Re:American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Rev...
by skissane on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @02:21AM
(#35521497)
> I put relativism is scare quotes because Continental philosophy doesn't espouse relativism, but is often accused of it.
Well, Nietzsche himself insists that his "perspectivism" isn't a mere "relativism" or "subjectivism". But, exactly what the difference between the the former and the latter is, is complicated and murky and debatable, and I don't think we should exclude the possibility that counterarguments against the latter may end up succeeding against the former as well.
> But -- and as a reply to the complaints of its obscurantism -- it's also not obvious that arguments in Continental philosophy can be re-expressed in an atomic way without losing its fundamental essence.
I think it is hopeless to read Nietzsche, for example, as presenting some sort of ordered philosophical system, like Aquinas' Summa or Spinoza's Ethics. But, I think, Nietzsche is under-appreciated as a poet. And reading some of his works as poetry and fiction – you can extract some ideas from them which are very amenable to being put in a precise form. For example, eternal recurrence – he probably didn't mean it literally, but there certainly are cosmological theories in which eternal recurrence is entirely literal, and I think one could fruitfully work out the philosophical implications of such a theory using traditional analytic methods
> However, many of these philosophies are ones that criticize reductive, logocentric discourse to begin with!
For me, it really comes down to this – I've read some Nietzsche, and I enjoyed it – even when he's wrong, he's entertaining. I tried reading Derrida – and I gave up. Nietzsche convinced me he had something worthwhile to say; Derrida failed to do so before he ran out of my attention.
Well, Nietzsche himself insists that his "perspectivism" isn't a mere "relativism" or "subjectivism". But, exactly what the difference between the the former and the latter is, is complicated and murky and debatable, and I don't think we should exclude the possibility that counterarguments against the latter may end up succeeding against the former as well.
> But -- and as a reply to the complaints of its obscurantism -- it's also not obvious that arguments in Continental philosophy can be re-expressed in an atomic way without losing its fundamental essence.
I think it is hopeless to read Nietzsche, for example, as presenting some sort of ordered philosophical system, like Aquinas' Summa or Spinoza's Ethics. But, I think, Nietzsche is under-appreciated as a poet. And reading some of his works as poetry and fiction – you can extract some ideas from them which are very amenable to being put in a precise form. For example, eternal recurrence – he probably didn't mean it literally, but there certainly are cosmological theories in which eternal recurrence is entirely literal, and I think one could fruitfully work out the philosophical implications of such a theory using traditional analytic methods
> However, many of these philosophies are ones that criticize reductive, logocentric discourse to begin with!
For me, it really comes down to this – I've read some Nietzsche, and I enjoyed it – even when he's wrong, he's entertaining. I tried reading Derrida – and I gave up. Nietzsche convinced me he had something worthwhile to say; Derrida failed to do so before he ran out of my attention.