bujno
Cosmopolitan
Posts: 648
|
Post by bujno on Sept 11, 2006 6:32:49 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 11, 2006 8:26:52 GMT -7
Wojtek,
Thanks for taking the effort of searching for it and fainding it. I will read it carefully this evening and try to give my reaction. Thanks for your contribution to the Philosophical part of this board. I enjoy and like your contributions very much.
Pieter
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 11, 2006 14:08:15 GMT -7
Wojtek, I have tried to read the text carefully, and it is not easy to read for an layman in philosophy, not being educated in the subject and not having studied it. I read a few general books about the history of Philosophy, philosophical directions, and only one book really thouroughly, a book of Lévinas, and read parts of Nietsches " Also Sprach Zarathustra" partly in German and partly in Dutch. Elzenberg is a real philosopher, and in that respect is not easy to read him, because most philosophers write in philosophical language. If Malgorzata Sady's translation is correct I see a link between Elzenberg and the Wiener Kreis, Logical positivism (later referred to as logical empiricism, rational empiricism, or neo-positivism); a philosophy that combines positivism—which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge—with a version of apriorism—the notion that some propositional knowledge can be had without, or "prior to", experience; and Analytic philosophy,the dominant academic philosophical movement in English-speaking countries and in the Nordic countries. It is distinguished from Continental Philosophy which pertains to most non-English speaking countries. Its main founders were the Cambridge philosophers G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. However, both were heavily influenced by the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege and many of analytic philosophy's leading proponents, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Karl Popper and others. Why do I say that, whel because in Henryk Elzenberg general axiology philosophical approach, is besides the focus on the content of value, seems concentrated on how to formulate the perfect philosophical language for his theory. Like in Analytic philosophy the text I read about Elzenberg was focussed on the right language, the prefect formulation, how to describe the perfect conditione humanaine, the right balance or combination of eshtetics and ethics. And that is the phasinating thing of this Philosopher, who can be followed by artists or people who write who are stuggling with construction and deconstruction. I like that, because I don't like onthology, because I don't see the use of the study of being or existence. Which seeks to describe or posit the basic categories and relationships of being or existence to define entities and types of entities within its framework. Ontology can be said to study conceptions of reality. You can endlessly think, study or talk about why we exsist, but that will not change anuthing in the end. Since Parmenides of Elea (early 5th century BC), Heraclitus of Ephesus (about 535 - 475 BC), the Platonic school, Plato, Aristotle, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Roman Ingarden and Gilles Deleuze Onthology hasn't changed anything, and did not find answers on " Why do we exists", " Why are we here", " What are we doing here", and " Where are we comming form"? Ofcourse these philosophers developed their own briljant theories, and perfect soil or fundaments for later generations of philosophs and logics, but not on an onthologucal solution. Like Elzenberg I like to focus on other things like the Value of things, the meaning of language, Esthetics (important in art, the qyestion of stile, form, composition, perspective, vision and space), and ethics (moral, tradition, customs, values which are logical [the ten commandments for instance]). This is very phascinating, and I should read that book to understand Elzenbergsopinion about that, and how he came to his statement " the first and final source of the instructions for life". This shows his growth in his philosophical developement. Leibniz was a jack of all, luckily Henryk Elzenberg focussed his attention on his on the advancement of his thinking. I like this limitation, and that he was not a polymath like Leibniz. THE PLACE OF ELZENBERG IN POLISH PHILOSOPHYElzenberg was a recluse. He was a philosopher for whom one of the most significant tasks he set for himself was to maintain his intellectual and political independence. In 1960, when the Minister of Science did not approve of his lecturing plans, he wrote a letter to Irma Radoska: " I do not know how much time is left, but if it were only ten days there is one thing I would have: I shall not die as a dog on a chain." Not to become ‘ a dog on a chain’, to remain faithful to himself and his ideals–was Elzenberg’s life motto. He was faithful to it and applied it consistently, many a time entering into open conflicts. He never took the side of those who were supported by the authorities and who, in his opinion, did not act properly. But he never hesitated, putting his own life in danger, to support a cause which he considered valuable. As a volunteer he joined Pilsudski’s Legions in the World War I and took part in the Polish-Soviet war in 1929. These features of character exerted undoubtedly a tremendous influence on the shape of Elzenberg’s philosophy, so much isolated against the background of Polish philosophy before and after the Second World War. What determines this isolated position? The simplest answer would be that it resulted from his different views and the different problems he dealt with. But such a statement would be too general and it would not explain anything. Therefore it is necessary to look at this problem in a more detailed way. Elzenberg wanted to build a philosophical system in which the central place was to be occupied by the philosophy of value. It is true that many distinguished philosophers like Ingarden, Tatarkiewicz, Wallis, Czezowski, and S.I. Witkiewicz were concerned with the problems of value at that time. But none of them aimed at building a system of axiology grounded on perfect ethics. None of them restricted philosophy to general axiology, with formal axiology (the philosophy of value) and substantial axiology, aesthetics and ethics as its main domains. For Elzenberg, philosophy de facto started and finished with value. In order to define philosophy, approached in this way, he was probably the first to introduce the term ‘axiology’. The term ‘ value’ was for Elzenberg a fundamental and primary concept, to the analysis of which he devoted most of his attention. It was characteristic for his attitude that he examined not the conditions but the very essence of the phenomenon of getting to know and realizing ‘ Service in the world of values’, as the only acts worthy of man. The world in which no proper care is taken of values is a barbarian world. Therefore one should revolt against such a world, one should start ‘ arranging the tables of value.’ This work should start from oneself, according to an instruction: " To care less for how we shall be and more for what we shall be". Elzenberg’s attitude is distinguished by his extraordinary emotional engagement in his views and his belief in their rightness. This was to be proved by Elzenberg’s own original axiological system. In spite of the unquestionably distinctive character of this system, it is not difficult to notice certain similarities with the solutions offered by other philosophers at that time. This is particularly evident with respect to aesthetic values. Like Ingarden, Czezowski and Tatarkiewicz he was a supporter of axiological objectivism, initiated in Antiquity by the Pythagoreans and Plato, continued and developed by the stoics, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Albert, Hegel, Hartmann, and Scheler. As in the case of the dispute on the way in which values exist so in the second fundamental problem of value theory, namely in the dispute between absolutism and relativism, Elzenberg supports, as do Ingarden or Tatarkiewicz, the thesis that aesthetic and ethical values are independent of the individual predilections presented by individual people, as well as class or cultural predilections. Elzenberg does not accept the solution according to which the divergence of judegements concerning values can be accounted for by external circumstances. He maintains that in spite of these circumstances one can and has to reach these judgements. One should not confine Elzenberg’s affiliations only to Polish philosophy of the interwar period. There are much more evident connections with the twentieth century Western European philosophy and also, to some extent, with Platonism, stoicism, Buddhism and Christianity. This does not mean that because of its references to other philosophical orientations his conception is less original or that it is eclectic. Elzenberg found particularly familiar the trend in philosophy which recognized the objective existence of values. It resulted in connections with the philosophy of Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann or even the British Analytical School ( especially Moore and Russell). These connections were also a consequence of a similar approach to an issue of the recognition of values. Like Scheler and the British philosophers he believed that values were recognized directly and intuitively. The sense of incommensurability between an intellect, discursive thinking and reality is present in the philosophy of Bergson ( Elzenberg listened to his lectures at the College de France). He shared with German phenomenologists the conception of value as an obligation of being[/i] (Seinsollen). This conception constituted one of the foundations of Elzenberg’s general theory of value, but at the same time it brought about his theoretical crisis in the forties.
What elements of Elzenberg’s theory of value constitute a positive contribution to the heritage of the philosophy of value, aesthetics, ethics and on the other hand, when does Elzenberg get caught by the difficulties he cannot really overcome? The answer to the second question should not be difficult, whereas the answer to the first cannot be fully univocal. I shall start with what in Elzenberg’s theory, in my opinion, was never finally settled. The most unclear and understated places can be found in formal axiology, that is in the part of Elzenberg’s system, which was to constitute the foundations of the general theory of value. What are the reasons for the lack of clarity? Probably the main reason consists in his problematic approach to perfect ethics connected with a concept of obligation. This connection brought about two theoretical crises, one in the early thirties and the other in the late forties. He was never fully decided as to whether value was to be explained by obligation or obligation by value. At that time he stopped within a step of solving the problem, that is withdrawing from defining value by obligation or obligation by value and recognizing their relationship as an axiom referring to these two primary notions at the same time. But he did not take this step.
The best evidence of the doubts that Elzenberg faced is the fact that he did not decide to publish all the materials dealing with a system of formal axiology, because he thought that there were too many gaps in his considerations. The situation looked much better in ethics and aesthetics where his propositions are mature and elaborated. Of course, one can discuss them, but on another plane. We should ask: does Elzenberg’s theory of ethics and aesthetics provide us with the possibilities, if we may say so, of ‘arranging’ and ‘describing’ the world of beauty and goodness? The answer to this question may seem obvious and its obviousness should have been proved by the analysis presented above.
When positivist philosophy dominated the scene, Elzenberg proposed the defence of absolute and objective values conceived in an almost Platonic manner. This modern supporter of Plato’s philosophy was a representative of radical, ontic, axiological objectivism in an idealistic form. In this respect he was an extraordinary, even unique, thinker, not only in the Polish twentieth century philosophy, but on the European scale. He was a supporter of the view that aesthetic value can be cognisable and that it takes place in the course of contemplative experience and by expression.
In the realm of ethics he was a supporter of perfectionism, originating from stoicism. He did not recognize setting partial aims and solutions, but was an ethical maximalist. "If you want people to follow you, make the greatest possible demand". These ‘greatest possible demands’ he made in relation to himself. One cannot leave the path of inner perfection, one cannot stop aspiring towards salvation, meaning ethical salvation. One has to try to be always and everywhere homo ethicus, aiming at the cognition and realization of values. Elzenberg was such an ‘ethical man’, while at the same time he estimated realistically that it is difficult to get rid of the undoubted inconsistency between the ideal he proposed and life. Therefore he wrote in 1942: "only aspiration towards value is ‘justified’ and objectively ‘right’ and in a way ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’. However, aspiration towards happiness is a fact and this aspiration is justified, there is no evil as such in it. It is difficult or hardly possible to demand from man the whole of behaviour which, in his view, would not be directed towards happiness; only happiness (for the whole of behaviour) has, as an aim, a satisfactory motivating power. To demand from person to act only an axiological motive, a desire of realization and nothing else (as in Kant’s ‘obligation’) is a utopia".
Elzenberg’s attitude is extraordinary due to one more reason. He was a rare example of combining two very fundamental elements. He attempted, very successfully, to realize his theoretical postulates in practice. In aesthetics his practice consisted mainly in essays and critical works on literature. In his essays and critical works he was able to realize his youthful dreams of becoming a writer. His essays, simple in form, were truly beautiful works, filled with delicate lyricism, bordering on philosophy, literature and literary criticism. Elzenberg tried to write poetry, which played an enormous role in his life. Unfortunately in this case the dreams and concrete attempts differ considerably. Whereas the standard of Elzenberg’s achievements in the area of philosophy is very high, his poetry proves that creative aspirations are not always realized in their most sublime forms.
translated by Malgorzata Sady
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 12, 2006 5:26:09 GMT -7
Roman Ingarden From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Roman Witold Ingarden (1893 - 1970), a Polish philosopher, working in the fields of phenomenology, ontology, and aesthetics. Before the second World War, Ingarden published his works mainly in German. During WWII, he switched to Polish, therefore his major works on ontology went largely unnoticed by the wider philosophical community.
Life
Born on February 5, 1893 in Kraków, as an Austrian subject during Austria'a last occupation of Southern Poland, he initially studied mathematics and philosophy under the guidance of Kazimierz Twardowski in Lwów, and in 1912 moved to Göttingen to study philosophy under Edmund Husserl. Husserl considered Ingarden one of his best students, and Ingarden followed him to Freiburg, where he submitted his doctoral dissertation in 1918 with Husserl as director. The two remained in close touch until Husserl's death in 1938. After receiving his doctoral degree, Ingarden returned to Poland for most of his academic career. At first he taught mathematics, psychology and philosophy in schools and worked on his Habilitationschrift, Essentiale Frage, which achieved some attention in the English speaking philosophical community. He was given a position at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv and in 1933 promoted to Professor. During this professorship he published most widely known work, The Literary Work of Art. Ingarden's career was interrupted by World War II (1941-1944), as Lwów university was closed. During this time, he secretly taught philosophy and mathematics to school children at an orphanage. Simultaneously, and despite the bombing of his house, he continued to work on his newest work, The Controversy over the Existence of the World. After the war in 1945 Ingarden moved to Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he was offered a position. In 1949, however, he was banned from teaching due to his alleged idealism (a philosophical position that Ingarden fought against most of his life) and for being an "enemy of materialism". The ban ceased in 1957 and Ingarden was reappointed at Jagiellonian University. There, he continued to teach, write, and publish. Roman Ingarden died suddenly from cerebral hemorrhage on June 14, 1970.
Works
Ingarden was a realist phenomenologist, but did not accept Husserl's transcendental idealism. His training was phenomenological, nonetheless his work as a whole was directed rather towards ontology. That is why Ingarden is one of the most renowned phenomenological ontologists, as he strove to describe the ontological structure and state of being of various objects based on the essential features of any experience that could provide such knowledge. The best known works of Ingarden, and the only ones known to most English speaking readers, concern aesthetics and literature. The exclusive focus on Ingarden's work in aesthetics is to some extent unfortunate and misleading about his overall philosophical standpoint.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 12, 2006 5:35:42 GMT -7
Tadeusz Czezowski
Tadeusz Czezowski (b. July 26, 1889 in Vienna, Austria - March 28, 1981 in Torun, Poland) was a Polish philosopher and logician. Tadeusz was student of Kazimierz Twardowski and member of the Lwów-Warsaw School of logic. He was from 1923 until 1939 professor on the Stefan Batory University in Wilno and from 1945 until 1960 professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Since 1948 he was editor of the "Ruch Filozoficzny" magazine.
Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz
Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz (April 3, 1886, Warsaw – April 4, 1980, Warsaw) was a Polish philosopher, historian of philosophy, historian of art, esthetician, and author of works in ethics.
Life
As he describes in his 1979 Memoirs, it was an encounter with a relative at a Kraków railroad station upon the outbreak of World War I that led Tatarkieiwicz to spend the war years in Warsaw. There he began his career as a lecturer in philosophy, teaching at a girls' school on ulica Mokotowska (Mokotowska Street, across the street from where Józef Pilsudski was to reside during his first days after World War I). When a Polish Warsaw University was opened under the sponsorship of the occupying Germans — who wanted to win Polish support for their war effort — Tatarkiewicz directed its philosophy department in 1915-1919. In 1919-1921 he was a professor at Vilnius University, in 1921-1923 at Poznan University, and in 1923-1961 again at Warsaw University. In 1930 he became a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. During World War II, risking his life, he conducted underground lectures in German-occupied Warsaw (one of the auditors was Czeslaw Milosz). After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising (August-October 1944) he again consciously risked his life by retrieving a manuscript from the gutter, where a German soldier had hurled it (this and other materials were later published as a book, in English translation titled Analysis of Happiness[/i]). In his Memoirs, published shortly before his death, which came the day after his 94th birthday, Tatarkiewicz recalled having been ousted from his Warsaw University chair by a (politically-connected) former student. Characteristically, he saw even that indignity as a blessing in disguise, as it gave him freedom from academic duties and the leisure to pursue research and writing. He reflected philosophically that, at all crucial junctures of his life, he had failed to foresee events, many of them tragic, but that this had probably been for the better, since he couldn't have altered them anyway.
Work
Tatarkiewicz belonged to the interbellum Lwów-Warsaw School of Philosophy, created by Kazimierz Twardowski, which gave reborn Poland many outstanding scholars and scientists: philosophers, logicians, psychologists, sociologists, and organizers of academia. Tatarkiewicz educated generations of Polish philosophers, estheticians and art historians, as well as a multitude of interested laymen. He posthumously continues to do so through his famous History of Philosophy and numerous other works.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 12, 2006 5:53:52 GMT -7
Stanislaw Ignacy WitkiewiczFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaStanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, a.k.a. “ Witkacy” (February 24, 1885, Warsaw – September 18, 1939, Jeziory, Polesie, Poland) was a Polish writer, dramatist, photographer, philosopher and painter. LifeStanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz was the son of Stanislaw Witkiewicz. His godmother was Helena Modrzejewska. Witkiewicz was raised at the family home in Zakopane. In accordance with his father's antipathy to the " servitude of the school", the young Witkiewicz was home-educated and encouraged to develop his talents across the creative fields. From childhood, Witkiewicz was a close friend of Bronislaw Malinowski. Following a crisis in Witkiewicz' personal life, Malinowski invited him to act as draughtsman and photographer on an expedition to Oceania in 1914, a venture interrupted by the onset of The Great War. On his return, Witkiewicz, nominally a Russian subject, went to St Petersburg and enlisted in the Tsarist army. Witkiewicz lived through the Russian Revolution in Petersburg. Later his works show his fear of social revolution and foreign invasion, but are written in absurd language. He had begun to support himself through portrait painting and continued to do so on his return to Zakopane in the new Poland. He entered into a major creative phase, setting out his principles in N ew Forms in Painting and Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in the Theatre. He associated with a group of " formist" artists and wrote most of his plays during the period to the mid-1920s. Of the plays, only " Jan Karol Maciej Hellcat" met with any public success at the time. After 1925, Witkacy ironically re-presented the painting activity which provided his economic sustenance as the " S. I. Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm" with the motto " The customer must always be satisfied". Several grades of portrait were offered - from the merely representational, to the more expressionistic and to the drug-assisted. The paintings are annotated with mnemonics to indicate the drugs that were influencing him at the time, even if it was only a cup of coffee. In the late 1920s he turned to the novel, writing two works, Farewell to Autumn and Insatiability, the latter a major work encompassing geo-politics, psychosomatic drugs and philosophy. During the 1930s, Witkiewicz published a text on his experiences of Narcotics including peyote and pursued his interests in philosophy. He also promoted emerging writers such as Bruno Schulz. When Poland was indeed invaded by Germany, he escaped with his young lover to Eastern Poland. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland, he committed suicide. Witkiewicz lied to his lover, saying that he was giving her poison while he was to cut his veins; she woke up later to find him dead. Witkiewicz had died in some obscurity but his reputation began to rise soon after the War which had destroyed his own life and devastated Poland. Czeslaw Milosz framed his argument in The Captive Mind around a discussion of Insatiability. The artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor was inspired by the Cricot group through which Witkiewicz had presented his final plays in Kraków. Kantor brought many of the plays back into currency, first in Poland and then internationally. The Ministry of Culture of Communist Poland decided to exhume his body, move it to Zakopane and give him a VIP burial. It was performed according to plan, though nobody was allowed to open the coffin delivered by the Soviet authorities. However, later genetic studies showed that the body belonged to an unknown Ukrainian woman; a final absurd joke 50 years after his last novel. www.joinme.net/philosophy/lfigures.htm(Genealogy of the Polsh analytical philosophy)
|
|
bujno
Cosmopolitan
Posts: 648
|
Post by bujno on Sept 13, 2006 3:14:25 GMT -7
I have tried to read the text carefully, and it is not easy to read for an layman in philosophy Pieter, this might be especially when we read the commentaries on specific philosopher. Mot of the original books, text by philosophers (at least good ones) are written in a way that is not difficult to undesttand. That is the case with Henryk Elzenberg, too. Thank you for your personal remarks on what you've read. I enjoyed reading them. I have noticed that you have mentioned a whole bunch of some of the most outstanding pillars of Polish Culture!
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 13, 2006 5:37:08 GMT -7
I have tried to read the text carefully, and it is not easy to read for an layman in philosophy Pieter, this might be especially when we read the commentaries on specific philosopher. Mot of the original books, text by philosophers (at least good ones) are written in a way that is not difficult to undesttand. That is the case with Henryk Elzenberg, too. Thank you for your personal remarks on what you've read. I enjoyed reading them. I have noticed that you have mentioned a whole bunch of some of the most outstanding pillars of Polish Culture! Wojtek, I hope you are right, and I don't know if it has to do with the Dutch language translation, that I had difficulties with reading philosophers like Bergson, Kieregaard, Rorty, Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer. It seemed to me difficult, tough language, I had to think and struggle with every sentence sometimes or with words or expressions, but that is maybe the essence of it. Reading and comming into philosophy was for me an autodidact study in the public library, my own dictionairy, the early internet of the Ninetees, and using a lot of Dutch, German and English dictionairies. It was a sort of analytical process. When I finished my Levinas book, I had a written a whole story next to it in my Dutch writing book, which were all translations of translations. I rewrote the sentences of the Dutch translation in it in for me understandable words. Don't get me wrong, I loved Levinas book, I probably learned more from that book than I had ever learned from any other book. About ehtics, about mutuality, about the responsability you have as a human being for another human being " the other" and etc. This book was for a large extend his response or reaction on philosophical statements and theories from Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sarte and Nietsche, so that could have had to do with the complexity of that book. Because my dealing with philosophy was greatly based on finding a practical use of thought, and the understanding of language, it became for me very analytical. Philosophy for me was about the use and understanding of language, and the connection of " that" philosophical language to reality, to life, to art, to history, and to the political reality that surrounded me (I was active back then in the Dutch labour party). Pieter
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 13, 2006 5:44:12 GMT -7
Emmanuel LévinasEmmanuel Lévinas (January 12, 1906 - December 25, 1995) was a French philosopher born in Kaunas, Lithuania in a Jewish family. In his youth he had received a traditional Jewish education, and in his later years was introduced to the Talmud by the enigmatic " Monsieur Chouchani". Levinas became a naturalized French citizen in 1930. Levinas was deeply influenced by the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, whom he met at the university of Freiburg, as well as by Jewish religion. He was one of the first intellectuals to introduce to France the work of Heidegger and Husserl, producing both translations of their work (e.g., Husserl's Cartesian Meditations) and original philosophical tracts. War experiencesDuring the German invasion of France in 1940, Levinas was reactivated with his military unit, which was quickly surrounded and forced to surrender. Initially sent to a prisoner of war camp in France, he was soon transferred to a camp on German soil near Hannover, where he remained until the end of the war. Although protected by the Third Geneva Convention from deportation to a concentration camp, Levinas was segregated in special barracks for Jewish prisoners, who were forbidden any forms of religious worship. Life in the camp was as difficult as might be expected, with Levinas often forced into wood-chopping duties. Other prisoners report seeing him make frequent jottings in a notebook, which would later be shaped into his treatises " De l'Existence à l'Existent," an appreciation and criticism of the philosophy of Heidegger, and " Le Temps et l'Autre" (both 1948). In the meantime, his wife was shielded from deportation through the efforts of the philosopher Maurice Blanchot who also risked his own well-being seeing to it that Levinas was able to keep in contact with his immediate family through letters and other messages. Other family members were not so lucky: his mother-in-law was deported and never heard from again, while his father and brothers were murdered in Lithuania by the SS. PhilosophySome decades after the war, Levinas became a leading thinker in France, emerging from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, he argues " ethics as first philosophy." For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (called ontology by Levinas). Levinas prefers to think of philosophy as the ' knowledge of love' rather than the love of knowledge. In his arrangement, ethics become an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; because of this, an ethics of responsibility precedes any ' objective searching after truth'. Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. " The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness." At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to accede or deny. One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronymy of the Other. Even murder would fail in any attempt to take hold of this otherness. In Levinas's later thought following " Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsiblity for-the-other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is [paraphrase] " it is of the utmost importance to know whether or not we are duped by morality." This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 from " Otherwise Than Being"). Therein Levinas maintained that subjectivity was formed in and through our subjected-ness to the other. In this way, his effort was not to move away from traditional attempts to locate the other within subjectivity (this he agrees with), so much as his view was that subjectivity was primordially ethical and not theoretical. That is to say, our responsibility for-the-other was not a derivative feature of our subjectivity; instead, obligation founds our subjective being-in-the-world by giving it a meaningful direction and orientation. Levinas's thesis " ethics is first philosophy", then, means that the traditional philosophical pursuit of knowledge is but a secondary feature of a more basic ethical duty to-the-other. Among the many works of Levinas, key texts include Totalité et infini: essai sur l'extériorité (1961) and Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence (1974). Both works have been translated into English by the American philosopher Alphonso Lingis. InfluencesLévinas had a great and noticeable impact on the young Jacques Derrida, a fellow Jew whose seminal Writing and Difference contains an essay on Lévinas. Derrida also delivered a eulogy at Lévinas' funeral, later published as Adieu á Emmanuel Lévinas, an appreciation and exploration of his moral philosophy which was a great influence on him. Links to related philosophers and influences; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserlen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heideggeren.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Blanchoten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Wahlen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergsonen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derridaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other (Central theme in Levinas philosophy) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face-to-face( The "Face-to-Face" relation refers to a concept in the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas' thought on human sociality.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_%28philosophy%29en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity (" The Golden Rule") en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaismen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_%28religion%29
|
|
bujno
Cosmopolitan
Posts: 648
|
Post by bujno on Sept 14, 2006 3:20:42 GMT -7
Pieter, I understand your point. You’re right it is not always easy, especially to follow the thought of a philosopher. Sometimes it is even impossible. I understand you better now, especiallu that your remarks were about Emanuel Levinas. My main problem generally is partly linguistic but mainly lack of the ‘background’ knowledge the philospher has as a branch from his own roots. You may think it is strange for me to say so as philosophy is beleieved to be the realm of pure thought. At least I used to think so but that changed. Since you’ve studies Emanuel Levinas and it is a very hard work – would it be equally difficult if you’d study Talmud first? Or – coming back to Immanuel Kant, I think that understanding his ‘practical mind’ without being able to perceive the Christian references Kant makes use of is impossible. Or even underestanding Marx and where he went wrong without the backround knowledge of Christianity and its ‘socialism utopia’ – that would be difficult too. And so on, and so on.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 14, 2006 5:42:00 GMT -7
Pieter, I understand your point. You’re right it is not always easy, especially to follow the thought of a philosopher. Sometimes it is even impossible. I understand you better now, especiallu that your remarks were about Emanuel Levinas. My main problem generally is partly linguistic but mainly lack of the ‘background’ knowledge the philospher has as a branch from his own roots. You may think it is strange for me to say so as philosophy is beleieved to be the realm of pure thought. At least I used to think so but that changed. Since you’ve studies Emanuel Levinas and it is a very hard work – would it be equally difficult if you’d study Talmud first? Or – coming back to Immanuel Kant, I think that understanding his ‘practical mind’ without being able to perceive the Christian references Kant makes use of is impossible. Or even underestanding Marx and where he went wrong without the backround knowledge of Christianity and its ‘socialism utopia’ – that would be difficult too. And so on, and so on. Wojtek, Even if we are no professionals in the field of philosophy we can be interested in it and try to get some basic thoughts, principles, logic and ethical and/or esthetical views from it. It differs from which perspective or walk of life you go into the work of the old masters. For a great deal philosophy is linked with Mathematics, Physics, Logic, Psychology, history, art criticizm, political sciences, economy (in the thinking about efficiency of language, the construction of ideas, and etc) and " Human thought" in general. A great part of the worlds philosophy can not be understood without Mathematics and Physics, and that is the Beta side of philosophy, which I as an Alpha, and layman will never be able to understand. I simply do not understand the Mathematical and Physician language of that kind of Philosophy. So Kant, Spinoza and Hegel are out of my reach. Wikipedia encyclopedia describes philosophy as; It is not always easy to follow the thought of a philosopher indeed, but there is something which encourages us to take the effort to go into the complex matter of such a thinker. It is our curiousity, or urge to know, our desire for logic reasoning, our Methaphysical wish to understand " Life" (in general) or " Our lives" (in particular) better. Because sometimes it gives answers to our indepth thoughts, our ethical or logical questions we ask ourselves and others. I think that I came to philosophy from other subjects, I had historical, psychological, social, artistic ( esthetical), political and economical questions, and found out that philosophy was the direction, where I could search for a logical formulation of those important questions. I wanted to go away from my personal, emotional, subjective searching for the truth, towards a more general, objective, shared vision of a community of thinking people, from whom I wish(ed) or am part of (I don't know which of the two is the right one, thinking you are part of that, or being part of that). I found out on an earlier age that there were such collective groups, of people who think they are part of a Collective of thought, the " Marxist" and " Socialist" ideological believers ( Political messianism, as you so rightly called it ‘socialist utopia’), and the Conservative and Liberal groups, the Christian idealists ( Christian communities or Communes), Art collectives or groups, agrarian communities (Kibbuts or Moshav's), Libertarians ( or Anarcho-Capitalists), Capitalists ( the guys who only believe in the Free-market, and Materialism), and Humanists ( who created a secular alternative for the Christian ethics, based on the enlightenment, and the development of Western values in the last three centuries). I found myself very much in the direction of Existentialism, because that came close into the direction of an artists approach. You are absolutely right when you state that " your main problem generally is partly linguistic but mainly lack of the ‘background’ knowledge the philospher has as a branch from his own roots." I think that we both agree that you can never fully understand a philosopher, if you don't understand where his roots come from, what he read, who were his Guiding lights, because most philosophers have reacted on other philosophers before them or from their own time. This very reaction and action is in my idea where philosophy is about, a continueing process of development of thought systems and thought experiments. I don't think philosophy is only the realm of pure thought. Philosophy exsists only because it is directly linked to a scientific heritage, because Mathematicians, Physicians, and other scientists used Logic to formulate their ideas about matter, the Universe, the earth, and abstract counting. The non-Mathematic/Physics part of philosophy is based on human experiance, language, history, psychological experiance, close to sociology, art research and social developments. But many philosophy is to abstract, complicated, filled with philosophical jargon that an ordinairy man can not understand. You have to be willing to be language-analytical to be able to go to the core of some of the philosophy which you encounter today. Yes to toatally understand Emanuel Levinas I would have to study the Talmud, but also really understand the work of the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and thus Phenomenology. You are right about Immanuel Kant and Marx too, but I have to say that Marx Messianism was rooted booth in his Jewish heritage as in his converted Lutheranian upbringing. Pieter en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenologyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicsen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_sciencepl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizykaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicen.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 14, 2006 5:54:58 GMT -7
Epistemology From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature and scope of knowledge. The term "epistemology" is based on the Greek words "episteme" (knowledge) and "logos" (account/explanation); it is thought to have been coined by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier. Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. In other words, epistemology primarily addresses the following questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?". Although approaches to answering any one of these questions frequently involve theories that are connected to others, there is enough particularized to each that they may be treated of separately. There are many different topics, stances, and arguments in the field of epistemology. Recent studies have dramatically challenged centuries-old assumptions, and the discipline therefore continues to be vibrant and dynamic.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 14, 2006 5:58:06 GMT -7
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the nature of the world. It is the study of being or reality. It addresses questions such as: What is the nature of reality? Is there a God? What is man's place in the universe? A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what categories of things are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence, objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility. More recently, the term "metaphysics" has also been used to refer to "subjects which are beyond the physical world". A "metaphysical bookstore," for instance, is not one that sells books on ontology, but rather one that sells books on spirits, faith healing, crystal power, occultism, and other such topics. This meaning is not recognized in academic philosophy.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Sept 14, 2006 6:03:03 GMT -7
OntologyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThis article is about ontology in philosophy. In philosophy, ontology is the study of being or existence. It seeks to describe or posit the basic categories and relationships of being or existence to define entities and types of entities within its framework. ontology can be said to study conceptions of reality. Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns refer to entities. Other philosophers contend that some nouns do not name entities but provide a kind of shorthand way of referring to a collection (of either objects or events). In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of a specific kind of intellectual activity. Any ontology must give an account of which words refer to entities, which do not, why, and what categories result. When one applies this process to nouns such as electrons, energy, contract, happiness, time, truth, causality, and God, ontology becomes fundamental to many branches of philosophy. Some basic questionsontology has one basic question: " What actually exists?" Different philosophers provide different answers to this question. One common approach is to divide the extant entities into groups called " categories". However, these lists of categories are also quite different from one another. It is in this latter sense that ontology is applied to such fields as theology, information science and artificial intelligence. Further examples of ontological questions include: - What is existence? - Is existence a property? - Why does anything exist rather than nothing? - What constitutes the identity of an object? - What is a physical object? - What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental, attributes of a given object? - Can one give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists? - What are an object's properties or relations and how are they related to the object itself? - When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing? ConceptsQuintessential ontological concepts include: - Universals- Substanceen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_%28metaphysics%29en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Nov 28, 2007 14:57:18 GMT -7
|
|