From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 16 2003 - 02:35:56 BST
David,
I like my world of sad, old private interests.
The problem pragmatists have with having a metaphysics centered on openness is that it seems like a useless hypostatization. Rorty says that Nietzsche's problem was that he inverted Platonism, like you say, but that along with it comes many of the same problems, just in inverted form. To put it another way, its like Derrida's "discovery" of the margin, and then making the margin the center. That just creates another margin.
Pragmatists say that the best way to deal with Platonic metaphysics, which is based on certainty, correspondence, i.e. closedness, is not to invert it and make your metaphysics centered around openness. They suggest that we instead simply live like we were open. The only reason you'd want to create a principle of openness, a metaphysics centered by openness, is if you thought thinking about openness as a thing-in-itself would help you be more open. Pragmatists see that as commensurate the Platonic idea of thinking about the Good to become more good. We say that thinking about a thing-in-itself hasn't seemed to help yet, so why not chuck it and think about something else. You don't have to think about openness to be open. You just do it.
Matt
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