|
In 1946 I went to Bard College, then a tiny place of 173 students, where I had the good fortune to be introduced to philosophy by Lincoln Reis who used Aristotle as his model of philosophic analysis and understanding. By being introduced to philosophy through Aristotle rather than the usual cocktail of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume I was given an outsider's perspective on modern philosophy and didn't see it in terms of the rivalry between empiricism and idealism to produce a comprehensive account of human knowledge within an individualistic framework - one that required the account to show that each individual had access to all genuine knowledge through his or her original endowments plus those experiences available to each. Gaining an Outsiders Perspective on Modern PhilosophyThrough Aristotle, I came to the view that the business of philosophy was clarity and the elimination of confusions, puzzles and difficulties (aporia he called them) rather than the construction of grand theories that would identify, explain and justify the order of the universe. Later I came to see that the founding fathers - Descartes, Locke, Berkley, Hume and the rest, had lumbered modern philosophy with the task of constructing such grand theories because in the historical circumstance of transition from the feudal to the modern era they had seen the function of philosophy as that of creating a whole system of thought and world view to replace the theologically based system that had dominated the Middle Ages. Another dimension of difficulty was added to the task they set themselves by the framework of individualism that they adopted in the light of the new individualism that came to dominate European society and thought about society as the result of the new dominance of private property which had replaced the feudal hierarchical system of landholding ultimately from the monarch. This individualism saw the individual as prior to society and those individuals only becoming social beings as the result of consciously entering into social relations.
My Books and the Lessons They DrawThe table of contents and introduction to Philosophy and Mystification give a sense of the direction of my work and perhaps I should also offer as an example of its character chapter 11, On Misunderstanding Science, and should perhaps add that it was given gratifying praise from Thomas Kuhn who said of it that 'You have seen to an almost unprecedented extent what I've been up to. I couldn't have identified my position so clearly at the time I wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.' The mechanistic framework of thought they founded gave rise to a picture of the brain as simply a complex mechanism and this picture generated a number of false questions including that of Artificial Intelligence which was dealt with in chapter 5 of my book: How to Tell Your Friends From Machines. That first book, Philosophy and Mystification ($24 in paperback from Fordham University Press) reflects that view of philosophy I got from Aristotle as well as from Marx and Wittgenstein, and at the same time it tries to identify the sources of the mystifications that were generated around central problems. It also aims to contribute to the project of rescuing philosophy from the academic fortress in which it has been confined for several generations and to return it to the larger public. I got a gratifying sense of success in this from some wonderful readers' reviews on both the Amazon and the Barns and Noble websites which were enthusiastic and clearly from readers who were not academic philosophers. Philosophy and IdeologyThe direction taken in that first book is sharpened and taken further in my second, Philosophy and Demystification, which aims to bring it out that the whole framework of modern western philosophy needs really to be regarded as an ideology - even though it was not intended as such by its original shapers. I try to bring out in it how those founding fathers of modern philosophy were constrained by the historical circumstances they found themselves in, and the state of knowledge in their time to take on ahistorical framework of thought and to adopt assumptions and projects that aimed to show that the newly arrived market-based social and economic system in Europe was both inevitable and permanent once it had arrived. In this way that whole framework has to be regarded as a defense of the status quo and the existing social arrangements against the possibility of replacement through historical developments. It is for that reason the existing framework, its conceptions, projects and assumptions have to be regarded as an ideology that twists and restricts our thinking and from which we need to be liberated so as to be able to move toward a more just and human society free from those oppressions that diminish the humanity of oppressor and oppressed alike. The Challenge of Our TimesIt is the challenge of our time to work out a new framework of thought that no longer hides our human creativity behind a barrier of human constructs presented as externalities imposed on us by nature conceived as an external and timeless entity - a framework that as a consequence denies the role of history in the shaping the human world. It is time we set out to construct a whole new framework and world view that could free us from the constrictions of that set of assumptions, projects and conceptions that can only be regarded as an ideology protecting the status quo. We need to embrace both history and human creativity so as to see how humanity can move on toward a world freer of oppression and the denial of the possibility of creativity to the majority. In a surprisingly suppressed passage in the manuscript of The German Ideology, Marx showed the direction we have to take in forging that new framework aimed at freeing us from that limiting ideology that has dominated us for too long and presented humanity as passive in the face of Nature and 'Nature's Laws' - just as we had been presented previously as passive in the face of God and God's laws. At the same time he showed us the scope of the task facing us in trying to articulate and make clear what he meant in describing nature as having a history that was dialectically linked with the history of humanity. This requires us to depose nature from the quasi-divine position it had been given in the framework of thought that has dominated the modern era. I have tried to make a start on this task in two places. The first is in Chapter 2 - The Concept of Nature its Mystification and Demystification, in my book Philosophy and Demystification - which aims to make a start on that task of forging a new framework of thought to replace the ideological one that has for too long denied or diminished human creativity with a view to protecting the status quo. The other place I focus on that suppressed passage of Marx is in a piece called 'Putting the History into Materialism' PublicationsArticles:
Books:
You can contact me at dalkeyguy@eircom.net |
I was born in New York but have lived and worked the majority of my life in Britain and now live in Dublin.
List price: $24.00