Philosophy in a Nutshell
.
Philosophy is the critical study of
the most fundamental questions that humankind has been able to ask. In doing
so, Philosophy asks what is the nature of reality, and what is the reality
of nature. Do our perceptions of reality match the actual reality that is
"out there"? What does it mean to think, to have a mind? How can we know
that other minds (i.e. other thinking beings) actually exist? Is there a
difference between right and wrong, and if so, how can we prove this? How
do we define rules that allow us to apply theoretical ideas of right and
wrong in practical situations? What do we mean by the word "God"? Does God
exist? Philosophy studies such concepts as existence, goodness, knowledge, and beauty. It asks "Is knowledge possible," and if so,
"What is knowledge?" Philosophy is the critical, speculative or analytical
study of any of these topics.
Philosophers generally frame problems in a logical manner then work towards a solution based on logical
processes and reasoning, based on a critical reading and response to previous
work in this area.
It proceeds by formulating problems carefully based on all known facts,
and proceeding to logically offer solutions to them, giving arguments for
the solutions, and engaging in a dialectical process to discern the truth; this is
the method of science without so much dependence on physical experimentation.
Just as science proceeds by observation, formulation of a hypothesis, and
further experimentation, so philosophy proceeds by logical formulation of
a problem, argument for a solution, and counter-argument. These processes
proceed until a solution is reached. Philosophy has developed more slowly
than other sciences because it is solely dependent on cognitive integrity,
without a coherent paradigm determining what kinds of
experimental evidence to accept. In fact, some have argued that the existence
of such a paradigm is what caused the various natural sciences to diverge
from philosophy, which was their original home (as reflected in the term
Ph.D., for Doctor of Philosophy).
Members of many societies around the world have considered the same questions,
and built philosophic traditions based upon each other's works. Philosophy
may be broadly divided into various realms based loosely on geography. The
term "philosophy" alone in a Euro-American academic context usually refers
to the philosophic traditions of Western civilization, sometimes also called
Western philosophy. In the West, the term "eastern philosophy" broadly subsumes the
philosophic traditions of Asia and the East.
The Western philosophic tradition began with the Greeks and continues to the present day. Famous Western
philosophers include Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Famous Eastern philosophers include Gautama Buddha, Bodhidharma, Lao Zi, Confucius, and Zhuang Zi. This article deals primarily with the Western
philosophic tradition; for more information on Eastern philosophies, see
Eastern philosophy.
Popularly, the word "philosophy" is often used to mean any form of wisdom,
or any person's perspective on life (as in "philosophy of life") or basic
principles behind or method of achieving something (as in "my philosophy
about driving on highways"). That is different from the academic meaning,
and it is the academic meaning which is used here.
To start with, "philosophy" meant simply "the love of wisdom." "Philo-"
comes from the Greek word philein, meaning to love, and "-sophy"
comes from the Greek sophia, or wisdom. "Philosopher" replaced the
word "sophist" (from sophoi), which was used to describe "wise men,"
teachers of rhetoric, who were important in Athenian democracy. Some of the first sophists were what we would now call philosophers.
In Plato's dialogues, Socrates often contrasts Philosophers (those who love
wisdom) with Sophists, those Socrates characterised as dishonest for hiding
their ignorance behind word play and flattery, and convincing others of what
was baseless or untrue. "Sophist" to this day is a derogatory term for one
who persuades rather than reasons.
The introduction of the term "philosophy" was ascribed to the Greek thinker
Pythagoras (see Diogenes Laertius: "De vita et moribus philosophorum",
I, 12; Cicero: "Tusculanae disputationes", V, 8-9). This ascription
is certainly based on a passage in a lost work of Herakleides Pontikos, a disciple
of Aristotle. It is considered to be part of the widespread
Pythagoras legends of this time. In fact the term "philosophy" was not in
use long before Plato.
The scope of philosophy was "all intellectual endeavors". It
has long since come to mean the study of an especially abstract, nonexperimental
intellectual endeavor. In fact, and as was mentioned at the opening of this
article, philosophy is a notoriously difficult word to define and
the question "What is philosophy?" is a vexed philosophical question. It
is often observed that philosophers are unique in the extent to which they
disagree about what their field even is.
Philosophy has many subdisciplines.
- Axiology: the branch of philosophical enquiry that
explores:
- Aesthetics: the study of basic philosophical
questions about art and beauty. Sometimes philosophy of art is used to describe only
questions about art, with "aesthetics" the more general term. Likewise "aesthetics"
sometimes applied even more broadly than to "philosophy of beauty" :to the
"sublime," to humour, to the frightening--to any of the responses we might
expect works of art or entertainment to elicit.
- Ethics: the study of what makes actions right or wrong,
and of how theories of right action can be applied to special
moral problems. Subdisciplines include meta-ethics, value theory, theory of conduct, and applied ethics.
- Economic philosophy: The branch
of philosophy that addresses issues of economic distribution, equality, justice,
poverty and progress, from the standpoint of first principles.
- History of philosophy:
the study of what philosophers up until recent times have written, its interpretation,
who influenced whom, and so forth. The bulk of questions in history of philosophy
are interpretive questions.
- Philosophy of biology: the
philosophical study of some basic concepts of biology, including the notion
of a species and whether biological concepts are reducible
to nonbiological concepts. Also see biosophy.
- Philosophy of perception:
the philosophical study of topics related to perception; the question what
the "immediate objects" of perception are has been especially important.
- Philosophy of psychology:
the study of some fundamental questions about the methods and concepts of
psychology and psychiatry, such as the meaningfulness of Freudian concepts; this is sometimes treated as
including philosophy of mind.
- Philosophy of religion:
the study of the meaning of the concept of God
and of the rationality or otherwise of belief in the existence of God.
- Philosophy of science:
includes not only, as subdisciplines, the "philosophies of" the special sciences
(i.e., physics, biology, etc.), but also questions about induction, scientific method, scientific progress, etc.
- Philosophy of social sciences:
the philosophical study of some basic concepts, methods, and presuppositions
of social sciences such as sociology and economics.
- Value theory: the study of the
concept value. Also called theory of value. Sometimes this is taken to
be equivalent to axiology (a term not in as much currency
in the English-speaking world as it once was), and sometimes is taken to
be, instead of a foundational field, an overarching field including ethics,
aesthetics, and political philosophy, i.e., the philosophical subdisciplines
that crucially depend on questions of value.
Axiology, metaphysics and epistemology are what many consider the three main
branches from which all philosophical discourse stems. Logic is sometimes
included as another main branch, sometimes as a separate science usually
worked on by philosophers, sometimes just as a characteristically philosophical
method applying to all the others.
It is a platitude (at least among people who write introductions to philosophy)
that everybody has a philosophy, though they might not all realize it or be
able to defend it. But at the same time the word "philosophy" as it is used
by philosophers is nothing like what is meant by people who say "Here's my
philosophy (of life, etc.): . . ." Such is the tension between pedagogy and scholarship.
If you're already interested in studying philosophy, your reason might
be to improve the way you live or think somehow, or you simply wish to get
acquainted with one of the most ancient areas of human thought. On the other
hand, if you don't see what all the fuss is about, it might help to read
the motivation to
philosophize, which explains what motivates many people to "do philosophy,"
and get an introduction
to philosophical method, which is important to understanding how philosophers
think. It might also help to acquaint yourself with some considerations
about just what philosophy is.
Those who are new to the subject of philosophy are advised to study logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language,
epistemology, philosophy of science,
ethics, and political philosophy as
these are - arguably - the central disciplines.
Philosophy has applications. The most obvious applications are those
in ethics--applied ethics in particular--and in political philosophy.
The political philosophies of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls have shaped and been used to justify governments
and their actions. Philosophy of education
deserves special mention, as well; progressive education as championed
by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational
practices in the United States in the twentieth century.
Other important, but less immediate applications can be found in epistemology, which might help one to regulate
one's notions of what knowledge, evidence, and justified belief are. Philosophy of science
discusses the underpinnings of the scientific method, among other topics sometimes
useful to scientists. Aesthetics can help to interpret
discussions of art. Even ontology, surely the most abstract and least practical-seeming
branch of philosophy, has had important consequences for logic and computer science. In general, the various
"philosophies of," such as philosophy of law, can provide workers in
their respective fields with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or
conceptual underpinnings of their fields.
Moreover, recently, there has been developing a burgeoning profession
devoted to applying philosophy to the problems of ordinary life: philosophical counseling.
Originally the term "philosophy" was applied to all intellectual
endeavour. Aristotle studied what would now be called biology, meterology,
physics, and cosmology, alongside his metaphysics and ethics. Even in the
eighteenth century physics and chemistry were still classified as "natural
philosophy", that is, the philosophical study of nature. Today these latter
subjects are referred to as science.
Psychology, economics, sociology, and linguistics were once the domain
of philosophers insofar as they were studied at all, but now have only a weaker
connection with the field. In the late twentieth century cognitive science
and artificial intelligence could be seen as being forged in part out of
"philosophy of mind."
Philosophy is done a priori. It does not and cannot rely
on experiment, However, in some ways philosophy is close
to science in its character and method; Analytic philosophy urges
that philosophers should emulate the methods of natural science; Quine holds that philosophy just is a branch of
natural science, simply the most abstract one. This approach, common nowadays,
is called "philosophical naturalism"
Philosophers have always devoted some study to science and the scientific
method, and to logic, and this involves, indirectly, studying the subject
matters of those sciences. Whether philosophy also has its own, distinct
subject matter is a contentious point. Traditionally ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics have all been philosophical subjects,
but many philosophers have, especially in the twentieth century, rejected
these as futile questions (the Vienna Circle). Philosophy has also concerned
itself with explaining the foundations and character knowledge in general
(of science, or history), and in this case it would be a sort of "science
of science" but some now hold that this cannot consist in any more than clarifying
the arguments and claims of other sciences. This suggests that philosophy
might be the study of meaning and reasoning generally; but some still would
claim either that this is not a science, or that if it is it ought not to
be pursued by philosophers.
All these views have something in common: whatever philosophy essentially
is or is concerned with, it tends on the whole to proceed more "abstractly"
than most (or most other) natural sciences. It does not depend as much on
experience and experiment, and does not contribute as directly to technology.
It clearly would be a mistake to identify philosophy with any one natural
science; whether it can be identified with science very broadly construed
is still an open question.
This is an active discipline pursued by both trained philosophers and scientists.
Philosophers often refer to, and interpret, experimental work of
various kinds (as in philosophy of physics and philosophy of psychology).
But this is not surprising: such branches of philosophy aim at philosophical
understanding of experimental work. It is not the philosophers
in their capacity as philosophers, who perform the experiments and
formulate the scientific theories under study. Philosophy of science should
not be confused with science it studies any more than biology should be confused
with plants and animals.
Like philosophy, most religious studies, are not experimental. Parts of
theology, including questions about the existence and nature of gods, clearly
overlap with philosophy of religion.
Aristotle considered theology a branch of metaphysics, the central field of philosophy, and
most philosophers prior to the twentieth century have devoted significant
effort to theological questions. So the two are not unrelated. But other
part of religious studies, such as the comparison of different world religions,
can be easily distinguished from philosophy in just the way that any other
social science can be distinguished from philosophy. These are closer to
history and sociology, and involve specific observations of particular phenomena,
here particular religious practices.
Nowadays religion plays a very marginal role in philosophy. The Empiricist tradition in modern philosophy often held
that religious questions are beyond the scope of human knowledge, and many
have claimed that religious language is literally meaningless: there are
not even questions to be answered. Some philosophers have felt that these
difficulties in evidence were irrelevant, and have argued for, against, or
just about religious beliefs on moral or other grounds. Nonetheless, in the
main stream of twentieth century philosophy there are very few philosophers
who give serious consideration to religious questions.
Math uses very specific, rigorous methods of proof
that philosophers sometimes (only rarely) try to emulate. Most philosophy
is written in ordinary prose, and while it strives to be precise it does
not usually attain anything like mathematical clarity. As a result, mathematicians
hardly ever disagree about results, while philosophers of course do disagree
about their results, as well as their methods.
The Philosophy of mathematics
is a branch of philosophy of science;
but in many ways mathematics has a special relationship to philosophy. This
is because the study of logic is a central branch of philosophy,
and mathematics is a paradigm example of logic. In the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries logic made great advances, and mathematics has been proven
to be reducible to logic (at least, to first-order logic with some set theory). The use of formal, mathematical logic
in philosophy now resembles the use of math in science, although it is not
as frequent.
So philosophy, it seems, is a discipline that draws on knowledge that
the average educated person has, and it does not make use of experimentation
and careful observation, though it may interpret philosophical aspects of
experiment and observation.
More positively, one might say that philosophy is a discipline that examines
the meaning and justification of certain of our most basic, fundamental beliefs,
according to a loose set of
general methods. But what we might mean by the words "basic, fundamental
beliefs"?
A belief is fundamental if it concerns those aspects of the universe which are most commonly found, which
are found everywhere: the universal aspects of things. Philosophy
studies, for example, what existence itself is. It also studies value--the goodness
of things--in general. Surely in human life we find the relevance of value
or goodness everywhere, not just moral goodness, though that might be very
important, but even more generally, goodness in the sense of anything that
is actually desirable, the sense, for example, in which an apple, a painting,
and a person can all be good. (If indeed there is a single sense
in which they are all called "good.")
Of course, physics and the other sciences study some very universal aspects
of things; but it does so experimentally. Philosophy studies those aspects
that can be studied without experimentation. Those are aspects of things
that are very general indeed; to take yet another example, philosophers ask
what physical objects as such are, as distinguished from properties of objects
and relations between objects, and perhaps also as distinguished from minds
or souls. Physicists proceed as though the notion of a physical body is
quite clear and straightforward--which perhaps in the end it will found to
be--but at any rate, physics assumes that, and then asks questions
about how all physical bodies behave, and then does experiments to find out
the answers.
"Science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know."
- Bertrand Russell
"What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the
fly-bottle." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."
- Ambrose Bierce
"No one would hire a plumber who claimed there was no such thing
as plumbing pipes, but apparently such standards of caution and care are
not required of philosophers." - Dr. Hugh Akston in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
agnosticism -- altruism -- anti-realism -- applied ethics -- Aristotelianism -- Buddhist philosophy -- conceptualism -- coherentism -- Confucianism -- Conscience -- consequentialism -- constructivism -- cosmology -- Critical Theory -- deconstruction-- determinism -- egoism -- empiricism -- epicureanism -- ethics -- existentialism -- feminism -- foundationalism -- foundation ontology -- formalism -- French materialism -- German idealism -- hedonism -- historicism -- idealism -- intuitionism -- Irrationalism and
Aestheticism -- irrealism -- knowledge -- logical positivism -- materialism -- mechanism -- mentalism -- memetics -- naive realism -- nativism -- nominalism -- ontology -- operationalism -- paternalism -- philosophical naturalism
-- philosophical pessimism
-- philosophy of action --
physicalism -- Platonism -- pragmatism -- probabilism -- psychological egoism --
Queer studies -- rationalism -- realism -- reality enforcement -- relativism -- reliabilism -- stoicism -- subjectivism -- scholasticism -- solipsism -- supertasks -- Taoism -- teleology -- traditionalism -- Transcendentalism -- utilitarianism -- vitalism
See also:
Economics
.
Economics is a social science that studies society's allocation of scarce resources to meet desires and wants. Economics
therefore starts from the premise that resources are in limited supply and
that it is necessary to choose between competing alternatives. With scarcity,
choosing one alternative implies foregoing another alternative; economists
refer to this as opportunity cost. Understanding choice by individuals
and groups is therefore central in economics. Economists tend to think that
incentives and preferences (tastes) together play
an important role in shaping decision making.
Aspects receiving particular attention in economics are trade, resource allocation and competition. Economics may be applied to such diverse
topics as the governance of production, distribution and consumption of wealth
as well as the various related problems of finance, taxation, labor, law, poverty, pollution etc.
Economics is said to be positive when
it attempts to explain the consequences of different choices given a set
of assumptions and normative when it prescribes
a certain route of action. The nature of positive and normative economics
is discussed further below.
Most contemporary theory assumes that economic agents act rationally to optimize well-being given available
information. This may sometimes be an acceptable approximation (for instance,
if individual irrationality cancel each other out in the aggregate) and tends
to produce tractable results. However, this framework ("homo economicus") is not accepted by all. More
recently, irrational behavior and imperfect information have increasingly
been the subject of formal modelling (often referred to as behavioral economics),
resulting in some Nobel Prizes in economics.
Mathematical economics is based on the belief that mathematical methods
encourage researchers to focus on essentials and makes exposition less prone
to ambiguity. However, the basic ideas of economics can be taught with no
more than simple arithmetic and graphs, without knowledge of the underlying
formal mathematical theory. Indeed, the Austrian School of economics believes that anything
beyond simple logic is not only unnecessary but inappropriate for economic
analysis.
In any case, economics relies on formal, mathematical styles of argument
more than other social sciences. However, formal modelling is also increasingly
used in other social sciences, such as political science, as well as philosophy. Formal modelling can involve advanced
mathematical methods, but often only relatively straightforward algebra or
elementary calculus is needed.
Economics is usually divided into two main categories:
- Microeconomics, which deals
with the behaviour and interaction of individual agents and firms.
- Macroeconomics, which examines
an economy as a whole with a view to understanding the interaction between
economic aggregates such as income, employment and inflation.
Attempts to join these two branches or to refute the distinction between
them have been important motivators in much of recent economic thought, especially
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Today, the consensus view is arguably that good
macroeconomics has solid microeconomic foundations i.e. its premises have
support in microeconomics.
Within these major divisions there are specialized areas of study that
try to answer questions on a broad spectrum of human economic activity (see
below). There are also methodologies used by economists whose underlying theories
are important. The most significant example may be econometrics, which applies statistical techniques
to the study of economic data.
There has been an increasing trend for ideas from economics to be applied
in wider contexts. There is an economic aspect to any field where people
are faced with alternatives - education, marriage, health, public policy, etc. Public Choice Theory studies
how economic analysis can apply to those fields traditionally considered outside
of economics. The areas of investigation in Economics therefore overlap with
other social sciences, including political science and sociology.
Economics may be broken down as follows:
- Microeconomics
- General equilibrium --
Industrial organization
-- Financial economics --
Public finance -- International trade --
Labor economics -- Development economics
-- Environmental economics
-- Evolutionary economics
-- Public choice theory --
Public goods -- Economic geography -- Network effect -- Transport economics --
Supply and Demand -- Consumer Theory -- Health economics
- Macroeconomics
- Stabilisation policy --
Economic growth -- Purchasing power parity
-- supply side economics
-- gold standard
- Methodology
- Econometrics -- Game Theory -- Mathematical economics
Related fields and topics:
- Related fields
- History of economic
thought -- Political economy -- Political science -- Accounting -- Finance -- Operations research
- Selected topics
- Economists -- The
Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel --
Communism -- Capitalism -- Coordinatorism -- Market economy -- Informal economy -- Freiwirtschaft -- Synthetic economies --
Participatory economics
-- Natural capitalism -- Stock exchange -- economic indicator -- Regulation -- Deregulation -- Privatization
Modern economic thought is usually said to have begun with Adam Smith in the late 18th century. For an overview
of precursors to Smith as well as an overview of schools that have developed
later, see history of economic
thought. Modern mainstream economics is primarily a further refinement
of neoclassical economics.
Macroeconomics began with Keynes in the 1930s. For
an overview of a number of competing schools, see macroeconomics.
Many economists use a combination of Neoclassical microeconomics and
Keynesian macroeconomics. This combination, sometimes known as the Neoclassical
synthesis, was dominant in Western teaching and public policy in the
years following World War II and up to the late
1970s.
In principle, economics can be applied to any type of economic organization.
However, it developed historically in market societies, and its most detailed and precise work
has dealt with the institutions belonging to them. To what extent economics
must be adjusted to be applied to earlier forms of social organization has
been the source of discussion. Generally, mainstream economists mostly feel
that the basic framework of economics is relevant and flexible enough to
be applied to virtually any form of society. Marxist economists, who were
more influential a few decades ago, often feel that each era of history obeys
its very own set of laws, and that contemporary economics can only be applied
to industrialized societies.
The term economics was coined in around 1870, and popularised by influential
neoclassical economists such as Alfred Marshall. Prior to this the subject
had been known as political economy. This term is still often
used instead of economics, especially by radical economists such as Marxists.
Austrian School
The Austrian School is a school of economic thought founded in 1871
with the publication of Carl
Menger's Principles of Economics, which helped
start the Neoclassical Revolution in economics
in the late nineteenth century. Austrian economics is currently closely associated
with advocacy of radical laissez faire views. This was not always the case
as the earlier Austrian economists were more cautious compared to later economists
such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. The early Austrian economist
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk said that
he feared that unbridled free competition would lead to "anarchism in production
and consumption." However the Austrian School, especially through the works
of Friedrich Hayek would be influential in the
free market revival of the 1980s.
Austrians view entrepreneurship as the driving force in economic
development, see private property as essential to the efficient
use of resources, and often see government interference in market processes
as counterproductive. The school originated in Vienna and
owes its name to members of the Historical School of economics
who during the Methodenstreit, where the Austrians defended
the reliance that classical economists derisively called it
the "Austrian School" to emphasize its departure from mainstream German thought
and to suggest a provincial approach.
Menger was closely followed by contributions from Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser. Austrian
economists developed a sense of themselves as a school distinct from neoclassical economics during the economic calculation debate, with
Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek representing the Austrian
position. The school was no longer centered in Austria after Hitler came
to power. Austrian economics was ill-thought of by most economists after
World War II. Its reputation has lately risen with
work by students of Israel Kirzner and Ludwig Lachmann, as well as an interest in Hayek
after he won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Carl Menger was one of a group of economists founding
neoclassical economics in the 1870s. Neoclassical economists reject classical cost of production theories, most
famously the labor theory of value. Instead they explain
value by subjective preferences of individuals. This psychological aspect
to Menger's economics may be partly explained by the schools birth in turn
of the century Vienna. Supply and demand are explained by aggregating
over the decisions of individuals, following the precepts of methodological individualism and
marginalist
arguments, which compare the costs and benefits for incremental changes.
Contemporary neo-Austrian economists claim to adopt Economic subjectivism more consistently
than any other school of economics and reject many neoclassical formalisms.
For example, while neoclassical economics formalizes the economy as an equilibrium system, Austrian economists
emphasize its dynamic, perpetually dis-equilibrated nature.
The Austrian economists were the first liberal economists to systematically
challenge the Marxist school. This was partly a reaction to the Methodenstreit when they attacked the Hegelian doctrines
of the Historical School. Though many Marxist authors
have attempted to portray the Austrian school as a bourgeois
reaction to Marx, such an interpretation is untenable: Menger wrote his Principles of Economics at almost the
same time as Marx was completing Das
Kapital. The Austrian economists were, however, the first to clash directly
with Marxism, since both dealt with such subjects as money, capital,
business cycles, and economic processes. Boehm-Bawerk
wrote extensive critiques of Marx in the 1880s and 1890s, and several prominent
Marxists--including Rudolf Hilferding--attended his seminar in 1905-06. In
contrast, the classical economists had shown little interest in such topics,
and many of them did not even gain familiarity with Marx's ideas until well
into the twentieth century.
Probably the most consistent and influential Austrian School body is
the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Some contributions of Austrian economists:
- A theory of distribution in which factor prices result
from the imputation of prices of consumer goods to goods of
"higher order", that is goods used in the production of consumer goods, goods
used in the production of those producers goods, etc.
- An emphasis on opportunity cost and reservation demand in
defining value, and a refusal to consider supply
as an otherwise independent cause of value. (The British economist Philip Wicksteed adopted this perspective.)
- An emphasis on the forward-looking nature of choice, seeing time as
the root of uncertainty within economics (see also time preference).
- A fundamental rejection of mathematical methods in economics seeing
the function of economics as investigating the essences rather than the specific
quantities of economic phenomena. This was seen as an evolutionary, or "genetic-causal",
approach against the stresses of equilibrium and perfect competition found in mainstream
Neoclassical economics.
- Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk's critique
of Marx
centered around the untenability of the labor theory of value in the light of
the transformation problem. There was also
the connected argument that capitalists do not exploit workers; they accommodate
workers by providing them with income well in advance of the revenue from
the output they helped to produce.
- The Mises-Hayek business cycle theory which explains depression
as a reaction to an intertemporal production structure fostered by monetary policy setting interest rates inconsistent
with individual time preferences.
- Hayek's concept of intertemporal equilibrium. (J. R.
Hicks took over this theory in his discussion of temporary equilibrium in
Value and Capital, a book very influential on the development
of neoclassical economics after World War II.)
- Stressing uncertainty in the making of economic decisions, rather
than relying on "homo oeconomicus" or the rational man who was
fully informed of all circumstances impinging on his decisions. The fact
that perfect knowledge never exists, means that all economic activity implies
risk.
- Seeing the entrepreneurs' role as collecting and evaluating information
and acting on risks.
- The economic calculation debate between
Austrian and Marxist economists, with the Austrians claiming that
Marxism was doomed to fail because prices could not be set to recognise opportunity
costs of factors of production, and so socialism could not calculate best
uses in the same way capitalism does.
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises (September
29, 1881
- October
10, 1973)
was a notable economist and a major influence on the modern Libertarian
movement. He was born in Austria-Hungary and subsequently taught at the
University of Vienna in the years 1913 to 1934, while also
serving as a principal economic adviser to the Austrian government.
Von Mises left Austria in 1934 due to the
turmoil provoked by the Nazis rising to power; he first went to Geneva, and
in 1940 to the
United States, where he taught at New York University from 1945 to 1969. He is seen
as one of the leaders of the Austrian school of economics - he wrote and
lectured extensively on behalf of (classical) liberalism.
-
-
-
LibertyForums - Classical Liberal,
Libertarian & Objectivist Discussion Board
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein (April 26,
1889 - April 29,
1951) was an
Austrian and English philosopher who was mainly concerned with the meaning
and limitations of language. In his life he only published one work, the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
which was very influential amongst the logical positivists of the Vienna
Circle, although Wittgenstein did not consider himself part of that school.
The Tractatus was later heavily criticised by Wittgenstein himself,
in the Blue and Brown Books and in
the Philosophical Investigations, both
published after his death. He studied under Bertrand Russell at Trinity College, Cambridge and later
taught there.
He was born as Ludwig Joseph Johann Wittgenstein in Vienna. His
paternal grandparents, after they had converted from Judaism
to Protestantism, moved from Saxony in
Germany to Vienna, where Ludwig's father, Karl Wittgenstein, gained wealth
and esteem as one of the leading businessmen in the iron and steel industry
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ludwig's mother,
Leopoldine (née Kalmus) was a Catholic, but her father was also of
Jewish descent. Ludwig was baptized in a Catholic church (and when he died
he would be given a Catholic burial although he never was a practicing nor
a believing Catholic).
Ludwig grew up as the youngest of eight children in a family that provided
an intellectually and artistically stimulating environment. Ludwig's parents
were both very musical and all their children were both artistically and
intellectually gifted. Moreover the Wittgenstein's house attracted many people
of culture, especially musicians. The family was often visited by artists
such as Johannes Brahms and Gustav
Mahler. All his life music would remain important to Ludwig and he used
many musical examples in his philosophical writings. Another less fortunate
inheritance would be his suicidal tendencies; three of his four brothers
committed suicide. The other, Paul Wittgenstein, became a famous pianist.
Until 1903 Ludwig was educated at home; after that he began three years
of schooling at the Realschule in Linz, a school
emphasizing technical topics. Adolf
Hitler was a student there at the same time, but there is no evidence
that the two met. In 1906 Ludwig took up studying mechanical engineering in Berlin. In
1908 he went to the University of Manchester to study for
his doctorate in engineering. For this purpose he registered as a research
student in an engineering laboratory. There he did research on the behavior
of kites in the upper atmosphere of the earth. From that he moved to aeronautical
research on the design of a propeller with small jet engines on the end of
its blades. He successfully designed and tested it.
For his research Wittgenstein needed to study more mathematics than he
knew, and he became interested in the foundations of mathematics, especially
after he had read Bertrand Russell's Principles of Mathematics
(the predecessor of Principia Mathematica).
He studied in Germany briefly under Gottlob
Frege, arguably the greatest logician since Aristotle
and who had in previous couple of decades laid the foundations of modern logic
and logical mathematics. Frege urged him to read the work of Bertrand Russell,
who had discovered certain crucial contradictions in Frege's own theories.
In 1912 Wittgenstein went to the University of Cambridge and studied with
Russell. He made a great impression on Russell and G. E.
Moore and started to work on the foundations of logic and mathematical
logic. In this period he had three big interests: philosophy, music and travelling.
In 1913, Wittgenstein inherited a great fortune when his father died.
He donated some of it (initially anonymously) to Austrian artists and writers
including Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg
Trakl. In 1914 he would go to see Trakl when the latter wanted to meet
his benefactor, but Trakl killed himself days before Wittgenstein arrived.
Because he felt that the discussions he had with other academics lacked
depth, he retreated in 1913 to a life of solitude in a mountain cabin in
Skjolden in Norway, so
remote it could be reached only by horseback. This turned out to be a very
productive period where he developed his ideas on logic and language that
would provide the basis for the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
and then only in German and in Wilhelm Ostwald's journal Annalen der
Naturphilosophie. A year later it would be published as a book in a
bilingual (English and German) edition under the Latin title, suggested by
G. E. Moore, with perhaps a deliberate resemblance to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
It was translated by Frank Ramsey, himself only just out of his teens,
and given an introduction by Russell. Of the original notebooks only the
three remain that were published in 1961.
In prison Wittgenstein read Tolstoy's
commentary on the gospels, and as a result when released in 1919 he gave away
the family fortune that he had inherited when his father had died. Much
of it he gave to his siblings, insisting they promise never to give it back.
Giving money to the poor, he felt, could only corrupt them further; the
rich would not be harmed by it.
The outbreak of World War I in the next year took him completely
by surprise as he was living a secluded life at the time. He volunteered
for the Austria-Hungarian Empire army, hoping that nearness
of death would improve him. He first served on a ship and then in an artillery
workshop. In 1916 he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian
front where he won several medals for bravery. The diary entries of this
time reflect his contempt for the baseness of his fellow soldiers.
During the war Wittgenstein wrote his philosophical contemplations in
his notebooks that he kept with him. At the end of the war in 1918 he was
sent to north Italy
in an artillery regiment, and there he became a prisoner of the Italians.
When he was taken prisoner they found a ready manuscript of the Tractatus
in his rucksack. He was allowed to send it (with help from John Maynard Keynes) from his prison camp
in Italy to Bertrand Russell in Cambridge. Despite Russell's efforts it
was not published until 1921.
Because in his own opinion Wittgenstein had now solved all the problems
of philosophy, he returned to Austria
and trained as a primary school teacher. He was educated in the methods of
the Austrian School Reform
Movement which advocated the stimulation of the natural curiosity of
children and their development as independent thinkers, instead of just letting
them memorize facts. Wittgenstein was enthusiastic about these ideas but
ran into problems when he was appointed as a elementary teacher in a small
village in rural Austria. Although the children seemed to appreciate him,
he had a long series of disagreements with the children's parents and his
colleagues. During this period Wittgenstein was very unhappy and came on
a few occasions close to committing suicide. In 1925 he gave up his job as
a teacher with the feeling that he had failed miserably as a primary school
teacher.
After that he worked as a gardener's assistant in a monastery near Vienna.
In the period 1926-28 he would work on the design and construction of a mansion
house near Vienna for his sister Margaret ("Gretl") Stoneborough. At the
end of this period Moritz Schlick brought him in contact with the
Vienna Circle. He accepted the invitation but
only on the precondition that they would not criticize any of his philosophical
positions.
During this whole period that Wittgenstein was away from university he
was not completely isolated from the study of the foundations of mathematics
and philosophy. On several occasions he met Frank P. Ramsey who was making a special study
of the Tractatus and had travelled several times from Cambridge
to Austria to meet with Wittgenstein and also with philosophers of the Vienna
circle. As Wittgenstein later admitted, these discussions showed him that
there might be some "grave mistakes" in his work presented in the Tractatus.
In 1929 he decided, at the urging of Ramsey and others, to return to
Cambridge. He was met at the train station by a crowd of England's greatest
intellectuals, discovering rather to his horror that he was one of the most
famed philosophers in the world.
Despite this fame, he could not initially work at Cambridge, as he did
not have a degree, so he applied as an undergraduate (!). Russell noted
that his previous residency was in fact sufficient for a doctoral degree,
and urged him to offer the Tractatus as a doctoral thesis, which he did in
1929. It was examined by Russell and Moore; at the end of the thesis defense,
Wittgenstein clapped the two examiners on the shoulder "Don't worry, I know
you'll never understand it." Moore commented in the examiner's report to
the effect that: "In my opinion this is a work of genius; it is, in any case,
up to the standards of a degree from Cambridge." Wittgenstein was appointed
as a lecturer and was made a fellow of Trinity College.
Wittgenstein's political sympathies lay on the left, and
while he was opposed to Marxist theory, he described himself as a "communist
at heart" and romanticized the life of labourers. In 1934, attracted by Keynes' description
Short View of Russia, he conceived the idea of emigrating to the
Soviet
Union with his close friend (or lover) Francis Skinner. They took lessons
in Russian and in 1935 Wittgenstein traveled to Leningrad and Moscow in an
attempt to secure employment. He was offered teaching positions but preferred
manual work and returned three weeks later.
From 1936 to 1937, Wittgenstein lived again in Norway, leaving Skinner
behind. He worked on the Philosophical Investigations. In the winter
of 1936/37, he delivered a series of "confessions" to close friends, most
of them about minor infractions, in an effort to cleanse himself.
After G. E. Moore's resignation in 1939, Wittgenstein, who was by then
considered a philosophical genius, was appointed to the chair in Philosophy
at Cambridge. He acquired the British citizenship soon afterwards.
After exhausting philosophical work, Wittgenstein would often relax by
watching an American western
or reading detective stories. These tastes are in stark contrast to his preferences
in music, where he rejected anything after Brahms as a symptom of the decay
of society.
By then, Wittgenstein's view on the foundations of mathematics had changed
considerably. Earlier, he had thought that logic could provide a solid foundation,
and he had even considered updating Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. Now he denied
that there were any mathematical facts to be discovered and that mathematical
statements were "true" in any real sense: they simply expressed the conventional
established meanings of certain symbols; he also denied that a contradiction
should count as a fatal flaw of a mathematical system. He gave a series of
lectures which were attended by Alan
Turing and in which the two argued vigorously about these matters.
During a period in World
War II he left Cambridge and volunteered as a hospital porter in Guy's Hospital in London and as a
laboratory assistant in the Royal Victoria Infirmary. He taught at Cambridge
until 1947 when he resigned to concentrate on his writing. He never liked
the intellectual's life at Cambridge, and in fact he encouraged several of
his students to pursue non-academic careers.
Wittgenstein communicated with the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright, who succeeded
Wittgenstein as professor at the University of Cambridge.
Wittgenstein never married. Indeed he was an active homosexual who at
times engaged in casual relationships as well as having longer relationships
e.g., with David Pinsent with whom he spent time in Norway.
Much of Wittgenstein's later work was done in the rural isolation that
was so much preferred by him, on the west coast of Ireland. By 1949, when
he was diagnosed as having prostate cancer, he had written most of the material
that would be published after his death as Philosophische Untersuchungen
(Philosophical Investigations) which arguably contains his most
important work. The last two years of his life were spent by him working
in Vienna, Oxford and Cambridge. His work from this period has been published
as On Certainty. He died in Cambridge in 1951. His last words were
"Tell them I've had a wonderful life."
The Tractatus could be fit with little difficulty into fifty pages. It
consists of a series of numbered propositions, 1, 1.1, 1.11, 1.12, etc., so
that 1.1 is a comment on or elaboration of 1, 1.11 and 1.12 comment on 1.1,
and so forth. There are seven "main" propositions; The first is "1. The
world is everything that is the case" (also translated "...all that is the
case." This is probably a significant ambiguity, since the former appears
to define "world" and the latter appears to delimit what is (or could be)
the case); the last, with no supplementary remarks is "7. What we cannot speak
of we must pass over in silence."
In rough order, the first half of the book sets forth the following theses:
the world consists of independent atomic facts--existing states of affairs--out
of which larger facts are built. Language consists in atomic, and then larger-scale,
propositions that correspond to these facts by sharing the same "logical
form." Thought, expressed in language, "pictures" these facts. We can analyse
our thoughts and sentences to express (*show*, not say) their true logical
form; those we cannot so analyse are in a literal sense meaningless. Philosophy
consists in no more than this form of analysis.
"Picture Theory of Language" "Logical Atomism" "Logical Analysis" "Ideal
Language philosophy"
Under 4. and 5. and their subsidaries, Wittgenstein develops "truth tables,"
which are now the standard method of explaining semantics for sentential logic,
and gives a rigorous if rather opaque account of formal logic generally, covering
notation, Russell's paradox, and the notions of tautology and contradiction,
and truth-functions. He moves increasingly into questions of language, connections
with science, belief, and induction, giving a rather austere view of all these
things ("Superstition is just belief in the causal nexus.")
In 6. he moves on to more philosophical reflections on logic, which connect
to ideas of knowledge, thought, and the "a priori" and "transcendental."
The final pages suggest logic and language can supply no meaning, and that
since they perfectly reflect the world, neither can it. Ethics and aesthetics
can say nothing. He begins talking of the will, life and death, and veers
rather deliberately into strangely mystical remarks ("If we take eternity
to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life
belongs to those who live in the present," "The riddle does not exist") all
the while increasingly hinting that his own project of trying to explain language
is impossible for exactly these reasons. He compares the book to a ladder
that must be thrown away after one has climbed it, then the book ends with
7.
See also: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Between the Tractatus and his death Wittgenstein published only a single
paper, "Remarks on Logical Form," and two very brief letters to a philosophical
journal. The paper was to be read to the Aristotelian Society, where members
would comment on it, but by that time he had repudiated it as worthless and
insisted on talking about the concept of infinity instead. He also gave a
lecture on ethics
that was reprinted.
He wrote copiously, however, and arranged much of his writing into an
array of incomplete manuscripts. Some thirty thousand pages existed at the
time of his death. Much, but not nearly all of this has been sorted and
released in several volumes.
The bulk of his work in the twenties and thirties involved attacking from
various angles the sort of philosophical perfectionism embodied in the Tractatus.
Published posthumously in 1953, Philosophical Investigations
comprises two parts. Part I, consisting of 693 numbered paragraphs, which
was ready for printing in 1946, but was rescinded from the publisher by Wittgenstein
and Part II which was added on by the editors, trustees of his Nachlass.
In PI Wittgenstein presents an analysis of our use of language which he
sees as crucial to the carrying out of philosophical research. In brief, Wittgenstein
describes language as a set of language-games within which the words
of our language function and receive their meaning. This view of meaning
as use represents a break from the classical view (also presented by
Wittgenstein in his earlier Tractatus) of meaning as representation.
- "On Certainty" - A collection of aphorisms discussing the relation between
knowledge and certainty, extremely influential in the philosophy of action.
- "Remarks on Colour"
- Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, Annalen der Naturphilosophie,
14 (1921)
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. by C.K. Ogden
(1922)
- Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953)
- Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe
(1953)
- Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik, ed.
by G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G.E.M. Anscombe (1956) (a selection from
his writings on the philosophy of logic and mathematics between 1937 and
1944)
- Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, trans. by
G.E.M. Anscombe, rev. ed. (1978)
- The Blue and Brown Books (1958) (Notes dictated in English
to Cambridge students in 1933-35)
- Philosophische Bemerkungen, ed. by Rush Rhees (1964)
- Philosophical Remarks (1975)
- Proposition 6.54 from the Tractatus: "My propositions serve as elucidations
in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognises them
as non-sensical.."..."-as steps-to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to
speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)"
- "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" (proposition
7 and final sentence of the Tractatus). An alternative version sometimes
quoted is "whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent"; and the related
paragraph from the introduction to the Tractatus:
- "...the aim of this book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather-
not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able
to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit
thinkable..."
- Ray Monk: Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius, 1990.
A biography that also attempts to explain his philosophy.
- Norman Malcolm: 'Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Memoir', 1958. A moving portrait
by someone who knew Wittgenstein well.
Homo economicus
Homo economicus, or Economic man, is
a term used for an approximation of Homo sapiens that acts to obtain the highest possible
well-being given available information about opportunities. This approach
has been formalized in certain social science models, particularly in certain
economic models.
As in social science in general, these assumptions are at best approximations.
The term is often used derogatorily in academic literature, perhaps most commonly
by sociologists, who tend to prefer structural explanations
to ones based on rational action by individuals.
Homo economicus bases his choices only the consideration of his own personal
"utility function". To the
extent that this utility function does not consider the well-being of others,
Homo economicus is selfish. Some believe such assumptions about humans are
unethical. Economists tend to disagree, arguing that it may be relevant to
analyze the consequences of enlightened egoism just as it may be worthwile
to consider altruistic or social behavior.
How is Homo economicus rational? Usually in the sense that well-being
as defined by the utility function is optimzed given perceived opportunities.
See Rational Choice Theory
and Rational expectations
for further discussion; the article on Rationality widens the discussion.
The Austrian School criticise homo
economicus as an actor for economic forecasting. They stress uncertainty
in the making of economic decisions, rather than relying on the rational
man who is fully informed of all circumstances impinging on his decisions.
They argue that perfect knowledge never exists, means that all economic activity
implies risk.
Although not typically used this way, Homo economicus could probably also
be used, with some degree of felicity, to critique the characters of Ayn Rand.
Comparisons between economics and sociology have resulted in a corresponding
term Homo sociologicus, to parody the image of human nature
given in sociological models. Hirsch, Michaels, and Friedman (1990, p. 44)
say that homo sociologicus is largely a tabula rasa upon which societies
and cultures write values and goals; unlike economicus, sociologicus acts
not to pursue selfish interests but to fulfill social roles. Sociologicus
may appear all society and no individual.
See also the discussion at Indifference curve.
-
Hirsch, Michaels, and Friedman (1990). "Clean Models Versus Dirty
Hands: Why Economics is Different From Sociology". pp. 39-56 in Zukin and
DiMaggio (Eds.), Structures of Capital: The Social Organization of the
Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
List of academic disciplines
An academic discipline is a branch of knowledge
that is formally taught, either at the university,
or via some other such method. Each division usually has several sub-divisions
and distinguishing lines are often both arbitrary and ambiguous. Functionally,
disciplines are usually defined and recognised by the academic journals in which research is published,
and the learned societies to which their practitioners
belong.
See also: list of science topics
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy
that deals with the nature of knowledge
and truth,
encompassing the study of the origin, nature, and limits of human knowledge.
People approach epistemology in various ways; the following categories
originally reflected divisions among schools of philosophy in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, but may prove useful in categorizing certain approximate
trends throughout the history of epistemology:
- (1) Rationalists believe there are innate ideas that
are not found in experience. These ideas exist independently of any experience
people may have. These ideas may in some way derive from the structure of
the human mind,
or they may exist independently of the mind. If they exist independently,
they may be understood by a human mind once it reaches a necessary degree
of sophistication.
- (2) Empiricists (see: scientific method, philosophy of science naive empiricism) deny that there are concepts
that exist prior to experience. For them, all knowledge is a product of human
learning, based on human perception.
Perception, however, may cause concern, since illusions,
misunderstandings, and hallucinations prove that perception does not
always depict the world as it really is.
- Some say the existence of mathematical theorems poses
a problem for empiricists. Mathematical truths certainly do not depend on
experience, and they can be known prior to experience. Some empiricists reply
that all mathematical theorems are empty of cognitive content, as they only
express the relationship of concepts to one another. Rationalists would hold
that such relationships are indeed a form of cognitive content.
- (3) The German philosopher Immanuel Kant is widely understood as having worked
out a synthesis between these views. In Kant's view people certainly do have
knowledge that is prior to experience, which is not devoid of cognitive significance.
For example, the principle of causality.
He held that there are a priori synthetic concepts.
People in all schools of thought agree that people have the capacity
to think of questions that no possible appeal to experience could answer.
For instance: Is there an end to time? Is there
a God? Is the
God of the philosophers the same as the Biblical God?
Is there a reality beyond that which we can sense? Such questions are termed
transcendental, as they seem to go beyond the
limits of rational inquiry. In the 20th century logical positivists have declared such questions
to be totally devoid of cognitive significance. Others disagree, and hold
that only some metaphysical claims are devoid of cognitive significance,
and that others may not be.
No consensus exists as to which epistemology will prove the most productive
in allowing human beings to have the most accurate understanding of the world.
All people use an epistemology, even if unconsciously. Thinking beings cannot
understand and analyze ideas without first having a system to accept and
analyze information in the first place, which we all do. All people - even
children - possess rudimentary and undeveloped epistemologies. However, those
who study some philosophy and logic can begin to recognize how their own
epistemologies work, and such people can choose to change their epistemology.
An analysis of this topic would be dependent on the system one used to
begin with. One might wonder: What do I have to do, to be sure that
I do have the truth? How can I be sure that my beliefs
are true? Is there some sort of guarantee available to me -- some sort of
criterion I might use, in order to decide, as rationally and as carefully
as I possibly could, that indeed what I believe is actually true?
Suppose someone thought that his or her belief had been arrived at rationally.
Using logic,
one might base his or her belief on observation
and experiment, conscientiously answer objections, and
so forth. Accordingly, one would conclude that his or belief is rational.
If so, then one's belief has at least some claim to be true. Rationality
provides an indicator of truth: if your belief is rational, then it is at
least probably true. At the very least, the rationality of a belief
gives reason to think the belief is true.
There are a number of features of beliefs, such as rationality,
justification, and probability,
that are indicators of truth. Accordingly, a feature of belief is an epistemic
feature if it is at least some indication that the belief is true.
Many beliefs have lots of positive epistemic features; many beliefs are
quite rational, quite justified, very probably true, highly warranted, and
so on. However, most people, at least in some moments, do not want to rest
content with just being rational because even a rational belief can be false.
To wit, one can be very conscious, careful, and logical in forming a belief,
and so be rational in holding the belief; but it still might be false. Arguably,
one's ultimate ambition for his or her beliefs is knowledge. If
one does know something, then not only is one justified, or rational,
in a belief, one has the truth. Accordingly, when one is thinking about
the epistemic features of one's beliefs, the overarching question is: When
does someone have knowledge? When can someone say that he or she
has knowledge? Skeptics claim that we cannot have knowledge.
Epistemology includes the study of:
- the epistemic features of belief, such as justification and rationality;
- the origin or sources of such features (and thus the sources of knowledge);
- what knowledge is, i.e., what epistemic features would make a true
belief knowledge;
- whether it is possible to have knowledge.
Epistemologists spend a great deal of time concerning themselves with
various epistemic features of belief, such as justification and rationality.
And they write long articles and books trying to say just when beliefs are
justified, or rational. A related concern is where such epistemic
features ultimately come from. If one says, for example, that his or her
belief that Paris
is the capital of France is justified, one can ask: Where did the justification
for that belief come from? This information could have come from a reliable
source of testimony. Another source of justification would
be sense-perception. So epistemology asks: What are the ultimate sources
of justification, rationality, or other epistemic features of belief? And
that allows one to answer a further question: What are the ultimate sources
of knowledge? Which brings one to the question of what knowledge
is. The question here is not what one can know, or even what one
does know. The question is: What would knowledge be, if one had
it? A belief has to pass some sort of muster to count as knowledge. So what
features would a belief have to have, in order to be an actual piece of knowledge
-- not just something that pretends to be knowledge, but which is actually
knowledge?
One of the more difficult topics of philosophy is trying to answer, or
otherwise deal with, the challenge that one cannot have knowledge.
A number of philosophers -- not too many, but some -- have said that we
cannot have knowledge. Many philosophers have said that it is very difficult
to obtain knowledge, but they usually do not deny that we have it or that
we can have it. Not so many philosophers, however, have gone so far as to
say that we have no knowledge at all, or (to say something even stronger)
that it is impossible to have knowledge.
Another contemporary approach to epistemology divides the approaches
into two categories: foundationalism and coherentism.
Foundationalism holds that there are basic beliefs
in which you can be certain and that you can be similarly confident in other
beliefs derived rigorously from these. The most famous example of this is
Descartes'
statement cogito ergo sum ("I think therefore I am"),
by which he meant that it is impossible to doubt one's own existence.
Others have responded that a person's observation of his or her own mental
activity is not fundamentally different or more reliable than other observations
and does not necessarily imply a thinker. The difficulty of foundationalism
is that no set of basic beliefs proposed for it are uncontroversial.
Coherentism holds that you are more justified in
beliefs if they form a coherent whole with your other beliefs. A common,
cheeky, riposte to this is called the "drunken sailors" argument, which points
out that two drunken sailors holding each other up may still not be on solid
ground. Stated more formally: a set of beliefs can be internally consistent
but still not reflect the actual world.
Recently, Susan Haack has attempted to fuse these two approaches
into her doctrine of Foundherentalism, which accrues
degrees of relative confidence to beliefs by mediating between the two approaches.
She covers this in her book Evidence
and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology.
See also: Self-evidence, theory of justification, the regress argument in epistemology,
a priori and a posterior knowledge,
knowledge,
scepticism,
Common sense and the Diallelus,
social epistemology, aesthetics,
ethics,
metaphysics,
philosophy,
ontology,
reason,
philosophy of science, science education.
Naive empiricism
(Redirected from Naive Empiricism)
Naive Empiricism is a philosophy about how one should best approach science. It is an attempt to explain what types of
actions are acceptable in science and the best way to use science to our
advantage. Naive Empiricism refers to the belief that scientist should try
to be as objective and neutral as possible when studying something. Scientists
should approach a problem with no preconceived expectations or assumptions
which have not been previously studied and justified using the scientific
method. Naive empiricism stresses the importance of relying on empirical
observations about the world and not our interpretations of those observations.
There are many arguments for and against naive empiricism. Someone who
subscribes to the philosophy may tell you that the goal of science is to
uncover truth but that this cannot be accomplished when scientist's methods
and interpretations are biased. Assumption causes scientists to arrive at
some particular conclusion, which is justified by the experiment but still
predetermined. Such conclusions cannot be said to be true becase assumption
limits which possibilities are examined.
Naive Empiricism has been around for a very long time, and many arguments
against the philosophy have developed. The rationale behind many of these
arguments is that one must make some assumptions before any progress in study
can be made. Assumptions don't have to be misleading or unfounded, but in
order to study anything we must either make assumptions of some kind. If
no such assumptions are made then science is limited to empirical observations
which tell us little about how the world works. An entertaining work of fiction
by a respected essayist, Jorge Luis Borges, Funes, the Memorious
illustrates this position.
Also see: Epistemology
- Funes, the Memorious was first published in Ficciones
by Luis Borges and is available online.
Logical positivism
Logical positivism (sometimes referred to as logical
empiricism), was one of the early manifestations of analytic philosophy. It
was the philosophical position of the Vienna Circle in its early years, and gained recognition
in the English speaking world through the work of A. J. Ayer. The term subsequently came to be almost
interchangeable with "analytic philosophy" in the first half of the twentieth
century. Logical Positivism was immensely influential in philosophy of science,
logic, and philosophy of language.
Even though few of its tenets are still agreed with, its role as in forming
contemporary philosophy should not be underestimated; many subsequent commentators
on "logical positivism" tend to attribute to it more of a singular purpose
and creed than it in fact adhered to, overlooking the complex disagreements
among the logical positivists themselves.
Logical positivism took up the projects of Bertrand Russell and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein (who,
along with Albert Einstein, were held
up by the circle as the paragons of modern science and philosophy). The
movement held that philosophy should aspire to the same sort of rigor as
science. This meant it should be able to provide strict criteria for judging
sentences true, false and meaningless. The claim most characteristic of
logical positivism asserts that statements are meaningful only insofar as
they are verifiable, and that statements can be verified only in two (exclusive)
ways: empirical statements, including
scientific theories, were verified by experiment and evidence. Analytic truth statements are true
or false by definition, and so are also meaningful. Everything else, including
ethics and aesthetics, was not literally meaningful, and so belonged
to "metaphysics." Serious philosophy, the Vienna Circle argued (in agreement
with David Hume), should no longer concern itself with
metaphysics.
Under this view, statements about God,
good and evil, and beauty are neither true nor false, and thus should not
be taken seriously. Positivism was the dominant theory of the philosophy of science
between World War I and the Cold War.
Critics of Logical Positivism says that its fundamental tenets could not
themselves be formulated in a way that was clearly consistent. The verifiability
criterion did not seem verifiable; but neither was it simply a logical tautology,
since it had implications for the practice of science and the empirical truth
of other statements. This presented severe problems for the logical consistency
of the theory. Another problem was that, while positive existential claims
(There is at least one human being) and negative universals (Not
all ravens are black) allow for clear methods of verification (find
a human or a non-black raven), negative existential claims and positive
universal claims do not.
Universal claims could apparently never be verified: How can you tell
that all ravens are black, unless you've hunted down every raven
ever, including those in the past and future? This led to a great deal of
work on induction, probability, and "confirmation," (which combined verification
and falsification; see below).
Karl Popper, a wellknown critic of Logical Positivism,
published a book Logik der Forschung in 1934,
presented an influential alternative to the verification theory of meaning,
explaining scientific statements in terms of falsifiability. First, though, Popper's concern
was not with distinguishing meaningful from metaphysical (meaningless) statements,
but distinguishing science from pseudo-science. He did not hold that metaphysical
statements must be meaningless; in some cases, such as Marxism, he held that
they were meaningful and had been falsified. In others, such as psychoanalysis,
he held that they offered no method for falsification, and so were not science.
He was, in general, more concerned with scientific practice than with the
logical issues that troubled the positivists. Second, although Popper's philosophy
of science enjoyed great popularity for some years, if his criterion is construed
as an answer to the question the positivists were asking it turns out to
fail in exactly parallel ways. Negative existential claims (There are no
unicorns) and positive universals (All ravens are black) can be falsified,
but positive existential and negative universal claims cannot.
Logical positivists' response to the first criticism is that Logicial
Positivism, like all other philosophies of science, is a philosophy of science,
not an axiomatic system that can
prove its own consistency. (see Gödel's incompleteness
theorem) Secondly, a theory of language and mathematical logic was created to answer
what it really means to say things like "all ravens are black".
Subsequent philosophy of science tends to make use of the better aspects
of both of these approaches. Work by W. V. Quine and T. S. Kuhn has convinced many that it is not possible
to provide a strict criterion for good or bad scientific method outside of
the science we already have. But even this sentiment was not unknown to
the logical positivists: Otto Neurath famously compared science to a boat
which we must rebuild on the open sea.
-
Logik der Forschung in 1934. http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/logical-positivism.html
Moral relativism
.
Moral relativism is the viewpoint that moral standards
are not absolute, but instead emerge from social customs and other sources.
The philosophical stance can be traced back at least as far as the Greek
scholar Protagoras, who stated that "Man is the measure of
all things;" a modern interpretation of this statement might be that things
exist only in the context of the people who observe them.
Moral relativism stands in contrast to moral absolutism, which sees morals as fixed
by an absolute human nature (John
Rawls), or external sources such as deities (many religions)
or the universe itself (as in Objectivism). Those who believe in moral
absolutes often are highly critical of moral relativism; some have been known
to equate it with outright immorality or amorality.
Moral relativism has sometimes been placed in contrast to ethnocentrism. Essentially, the claim is that
judging members of one society by the moral standards of another is a form
of ethnocentrism; some moral relativists claim that people can only be judged
by the mores
of their own society. (This is analogous to the stance often taken by historians,
in that historical figures cannot be judged by modern standards, but only
in the context of their time.) Other moral relativists argue that, as moral
codes differ among societies, one can only utilize the "common ground" to
judge moral matters between societies.
One consequence of this viewpoint, also known as cultural relativism,
is the principle that any judgment of society as a whole is invalid: individuals
are judged against the standards of their society; societies themselves have
no larger context in which judgement is even meaningful. This is a source
of conflict between moral relativists and moral absolutists, since a moral
absolutist would argue that society as a whole can be judged for its acceptance
of "immoral" practices, such as slavery. Such judgments are inconsistent with
relativism, although in practice relativists often make such judgments anyway
(for example, a relativist is unlikely to defend slave-owners on relativistic
principles).
Another view point is the individual viewpoint, also known as emotivism,
where people judge morality based on ones emotions and feelings. Universism
further argues that only those individuals causing or directly affected by
an action can make any judgment about the action's ultimate rightness or wrongness.
Those judgments can be made on the basis of reason, experience and emotion.
The philosopher David Hume suggests principles similar to those of
moral relativism in an appendix to his Enquiry Concerning the Principles
of Morals (1751).
See also: morality, ethics, Situational ethics.
Structuralism
The term structuralism is used in many contexts
in different disciplines in the 20th
century. Structuralism proposes the idea that many phenomena do not occur
in isolation, but instead occur in relation to each other, and that all related
phenomena are part of a whole with a definite, but not necessarily defined,
structure. Structuralists, in any area of knowledge, attempt to perceive
that structure and the changes that it may undergo with the goal of furthering
the development of that system of phenomena or ideas.
In film and literary theory and criticism, the term refers
to a line of thought stemming from the structural linguistics usually
identified with Ferdinand de Saussure. The generalization
of linguistic
models by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss inspired others to apply
their versions of structuralist ideas to a wide range of subjects. Thus,
Levi-Strauss' views affected the social sciences from the 1960s and onward.
As with any cultural movement, the influences and developments
are complex; other linguists besides Saussure were important. Roman Jakobson, in particular, worked on specifically
literary problems long before structuralism became a general trend. For a
description of structuralist principles, Levi-Strauss is an adequate representative
of the approach; trained in both philosophy and social science, he states
his views methodically.
Also, other major figures in structuralism have written a good deal of
work in which other influences dominate. Both Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have been called both structuralists
and post-structuralists. Louis Althusser's chief concern was to enlarge
Marxist theory.
In America, the work of Leonard Bloomfield, who was inspired by Saussure,
represents a more specific sense of structuralism, which is now thought to
be too restrictive. In the fifties, Noam
Chomsky rigorously criticized many aspects of structuralism, while at
the same time he contributed to it as it is perceived today.
(But Levi-Strauss was an anthropologist, a point to remember in searches
for further information. He uses certain terms, including "structuralism,"
in the way his field uses them, even though they have other meanings elsewhere.
He repeatedly contrasts structural anthropology with the work of "functionalists"
while relying on two linguistic authorities, Roman Jakobson and Nicolas Troubetzkoy, who are
functionalists as far as many linguists are concerned. Indeed, the purpose
of calling them functionalists, along with other members of the Prague School, is to distinguish their
work from the structural linguistics of Saussure. Even more confusingly,
the Prague School is occasionally referred to as "functional-structuralist",
while there is a well-known position in the social sciences, deriving from
Talcott Parsons, which is sometimes called "structural functionalism." A Google
search on any of these terms can be exasperating.)
Structural linguists make the influential argument that the elements of
a language have no intrinsic character. They take on a character only in
relation to each other.
For example, human beings can make a certain range of noises, but the
sound of "m" is not really the sound of "m" outside of a language that uses
an "m." Within that language, a certain range of noises gets classified together
as equivalent versions of the "m" sound, and there is no useful way to describe
this classification except by referring to the language. The boundaries are
imprecise--people who hear an "m" are not measuring waveforms and rejecting
the ones beyond a certain cutoff point. Furthermore, there is change through
time, local variation, and a good deal of overlap between the range of noises
that can be classified as "m" and those that can be classified as something
else. If there is an "m" sound that exists in the language, it must be thought
of as something persisting through the welter of possible variations.
The phoneme
has some essential character, apart from all its manifestations. Furthermore,
the language defines this essential character partly by differentiating it
from other phonemes. What makes an "m" is partly its distinction from "n."
But what makes an "n" is partly its distinction from "m."
Continuing this line of analysis, it must be the case that the ?m? sound
in one language is not the same as the ?m? sound in another, even if the
same range of vocal noise is classified as ?m? in each. The classification
is being made by contrasts within two different systems.
Saussure believed that the meanings expressed in a language were determined
by an analogous system of differences.
This way of thinking has several obvious characteristics.
It defines the boundaries of a language by reference to its internal
structure.
It portrays the workings of a language solely in terms of the internal
structure, rather than seeking a set of causes, functions, or patterns that
could underlie several different structures. If generalized from phonetics
to meaning, the approach obviously raises the possibility that what's expressed
in one language cannot be expressed in any other.
Most pervasively, it depends on a notion of purely abstract structure
underlying all the particular manifestations of a language. Language is not
the sound, it is the classification of sounds; it is not the question, it
is the comparison with other sentence types that define what a question is;
it is not the idea, it is the set of underlying distinctions that make the
idea possible.
This idealism, if that is the term, has a somewhat surprising
result. Sign and meaning tend to merge. A word means just what it means in
the language that uses it, and only that word expresses it.
So, implicitly, languages are not translatable into each other. This
is a possibility taken up by deconstructionism.
In psychology, structuralism refers mainly to the work
of Wilhelm Wundt and Edward B. Titchener, who investigated
the mind by directing subjects to introspect and recording the subjects'
reports.
Levi-Strauss extends this form of linguistic analysis to all human culture.
But he assumes that there is a knowable structure underlying all actions.
All the operations of human consciousness and action are built on simple contrasts-the
raw and the cooked, the wet and the dry, and so forth. In his view, these
contrasts are changeless and universal.
In this respect, he is extending another aspect of linguistic research,
the search for a universal grammar. Cultures cannot be explained without some
reference to universals, located in a fundamental structure of the human mind,
which must necessarily be expressed in every human act.
One implication of this view is that the same structures will operate
in both the actions being studied and the scholar's interpretation of them.
Freud may completely misread a folktale's meaning, in the sense of giving
a bad description of the psychological tensions that its tellers had in them
to express. But his response to the tale nevertheless arises from the same
basis as theirs. It is at least relevant to a good description of what the
tale means. Levi-Strauss explored this sort of ambiguity in his later MYTHOLOGIES.
Now, a brief illustration of structuralist analysis. In 1977, Levi-Strauss
recorded an informal series of talks for the Canadian Broadcasting Company,
presenting his views in layman's terms. The talks were published in 1979
as MYTH AND MEANING. At one point, Levi-Strauss commented on the puzzling
recurrence of a musical theme in Wagner's Ring
Cycle. The analysis is a good example because it is quick and entirely
verbal (where thorough structural presentation often requires charts and
tables and ad hoc borrowings of algebraic notation).
In the Rheingold, the character Alberich renounces all human love in
order to receive a treasure of gold, and the theme is played. Later his wealth
allows him to seduce a woman who later bears his son.
The theme is played again in the Valkyrie
at a puzzling moment. Siegmund embarks on an incestuous relationship with
his sister, after extracting a sword that is embedded in a tree. The scene
is unlike the first one--instead of renouncing love, a man is embarking on
it. His sister will later give birth to Siegfried.
The music plays again later in the Valkyrie as the king of the gods consigns
his daughter Brunhilde to an enchanted sleep in a ring of fire.
What Levi-Strauss notices is that in each scene there is a protected or
obstructed treasure-- the gold at the bottom of the Rhine, the sword held
in a tree, the woman held in a ring of fire. The repetition of the music responds
to this similarity.
In fact, says Levi-Strauss, the three objects merge. The gold is a way
to a position of power which eventuates in a son, the extraction of the sword
opens the way to a sexual conquest that also produces a son, and each of
the sons will eventually possess Brunhilde, the woman in the fire. And she,
of all the characters in this multi-generational story, will in the end return
the gold to the river.
Thus, by considering a structural element common to three situations,
Levi-Strauss finds a sense in which the situations are related, outside the
cause-and-effect of plot. This analysis has two properties characteristic
of structuralism. The structuralist comparison runs somewhat at odds with
the plot sense of the scenes--the same music occurs at a moment of renunciation
and a moment of love. And the analysis allows a certain shifting of use or
meaning among the analogous elements. The gold and the sword are buried treasures
that become instruments of conquest, while the woman is more like the object
of conquest, and the music is linked to her in a scene where she the treasure
is being confined rather than extracted. She returns the gold to the Rhine
partly because she is identified with it, but in this action the nature of
the identification becomes ambiguous--does she return the gold, or is the
gold acting through her?
Now, these meanings are simple, used only to illustrate method. An opera
lover might perceive them (or correct them) without any set critical approach.
Where structuralism becomes useful is in organizing large bodies of material,
such as the kinship systems that Levi-Strauss initially studied or the mythologies
that occupied him later. Applied to criticism, it takes the form of considering
many texts, many films.
To be blunt, this approach strains the abilities of many writers. It requires
a meticulous examination of the material, and its ambition is to find the
patterns that underlie just about everything. So its use as a general outlook
on art and society is somewhat questionable, compared to the influential
work it has produced in specialized fields. In Hellenistic studies, for example,
the understanding of the myths and rites of sacrifice requires a grasp of
the basic oppositions that generate all Hellenistic
ideas of sacrifice: god vs. man, animal vs. man, heaven vs. earth. But one
must also understand how the myrrh tree, which produces a perfume used in
some rites, is defined in an entire body of knowledge about plants. Myrrh
was also used as a sexual perfume, so the relation of the plant world to marriage
customs is part of the same story.
For the essayist at large, structuralist methods can blend easily into
the practice of attending only to the facts that support a preconception.
The persistent criticism of structuralist work has been just that. Historical
influences, local meanings, plot structure and other conscious work--in a
word, context--provide one way of interpreting the details of a text. When
structural analysis is not carried through methodically, specific interpretations
can be dismissed with nothing to replace them but arbitrary claims.
Several aspects of structuralism open the way for the revision known
as deconstruction. As mentioned, the Saussurean
linguistic theory strongly implies that meanings cannot be translated. If
the original author and the commentator are playing variations on the same
structure whether the interpretation can be judged right or not, then variations
may be seen as having value in themselves. And if the Western tradition of
historical and critical thinking only exists within a framework of continuing
mythical thought, then attention may turn to exposing how this framework
is concealed.
Deconstruction
(Redirected from Deconstructionism)
In Continental philosophy
and literary criticism, deconstruction
is a post-structuralist philosophical
and literary method (or, some would say, event) first characterized by the
French philosopher Jacques Derrida. More broadly, it is the critical
reading of texts in a manner similar to Derrida's. Many whose writings may
be considered deconstructive resist the use of the word
deconstructionism, along with related "-ist"
and "-istic" forms, because they do not consider deconstruction
properly to be a movement or constituency, but rather a textual occurrence.
(A few have advocated the word deconstructor.) Popularly,
however, deconstruction is widely considered to be a liberal Western academic
movement, and the main philosophical pillar of postmodernism.
The word deconstruction has been used by Jacques Derrida and
others, including Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, Paul de Man, Jonathan Culler, Barbara Johnson, and J. Hillis Miller, to describe an
event in which they participated. However, these writers have actively resisted
a precise and succinct definition of the word. While Derrida was the first
to use the word in this philosophical and linguistic sense, he states, "I
little thought it would be credited with such a central role in the discourse
that interested me at the time." See Derrida, Jacques, "Letter
to A Japanese Friend," Derrida and Differance, ed. David Wood
& Robert Bernasconi, Warwick: Parousia Press 1985, p. 1. According
to Derrida, deconstruction is neither an analysis, a critique, a method,
an act, or an operation. See id. , p. 3. As to the question
of what deconstruction is, Derrida stated, "I have no simple and formalizable
response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with
this formidable question. See id. , p. 4.
Similarly, there are hundreds of pages devoted to the issue of what deconstruction
is, and thousands of pages in which deconstruction occurs. Most of these
texts are difficult reading, and resistant to summary. The writing's difficulty
and idiosyncratic style is claimed by sympathetic readers to be essential
to a proper treatment of its subject (but many unsympathetic readers have
called it everything from obscurantism to outright nonsense).
Deconstruction is not, properly speaking, a synonym for "destruction."
Rather, according to Barbara Johnson,
- [Deconstruction] is in fact much closer to the original meaning of
the word 'analysis' itself, which etymologically means "to undo"--a virtual
synonym for "to de-construct." ... If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive
reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one
mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which
analyses the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself." See
Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference (1981).
Deconstruction's central concern is a radical critique of the Enlightenment project and of metaphysics, including in particular the founding
texts by such philosophers as Plato, Rousseau, and Husserl, but also other sorts of texts, including literature.
Deconstruction identifies in the Western philosophical tradition a "metaphysics
of presence" (also known as logocentrism or sometimes phallogocentrism) which holds
that speech-thought (the logos) is a privileged, ideal, and self-present
entity, through which all discourse and meaning are derived. This logocentrism
is the primary target of deconstruction.
An early translator of Derrida (the philosopher David B. Allison) explained the
term "deconstruction" as follows:
- It signifies a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and
"take apart" those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period
of thought, those concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch
of metaphysics. "Deconstruction" is somewhat less negative than the Heideggerian
or Nietzschean terms "destruction" or "reversal"; it suggests that certain
foundational concepts of metaphysics will never be entirely eliminated...There
is no simple "overcoming" of metaphysics or the language of metaphysics.
(Introduction to Speech and Phenomena, p. xxxii, n. 1)
Another explanation of deconstruction is by Paul de Man, who explained, "It's possible, within
text, to frame a question or to undo assertions made in the text, by means
of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures
that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements." See
de Man's reply to a request for a definition of "deconstruction" in Robert Moynihan, A Recent Imagining,
p. 156. Thus, viewed in this way, "the term 'deconstruction', refers in the
first instance to the way in which the 'accidental' features of a text can
be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly 'essential' message."
See Richard Rorty, "From Formalism
to Poststructuralism", in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism,
Vol.8, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Against the metaphysics of presence, deconstruction brings an idea called
différance. This French neologism
is, on the deconstructive argument, properly neither a word nor a concept;
it names the non-coincidence of meaning both synchronically (one French homonym
means "differing") and diachronically (another French homonym
means "deferring"). Because the resonance and conflict between these two
French meanings is difficult to convey tersely in English, the word différance
is usually left untranslated.
In simple terms, this means that rather than privileging commonality
and simplicity and seeking unifying principles (or grand teleological narratives, or overarching concepts,
etc.) deconstruction empasizes difference, complexity, and non-self-identity.
A deconstructive reading of a text, or a deconstructive interpretation of
philosophy (for deconstruction tends to elide any difference between the
two), often seeks to demonstrate how a seemingly unitary idea or concept
contains different or opposing meanings within itself. The elision of difference
in philosophical concepts is even referred to in deconstruction as a kind
of violence, the idea being that theory's willful misdescription
or simplification of reality always does violence to the true richness and
complexity of the world. This criticism can be taken as a rejection of the
philosophical law of the excluded middle,
arguing that the simple oppositions of Aristotelian logic force a false appearance
of simplicity onto a recalcitrant world.
One typical procedure of deconstruction is its critique of binary oppositions.
A central deconstructive argument holds that, in all the classic dualities
of Western thought, one term is privileged over the other. Examples include:
- speech over writing
- presence over absence
- identity over difference
- fullness over emptiness
- meaning over meaninglessness
- mastery over submission
- life over death
Derrida argues in Of Grammatology (translated by Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak and published in English in 1976)
that, in each such case, the first term is classically conceived as original,
authentic, and superior, while the second is thought of as secondary, derivative,
or even "parasitic." These binary oppositions, and others of their form,
he argues, must be deconstructed.
This deconstruction is effected in stages. First, Derrida suggests, the
opposition must be inverted, and the second, traditionally subordinate term
must be privileged. He argues that these oppositions cannot be simply transcended;
given the thousands of years of philosophical history
behind them, it would be disingenuous to attempt to move directly to a domain
of thought beyond these distinctions. So deconstruction attempts to compensate
for these historical power imbalances, undertaking the difficult project of
thinking through the philosophical implications of reversing them.
Only after this task is undertaken (if not completed, which may be impossible),
Derrida argues, can philosophy begin to conceive a conceptual terrain outside
these oppositions: the next project of deconstruction would be to develop
concepts which fall under neither one term of these oppositions nor the other.
Much of the philosophical work of deconstruction has been devoted to developing
such ideas and their implications, of which différance may
be the prototype (as it denotes neither simple identity nor simple difference).
Derrida spoke in an interview (first published in French in 1967)
about such "concepts," which he called merely "marks" in order to distinguish
them from proper philosophical concepts:
- ...[I]t has been necessary to analyze, to set to work, within
the text of the history of philosophy, as well as within the so-called
literary text,..., certain marks, shall we say,... that by analogy
(I underline) I have called undecidables, that is, unities of simulacrum,
"false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included
within philosophical (binary) opposition, resisting and disorganizing it,
without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving
room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics. (Positions,
trans. Alan Bass, pp. 42-43)
As can be seen in this discussion of its terms' undecidable, unresolvable
complexity, deconstruction requires a high level of comfort with suspended,
deferred decision; a deconstructive thinker must be willing to work with
terms whose precise meaning has not been, and perhaps cannot be, established.
(This is often given as a major reason for the difficult writing style of
deconstructive texts.) Critics of deconstruction find this unacceptable
as philosophy; many feel that, by working in this manner with unspecified
terms, deconstruction ignores the primary task of philosophy, which they
say is the creation and elucidation of concepts. This deep criticism is
a result of a fundamental difference of opinion about the nature of philosophy, and is unlikely to be resolved simply.
A more concrete example, drawn from one of Derrida's most famous works,
may help to clarify the typical manner in which deconstruction works.
Structuralist analysis generally
relies on the search for underlying binary oppositions as an explanatory
device. The structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss
argued that such oppositions are found in all cultures, not only in Western
culture, and thus that the device of binary opposition was fundamental to
meaning.
Deconstruction challenges the explanatory value of these oppositions.
This method has three steps. The first step is to reveal an asymmetry in
the binary opposition, suggesting an implied hierarchy. The second step is
to reverse the hierarchy. The third step is to displace one of the terms
of the opposition, often in the form of a new and expanded definition.
In his book Of Grammatology, Derrida offers one example of deconstruction
applied to a theory of Lévi-Strauss. Following many other Western
thinkers, Lévi-Strauss distinguished between "savage" societies lacking
writing and "civilized" societies that have writing. This distinction implies
that human beings developed verbal communication (speech) before some human
cultures developed writing, and that speech is thus conceptually as well as
chronologically prior to writing (thus speech would be more authentic, closer
to truth and meaning, and more immediate than writing).
Although the development of writing is generally considered to be an
advance, after an encounter with the Nambikwara Indians of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss
suggested that societies without writing were also lacking violence and domination
(in other words, savages are truly noble savages). He further argued that
the primary function of writing is to facilitate slavery (or social inequality,
exploitation, and domination in general). (This claim has been rejected by
most later historians and anthropologists as incorrect. There is abundant
historical evidence that both hunter-gatherer societies and later non-literate
tribes had significant amounts of violence and warfare in their cultures.)
Derrida's interpretation begins with taking Lévi-Strauss's discussion
of writing at its word: what is important in writing for Lévi-Strauss
is not the use of markings on a piece of paper to communicate information,
but rather their use in domination and violence. Derrida further observes
that, based on Lévi-Strauss's own ethnography, the Nambikwara really
do use language for domination and violence. Derrida thus concludes that
writing, in fact, is prior to speech. That is, he reverses the opposition
between speech and writing.
Derrida was not making fun of Lévi-Strauss, nor did he mean to
supersede, replace, or proclaim himself superior to Lévi-Strauss.
(A common theme of deconstruction is the desire to be critical without assuming
a posture of superiority.) He was using his deconstruction of Lévi-Strauss
to question a common belief in Western culture, dating back at least to Plato:
that speech is prior to, more authentic than, and closer to "true meaning"
than writing.
As a rule, deconstructive writing tends to be rather inaccessible and
eccentric, containing word-play, playful interpretations of texts, and other
features that invite criticism. Judged on the basis of more orthodox Western
thought, these writings may appear irrelevant and incoherent. For example,
Derrida used punning on the name of a poet as a way to explore the meaning
of a poem.
The practices of deconstructive writers have been disputed and criticized
by many historians, linguists, and literary scholars. For example:
- Deconstructionists have deconstructed the idea that each text has
a "truth" corresponding to what the author intended to say. In
response, critics argue that as a matter of practice most authors do
have specific objective intentions, and the authors themselves may agree that
readers are able to accurately understand their intentions. There is no
reason, they argue, to suspect that an author is lying when she states that
her text is understood properly. In response, deconstructionists defend this
position by saying that an author's claims "participate in the same condition
of textuality" in which the "works" in question are enmeshed. In other words,
text can be thought of as "dead," and what an author says about her text
doesn't revive it, and is just another text commenting on the original, along
with the commentary of others. In this view, when an author says, "You have
understood my work perfectly," this utterance constitutes an addition to
the textual system, along with what the reader said she understood
about the original text, and not a resuscitation of the original dead text.
Most philosophers, literary critics, scientists and historians would not
agree with this view.
- No one can know anything about the true nature of reality. Some deconstructionists have deconstructed
the idea that there is a privileged, objective reality "out there", arguing
instead that reality is a social construct as defined by text. This view
is often rejected as a disguised version of solipsism. Deconstructionists hold that this view
is justified; they claim that deconstruction questions the very notion that
meaning can be fixed by reference to a source or principle within the mind.
Most philosophers, literary critics, scientists and historians would not
agree with this view.
- No claim of knowledge is privileged; no method
of learning provides authoritative information. This deconstructionist belief
is rejected on its face; the articles on Knowledge, science and history give explanations of why most people believe
that there are reliable ways of learning information. Many deconstructionists
defend this position; they hold as a belief that all information or knowledge,
no matter how thoroughly tested and confirmed, is only available within a
discursive system, that is, within textuality. Most philosophers, literary
critics, scientists and historians would not agree with this view.
- Deconstruction is seen by many as means of academic empire-building;
it is seen as a vain attempt to make literary analysis of texts become as
important as the texts themselves. For example, many deconstructionist writers
treat their own essays on science, like Quantum Mechanics, and on philosophy,
like Aristotle, as just as important as the disciplines
of science and philosophy themselves. Thus, many critics consider this to
be arrogant.
- A central concept of deconstructionism is that language has no inherent
meaning. Critics counter that if this were true, then how could anyone ever
agree with deconstructive writers? How could deconstructionist writers themselves
disagree with others? In response, deconstructionists argue that the meaning
of sentences does not derive from an absolute realm of ideas to which words
can refer unproblematically. They believe that language, and all books,
have no fixed and stable meaning. However, deconstructive writers are willing
to deconstruct unstable language using other unstable language.
- Many deconstructionists claim that their writings should be classified
as philosophy. However, most philosophers find deconstructionist writings
to be more similar to wordplay, or book reviews, and devoid of actual philosophical
content. Critics hold that most deconstructionist writings relies on terms
whose conceptual status and definition are unclear, and often contradictory.
Deconstructive writers consider philosophy to be much the same as wordplay,
and are happy to point out, and even use, philosophical unclarity and contradiction,
in the course of their deconstruction of philosophy.
- Critics argue that deconstruction's rejection of teleology renders accounts of historical progress (and indeed the entire philosophy of history)
considerably more difficult to sustain, leading some to reject it on political grounds. (The relation between deconstruction
and Marxism, Marxist theory, and Marxist philosophy is particularly complex
and fraught with numerous disagreements and attempted reconciliations.)
A common rebuttal to all deconstructionist dogma is that deconstructionists
effectively claim a privileged position for their own writings. They write
letters and books which expect that readers understand their own intent, yet
deny that this is possible for anyone else. MIT
Linguist Noam Chomsky has written a strong
refutation of deconstructionism and related philosophies.
- I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using
the only methods I know of--those condemned here as "science," "rationality,"
"logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would
help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different
course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation.
Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse
on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is
largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count.
True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in
the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is
a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and
have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that
people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that
I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems
to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the
most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how
to proceed.
Noam Chomsky
on Rationality/Science - From Z Papers Special Issue
During the period between the late 1960s and the early 1980s many thinkers influenced by deconstruction, including
Derrida, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller, worked at Yale University. This group came to be known
as the Yale school and
was especially influential in literary criticism, as de Man, Miller, and
Hartman were all primarily literary critics. Several of these theorists
were subsequently affiliated with the University of California
Irvine.
(More detailed institutional history could be added here.)
Deconstruction has significant ties with much of Western philosophy; even
considering only Derrida's work, there are existing deconstructive texts about
the works of at least many dozens of important philosophers. However, deconstruction
emerged from a clearly delineated philosophical context:
- Derrida's earliest work, including the texts that introduced the term
"deconstruction," dealt with the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl: Derrida's first publication was
a book-length Introduction to Husserl's The Origin of Geometry,
and Speech and Phenomena, an early work, dealt largely with phenomenology.
- A student and prior interpreter of Husserl's, Martin Heidegger, was one of the most significant
influences on Derrida's thought: Derrida's Of Spirit deals directly
with Heidegger, but Heidegger's influence on deconstruction is much broader
than that one volume.
- The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud is an important reference for much
of deconstruction: The Post Card, important essays in Writing
and Difference, Archive Fever, and many other deconstructive
works deal primarily with Freud.
- The work of Friedrich Nietzsche is
a forerunner of deconstruction in form and substance, as Derrida writes in
Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles.
- The structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure,
and other forms of post-structuralism that evolved contemporaneously
with deconstruction (such as the work of Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, etc.), were the immediate intellectual
climate for the formation of deconstruction. In many cases, these authors
were close friends, colleagues, or correspondents of Derrida's.
See also: Jacques Derrida -- Paul de Man -- Jean Baudrillard -- Jean-François Lyotard
-- Judith Butler -- Yale school (deconstruction)
-- structuralism -- Post-structuralism -- Cultural movement -- Post-modernism -- Continental philosophy
-- feminism -- feminist theory -- Queer theory -- literary theory -- literary criticism -- psychoanalysis -- phenomenology
See also: Deconstructivism or Deconstruction,
an architectural movement inspired by Deconstruction.
- Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after
Structuralism.
- Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's
Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern U.P.,
1973.
- Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U. of Chicago
Press, 1981.
- Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
- Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction.
- Ellis, John M. (1989). Against Deconstruction Princeton:
Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-06754-6
Critical theory
.
Critical theory, in sociology and philosophy, is shorthand
for critical theory of society or critical social
theory, a label used by the Frankfurt School, i.e. members of the Institute
for Social Research of the University of Frankfurt,
their intellectual and social network, and those influenced by them intellectually,
to describe their own work, oriented toward radical social change, in contradistinction
to "traditional theory," i.e. theory in the positivistic, scientistic, or
purely observational mode. In literature and literary criticism, by contrast,
"critical theory" means something quite different, namely theory used in criticism.
Although the original critical social theorists were Marxists and there
is some evidence that in their choice of the phrase "critical theory of society"
they were in part influenced by its sounding less politically controversial
than "Marxism", nevertheless there were substantial substantive reasons for
this choice. First, they were explicitly linking up with the "critical philosophy"
of Immanuel Kant, where the term "critique" meant
philosophical reflection on the limits of claims made for certain kinds of
knowledge and a direct connection between such critique and the emphasis
on moral autonomy. In an intellectual context defined by dogmatic positivism
and scientism on the one hand and dogmatic "scientific socialism" on the
other, critical theory meant to rehabilitate through such a philosophically
critical approach an orientation toward revolutionary agency, or at least
its possibility, at a time when it seemed in decline. Second, in the context
of both Marxist-Leninist and Social-Democratic orthodoxy, which emphasized
Marxism as a new kind of positive science, they were linking up with the
implicit epistemology of Karl Marx's
work, which presented itself as critique, as in Marx's "Capital: a critique
of political economy", wanting to emphasize that Marx was attempting to create
a new kind of critical analysis oriented toward the unity of theory and revolutionary
practice rather than a new kind of positive science. In the 1960's, Juergen
Habermas raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in his "Knowledge
and Human Interests", by identifying critical knowledge as based on principles
that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanities,
through its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation.
The term "critical theory", in the non-literary-criticism sense, now
loosely groups all sorts of work, e.g. that of the Frankfurt School, Foucault,
Bourdieu, and feminist theory, that has in common the critique of domination,
an emancipatory interest, and the fusion of social/cultural analysis, explanation,
and interpretation with social/cultural critique.
Notable figures in critical theory:
See also: Marxism, Frankfurt School, cultural studies, Race Theory, queer
theory
What are our priorities for writing in this area? To help develop a
list of the most basic topics in Critical Theory, please see Critical Theory basic topics.
Critical Theory basic topics
(Redirected from Critical Theory basic
topics)
These should be the most basic topics in the field--topics
about which we'd like to have articles soon. Please see the
most basic encyclopedia article topics for general instructions on constructing
this list, and consult complete list
of encyclopedia topics.
Reason, Enlightenment,
Negative dialectic, Communicative action, Public sphere, Civic society, Constellation, Cultural industry, Late capitalism,
<long list here... lots of French and German intellectuals, and later some Americans>
Frederick Jameson, Hebert Marcuse, Althusser, Taccheri Louis Althusser,
Jean Baudrillard, Stuart Hall, Slavoj Zizek, Raymond Williams, Moshe Postone, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, David Harvey, LOÏC WACQUANT
Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Jurgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal,
Gyorgy Lukacs, Ernest Bloch, Bertolt Brecht,
One Dimensional Man -Escape from Freedom -Theory of Communicative
Action -Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere -Negative Dialectic -Dialectic of Enlightenment
Habermas-Luhmann debate,
Habermas-Lyotard debate,
Adorno-Popper debate
Neo-Marxism, Post-Marxisim, Postmodernism, Poststructuralism
Postmodernism
The term postmodernism refers to a philosophical and cultural movement that is notoriously difficult
to define, but distinguished largely by its rejection of modernism. The term is hard to define precisely due
to one of its central premises: the rejection of "meta-narratives", ways of thinking
that unite knowledge and experience to seek to provide a definitive, universal
truth. Also adding confusion to the debate surrounding its definition and
significance is the fact that modernity and modernism are not easy to define.
Postmodernists claim that modernity was characterised by a monolithic
mindset impossible to maintain in the culturally diverse and fragmented world
(which is sometimes referred to as postmodernity) that we live in today. Postmodernism,
instead, embraces fluid and multiple perspectives, typically refusing to
privilege any one 'truth claim' over another. Ideals of universally applicable
truths give way to provisional, decentered, local petit recits which,
rather than referencing some underlying universal reality, point only to
other ideas and cultural artefacts, themselves subject to interpretation
and re-interpretation.
The role of individuals (and especially the individual body) and action
is emphasised over standardized or canonical forms of knowledge. Knowledge
is interpreted according to our own "local" experiences, not measured against
all encompassing universal structures. In this sense, postmodernity owes much
to its allied school of thought, post-structuralism (or deconstruction) which sought to destabilise the
relationship between language and the objects to which
it referred.
Postmodernists often express a profound skepticism regarding the Enlightenment quest to uncover the nature
of truth and reality. Perhaps the most striking examples of this skepticism
are to be found in the works of French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard. In his book Simulations,
he contends that social 'reality' no longer exists in the conventional sense,
but has been supplanted by an endless procession of simulacra. The mass media, and other forms
of mass cultural production, generate constant re-appropriation and re-contextualisation
of familiar cultural symbols and images, fundamentally shifting our experience
away from 'reality', to 'hyperreality'.
Postmodernism has applications in many modern academic and non-academic
disciplines; philosophy, art, architecture, film,
television, music, sociology, fashion, technology, literature, and communications are all heavily influenced
by postmodern trends and ideas, and are rigorously scrutinised from postmodern
perspectives.
Postmodernism is not limited to the West, it exists in many national
varieties such as Russian postmodernism [1], Japanese,
and Latin American postmodernisms (the plural advocated by postmodernism in
relation to "cultures," "mentalities," and "sexualities" should be applied
to PM itself).
Postmodern culture is ubiquitous and permeates every aspect of our daily
lives. From film and television programs to political personas and our
daily clothes, postmodernity, it has been stated, "is the very air we breathe".
(Steven Shaviro, Doom Patrols).
Note: It may be helpful to distinguish between postmodernism in its philosophical,
theoretic sense, and as a cultural phenomenon that can be observed in daily
life — often referred to as 'Postmodernity'. Examples of postmodernity in
action abound in Western society; in fact, Wikipedia is a good example of a postmodern project.
Also note: "post-modern" tends to be used by critics, "postmodern" by
supporters.
Postmodernism was first identified as a theoretical discipline in the
1980s, but as a cultural movement it predates them by
many years. Exactly when modernism began to give way to post-modernism is
difficult to pinpoint, if not simply impossible. Some theorists reject that
such a distinction even exists, viewing post-modernism, for all its claims
of fragmentation and plurality, as still existing within a larger a 'modernist'
framework. The philosopher Jurgen Habermas is a strong proponent of this
view.
The theory gained some of its strongest ground early on in French academia.
In 1979 Jean François Lyotard wrote a short
but influential work "The Postmodern Condition : a report on knowledge".
Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes (in his more post-structural work)
are also strongly influential in postmodern theory. Postmodernism is closely
allied with several contemporary academic disciplines, most notably those
connected with sociology. Many of its assumptions are integral to feminist
and post-colonial theory.
Some identify the burgeoning anti-establishment movements of the 1960s as the earliest trend out of cultural modernity
toward postmodernism. Tracing it further back, some identify its roots in
the breakdown of Hegelian idealism, with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and
his philosophy of action,
Soren Kierkegaard's and Karl Barth's important fideist approach to theology,
and even the nihilism of Nietzsche's philosophy. Michel Foucault's application of Hegel to thinking about the body is also identified as
an important landmark.
While it is rare to pin down the specific origins
of any large cultural shift, it is fair to assume that postmodernism represents
an accumulated disillusionment with the promises of the Enlightenment project
and its progress of science, so central to modernist thinking.
The movement has had diverse political ramifications: its anti-ideological
insights appear conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist movement, racial equality movements, homosexual
rights movements, most forms of late 20th century anarchism, even the peace movement and various hybrids of these in
the current anti-globalization
movement. Unsurprisingly, none of these institutions entirely embraces
all aspects of the postmodern movement, but reflect or, in true postmodern
style, borrow from some of its core ideas.
In an essay From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: the Local/Global
Context, [2]
Ihab Hassan point out a number of instances in which the term postmodernism
is used before the term became popular:
-
John Watkins Chapman, an English salon painter, in the 1870s, to mean
Post-Impressionism.
-
Federico de Onís, 1934, to mean a reaction against the difficulty
and experimentalism of modernist poetry. (The term was postmodernismo)
-
Arnold Toynbee, in 1939, to mean the end of the "modern," Western
bourgeois order dating back to the seventeenth century.
-
Bernard Smith, in 1945, to mean the movement of Socialist Realism
in painting
-
Charles Olson, during the 1950s,
-
Irving Howe and Harry Levin, in 1959 and 1960, respectively, to mean
a decline in high modernist culture.
Also, many cite Charles Jencks (1977) "The Language of Postmodern Architecture"
among the earliest piece which shaped the use of the term today.
Postmodernist art may be seen as a reaction to the reductionism and abstraction
of Modernism.
Where modernists desired to unearth universals or the fundamentals of
art, postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace diversity and contradiction.
A postmodern approach to art thus rejects the distinction between 'low' and
'high' forms. It rejects rigid genre boundaries and favours eclecticism, the
mixing of ideas and forms. Similarly, it promotes parody, irony, and playfulness,
commonly referred to as "joissance" by certain postmodern theorists. Unlike
modern art, postmodern art does not approach this fragmentation as somehow
faulty or undesirable, but rather celebrates it. As the gravity of the search
for underlying truth is relieved, it is replaced with 'play'. As postmodern
icon David Byrne, and his band Talking Heads said: 'Stop making sense'.
Andy Warhol is an early example of postmodern art
in action, with his appropriation of common popular symbols and "ready-made"
cultural artefacts, bringing the previously mundane or trivial onto the previously
hallowed ground of 'high art'.
In economics, Postmodernism refers to multinationalist, consumer-based
capitalism, as opposed to the monopoly capitalism associated with modernism
through the first half of the 20th century, or market capitalism before that.
Some think semi-marxistically that the shift in mode and technology of production
may have precipitated or at least emphasized the change to modernism and
then to postmodernism.
As with many cultural movements, one of postmodernism's most pronounced
and earliest ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional, mostly bland
forms and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically
bold aesthetics; styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new
ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.
Classic examples of modern architecture are the Empire State building
or the Chrysler building. A classic example of post-modernist architecture
is the ATT building in New York, which, like modernist architecture, is a
skyscraper relying on steel beams and with lots of windows — but, unlike modern
architecture, it borrows elements from classical (Greek) style. Post-modern
buildings are usually not so grand and imposing as modern skyscrapers; they
are more playful, and, often through the use of mirrored glass that reflects
the sky and surrounding buildings, call attention to their environment rather
than to themselves.
Modernist literature has commonly relied on an objective and omniscient
point of view (think of the role of a narrator in a third-person narrated
novel). Perhaps Joyce's Ulysses may be
the best example, but anything by Dickens or Tolstoy may serve.
For a good study of modernism, see Marshall Berman's book All That
is Solid Melts into Air.
Among popular and influential examples of post-modern literature are
Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot and
works by Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Some suggest Douglas Adams' series Dirk
Gently's Holistic Detective Agency as a humorous introduction to postmodern
ideas. Some postmodern philosophy may also appear is his better known work,
The Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy.
But some people think that modernity has reached its end; there will be
no more progress, just more combinations and re-combinations of what we now
have. They feel that the Enlightenment project is bankrupt, and they celebrate
this, feeling that the new global economy, the "information age" has liberated
us from everything that the enlightenment sought, unsuccessfully, to liberate
us from. These are people who looked to post-modern art and architecture for
inspiration in a new philosophy. The leading proponent of this attempt to
bring post-modernism into philosophy is Jean-François Lyotard
who wrote a short book called The Postmodern Condition. Guy Debord is another important post-modernist philosopher.
Deconstruction was a tool of
postmodernism that was itself constructed by the philosopher and textual artist Jacques Derrida. He played with words, putting
them together with unique combinations of punctuation to make points about,
in essence, how meaningless words are and the ways in which we give them
meaning. The term deconstruction itself is Destruct
+ Construct. By analyzing an idea and breaking it into pieces, you are simultaneously
asserting its existence. If it did not exist and was not of importance, you
would not be analyzing it. Also, you are in the process of defining it and
reifying its existence as you name its pieces. Most people use deconstruction simply to mean the analysis of
the binaries within an idea. Understanding that this analysis recreates the
binaries is more difficult to grasp.
Many figures in the 20th century philosophy of mathematics
are identified as "postmodern" due to their rejection of mathematics as a strictly neutral point of view.
Some figures in the philosophy of science,
especially Thomas Samuel Kuhn and David Bohm, are also so viewed. Some see the ultimate
expression of postmodernism in science and mathematics in the cognitive science
of mathematics, which seeks to characterize the habit of mathematics
itself as strictly human, and based in human cognitive bias.
For further information, see Postmodern philosophy.
In terms of frequently cited works, postmodernism and post-structuralism
overlaps quite significantly. Some philosophers, such as Francois Lyotard,
can legitimately be classified into both groups. This is partly due to the
fact that both modernism and structuralism owe much to the Enlightenment project.
Structuralism has a strong tendency to be scientific and seeking out
stable patterns in observed phenomena - an epistemological attitude which
is quite compatible with Enlightenment thinking, and incompatible with postmodernists.
At the same time, findings from the structural analysis carried a somewhat
anti-Enlightenment message, revealing that rationality can be found in the
minds of "savage" people, just in different forms than people from "civilized"
societies are used to seeing. Implicit here is a critique of the practice
of colonialism, which was partly justified as a 'civilizing'
process by which wealthier societies bring knowledge, manners, and reason
to less 'civilized' ones.
Post-structuralism, emerging as a response to the structuralists' scientific
orientation, has kept the cultural relativism in structuralism, while discarding
the scientific orientations.
One clear difference between postmodernism and poststructuralism is found
in their respective attitudes towards the demise of the projects of the enlightenment
and modernity: post-structuralism is fundamentally ambivalent, while post-modernism
is decidedly celebratory.
Another difference is the nature of the two positions. While post-structuralism
is a position in philosophy, encompassing on views on human being, language,
body, society, and many other issues, it is not a name of an era. Post-modernism,
on the other hand, is closely associated with "post-modern" era, a period
in the history coming after modern age.
Charles Murray, a strong critic of postmodernism, defines the term:
-
"By contemporary intellectual fashion, I am referring to the constellation
of views that come to mind when one hears the words multicultural, gender,
deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead White Males. In a broader sense, contemporary
intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread disdain in certain
circles for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set
is hostility to the idea that discriminating judgments are appropriate in
assessing art and literature, to the idea that hierarchies of value exist,
hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the
overarching label that is attached to this perspective." [1]
It is this underlying hostility toward objectivity, evident in most contemporary
critical theorists, that is the common point
of attack for postmodernist critics. Many critics characterise postmodernism
as a temporary phenomenon that can't be adequately defined simply because,
as a philosophy at least, it doesn't represent anything
more substantial than a series of disparate conjectures allied only in their
distrust of modernism.
Indeed, there seems to be a glaring contradiction in maintaining the
death of objectivity and privileged position on one hand, while the scientific
community continues a project of unprecedented scope to unify various scientific
disciplines into a theory of everything, on
the other. Hostility toward hierarchies of value and objectivity becomes
similarly problematic when postmodernity itself attempts to analyse such hierarchies
with, apparently, some measure of objectivity and make categorical statements
concerning them.
Despite its ability to challenge the status quo and shake the foundations
of ingrained ideologies, many theorists think postmodernism is on decidedly
shaky epistemological grounds. How can we effect any change in people's poor
living conditions, in inequality and injustice, if we don't accept the validity
of underlying universals such as the 'real world' and 'justice' in the first
place? How is any progress to be made through a philosophy so profoundly skeptical
of the very notion of progress, and of unified perspectives? Such critics
may argue that, in actual fact, such postmodern premises are rarely, if ever,
actually embraced — that if they were, we would be left with nothing more
than a crippling radical subjectivism. That
the projects of the Enlightenment and modernity are alive and well can be
seen in the justice system, in science, in political rights movements, in
the very idea of universities; and so on. This is the common approach of
left academics with Marxist leanings, such as Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson (Postmodernism, or, the
Cultural Logic of Late capitalism), and David Harvey (The Condition of
Postmodernity), whose attacks on the philosophy of postmodernism have
been frequent and scathing.
Such critics see postmodernism as, essentially, a kind of semantic gamesmanship,
more sophistry than substance. Postmoderism's proponents are often criticised
for a tendency to indulge in exhausting, verbose stretches of rhetorical
gymnastics, that sound important but don't appear to have any discernible
meaning. The more brave of the postmodernists may argue that this is precisely
the point. This tendency is parodied by the "Postmodern essay generator",
a computer program whose output
is meaningless essays which appear unnervingly similar to the actual writings
of many followers of postmodernism, and, more notoriously, by the Sokal Affair in which Alan Sokal, a physicist wrote a deliberately and
obviously nonsensical article purportedly about interpreting physics and
mathematics in terms of postmodern theory which was nevertheless published
by a journal of postmodern thought. The same also co-authored Fashionable
Nonsense, which criticizes the abusive use of scientific terminology
in intellectual writing and finishes with a critic
of some forms of postmodernism.
Whatever its philosophical value, postmodern phenomena can be observed
in nearly all areas of Western capitalist cultures, and a postmodern theoretical
approach can help explain much of this cultural condition, irrespective of
whether it offers a coherent, functional epistemology.
-
There is no “reason” insomuch as reason is by definition a “3rd-person
perspective” and there is no 3rd-person perspective without a hermeneutic, thus making it either a disguised 1st-person
perspective or a 2nd-person perspective.
Post-structuralism
(Redirected from Poststructuralism)
Post-Structuralism is a body of work that is a response
to structuralism; it rejects structuralism yet for
various reasons still defines itself in relation to it. So the best way
to understand post-structuralism is to understand structuralism.
There are many definitions. Most broadly, structuralism is any theory
that follows Immanuel Kant's notion that the
mind actively structures perceptions (Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky are structuralists in this sense),
or any theory that follows Durkheim's attention to social structure (e.g.
classifying societies as mechanical or organic). More narrowly, structuralism
is inspired by the work of the linguists Roman Jakobson and Ferdinand de Saussure.
Their main point is that language is not just a set of words (abstract) that
refer to things (concrete). In other words, the word "rock" does not have
sense, or meaning, simply because we identify
it with real rocks. Rather, language consists of a system of meaning; that
is, the meaning of any one word is determined by its relationship with other
words (thus, a dictionary doesn't juxtapose words with pictures of things;
rather, it defines words in terms of other words). When looking solely at
language or systems of meaning that function linguistically, this approach is called semiotics. When looking at other phenomena, it is structuralism. In short, any approach
that sees the meaning of something as subordinate to its place within a system
is structuralism. The most important structuralists were French scholars
who tried to adapt these principles to other fields of study: the psychoanalyst
Lacan, the philosopher Louis Althusser, and the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
Note: structuralism is in many ways opposed to humanism, because it privileges
structures and systems rather than the specific parts of these systems (e.g.
actual humans).
Note: structuralism requires some space between the system and the person
studying the system -- in other words, structuralism is a way of studying
structures objectively.
Post-structuralists are quite simply all people who take structuralism
very seriously and recognize its importance, yet on some level profoundly
disagree with or even actively reject it. This ambivalence echoes a deeper
ambivalence towards the whole Enlightenment project. Like Kant
and his contemporaries and successors, they believe in the importance of
critical thinking (the philosopher Jurgen Habermas is probably the most important
heir to Kant today -- not that he is strictly speaking a "Kantian", but in
a more general sense that he believes that through reason we can understand
the world and achieve enlightenment). Unlike Kant and his successors, they
are highly skeptical of progress. You might say they take Kant's critical
approach one step further by turning it against itself, and thus criticizing
the Enlightenment assumptions that objectivity is possible and good, and
that the positive accumulation of objective knowledge is possible and good.
They are so true to this critical spirit that, unlike post-modernists, they
do not whole-heartedly celebrate the demise of the Enlightenment project.
(In this ambivalent turn they are something like contemporary heirs to Nietzsche, and many explicitly refer to Nietzsche
for inspiration, even if they do not agree with everything he wrote.)
Other than a disagreement with the tenets of structualism, many post-structuralists
are sharply critical of one another. This is one reason why a group with
such divergent views are called post-structuralists and not something else
- once you get beyond their debt to structuralism and the fact that they nevertheless
are not structuralists, there is nothing else to define them as a group.
The most famous post-structuralists - although they express often fundamentally
divergent views - are the philosopher Jacques Derrida, the historian Michel Foucault, and the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour.
|
|
