From: Monkeys' tail or (elkeaapheefteen@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Dec 13 2002 - 13:49:32 GMT
Matt,
you probably already read it but here's the letter from P. to Lila
squad(1998):
I've kept out of online discussions, because, as I say, children have to
make it on their own. But there's another reason that relates to the
distinction between philosophers and philosophologists. People sometimes ask
who my favorite philosopher is and I answer, just to jog them out of the
usual philosophological rut into the idea that real philosophy is not a set
of fixed stale systems of ideas but rather a kind of creative activity:
'Abraham Lincoln.' Lincoln was a creative philosopher. My favorite quotation
from him was that he liked to take an idea and bound it on the North and
bound it on the East and on the South and on the West, just to see how far
it goes. Lincoln was a surveyor in his early years and I think he used the
word 'bound' in the old surveyor's sense. I see a lanky man with a compass
and transit and surveyor's rods and chain pushing his way through the
underbrush of the wilderness, very concerned about accuracy in determining
where this particular parcel of land stops and the next begins. He knows
that if he doesn't get his measurements right, endless disputes and problems
will follow later on. If you study Lincoln's speeches closely you'll see
that, although he sounds casual enough on the surface, there's a careful
surveyor's precision underlying every sentence he writes.
"I sometimes see you as a group of surveyors at the edge of a kind of
intellectual wilderness. You're all engaged in a creative activity rather
than just sitting back parroting and dissecting old masters. This is real
philosophy. I can't tell you where to go because I don't really know for
sure myself. And if I did, I probably shouldn't tell you anyway because that
might spoil all the Dynamic adventure and excitement this wilderness
offers."
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