[MD] continental and analytic philosophy

[gav]

been thinking about the differing approaches to philosophy that these traditions use...seems v relevant to what's going on here - think the disputes arising here illuminate an epistemological divide along these lines.

 been reading about deleuze and getting a lot out of him:

'[deleuze] argue that the human subject and its stable outside world was a fiction produced within the flow of experience - "the world (continuity and distinction) is an outright fiction of the imagination"'


perfect correlation...

the word 'fiction' here is key

the intellect is creative. philosophy, according to deleuze, creates new concepts, new ways of thinking in response to the formulation of new problems

i still think this list, and our general approach to thought, eschews creativity, fiction, in favour of truth - the idea of truth. and this situation produces the ironic evangelisation of philosophy, which in turn projects this very evangelical stance on to things like religion. classic jungian shadow stuff 

i like the idea of approaching truth tangentially, repectfully, modestly...i think nietzsche's quote from the beginning of beyond good and evil says it well:

'Supposing truth is a woman - what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart?'

we can only perceive the whole picture with peripheral vision - if we are always using the analytic knife we just end up with arguments about definition really...meaning is always contextual....

the continental approach is more akin to producing a sketch, that through repetition and variation, gains clarity....

i think the years have shown that it is folly to try and reach some sort of GUT of pirsig's work. the same arguments are rehashed again and again.
instead i propose a deepening and expanding of his work into new territory....and the making of fertile interconnections.

i agree with emerson on the idea of literature. he said that once men were able to record truth truly the era of contrived fiction in literature would give way to the 'true' fiction of life. 

although they are different modes of thought, art and philosophy are mutually fecundating. art produces new percepts and affects; philosophy produces new concepts in response to these new experiences and in turn furnishes art with new points of departure.

the DQ/sq split is primary.
are we too focussed on the secondary level distinctions - are we forgetting the primary moral value of direct novel experience?

perhaps we need to drop truth as an explicit goal, an object....it is in truth (ha!) as ephemeral as 'god', another siren leading us onto the rocks of hubris.


anwyay just thoughts
gav





'life is difference, the power to think differently, to become different and to create differences'....but the thrust of analytic philosophy is often towards the inference of generalities from particulars...