Future, Present, & Past:



Speculative
~~ Giving itself latitude and leisure to take any premise or inquiry to its furthest associative conclusion.
Critical~~ Ready to apply, to itself and its object, the canons of reason, evidence, style, and ethics, up to their limits.
Traditional~~ At home and at large in the ecosystem of practice and memory that radically nourishes the whole person.

Oυδεὶς άμουσος εἰσίτω

Saturday, December 11, 2010

How to argue, why & why not


Indelimitability and incommensurability, the two aspects of experience which I tried to spell out here, have a great deal to do with the “style,” or lack thereof, of these Open Letters. Discursiveness and density are the twins born to wonder and the desire to articulate. Superficially resembling indiscipline, discursiveness is a faithful and dogged following of one’s nose—or better yet, following the Tao (philosophy may be the fine art of distinguishing one’s nose from the Tao), over whatever borders may lie along the way. Neither thinking nor experience comes in chunks. The subjects most apparently at odds can be brought into intimate contact with a flick of a sentence. This is a function of an ontological wholeness, not just of discursive ingenuity. This is at least as significant, I hold, as any particular “point” we may address about the construction of Christian liturgy, the plausibility of a given reading of Kant or Plato, the resonance of an Indian myth with musical tuning or astronomical observations, or even about the attainability of shifts in consciousness or the political and ecological future of the planet. Laden with import as any of these specific arguments may (or may not) be, none is especially significant except in the context of the wonder that is the beginning of philosophy. Indeed, I would say that “discursive ingenuity” is a sort of “picture” of the ontological ingenuity of being.

Whatever the issue at hand, there is a deeper, more fundamental concern underneath, to which the more topical matters are merely tributary. This is why I asserted that the relationship between interlocutors is more philosophically crucial than any doctrine. As we meander between ostensibly separate topics, there is almost always more than one thing going on; far from being a mere symptom of a short attention span, philosophy aims to cultivate an ability to navigate among discourses. In fact, I do think that there is something to be said for grand, sweeping, “it-all-comes-down-to-X” theses. But these are not as easy to get to as one might think. Assumptions are hard to see, because often they are what we see by. Discovering them is usually the work of much reflection, of conscious, careful attention not to what we think we think, but at what we actually say and do.

This doing is not what happens when we set out to watch ourselves, but what happens when we are simply in conversation—and particularly, in argument. Argue: from the Old French, arguere “to make clear, to demonstrate,” linguists derive it from a proto-Indo-European base *arg- “to shine, be white, bright, clear”—a form that can still be seen in Latin argentum and French and Spanish argent, silver, and indeed the Old French for quicksilver or mercury. The root is also seen in the Greek Argo, the ship which carried the heroes questing for the shining Golden Fleece, and in the Sanskrit name of the hero Arjuna, the archer.

Philosophy arises in argument, either with oneself or someone else; but it is much easier—and more uncomfortable—to catch oneself at what one does when arguing with others. This means, however, slowing down, and watching carefully: a kind of continual weaving back-and-forth between saying what comes into one’s head, or being absolutely stumped, and (on the other hand) noticing what one has just said, or not said—noticing how one said it, noticing one’s feelings and motives all along the way.

It is easy to think that philosophy is a matter of assertions about the meaning of life, about space and time, about perception and reality, about freedom and unfreedom, the best political regime, the nature of the beautiful. This conception of philosophy is certainly preferable to the analyses-of-grammar one gets on one side of the Analytic/Continental aisle, or to the endless and trivial non-explication du texte on the other. At least in beginning courses on philosophy, one is offered the chance to think about large questions. But we are not philosophers until we allow the questions to shape who we are. We must be confronted by the questions, grasped by them, made to feel that our lives depend upon them.

“Philosophy,” notes Aquinas, “does not consist in asking what men have said, but in asking after the truth of the matter.” (In I lib. de Coelo, lect. xxii; II Sent., D. xiv, a. 2, ad 1um). But the truth of the matter is never an abstract assertion, because the question of (e.g.) freedom or nature or goodness does not offer us anywhere to stand outside of it to ask after it. If we are free or unfree, our freedom or lack thereof is already at play in the asking. If it is good to know what goodness is, this asking is part of its own object. Whether we are part of nature or stand across from it, this too conditions our inquiry from the beginning. It takes time to ask about time, we must be somewhere to ask about space, and in any asking whatsoever, the question of the nature of language arises for us. Philosophy is an exercise in conscious human life, is meant to foster our awakening. The ancient philosophers were quite explicit in their conception of philosophy as a spiritual discipline; one cannot read any of them of whatever school—whether Parmenides or Heraclitus, Plato or Aristotle, Epictetus or Lucretius, Plotinus or Marcus Aurelius—without the sense that they are speaking of experiences and not merely “doctrines.” Plato expressly says this in the Seventh Letter, for instance. Parmenides relates a vision of a goddess. Socrates goes to his death in genuine tranquility—not mouthing the word tranquility nor expounding the concept thereof, but having cultivated the state of mind. Aristotle speaks of generosity, bravery, equanimity; Lucretius of being delivered from fear.

And the most compelling way for this to happen is to be met by someone whose answers are not ours. It takes some time to get to these “answers” because they are usually operative assumptions and do not lie on the surface in our own or in the other’s thought. One can often see them (or think one sees them) in the other person first. After a while of being baffled by how they can be so wrong (or better, so right and yet so wrong), one eventually diagnoses the “problem,” the one big thing from which all their other errors stem. (E.g., “Dawkins’ fundamental error is that he cannot grasp that God is not an entity.”) And this is not just a diagnostic for individuals; it gets applied to social and cultural ills all the time. (Think Marx, think Freud; think radical Islamism, or Radical Orthodoxy.) But as we cast about, it is easy to see that there are many competing notions today—as there were for the ancients—concerning the One Big Thing that’s fundamentally wrong. Some see it as atheism; some as belief in God at all; some as belief in the wrong sort of God; some as that we think of time as linear, or that we believe values are relative, or that we believe values are absolute. Some think we should just get the hell out of science’s way; some that a few Timothy Treadwells and Julia Butterfly Hills and Theodore Kaczynskis are all that is keeping science from running our planet into the sun. We place too much faith in the free market; we place too much faith in the state. We waste all our time on video games; we don't play video games nearly enough. We are sexually repressed; we are sexually promiscuous. We are all brainwashed to think that existence is better than extinction; we have all already decided extinction is better, but we don’t know it yet.

What I am interested in is how to navigate (not arbitrate) these (and less-radical) disagreements, without demonizing each other, and without minimizing the non-negotiable gravity of the matter. Not, please note, how to show how "both are right," but to show how it is possible to account for really living according to these conclusions, and then to see what happens when one experiences the world as the context for all of them.

The method is first to seek the basic faultline—for instance, the “metaphors” that shape our thinking, as Lakoff & Johnson, among others, have suggested. This involves a good deal of skirting about over different subjects, in pursuit of the unifying theme. Next is frank and risky confrontation—genuine argument, but conscious argument. This is a vision of philosophy as a sort of irenic agonism. Genuine conflict is, as Empedocles saw, of the essence of thinking (for him it was even the essence of existence)—the contention between rival assertions. Such conflict offers a chance for the experience of freedom to leap up, like a flame from friction; but the friction sometimes has to get quite high first. One might compare work on koans. (It is often not appreciated that in the Zen tradition there is a right answer to a koan.) Or again, consider the crushing dilemma Paul names in Romans, “the good I would do, I do not, and the evil I would not, that I do,” a dilemma which alone allows the sudden inversion of law and grace that highlights for Paul the true freedom of the Christian. Sartre said that the most free he ever felt was when, during the Resistance, he might have been arrested and shot at almost any time; Koestler broke though and had one of the best-described experiences of transcendence more or less on the eve of his scheduled execution. I believe that the opportunity argument presents us as philosophers is to raise the pressure—to free us from our conflict-avoidant fear of fighting—which can offer a chance for seeing things whole, in a way that simply glossing over differences does not (for nothing is gained by muddy thinking and denial).

If this seems a strange claim--that a debate, raised to a sufficient pitch, can spark a mystical experience, or something like it--I can only rejoin that while I do not believe anyone was ever argued into (say) a religious conversion, philosophy that is not oriented towards the fundamental questions of who I am, what God is, what the world is, and these at a far deeper than theoretical level, simply does not interest me. But if "mystical experience" seems too high-pitched, try something like "concpetual breakthrough" or "paradigm shift," or (more riskily) "falling in love."

At the same time, it matters how one argues; the most important thing is not the content of the assertions but the process of the confrontation. “What kind of disagreement, my friend, causes hatred and anger?” asks Socrates of Euthyphro. Philosophy does not merely cultivate conflict, but seeks to channel it. It is, in this respect, the careful use of the irascible element in the human soul. (“I have never met a poet worth a damn that was not irascible,” said Ezra Pound, who surely ought to have known.)

To fall into the passions of hatred and anger is to fall into unfreedom; to be able to be in the midst of the contest without being controlled by it is the aim. This poise is extremely hard to attain except for brief moments, at least for a beginner like me. The drive to be right is all too easy to fall into, and avoiding it is not the child’s-play one might think; and most pernicious are those ploys which seem to allow eating the cake of being right and having the cake of arch indifference—the “going meta” that Morton sees as a refrain in Harman’s work. Because one is certain of one point, it is very easy to think one is certain of a related but separable point. This makes all the more seductive the impulse to defend “the truth of the matter”—not my feeling of being right, I tell myself, but the truth!!—with methods whose disingenuousness is so slight as to be almost unperceivable to myself. I dismiss some point I disagree with as a “long-discredited error,” especially if there is an excuse for me to claim a sizable majority of opinion on my side; or I slip into a rhetorical flourish with a sense of satisfaction that I am honoring the truth, not betraying it, though the rhetoric has nothing to do with the point. All the better if my allies and I can share a laugh at the opponents’ expense.

Socrates might say that these dangers, of forgetting the real point of argument, are the most pressing; but it would be facile to ignore others, namely, that one’s opponents might be riled into even more debilitating behavior than these. If “defending the truth” (as one sees it) with a misleading oversimplification is unfortunate, somewhat more so is such defense by harnessing legal or state or military apparatus. An “argument” by a cutting word is bad; one with a weapon is worse. Socrates went to the hemlock because his opponents were less level-headed and even-handed than he in their choice of argumentative strategy.

Philosophy is dangerous, then, in part simply because it is a kind of conflict. It can easily turn upon one; it can degenerate into scapegoating. The various moves that Straussian exegesis unfolds are employed, Strauss claims, as shields against such backfiring. As I mentioned, I have a different take on these moves; while I believe Strauss was correct both in diagnosing these “esoteric” strategies, and in the functions he claimed for them, I tend to see them more as intended to indicate to the insightful reader that the overt content of the philosophical argument is not always its most important aspect. Above all, they serve to show the philosopher that there is always another way—sometimes another way no one has thought of yet—a new way both to think the matter at hand, and to connect it with matters hitherto unsuspected. These trapdoors are like escape routes into different discourses, and though the philosopher cannot avail himself of them bodily in the courtroom or jail cell, they are a way of consolation even there. Of course, to the enemies of philosophy, they will be hard to distinguish from merely changing the subject. But this only indicates that the real subject has not been understood.

17 comments:

  1. This is a very nice piece of writing about the lived experience of philosophical thinking and writing. One lives and feels philosophy. In all our and its ramblings we are wrestling with that one thing. Or I suppose it is one thing—that part is debatable. Danger, trapdoors, scapegoating, enemies, the irascible and the irenic, tranquility, freedom and skirts with flames leaping up. It’s all there. The cursive and the discursive. The coursing and the discoursing. The changing and the changling. The vision, the pursuit and the expounding. One can feel it happening in the jumping with frank and risky in a confront-faultline-nation. It commences in the incommensurable with the inimitably indelimitable in the unifying theme park of a genuine knowing that the real subject has not been understood—at all, simply put. Then Wittgenstein shows up conjecturing, “Indeed, I would say that “discursive ingenuity” is a sort of “picture” of the ontological ingenuity of being.” Yes, I answer, we are down to ontology, my boy. Style, smiles, and miles to go before we sleep. And then there goes argilos, the speedy little white mouse. I agree with what you’re saying one hundred percent—in a dense sort of way. (If you know my writings, then you know that this really is a very friendly response. The spirit is incorrigible. Unfortunately, we live in a time when the play of the spirit is taken as an insult.) I think I’m beginning to understand you.

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  2. Gary,

    Thanks much for this, especially for catching that mouse (though the etymology is debated, I like to think it's legit). Whenever animals move by, we are close to the mythological matrix out of which philosophy defines itself.

    Is it, or is it not, one thing? The debate on this question is itself the golden thread. I doubt that any verbal formula, even "beyond one and many," will satisfy everyone. But there is an experience that is possible to cultivate.

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  3. Thanks for this too, Skholiast. You've captured a great deal of my own thinking here, probably expressed a lot of the reasons we tend to agree so frequently. There are so many wise and/or smart people out there who have thought, and continue to think, things incredibly different from me and from everyone else. There's got to be something there - even if they are as wrong as I sometimes think they are, there's got to be some element of truth in there that attracts them to that wrongness. We find this element of truth most easily in discussion and debate with those far from us. For, as you rightly note, it is typically found more in the unspoken assumptions than the explicit claims; but in debate, those assumptions can be made explicit - our own assumptions as well as theirs.

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  4. This may sound staid and uninteresting in an intellectual climate of muddle-headed post-modernism. The purpose of philosophical thinking is to ascertain first the meaning of a claim or set of claims and second the truth or plausibility of those claims. Argument guided by the highest standards of logic and evidence is the best means to accomplishing that purpose.
    "At the same time, it matters how one argues; the most important thing is not the content of the assertions but the process of the confrontation."
    This is dangerously mistaken. The content and the plausibility of the content of assertions has primacy. Racist claims or Zionist apologetics for atrocities and war crimes such as the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2008-2009 don't become acceptable because they use non-confrontational, suave, and sugar-coated methods of persuasion or rhetoric.
    "Philosophy is dangerous, then, in part simply because it is a kind of conflict."
    Philosophy is a mode of inquiry. Any conflict this inquiry generates arises from the philosophical imperative of identifying and eliminating nonsense, confusion, and falsity on the way to a clear comprehension of the truth of a matter or issue.

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  5. Thill, welcome to SCT. After sparring a little with you on Amod's blog, I feel sure you will find a great deal here to be uncongenial, but perhaps we will learn from each other. (Also, If I don't respond to every one of your comments, please don't take it amiss. This blog is a hobby, not a profession for me, and I don't always have the time I would like to devote to it.)

    You are certainly challenging me to put my claims into practice. When I speak of "irenic agonism," I am expressly not talking about being "non-confrontational, suave, or sugar-coated." I would venture to say that one of the problems in certain modes of discourse (not just philosophy) is precisely their conflict-avoidance.

    I can only agree that "racist claims [for example]...don't become acceptable" merely on account of their presentation. Neither, I would add, do the most solid and respectable truths lend any dignity to sneer or slur.

    I am certainly interested in the (empirical?) limits of civility, so to speak. In activism, it is painfully clear that one cannot negotiate with those who systematically lie to you. This is why Marxism (e.g.) maintains that revolution and not some slow social ad-hoc series of adaptations is necessary to bring about a classless society: because the capitalist class (says Marx) cannot be honest with the proletariat. Now leaving aside the specifics of Dialectical Materialism (this is only an example), this is a point where philosophy declares war, and insofar as this is the case, it has pushed to the limit of discourse.

    (But there are other limits that are less socially explosive. Wittgenstein thought he had found such a limit at the end of the Tractatus.)

    (cont'd.)

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  6. (cont'd):
    For myself, I know I get defensive and have more trouble thinking clearly if I am confronted by someone who makes it plain that they think I am speaking nonsense from beginning to end, that my values are bankrupt, that I am irresponsibly wedded to privilege, that my assertions are just muddled excuses for thinking.... It's not easy to even decide where to begin to talk with such an interlocutor; I'm tempted just to say, wow, man, you're hurting my feelings. On the other hand, I have friends who can say, Man, you're making a mistake here, or, But aren't you leaving out a huge amount of experience, or even, Why do you want to talk that way? and this bring s me up short and makes me reconsider. Of course, no one is obliged to make me feel comfortable. Socrates certainly did not do this for Meno or Callicles or Hippias; even Phaedo and Phaedrus, Glaucon and Adeimantus, are made to stammer and not know what to say. But Socrates insists his numbing sting can be ultimately helpful, and it is difficult to see how inflammatory words aid in the midwifery of the soul. To say this is not to issue a license for dissimulation or flattery (though certainly I would argue that Socrates is not completely straightforward either), but to urge being intentional and paying heed to how ones presentation effects one's conversation partner. If one is aiming to shock or alienate, well then, go! But this is not what philosophers do, by and large, with one another.

    To take your example of racism: Even (to draw a cartoon for a moment) if I am talking to a member of the KKK, am I likely to get anywhere if I start out by telling him that racism is simply unacceptable? He knows already that I don't find it acceptable. What does he care? But if (and I realize this is a "Big If") we start by a thought-experiment in which his brother or son gets lynched, we might, maybe maybe maybe, get somewhere. Yes, this is naive example, stark in its outlines and perhaps ridiculous in its premise, but I'm trying to start simple. Of course, one might say that I'm under no obligation to treat the KKK man as a philosopher. Indeed. But I wonder. Socrates does not convert Thrasymachus, but does he ask him different questions than he asks Glaucon & Adeimantus?

    On the one hand, Socrates practice is very close to your description:

    "The purpose of philosophical thinking is to ascertain first the meaning of a claim or set of claims and second the truth or plausibility of those claims. Argument guided by the highest standards of logic and evidence is the best means to accomplishing that purpose."

    But I note that Socrates starts out (and indeed ends) with claiming not to know anything (except his own ignorance, and also about love). (One can of course debate the degree to which this is rhetoric in itself.) I do not detect this same humility in most contemprary proponents the canons of logic and empiricism. Something has been lost, and I believe it has to do with the shaping of the soul. If one replies, "The soul? What's that?", I reply in turn that this question is part of the problem. Which is not to say it's out of place-- indeed, it might be the best possible place to start.

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  7. "But I note that Socrates starts out (and indeed ends) with claiming not to know anything (except his own ignorance, and also about love). (One can of course debate the degree to which this is rhetoric in itself.)"

    One must, and not merely "can", point out that if Socrates was sincere in his avowal of ignorance, he would not be doing so much talking and pontificating in the Dialogues!

    "I do not detect this same humility in most contemprary proponents the canons of logic and empiricism."

    The question of humility or arrogance arises only in contexts in which there is the possibility of comparing what one knows with the available stock of knowledge or what is yet to be known concerning a topic. In the context of religion and metaphysics, there is no possibility of such comparison. What on earth do we know in those contexts other than that so-an-so has claimed such-and-such? Hence, the appeal to humility is but a disguised form of authoritarianism.

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  8. Hi again, and please note the inclusion of your blog as the newest addition to the blogroll!

    I note a few assumptions here. The question of humility/arrogance arises only when it is a matter of comparing stocks of knowledge? I would have thought that this had a lot more to do with a disposition of character, a bearing of oneself, than it had to do with how much you knew. I've known smart and well-informed people who were arrogant and others who were not. These have some bearing on each other but they do not define the issue.

    "In the context of religion and metaphysics, there is no possibility of such comparison."

    Again, I just don't see this. The simplest case of course would be to compare two co-religionists, one of whom is proud and one of whom is not. (Then we can leave the red herring of 'religious knowledge' aside). I presume that for you (please correct me), no appeal to "religious experience" counts as genuine evidence. In a sense this is even correct, since this sort of experience is in one way irreducibly anecdotal. But even here, we may certainly compare the meaning of claims; and we can compare the

    "the appeal to humility is but a disguised form of authoritarianism."

    The appeal to "authoritarianism" is just a disguised form of arrogance. (See? we could do this for hours!)

    But in seriousness, yours is an admirably concise Nietzschean bon mot, and one I take to heart, though-- I suspect-- maybe not in the way you mean it. At any rate, I don't accept the necessity, only the risk.

    And then again, there is indeed a degree of "authoritarianism" that I accept, because I think there is such thing as valid authority. (I don't say this can completely evade the Euthyphro-esque critique of circularity, but this does not prevent me from deferring to authority in practice any more than it kept Socrates piously offering sacrifice to Asclepius).

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  9. Dr Raghu-ji is certainly a content-over-form guy. Matter-over-style. I’m sure he absolutely hates any art we might call Aestheticism, Decadence, Symbolism, Surreal and on and on. He is a meat and potatoes guy. In Plato’s Battle of the Giants versus the Gods, he is most definitely on the side of the Giants. He is a no-nonsense, no-queer-stuff, no spiritual-dancing, hard-thinking tough. Heavy stuff. He would absolutely detest my writing. I find his style delightful, the way I find all he-men posing for the muddle-headed queens of the street.

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  10. Skholiast, thanks for the inclusion of my blog. I will refer to your posts in due course on my blog.

    Before we can discuss this issue, it would help if you clarified what you mean when you ascribe humility or arrogance to someone and what are typically your grounds for such ascriptions.

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  11. Senor Smith is certainly a form-over-content guy. Style-over-Matter. I'm sure he hates any subject we might call, Science, Logic, Logical Positivism, Empiricism, Semantics, Analytical Philosophy, and on and on. He is a dressing and dessert guy. In Plato's Battle of the Giants versus the Queens, he is most definitely on the side of the queens. More-nonsense, more-queer-stuff, more spiritual-dancing, soft-non-thinking, easygoing. He already detests my writing. I find his style seductive, the way I find all muddle-headed queens posing for the she-men of the street.

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  12. "But I note that Socrates starts out (and indeed ends) with claiming not to know anything (except his own ignorance, and also about love)."

    This is not true. He makes all sorts of knowledge-claims, and not merely on the nature of love in the Symposium, including some bizarre ones, throughout the Dialogues.

    The issue concerning humility and arrogance was raised in the context of your reference to Socrates' alleged humility in contrast to the alleged arrogance of "contemporary proponents (of) the canons of logic and empiricism."

    Note that it is a red herring to refer to the alleged arrogance of "proponents of the canons of logic and empiricism" if their arguments are sound.

    It is clear from your reference to Socrates that you understand humility to involve a true confession of ignorance. It would follow that arrogance would be a false declaration or claim of knowledge.

    This shows that ascriptions of humility or arrogance pertain to a confession or acknowledgment of ignorance or a claim of knowledge. This is consistent with the fact that humility and arrogance are character traits or features of behavior in a given context.

    The appeal to a legitimate authority in secular contexts is vastly different from the appeal to authority in religious contexts. In the latter, you have an appeal to the "authority" of "holy" scriptures, priests, saints, "enlightened masters" and such. Belief or "faith" ( that is, blind belief) is the universal currency in these contexts, not knowledge, unless you are talking about knowing that so-and-so claimed such-and-such.
    In these contexts, the requirement of humility is tantamount to the requirement that you submit to religious authority. Since this authority rests on a house of cards, what we have here is a contemptible form of authoritarianism.
    So, yes, in these religious contexts, the appeal to authoritarianism is the worst form of arrogance, particularly given the pretext of, or the pretense to, humility.

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  13. Now Boys (T & G)... if you need to take this outside, please mind your manners until you are out the door. I'm only going to ask once.

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  14. Thill, you are quite right that my original mention of humility did implicate Socratic ignorance. I can see how my later reply might have seemed to move the goal-posts. Sorry about that. Sometimes I only know what I mean when I see what I say. I do in fact think that Socrates' humility is evidenced by his avowal of ignorance. He does posit all sorts of definitions, but is ever ready to revise them (in this revisability he is-- so far-- not so different from Popper or any modern proponent of the scientific method); but he is also never satisfied; in some sense the Socratic quest for the definition is, at the end of the dialogue, exactly where it was at the beginning. And yet-- there's also a progress. So what's been gained? Not (to put it over-simply) positive knowledge, but depth of character.

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  15. Sorry Skholiast, I will continue my ideas over at my own website. You two are having a mighty interesting debate and I will be following it.

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  16. Gary, although you initiated the attack, I don't mind the amusing little verbal tit for tat if it is the first and last. I am sure your contributions to this blog are appreciated.

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  17. Don't misunderstand, Gary-- I do value your comments here and will actually be very pleased if other people want to respond to Thill's (I certainly can't respond to each of them, if his record at Love of All Wisdom is going to be matched here! But perhaps more of his effort will be going into his own blog now.) My remark was meant somewhat in the spirit in which T.E. Lawrence introduced Robert Graves and Ezra Pound. "Graves, Pound; Pound, Graves. You'll dislike each other." Also, I was myself amused at the wit with which you made the initial thrust and the well-wrought parry Thill came up with.

    Also (I dare not predict, but...) I genuinely do think it is more (not to the exclusion of all else, but more) important-- and more philosophically interesting-- that nigh-irreconcilable positions may be held by people who are friends. In the spirit of my post above: It matters how you argue. Irenic Agonism. I only mention this up-front because I am of course aware of the way blog discussions can go off the rails quick. So far this has not happened on SpecCritTrad and I like it that way.

    Having said that, I'll add that I often wind up posting here what would have been a comment elsewhere but just grows too long and unruly. My hope (and assumption) is that people reading here will look to the other blogs in the discussion.

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