From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sun Dec 07 2003 - 21:40:09 GMT
Dear Matt K.,
You wrote 2 Dec 2003 17:05:23 -0600:
'Good historical narratives ... show how some of these old philosophical
questions (and answers) arose out of their historical context and how, with
the march of time and context, these old philosophical questions have lost
relevancy. Historicists don't think there are any natural order of questions
or any natural questions to be asked. ... It is good to rehearse these
narratives that show how we've gotten to where we are. _That's_ how we
maintain our intellectual patterns. However, I don't think all the old
questions need to be answered because many of them have lost their relevancy
and answering them again might help us fall, for instance, into Cartesian
epistemology again. Its taken us 400 years to try and break free, I'd hate
to start the process all over again. To think that there are a list of
questions that we have to keep answering every so often is a bit too
ahistorical for the pragmatist, a bit too removed from context.'
I agree that we maintain our intellectual patterns by rehearsing narratives.
Not repeating history, i.e. latching ourselves at the highest Quality level
we achieved in history and preventing to fall back on previous latches,
requires rehearsing 'narratives that show how we've gotten to where we are'.
Making sense of a historical sequence of (systems of) ideas, requires
narrating how this sequence involves different (and gradually better)
answers to the same questions. Every narrative that makes sense of such a
historical sequence (that shows how we've gotten to where we are and ...
want to be) formulates different questions to perform that function. In that
sense these questions are indeed relative and historical: related to the
particular narrative that one chooses to 'show how we've gotten to where we
are' and want to be.
Your narrative is a (neo-)pragmatist one and is supposed to prevent falling
back on the latch of Cartesian epistemology. It requires questions that are
answered differently by neo-pragmatism and Cartesianism. Which are these
questions?
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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