative sense of “sophistry” that I’m aware of, the one associated with a negative sense of “rhetoric” (which I wasn’t intending to use, but @David Mo seems to mean), seems to be of discursive partners who are uninterested in discovering together what is or isn’t actually a correct answer to the questions at hand, but instead simply in WINNING: convincing everyone that they were right all along, whether or not they really are.

It seems to me then, @path, that that pejorative sense of “sophistry” is quite what you seem to be against, as it involves a kind of closed-minded disinterest in finding out if you were wrong, and more interest in showing everyone that you were right all along.

seems to be of discursive partners who are uninterested in discovering together what is or isn’t actually a correct answer to the questions at hand, but instead simply in WINNING: convincing everyone that they were right all along, whether or not they really are. — Pfhorrest

Well 'sophistry' is a token in our mostly automatic language games, so I won't pretend to dominate it by fiat from the outside, as we philosophers tend to do. That said, I do value dialectic, which involves a certain risk, if sincere. Where we may differ is in your assumption that there is a correct answer.
Life is not math. To be Socratic and know that one does not know is to never be complacently sure that one is on the a right path, or a less wrong path. Other, different paths might be equal or better. Maybe there is no Method that can save me from doubts about my 'final vocabulary.' Perhaps the torch that lights my way also necessarily blinds me. To be/see one world is to foreclose, ignore, fend off some other. And we always arrive too late for 'pure' reason.

Some nice quotes:

Over and against traditional conceptions of truth, Gadamer argues that truth is fundamentally an event, a happening, in which one encounters something that is larger than and beyond oneself. Truth is not the result of the application of a set of criteria requiring the subject’s distanced judgment of adequacy or inadequacy. Truth exceeds the criteria-based judgment of the individual (although we could say it makes possible such a judgment). Gadamer explains in the last lines of Truth and Method that “In understanding we are drawn into an event of truth and arrive, as it were, too late, if we want to know what we are supposed to believe” (490). Truth is not, fundamentally, the result of an objective epistemic relation to the world (as put forth by correspondence or coherence theories of truth). An objective model of truth assumes that we can set ourselves at a distant from and thus make a judgment about truth using a set of criteria that is fully discernible, separable, and manipulable by us.
...
In part II of Truth and Method Gadamer develops four key concepts central to his hermeneutics: prejudice, tradition, authority, and horizon. Prejudice (Vorurteil) literally means a fore-judgment, indicating all the assumptions required to make a claim of knowledge. Behind every claim and belief lie many other tacit beliefs; it is the work of understanding to expose and subsequently affirm or negate them. Unlike our everyday use of the word, which always implies that which is damning and unfounded, Gadamer’s use of “prejudice” is neutral: we do not know in advance which prejudices are worth preserving and which should be rejected. Furthermore, prejudice-free knowledge is neither desirable nor possible. Neither the hermeneutic circle nor prejudices are necessarily vicious. Against the enlightenment’s “prejudice against prejudice” (272) Gadamer argues that prejudices are the very source of our knowledge. To dream with Descartes of razing to the ground all beliefs that are not clear and distinct is a move of deception that would entail ridding oneself of the very language that allows one to formulate doubt in the first place. — link

https://www.iep.utm.edu/gadamer/#SH1c

The pejorative sense of “sophistry” that I’m aware of, the one associated with a negative sense of “rhetoric” (which I wasn’t intending to use, but David Mo seems to mean), seems to be of discursive partners who are uninterested in discovering together what is or isn’t actually a correct answer to the questions at hand, but instead simply in WINNING: convincing everyone that they were right all along, whether or not they really are. — Pfhorrest

I was referring to Plato's vision of sophistry. (True sophistry was something else.) In Platonic interpretation sophists are individual relativists.Therefore, discourse - all discourse, in fact - is not aimed at finding some kind of truth, but only at persuading the listeners. In that sense, the Sophistry is a real and present problem for all those who think that some kind of truth must be sought in philosophy, even if it is never found in its pure state.

For example, Rorty. According to him, there is no truth in philosophy. Philosophical discourse only aims at persuading new generations when a particular discourse becomes old. In my opinion this view is dangerous because it omits the fact that behind a language there is always an ideology. Changing discourses without a critical analysis of ideologies is pure conformism and marketing that left relations of domination intact. And this is an unconventional problem.

I completely agree that sophistry in that sense is a problem, precisely as you have stated.

I only disagree that "rhetoric" necessarily refers to that. To quote myself again from immediately before my previous quote:

...some philosophers such as Plato were vehemently opposed to rhetoric, seeing it as manipulative sophistry without regard for truth, in contrast with the logical, rational dialectic that he and his teacher Socrates advocated. His student Aristotle, on the other hand, had a less negative opinion of rhetoric, viewing it as neither inherently good nor bad but as useful toward either end, and holding that because many people sadly do not think in perfectly rational ways, rhetorical appeals to emotion and character and such are often necessary to get such people to accept truths that they might otherwise irrationally reject. I side much more with Aristotle's view on this matter, viewing logic and rhetoric as complimentary to each other, not in competition. — The Codex Quaerentis: On Rhetoric and the Arts

What I dislike about the pejorative use of 'sophistry' is it's one way we might hide ourselves from such perspectives. It's in our interest to keep our network of beliefs and desires sufficiently stable. — path

I side much more with Aristotle's view on this matter, viewing logic and rhetoric as complimentary to each other, not in competition. — The Codex Quaerentis: On Rhetoric and the Arts

I don't know if certain doses of rhetoric are necessary. But I think that turning philosophy into rhetoric is dangerous. Even if it's a parody, the outcome is to turn thought into tweets. Short and forceful discourses that let no space of calm thought. This is the new rhetoric for the 21th century.

I think we're talking about some good stuff, and I want to articulate my position so that you can see that it's not about correctness for me. There is something like a desire to win, but there's also a desire to keep the game going.

For me the ambivalent/ironic position is connected to a realization of thrownness, of how history lives in us, constraining us while making us possible.The earnest philosopher (the totalizer who has it all tied up in a nice little bundle, his existence and ours) ignores that he was shaped by a past that also limits what he can see and understand. For him there is no darkness. The other is falsely assimilated, creatively misunderstood. Now I think we all misunderstand and live in a certain darkness. The ironic and ambivalent aphorist just tries to work the 'laughter of the gods' into his aphorisms. Maybe they aren't universal truths for everyone. Maybe they are graffiti of uncertain utility to others, poems in the form of metaphysical propositions. Tristam Tzara comes to mind. Can we grind him into the dust of earnest, technical propositions? Or is he one more voices who opens various possibilities for us? Tone is crucial here.

Anyway, here's a nice quote that I relate to how our history shapes us, how we don't start from zero, how we wake up already invested and biased with particular tools in our hand to work with.

His point is that in as much as tradition serves as the condition of one’s knowledge, the background that instigates all inquiry, one can never start from a tradition-free place. A tradition is what gives one a question or interest to begin with. Second, all successful efforts to enliven a tradition require changing it so as to make it relevant for the current context. To embrace a tradition is to make it one’s own by altering it. A passive acknowledgment of a tradition does not allow one to live within it. One must apply the tradition as one’s own. In other words, the importance of the terms, “prejudice” and “tradition,” for Gadamer’s hermeneutics lies in the way they indicate the active nature of understanding that produces something new. Tradition hands down certain interests, prejudices, questions, and problems, that incite knowledge. Tradition is less a conserving force than a provocative one. Even a revolution, Gadamer notes, is a response to the tradition that nonetheless makes use of that very same tradition. Here we can also perceive the Hegelian influences on Gadamer to the extent that even a rejection of some elements of the tradition relies on the preservation of other elements, which are then understood (that is, taken up) in new ways. Gadamer desires not to affirm a blind and passive imitation of tradition, but to show how making tradition our own means a critical and creative application of it. — link

I don't know if certain doses of rhetoric are necessary. But I think that turning philosophy into rhetoric is dangerous. Even if this is a parody, the outcome is to turn thought into tweets. Short and forceful discourses that let no space of calm thought. This is the new rhetorical for the 21th century. — David Mo

I understand your concern. I don't like the level of public discourse either. I'm just saying that even decent discourse (the kind we like) is not 'pure reason.' I don't think we have or ever will have mechanically certain standards for sorting the wheat from the chaff. We do have taste and skill, even if we can never perfectly articulate them.

For me the ambivalent/ironic position is connected to a realization of thrownness, of how history lives in us, constraining us while making us possible.The earnest philosopher (the totalizer who has it all tied up in a nice little bundle, his existence and ours) ignores that he was shaped by a past that also limits what he can see and understand. — path

To my eye the difference between them seems not* one of ignoring vs acknowledging, but of fighting vs giving in. The “earnest” philosopher can acknowledge that he is inevitably biased and that attaining complete objectivity is impossible, but still try to bracket out his biases and get as close to objectivity as he can. The “ironic” philosopher, on the other hand, sees that inevitability and impossibility as an excuse to not even try to do the best he can, and reads the “earnest” philosopher’s attempts as foolish or even arrogant.

*Rather than this dichotomy being either the way you say it is or the way I say it is, perhaps we should apply the tactic of dissolution here too, and recognize that these are two different dichotomies. There ARE some who don’t acknowledge their biases and the impossibility of total objectivity, and some who do. Among those who do, there are those who try anyway, and those who just give up. Clear examples of the three are the naive religious folk who think God gives their lives meaning, the Absurd Hero of Camus, and the existential nihilist.

My entire philosophy is actually structured around that kind of division, finding the ways that various answers to each philosophical question fall along those lines, eschewing both the fideistic and the nihilistic approaches, and championing the way analogous to that Absurd Hero.

To my eye the difference between them seems not* one of ignoring vs acknowledging, but of fighting vs giving in. The “earnest” philosopher can acknowledge that he is inevitably biased and that attaining complete objectivity is impossible, but still try to bracket out his biases and get as close to objectivity as he can. The “ironic” philosopher, on the other hand, sees that inevitability and impossibility as an excuse to not even try to do the best he can, and reads the “earnest” philosopher’s attempts as foolish or even arrogant. — Pfhorrest

Note how the ironic philosopher is interpreted as making excuses. That's the kind of folk-psychology I associate with 'sophistry.' We would like to install some Rational Method, but we are already being politicians to do so. It's this primacy of the sophistical or the political that I'm pointing at.

So, sure, the ironist is a lazy hipster. Then Mr. System is a square who fends off the impossibility of his project by re-describing objections as the rationalizations of a lazy hipster. As soon as the unconscious is introduced, we're already in Nietzsche's back yard. If my opponent can lie to himself, then why can't I? Why is my organ, my evolved brain, so reliable? Why is my quest for the 'objective truth' genuine and not self-serving or tribe-serving ? And if rationality is always self-serving and never pure, then how is this vision of impure reason to be trusted? 'I might be lying to myself.' I might decide later that I was missing something. I might decide even later that the previous decision was a temporary loss of nerve, that I was right the first time.

This is the drama of life for finite minds. There are books we will never read, some that are not yet written. So there are objections we'll never get to address, contradictions in our worldviews that we won't live long enough to notice. The totalizer denies that surrounding darkness. He might decide that everything is Information or whatever. One magic word to rule them all, which allows us to dominate or neutralize the future from the present in terms of a neutralized past. The past is 'neutralized' as we pretend it does not constrain us.

That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are—how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"—and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. — Nietzsche

Some nice stuff in this thread.

Thanks!

whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments — Nietzsche

Very sharp words, but the (non)curious thing is that Nietzsche believed that his truth about the truth was the true truth and he defended it so passionately that he went so far as to say true brutalities.
May the god of the philosophers save us from the relativists who only preach the relativism of others.

In my opinion, it is admirable the capacity of the one who tells the truth in a beautiful way. It makes our hair stand on end. But we must not forget that Beethoven's Ode to Joy has been sung to praise freedom, as the official song of the Europe of the Merchants and as the national consolation of the defeated Nazis (as told by Primo Levi). Consequently, does Pythagoras' theorem improve somewhat if it is sung with Bach's music or is it declaimed with rhetorical emphasis?
The philosopher must be committed to the truth, not to floral games. It is not bad at all that he calls our attention with beautiful phrases, but later, once we are awake, we better dedicate ourselves to see what is really behind the music.

To continue with what we were, Nietzsche is exciting. I've had to buy some Nietzsche's books twice because I had unbind them from reading them so much. But sometimes I think it's pure poison. And there seem to be many people who swallow the poison happy if it is flavored with honey. And that's the danger of rhetoric and aesthetics.

I'm very sorry, but in matters of form, I'm for pure Cartesianism.

Very sharp words, but the (non)curious thing is that Nietzsche believed that his truth about the truth was the true truth and he defended it so passionately that he went so far as to say true brutalities.
May the god of the philosophers save us from the relativists who only preach the relativism of others. — David Mo

I think you miss the point of 'ironic' in ironic aphorist. As one becomes intensely critically minded, one invariably turns this criticism back on itself. That's where the fireworks begin. And this is not even especially philosophical. We are all psychologists these days, suspecting others and even ourselves of rationalization. Are we masters in our own house? Is our evolved human brain fundamentally truth seeking? Or is it a tool 'for' survival and reproduction? What if knowing the truth (whatever that means exactly) was fatal? Isn't it more plausible that our noises and marks are more about useful than accurate representation? And is representation even the best way to think of the situation? Do other animals represent 'Reality' with the noises they make?

The philosopher must be committed to the truth, not to floral games. It is not bad at all that he calls our attention with beautiful phrases, but later, once we are awake, we better dedicate ourselves to see what is really behind the music. — David Mo

But what if the truth is that the truth is caught up in floral games, is inseparable from floral games? What if this distinction between form and content is something of a myth? A myth that comforts a certain type of person? Or keeps a certain class in power?

I've had to buy some Nietzsche's books twice because I'd unbind them from reading them so much. But sometimes I think it's pure poison.And there seem to be many people who swallow the poison happy if it is flavored with honey. And that's the danger of rhetoric and aesthetics. — David Mo

Note that you use metaphors of poison and honey here. I suggest that human cognition is largely metaphorical, or let's say meta-floral. In your speaking for pure Cartesian-ism...and against the poison/honey of rhetoric and floral games, you use figurative language.

What if a 'pure' non-figurative non-rhetorical language or rationality was a fiction from the very beginning?

In any case, I think it's cool that you read those books until they fell apart. I also think that they are honey-poison. Nietzsche (and philosophy like his) is thrilling and dangerous. That his work doesn't cohere, that we get the whole mess of his soul in its contradictory modes...is a virtue. Is he a creep, a saint, a mystic, a supremely critical mind? He's all of these things. He walked into the storm and forgot his umbrella.

On the 'I' that thinks and therefore is, here are some minimally floral comments:

Psychological history of the concept subject: The body, the thing, the "whole," which is visualised by the eye, awakens the thought of distinguishing between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the "subject" over.
...
"Subject," "object," "attribute"—these distinctions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who "has" something, who "has" a quality. — Nietzsche

May the god of the philosophers save us from the relativists who only preach the relativism of others. — David Mo

This. :clap:

@path What if the whole of one's systematic, "totalizing" philosophy boils down to / elaborates upon a principle along the lines of "be critical, but not cynical", where those terms are rigorously defined, and that principle's application to an organized variety of questions then laid out?

Note that you use metaphors of poison and honey here. I suggest that human cognition is largely metaphorical, or let's say meta-floral. In your speaking for pure Cartesian-ism...and against the poison/honey of rhetoric and floral games, you use figurative language.

What if a 'pure' non-figurative non-rhetorical language or rationality was a fiction from the very beginning? — path

Hey, you don't ask too many questions without answering them?

I was very conscious of using metaphors. I am not opposed to the use of metaphors, nor to ironies, unless the thought gets caught up in them. The problem is inconclusive thinking. Not because it is always possible to reach some port, but because the journey is meaningless if it does not go somewhere.

I use metaphors because I'm not a philosopher among philosophers. I am not writing philosophy but comments in a forum of philosophy fans. Which are two different things.

The problem with philosophy is that it gets bored with itself. The spleen. So much effort for what? No First Cause, no essence, no ideal world, no Being as Being, no synthetic a priori... What a frustration! You get tired of playing Captain Ahab, sailing tirelessly through the seven seas in search of a white whale that no one sees until it kills you. So we let ourselves be carried away by the paradoxes, the ironies and the beautiful metaphors. It is weak thinking, which is the end of philosophy dissolved in pure poetry - almost always bad poetry, I am sorry.

I don't just call for Cartesian clarity and distinction but analytical pruning too. Or writing novels.

Are we speaking about the method of philosophy, is it not?

I was very conscious of using metaphors. I am not opposed to the use of metaphors, nor to ironies, unless the thought gets caught up in them. — David Mo

What I question here is this assumed 'clean' separation of thought from the metaphor and irony that otherwise taints it.

The problem is inconclusive thinking. Not because it is always possible to reach some port, but because the journey is meaningless if it does not go somewhere. — David Mo

I think humans creatively adapt to their natural and social environment. We seem to be an especially experimental species. Come back in 1000 years and who knows what we will be doing? On the other hand, sharks will probably be doing the same thing, assuming there's still an ocean.

Connected to this, we're also playful little monkeys. We like novelty, we like stimulation, we have vivid imaginations. Why should philosophy always already know where it is going? Why should philosophy not include experiments whose effects are not known ahead of time? Human nature is not fixed. It is not already here. As cultural, creative animals we are always a work-in-progress. We try new ways of talking about things. Some of them catch on. We get better at prediction and control and like to talk about it perhaps as getting closer to the truth...whatever that is supposed to mean beyond getting better at prediction and control.

Where are we going, we clever animals? As individuals we are going to the grave. As a species we are probably going gloriously and miserably to our extinction, be it one million years from now.

Is 'inconclusive thinking' just whatever isn't engineering ? But we can read even Nietzsche as an engineer, or at least as an inventor of new ways of talking. I don't think we can calculate the effect ahead of time of this or that verbal invention. Surely philosophy, when it catches on, has at least an indirect effect on ...conclusive thinking.

The problem with philosophy is that it gets bored with itself. The spleen. So much effort for what? No First Cause, no essence, no ideal world, no Being as Being, no synthetic a priori... What a frustration! You get tired of playing Captain Ahab, sailing tirelessly through the seven seas in search of a white whale that no one sees until it kills you. So we let ourselves be carried away by the paradoxes, the ironies and the beautiful metaphors. It is weak thinking, which is the end of philosophy dissolved in pure poetry - almost always bad poetry, I am sorry. — David Mo

But look how poetically you express this! And I enjoyed it. And is the above not a partial expression of your fundamental stance with respect to your existence? IMO, one's vision of what philosophy is and should be is a big part of that.

Are we speaking about the method of philosophy, is it not? — David Mo

Or the impossibility of such a method. The method of philosophy is like the ice of fire. It you want to call foundational abnormal discourse something other than philosophy, I guess you can.

Normal discourse (a generalization of Kuhn’s notion of “normal science”) is any discourse (scientific, political, theological, or whatever) which embodies agreed-upon criteria for reaching agreement; abnormal discourse is any which lacks such criteria. — Rorty

path What if the whole of one's systematic, "totalizing" philosophy boils down to / elaborates upon a principle along the lines of "be critical, but not cynical", where those terms are rigorously defined, and that principle's application to an organized variety of questions then laid out? — Pfhorrest

It's not a bad philosophy of life, but do you not see how individual personality is manifested in the admonishment to not be cynical? Philosophy has often been quite cynical. For many its thrill is tangled up in demystification, which we might think of as an asceticism.

As far as being critical, I'm with you. At the same time, I'm really not sure that it's the best way to live (or that there is a best way to live.) I don't advise strangers to be critical. I don't talk people out of their religion or politics. On this forum it's different. An investment in being critical is presupposed. So I feel OK with being loud about my personal solutions-in-progress to the problematic opportunity of existence.

I was referring back to this bit where you were discussing the characterization of the ironic aphorist as self-critical:

As one becomes intensely critically minded, one invariably turns this criticism back on itself. — path

And so I was asking your thoughts on a “totalizing system” of philosophy which is just that criticism applied systemically to everything, including itself.

...with the caveat about not being cynical either, in a sense that basically means giving things a chance, and not tearing them all down before you even begin.

This ties back to the thing I said earlier that you didn’t respond to:

*Rather than this dichotomy being either the way you say it is or the way I say it is, perhaps we should apply the tactic of dissolution here too, and recognize that these are two different dichotomies. There ARE some who don’t acknowledge their biases and the impossibility of total objectivity, and some who do. Among those who do, there are those who try anyway, and those who just give up. Clear examples of the three are the naive religious folk who think God gives their lives meaning, the Absurd Hero of Camus, and the existential nihilist. — Pfhorrest

One of those dichotomies is basically the critical-uncritical axis. The other is the cynical-uncynical axis. They are orthogonal to each other, and I think conflating them is the source of all our apparent disagreement here. The critique of the earnest philosopher is that they aren’t self-critical enough. The critique of the ironic philosopher is that they are too cynical. But you can be critical without being cynical, which breaks this entire bipartite model. You can be neither the earnest stereotype saying “This is the objective truth” nor the ironic stereotype saying “Finding objective truth is hopeless”, but instead an “Absurdist Hero“ toward philosophy itself, saying “It may be hopeless, but I’m trying anyway”.

And so I was asking your thoughts on a “totalizing system” of philosophy which is just that criticism applied systemically to everything, including itself. — Pfhorrest

Thanks. That's helpful. Yes, I like that. I do think that we can't genuinely doubt everything. Some beliefs are too basic in our culture, in our identity. For instance, we all just know that there is one soul or consciousness per skull. To what degree can I really question that without being locked up?
We use the word 'I' with a blind skill that we mostly don't notice. Critical thinking reveals that critical thinking can never be total.

...with the caveat about not being cynical either, in a sense that basically means giving things a chance, and not tearing them all down before you even begin. — Pfhorrest

I think I can meet you on this terrain. Your anti-cynicism seems close to my experimentalism. The issue with cosmic systems is that want to dominate the future from the present. They already know or pretend to know what will work or what is possible. As humans, we do want to neutralize the future. So such systems are comforting. And prediction and control is part of that. A metaphysical theory of philosophy (what it is and should) tries to neutralize the future of philosophy. It tries to foresee or dominate all that is possible in essence if not in detail.

From this angle, my objection to accusations of sophistry is that they are basically expressions of what you mean by cynicism. They'd like to rule out experiments ahead of time. Then we have philosophers in different traditions calling one another sophists. I've studied the clash of Derrida and Searle. I think Derrida is great but difficult and sometimes indulgent. It's because of some of his 'results' that his style is also more playful. If one breaks free from certain dogmatic assumptions (that form and content can truly be separated, that the serious/unserious distinction can and must be taken seriously), then one naturally explores new stylistic possibilities.

This ties back to the thing I said earlier that you didn’t respond to: — Pfhorrest

Sorry, I should have responded to that. It's good stuff.

There ARE some who don’t acknowledge their biases and the impossibility of total objectivity, and some who do. Among those who do, there are those who try anyway, and those who just give up. Clear examples of the three are the naive religious folk who think God gives their lives meaning, the Absurd Hero of Camus, and the existential nihilist. — Pfhorrest

Yes, excellent stuff. Basically the ironic aphorist is (for me) close to the absurd hero. I'm not sure what to make of the existential nihilist. There is something deeply representational in us, so I do wonder if the recognition of bias 'must' include some concern with overcoming it. To know that I am biased is to know that I might be lying to myself. Are the people at piece with that? It might be a kind of modesty or playfulness is they say so. This goes back to whether we can cleanly separate the serious from the non-serious.

The critique of the earnest philosopher is that they aren’t self-critical enough. The critique of the ironic philosopher is that they are too cynical. But you can be critical without being cynical, which breaks this entire bipartite model. You can be neither the earnest stereotype saying “This is the objective truth” nor the ironic stereotype saying “Finding objective truth is hopeless”, but instead an “Absurdist Hero“ toward philosophy itself, saying “It may be hopeless, but I’m trying anyway”. — Pfhorrest

To me the ironic philosopher who bothers to read and argue philosophy is more or less implicitly the absurd hero. That said, I don't think that we as critical thinkers 'should' (by our own vague standards) take the representational paradigm for granted. In case I haven't emphasized it enough, I think one of the revolutionary ideas in philosophy moves beyond language as representation.

Instead of 'we will never quite mirror Ultimate Reality in words,' we get 'this whole framework of trying to mirror Ultimate Reality in words...is not the only option.' We can think of language as a tool that is not an eye or a mirror but instead a hand. If language is a blind hand that helps us cope, it's not a matter of correctness. It's a matter of more or less successful coping. What is success? We have to invent goals. We can also be representational in checking to see how well we've done in our pursuit of them. We don't have to reject the representational paradigm where it is effective. We don't have to represent it as impossible, though we may use the hand of language that way more or less consciously. To deconstruct frameworks requires inhabiting them to some degree, ironically or half-seriously.

For instance, we all just know that there is one soul or consciousness per skull. — path

Eh, the unity of personal identity can get pretty fuzzy and I’m far from the first person to talk about that.

We use the word 'I' with a blind skill that we mostly don't notice. — path

I’ve often wished that English had different words for “I” etc that referred to one’s id, ego, and superego, as it would make talking about certain kinds of self-experiences much easier to communicate. (E.g. if I-ego am talking to someone about what I-id want to do even though I-ego know better, or how I-superego am always berating my-ego-self for reasons I-ego know are unfounded).

I’ve often wished that English had different words for “I” etc that referred to one’s id, ego, and superego, as it would make talking about certain kinds of self-experiences much easier to communicate. (E.g. if I-ego am talking to someone about what I-id want to do even though I-ego know better, or how I-superego am always berating my-ego-self for reasons I-ego know are unfounded). — Pfhorrest

Yup, and this is a great example of what I mean by thrownness. We just grow up using 'I' in a certain way that we don't think to question till much later, if even then. As I see it, we can never get 'above' or see clearly all of the blind skill that constrains us in this way. As you and I deconstruct this taken-for-granted 'I'-talk, we're bound to be taking for granted some other kind of talk as we do so. At the same time, it's only these taken-for-granted conventions/habits that allow us to communicate or think at all. So we are blinded by our own eyes in that sense. Yet here I am, absurdly hoping to see around my own eyes. I am time or history trying to slip out of its own skin. Do we want to look down on time from eternity? Metaphorically it's like climbing a mountain to see things whole and from above and yet questioning whether this mountain has a peak...or why I decided beforehand that the view up there is better.

***

Stephen in Joyce's Ulysses says 'History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake.' I think that just sums up so much. While thinking about our conversation, I gave it a twist:

I am the history from which I am trying to awake.