German Mind

Posted on September 27, 2009
Filed Under Heidegger, Philosophy, Science | 1 Comment

Brandon at Sirus posted a funny quote by Duhem on Kant:

Highly skilled at deduction, the German mind is poorly endowed with common sense. It has a limitless confidence in the discursive method, whereas its confused intuition gives it only a weak assurance of the truth.

Read the full quote and discussion at Sirus. He has an earlier post (revised from a few years ago) on Duhem’s view. There he noted that the above view on the German mind was quite controversial.

All that said, I tend to be more sympathetic to the scientist (whom Duhem caricatures with the phrase “the German mind”) who sees science as proving various common-sense principles false. I just think a lot of science is counter-intuitive and that most errors about science come from thinking science should be intuitive.

I should also say that when I read that first Duhem quote I immediately thought of Heidegger and his critique of neo-Kantianism and German phenomenology. I’m just not sure Heidegger’s “intuitions” and mediations after the Kehr were much better. i.e. despite what some think I don’t think Heidegger is as good at intuition as he is at critique. But then one way of thinking about Heidegger’s critique, especially how the present at hand becomes manifest is to think of intuitions as arising not directly but out of a kind of failure of discursive method. Otherwise truth withdraws and remains hidden – obscured by the very success of discursive method.

Related posts:

  1. More on Intuitions
  2. Intuitive Fatalism
  3. Peirce on Intuition
  4. Heidegger, Plotinus and Ereignis
  5. Revisionist Accounts
  6. On Intuitions in Argument

Comments

One Response to “German Mind”

Duhem says “the German mind is poorly endowed with common sense”, Heidegger says the German mind recovers anew the originary essence of Greek science. The French say chocolat, the Germans Schokolade. Just differences in translation, I’m sure.

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