From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 17 2003 - 18:26:32 GMT
David,
Matt said:
Rorty said in a reply to Christopher Norris that the only people who really get into Heidegger and Derrida are people who were taken by philosophy earlier in their lives, people who came down with what Heidegger, Derrida, and Wittgenstein would diagnose as the Platonic disease.
David said:
Often true, however for myself, I started with an interest in science but found it far from satisfying all my knowledge needs, and ended up all the way to Heidegger. Now, the link here is the underlying metaphysics in science that go all the way back to the Greeks/Plato. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida and Pirsig know this. My greatest social/moral concern is that most people are either in the pre-science religion camp or the post-science nihilist camp as far as their overall outlook is concerned. My interest is, in the light of what modern life and science have done to religion, what is next? I think that many people think we have science and that is it, nothing else to think about.
But science provides practical knowledge, it does not give us projects to do or tell us what we live our lives for. What Nietzsche feared is that after the death of god our values would regress to simply animal-biological needs and social conformity, and we might add some entertainment to cover over the horrors of life. And here we are, the biggest challenge most people take on is to place themselves as highly as possible in the spread of social inequality that we allow to thrive. Mankind is losing its dignity and perhaps its point. I feel that I less and less often meet anyone who is in anyway interesting.
Nietzsche might suggest that mankind is splitting in two, and perhaps the politico-techno-media-aristocracy is getting ready to get rid of the rest of us, we are becoming less and less required for production, this is suggested by Houllebecq in his book Atomised, although it could go the other way, it looks like we are finding it harder to sustain basic security in the conditions of inequality. Dark times, but perhaps it will give us some enthusiasm for the light when it arrives.
Matt:
This resonates strongly with me, particulary the bit about "science provides practical knowledge, it does not give us projects to do or tell us what we live our lives for." Now, I know we disagree about disenchantment, but for my own part I feel the disenchanting motions of the early Heidegger, late Wittgenstein, Dewey, Derrida, and Rorty are good, while the re-enchanting efforts of the later Heidegger not needed. I don't think think we need a re-enchantment of philosophy. I think Rorty offers us a perfectly good substitute, and that's the turn towards literature, taking well read people like Harold Bloom as our moral and spiritual advisors.
Matt
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