From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Tue Oct 08 2002 - 12:39:09 BST
Hi Matt,
> So, when Sam says that "To deny [a true account of a text] is ultimately
to
> deny any possibility of communication between different individuals," I
say
> that this is a bit dramatic. As I just elaborated to John B. (in the Ways
> of Knowing thread), communication for Rorty is a matter of constructing
> "passing theories" of other people's noises and inscriptions. The goal is
> to be able to predict what the person will say next.
I think that a full elaboration of where you and I differ would take us a
long way away from what is suitable for a MoQ forum discussion, and at the
moment I a) don't know enough about Rorty, although I intend to put that
right and b) I'm using my spare time to work up my full response to John B
on mysticism. So this short response will just have to do!
I'm one of those people who see postmodernism, in all its various guises, as
a late and decadent phase of modernism itself. Although postmodernism
proclaims itself free of meta-narratives I view it as still operating within
what I have christened 'the meta-narrative of rational primacy' (the MORP),
a full elucidation of which forms the central part of the book I am writing
at the moment (In MoQ terms the MORP is a virulent variant of SOM logic,
with particular social forms and terminology deriving from late seventeenth
century England, the Royal Society in particular). The MORP says, following
Locke, that we have to justify our beliefs by appealing to reason, on pain
of being irrational/ emotional/ socially dead in the water. Post modernism
says no beliefs can be justified by reason, therefore no beliefs can be
justified, and we must let go of the dream of reason and indulge in
'jouissance'. Post modernism, in my view, still accords reason the role of
dominant arbiter - and, further, is still embedded in some of the Cartesian
philosophical platypi which cause so much hassle. I think there is a clear
division between the MoQ and postmodernism, in that the MoQ gives Quality
the role that reason has in both modernism (where it is exalted) and
postmodernism (where it is deconstructed).
You quote Rorty as saying that communication is 'a matter of constructing
"passing theories" of other people's noises and inscriptions' - that to my
mind is the giveaway that, in this respect at least, Rorty is still
operating in the MORP. My response to that is to follow Wittgenstein (who
also operates outside the modernist framework, and is - in some ways - a
pragmatist) who writes "I want to say: it is characteristic for our language
that it springs up on the foundation of stable forms of life, regular ways
of acting." In other words, we don't need a *theory* to justify
communication - the shared life comes first, then the reasoning and theories
based upon that shared life.
I get the impression you're a philosophy student at university? If so, I'm
sure you'll be exposed to Wittgenstein at some point. If you want a good
introduction to this aspect of Wittgenstein's thought, have a look at
'Theology After Wittgenstein' by Fergus Kerr, which, despite the title, is
predominantly a work of philosophy.
PS a full explanation of my understanding of Wittgenstein, and indeed of
some of the central ideas in the book I am writing, can be found in the
archives at
http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/0110/0034.html
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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