Why should things exist?

[Guest guest]

At 02:29 PM 2/26/2004 +0000, ombhurbhuva wrote:

>Modern and contemporary Western philosophy has not

>entirely succumbed to the analytical. Before me I

>have Brand Blanshard's 'Reason and Analysis'

>where he masterfully exposes the numerous

>errors of Logical Positivism and the Early Wittgenstein.

 

Brand Blanshard! Although I never met him, he was my Berkeley teacher's

teacher.

 

He is widely known as a charitable and "gentlemanly" philosopher, as well as one

of the clearest stylists to have written in English. He even wrote a marvelous

little book called _On Philosophical Style_. Blanshard's is 2-volume _Nature of

Thought_ is one of the best treatises I've ever read. He comes close to

non-dualism from a startlingly fresh perspective. He regards the relationship

between idea and object as a matter of degree. And with his theory of internal

relations, he endeavors to show that nothing can be fully known until everything

is fully known.

 

I don't know too many these day who write non-analytically like Blanshard does.

Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson are the best examples I can think of who are

currently in business.

 

--Greg

[Guest guest]

Hello Greg and Chitteranjanji,

No I am not a professional philosopher. I

can't imagine why Chitteranjan would suppose that I was upset by a remark

about the sun setting on philosophy in the 19th.century if I was. It is a

hoary tradition in Western philosophy to derogate all practitioners who

hold opposing views. 'Muddle' is a favourite English term and even

gentleman Brand Blanshard writing of Tractatus Wittgenstein says: "There

must have been something hypnotic about Wittgenstein which made listeners

accept as oracles what in other mouths they would have dismissed as

absurdities. Fortunately or not, the present writer never fell under the

basilisk eye. He has therefore no inhibitions in calling absurd, even in

Wittgenstein, what plainly seems so. He is also free to express

astonishment at the unoriginality of this view. For in essentials it is

Hume over again - his scepticism without any vestige of his humour, clarity

or grace."

 

Chitteranjanji, you had gone out very far on a slender limb about the matter

of assesing the assumptions embedded in culture and now you find that your

perch is springing under you. Now please hand me the saw -

 

Best Wishes, Michael.

 

Chitteranjanji wrote:

I believe I owe you an apology. While I have been saying that one should

avoid imposing one's own set of values on the subject of study, I have been

guilty of this same offense. I believe thatcharacterising the nineteen

century as "the twilight of European philosophy" is rather value-laden and

is sufficient cause to hurt the

modern philosopher. I am sorry if I have said anything to hurt your

sensibilities.