Philosophy could be called highest because it is without presuppositions. — Leontiskos
You seem to want to say that philosophy has to do with thinking qua thinking, and that if all being can be thought, then philosophy has a relation to all being in a way that other disciplines do not. That seems right. Or we might say that there is no thinking or knowledge that is non-philosophical. — Leontiskos
From biology to philosophy isn’t a lateral move, on this view; we’re going up the ladder a rung, looking down on our previous viewpoint from a higher and more perspicuous and more general one. And, completing the picture, once we’re at the philosophy level, there are no more rungs. — J
The "perennial philosophy" is in this context defined as a doctrine which holds (1 )that as far as worth-while knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; (2) that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and (3) that the wise men of old have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, and so on; and (4) that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Edward Conze
The Sage was the living embodiment of wisdom, “the highest activity human beings can engage in . . . which is linked intimately to the excellence and virtue of the soul” (WAP 220). Across the schools, Socrates himself was agreed to have been perhaps the only living exemplification of such a figure (his avowed agnoia notwithstanding). Pyrrho and Epicurus were also accorded this elevated status in their respective schools, just as Sextius and Cato were deemed sages by Seneca, and Plotinus by Porphyry. Yet more important than documenting the lives of historical philosophers (although this was another ancient literary genre) was the idea of the Sage as “transcendent norm.” The aim, by picturing such figures, was to give “an idealized description of the specifics of the way of life” that was characteristic of the each of the different schools. — About Pierre Hadot, IEP
I am uncomfortable with viewing the presuppositionaless-ness of philosophy as "an argumentative trick." — Leontiskos
(Is "presuppositionaless-ness" translated from the German? :wink: ) — J
Oh, I didn't realize that's what you meant. — J
I was referring merely to the "gotcha" aspect, where any questioning of philosophy becomes yet more philosophy. Do you think this has to do with the lack of presuppositions? I'd like to hear more about that. — J
More an attempt to tease out some possibilities as we consider what, if anything, is special about philosophical discourse. — J
Other disciplines have fairly clear starting points, but not philosophy. — Leontiskos
there is nothing unique that all philosophical discourse has in common that distinguishes it from other modes of discourse. — Fooloso4
Except, as above, that all philosophical discourse resists being absorbed/reduced into a different discourse. Or at least that's the possibility we're looking at here. — J
I will sometimes argue that there is such a thing as the philosophical ascent, generally understood as moving from a state of ignorance to insight or enlightenment. And also that there are degrees of knowledge, the 'analogy of the Divided Line' in the Republic being a paradigm for that. — Wayfarer
much of philosophy is modeled on the success of science. — Fooloso4
The division between philosophy and literature is not so clear. — Fooloso4
The question of the OP is, in part, can we find the path to these qualities by examining the peculiar nature of philosophical reflection? — J
you've made me think of Ian Hacking's Elevator Words in The Social Construction of What?. Take a gander at page 31* of the pdf and page 21* of the printed page numbers and tell me what you think. — Moliere
If philosophy is only reflection then clearly there's something "higher" than philosophy -- action, life, experience, whatever you want to call it. — Moliere
Or, at least, I see action as a part of philosophy — Moliere
This is going to sound paradoxical, but perhaps the starting point of philosophy is in fact the realization that its inquiries cannot be brought to an end by absorption into another discipline. — J
Clearly we couldn't know that reflection is endless until we'd discovered it to be so, which is a process in time, but having learned this, we can posit that feature as the feature which makes philosophy unique... — J
If an inquiry requires support and presuppositions are the ultimate supports, then an inquiry without presuppositions cannot ultimately be brought to an end in any obvious way. — Leontiskos
But one could speak about "bringing an inquiry to an end" via justification or via termination. I am thinking about justification, where an answer to a question is definitively justified. — Leontiskos
Yes, that's an important distinction. I think the problem I'm proposing in the OP is more about termination than justification. Self-reflection -- that is, the ability of philosophical discourse to always reply with more questions that can only be answered philosophically -- is literally interminable. That's the aspect that I said cannot be brought to an end, and that many philosophers regard as evidence of something important and special about such discourse. — J
I’m suggesting that this be downrated to an argumentative pinnacle because of a particular characteristic it reveals: The philosopher can automatically trump any card played against them. Suppose some surly neo-Freudian interrupts me at the point where I assert that “there’s nowhere else to go.” Nonsense, he says. “I’ll give you a psychological-slash-reductive explanation of why philosophers do what they do, and this explanation will have nothing to do with ‛ideas’ or ‛reasoning,’ and everything to do with culturally determined modes of expression mixed with individual depth psychology.” Ah, but I can reply, “Indeed? And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?” We see where this has to go: We’re back to doing philosophy. My surly interlocutor has been trumped. My question doesn’t arise out of any real insight or depth, but he can’t very well deny that it’s reasonable and meaningful. And nor can he claim that it has an answer within his discipline. — J
When Hegel compares this image to the way a philosophical idea develops, he points out that nature must exist in time, so this development is necessarily time-sequential. But he emphasizes that, again, being last in a sequence is not what he means by “highest” or “last” philosophy. We are speaking of a dialectical process in which each stage retains or “sublates” the former one. Ideas reveal themselves as a theoretical unity, they do not grow or develop in time, like a plant. That would be like saying that 3 “comes before” 4 according to a clock measurement. This coming-before is surely not temporal. Rather, we perceive the sequence in one glance, so to speak, and can recognize that what is last has to be last, but not in the way that events in time are last. — J
At this point, if we want to, we can shrug our shoulders and declare nothing of interest here. Or we could keep the Hegelian glasses on and speculate that philosophy is “last” or “concluding” because it represents a true limit of something beyond mere argumentation. If we go full-on Hegelian, we would describe this something as Idea, or Spirit. But we could also say, more modestly, that the limits of inquiry may also show us the limits of being. As mentioned earlier, this requires a monistic turn, a suspicion that what is true of thought must be true of being as well. We have all read Irad Kimhi by now ( :joke: ) so we know how complicated this can get. But, again more modestly, all I’m pointing to is this: If there is an important connection between what can be thought and what exists, then it must include a thesis about self-reflection, and the limits of inquiry, and how these limits are related to what exists. — J
I suppose I am wondering what you meant when you talked about an inquiry being, "brought to an end by absorption into another discipline." — Leontiskos
... science cannot absorb philosophy into its inquiry, whereas philosophy can set the terms for discussing how science is done. — J
3. … the subject matter is not exhausted in its aims; rather, it is exhaustively treated when it is worked out. Nor is the result which is reached the actual whole itself; rather, the whole is the result together with the way the result comes to be.
… differentiatedness is instead the limit of the thing at stake. It is where the thing which is at stake ceases, or it is what that thing is not.
Instead of dwelling on the thing at issue and forgetting itself in it, that sort of knowing is always grasping at something else.
5. The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth.
The truth exists only in the system of knowledge of the truth.
To participate in the collaborative effort at bringing philosophy nearer to the form of science – to bring it nearer to the goal where it can lay aside the title of love of knowing and be actual knowing – is the task I have set for myself.
The inner necessity that knowing should be science lies in the nature of knowing, and the satisfactory explanation for this inner necessity is solely the exposition of philosophy itself.
However, external necessity, insofar as this is grasped in a universal manner and insofar as personal contingencies and individual motivations are set aside, is the same as the internal necessity which takes on the shape in which time presents the existence of its moments. To demonstrate that it is now time for philosophy to be elevated into science would therefore be the only true justification of any attempt that has this as its aim, because it would demonstrate the necessity of that aim, and, at the same time, it would be the realization of the aim itself.
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