Re: MD Truth

From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 20 2003 - 22:11:50 BST

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    Patrick,

    Patrick said:
    Very much abstract talk... Maybe that's what Rorty doesn't find interesting or even worthwile in philosophy anymore, philosophy as the process of a continual refreshion of old abstract conceptions only to see these same conceptions anew again and again. Anyhow this abstract thinking might be worthwile after all, to me, if the fruit of DQ has brought forward a Good static quality, if after and before that more pragmatic action is being pursued. Balance (between thinking and action, between relativism and absolutism) is what it's all about.

    Matt:
    You're talking out loud, but I think you're on to it. Philosophy is abstract. Rorty doesn't have a problem with that, insofar as we don't think philosophy is the best way to galvanize people to take action. At one time, philosophers could do that, but these days nobody listens to philosophers. And because they are so abstract, its hard to get out any concrete messages that aren't more readily made in other disciplines.

    The other part is that Rorty does follow Hegel in thinking that philosophy is "your time held in thought". That means that to do philosophy is to recapitulate the past before moving on to the future. Pirsig follows in this, too. So, what Rorty dislikes about some contemporary philosophy is not the continual refreshing in general (which is impossible to get away from), but the continual refreshing of old Platonic and Kantian dichotomies and dualisms.

    Rorty does think that philosophy can be useful, but he thinks its role now is not at the forefront of action, but as a handmaiden to those areas of action (like politics). He thinks it can be useful in clearing up conceptual problems, but not for formulating political reforms.

    Matt

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