The best is the enemy of the good. Meaning that sometimes striving for perfection screws up achieving any good because you're constantly unwilling to accept anything but the best. Thus you end up with nothing. I don't know how true that is, but I have decided to write a few brief thoughts over the next few days rather than try to write what I'd intended. Something's better than nothing. And blogging is at its best when it is making you think. So this is a way to get some thinking done on some topics even if it isn't quite the musing I'd like. Up tonight is the old debate about the relationship between a philosopher and his philosopher. The most obvious example is, of course, Heidegger. Heidegger is famous for his Nazism and his failure to really explicitly decry the holocaust. There has been an inordinate amount of discussion of this the last decade or two. But is this just? That is, to what degree does Heidegger being a bit of a jackass or worse have on his philosophy?
That's an interesting, if somewhat complex and difficult question. I don't intend to focus on it too much.
Instead I bring up some comments from the blog Gedanken Travel Experiment. (Hat tip Enowning) He makes the typical silly attack on Continental thought. But he then goes on:
In contrast take analytic Anglo-American philosophy. The hero for us is Frege. Frege started philosophy of language, modern logic, philosophy of mathematics, then philosophy of mind. Frege was also a proto-Nazi. He was a virulent anti-Semite, and anti-Catholic. That is all clear. We know this because he left over a diary where he wrote some real bizarre things (only recently translated to English by someone I know). Is what he said defensible? I am sure with the right twists of logic (which would be real ironic) you can construe him as not evil. But for analytic philosophers, that is hardly the point. Maybe he was a bad guy, maybe he wasn't. Who cares? A philosopher is supposed to really be above that. In France they have not gotten past this hero worship. In France, and Germany too, it is way more important for a philosopher to believe in the goodness of the greats than to do philosophy. That is the equivalent of talking about the sex lives of politicians and calling yourself a political theorist. Political theory is about countries and their interactions, etc. Philosophy is about arguments, not their proponents. The sooner the continent stops confusing gossip with thought, the better off they will be.
I'd just note that it is often analytic critics of Continental philosophy who often bring up Heidegger's Nazism as a way of pigeon-holing him. As for some Continental philosophers... Well take Levinas. He studied under Heidegger and then had his family put in the ovens. You can understand the anger towards Heidegger and how that affected Levinas' thought.
However it seems to me that this gets at the issue of what philosophy is. As interesting as the Frege - Heidegger parallel is, I wonder if what isn't interesting is why some in the analytic tradition are so willing to divorce a philosopher's thought from their life. There is, of course, the saying of Nietzsche regarding philosophy.
The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that the building can be destroy and nonetheless possess value as material. (Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 31)
We might follow Nietzsche and say that either Heidegger or Frege are the building, while the arguments are the pieces. One certainly tends to do this relative to mathematics, logic, or even physics, which seems so disconnected from life. No one cares, for instance, regarding Newton's rather distasteful character nor the conflict over the invention of the calculus with Leibniz. Well, except for historians. But it has relatively little impact on doing calculus.
However is philosophy only science in this sort of way? Certainly Heidegger doesn't think so. (We'll get to that tomorrow) Rather than repeat myself too much, I'll simply point to my discussion of Kant on this subject from a couple of months ago. Kant distinguished two elements in philosophy. What one might call the scholastic and the "human." Allow me just one Kant quote.
But there is likewise another concept of philosophy. . . which has always formed the real basis of the term 'philosophy,' especially when it has been as it were personified and its archetype represented in the ideal of the philosopher.
In this view it is quite impossible to separate out the philosopher from the philosophy, except by divorcing something important about philosophy from philosophy itself. We are left with mere "scholasticism." (A somewhat unfair characterization of medieval philosophy - but I think the general problem is apt) If analytic philosophy has a problem, it is that ability to only focus in philosophy what can be said independent of the lived life. (Not that I think all analytic philosophy actually does this)
Forgive me if this is not a cogent inquiry: Do think that this discussion relates at all to Prophets and their teachings? I have my thoughts (though very rudimentary), but would be interested in your opinion.
It's an interesting question. My inclination is that it depends. I'm going to do a second part on the above for how one can deal with philosophy that depends upon the lived life yet still rescue philosophy from people whose lives one would not wish to emulate. (Heidegger being a great example) The approach in philosophy is to take up the question of philosophy. That is to question what the philosopher questions and make the questions lively. That's what Heidegger does to other philosophers and is what I think the work of deconstruction does. Heidegger is famous for idiosyncratic readings of other philosophers. For instance in The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic he "deconstructs" Leibniz. He's most famous for doing this with Greek philosophers. Classicists criticize Heidegger's readings. And they legitimately do so. However they miss what Heidegger is doing. He's taking up their problems anew.
In a religious context I think the same thing can happen. Now I happen to think one can't be as bad a person in religion. (And even in philosophy I think there is a danger when a bad person raises a philosophy - thus the danger of Heidegger) But clearly someone can deliver a message they don't necessarily wish to. Jonah's the classic example in the Old Testament. A prophet is also less thinking through their message but is acting more as a messenger. A carrier of a message. Now because of the nature of repeating messages and of translating them, any message delivered will be a joint effort. So we can't isolate out the prophet from the message. When the message is the life of the prophet - a lived life - then that is even more true. Thus, the danger to the community when a religious figure goes astray. (Say the sons of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon)
Having said that though I think the issue of taking up the message of a prophet is pretty important. i.e. don't simply take the word of the prophet but take up the question and go directly to the source. Thus we have, for example, Alma's allegory of planting the seed. Where the seed is the word of the prophet that each person then tries out. This is very akin to the notion of taking up the question of philosophy. We try it out, and see if works (in a broad sense of work).
From a Mormon perspective I'd say this isn't just something we can do, but something we must do. That is, the prophets act primarily as a catalyst to personal revelation and developing a direct relationship with God. They are there to get us to take up the questioning rather than answering the question. (Although clearly as we take up the question we answer in a vague way some questions)
I'm partial to the "let's save the bricks" argument regarding Frege and Heidegger. To me, the interesting contributions from Heidegger are ontological. If we accept that ontology is a basis for epistemology, which in turn is a basis for science, and we also accept that a scientist's personal life is irrelevant when judging her contributions to science, then an ontologist's contributions to ontology should not be judged by his personal behavior.
On the other hand, if a moral philosopher or ethicist behaved in a beastly manner, I'd be partial to examining their philsophy in light of their behavior.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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