Pye wrote: Weirdly, Alex, this rolls around to you, and why I sometimes find it angular to talk to you. I'm thinking you are caught up in language systems as systems; types of thought as types, and that you don't want to do anything with philosophy. As much healthy skepticism as you apply, your focus is more on the how of speech, its fascinating forms and slipperies, and not on the world it's seeking to abstract. This makes you so much more about speakers, persons, and speech ways - your "angle-in." :) True as the private circumstances of those speaking-selves are, they are also conscious-of something, and trying to look at it together; trying to get you to look, I'm thinking, for all your years posting here . . . . :) It's probably what others have estimated in you as a misdirected gaze. S'not that you can't think. S'where you have restricted your gaze . . . . :)
I don't really know why you would say 'weirdly' when 'predictably' might be a better word (from your and from other's perspectives).
While I don't quite know what you mean by 'angular' and have to guess, I will try to deal with your critique. I only hope that you will note, just note, the manner in which Dear Dennis
uses your critique. With this in mind: since I first logged on here---into this environment of 'philosophy' but moreover of religion---I noticed principally the 'violence'. The attacks. The ridicule. The establishment of hierarchies with the very clearly established sense of 'we have and represent knowledge; you others, and you who don't agree, are lower level beings'. It is part-and-parcel of the 'philosophy' [sic] that is carried on here. It would surprise me if you didn't see this, and if you didn't consider it, but then many things about people who write here surprise me. I am surprised by the
omissions.
Second point. Critique, fine. No problem. But critique leveled without actually dealing with (and I am truthful here) 95% of all the statements I have made! You do exactly what Quinn and others do: you simply
dis-hear. It is
as if a whole group of terms, notions, ideas, possibilities, and so much more, simply cannot appear on your mental screen. It is like a certain color that cannot be reproduced by the pixel structure of your mind. [I am not trying to be insulting, just factual]. What I say [to use some of the language you seem to like] is that this represents 'mauvaise foi'. Perhaps I am using that term a little out of context, but no matter. 'Bonne foi' in discourse is certainly a possibility but if we accept Diebert's recent illumination we would have to
start from the assumption that all discourse is 'battle', and since the world is in a state of war on so many levels, perhaps we should just eliminate the notion of
bonne foi right from the start? If that is so, then I think it illumines all conversations that occur here! It offers the reason no one will mention! Because if we were honest we would all realize what 'in truth' we are doing and stop playing games. Then people might actually build bridges. But no, go to the top of your screen and click on the little blurb about the function of this [GF] 'philosophy'.
'I come not to bring peace but to bring a sword', etc. etc. ;-)
It is quite probable that I see 'philosophy' differently than you do. Let's just take this as a clear given. True, I think you function from a 'naive' platform and have assumptions about what it can 'do' even if it does no-thing. I am more, say, attuned to philosophy (language-tools, idea-tools) in the sense of
weapons. You could stick with the term 'tool' as in
homo faber (...but only if you keep in mind the opening scenes of the Kubrick film 2001). If having this consciousness of the way ideas are used in this world, as the means by which we have our way with others and fuck people out of their own life-substance, is seen by you as a
negative, then I just have to accept your designation. But what I am essentially doing, or trying to do, is to use langauge and ideas
defensively. In this sense I am (if you'll permit me to think in this way) a 'disciple of Chomsky'. Which also means a 'disciple of Machiavelli', or I am aware of the
homo politicus and
homo mendax.
But the real core here, and the thing you can really focus on is that I am articulating a defense of Jewish and Christian humanism. If there is a crime being committed here by me,
this is the crime! And it is [I think?]
definitely a crime for you because your mind cannot even entertain, in the vaguest and most attenuated sense, the theism that has produced these traditions, perceptions, and ways of viewing (even if I myself define a radically different 'theism' which is more existential). Pretty much everything that I say and think and feel comes to me 'from within' [myself] and it is within myself that the core 'crime' is committed! I am only trying to
help you with your defining project even as I try to help Quinn and Dennis (and so many who function like them) to accumulate some ammunition with which to 'destroy' this position.
I repeat: When I saw with what violence and disregard
the message of these traditions was severed away from, hated and condemned, and when I compared this to the sense I have of the emotional quality and presence of many who write here or have written here (people come through like meteors), 'the Messenger' (I'm fucking with your head now...) said 'Pay ttention, my son'. I have not hidden my 'agenda', I have never called it something other than what it is. I deal with it straight-on and straight-up.
As to: "True as the private circumstances of those speaking-selves are, they are also conscious-of something, and trying to look at it together; trying to get you to look, I'm thinking, for all your years posting here." Oh yes, very much indeed. It would be a mistake on your part if you were to think that I do not see that and do not consider it. You put me in a bit of an
aprieto here,
muchacha. But you have made the mistake of referring to some generality of opinion, and the truth is that there is a plurality here. I acknowledge what I consider to be honest and valuable [in the opinions, ideas, views of others]. Usually, it rings in what is said. But if it doesn't
ring, and if there is no
value-ringing, I am inclined to see it as 'destructiveness-in-operation'.
But let's go back to the beginning: you are bringing a critique and asking me to
deal with it, but you have not actually dealt in any substantial sense with what I
wrote.