22/10/2024
Our lecture for this week is on meta-philosophy and being delivered by the brilliant Leonard Harris visiting from Purdue University. Abstract below 👇
Philosophy does not have a nature. All claims to the contrary are claims that belie a normative judgement – they are asserting what they want to be its nature. There is no ‘it’ hiding beneath language and consciousness waiting to be discovered and revealed through pure logic, creative reasoning or revelation. The word ‘philosophy’ has many contrary meanings spanning numerous languages and the practice of ‘philosophy as a way to life has equally as many contrary practices, from medicative self-absorption to active communal debate. Philosophers have been racist, sexist, autocratic, thieves, egomaniacs and sadist as well as benevolent monks and pious Communitarians. What, then, is philosophy? The question itself misleads.
I will offer a normative claim, openly, regarding what the nature of philosophy should be. It is not a discovery but an assertion: I contend, as a normative claim, that genuine philosophy is Philosophia nata ex conatu(philosophy as, and sourced by, strife, tenaciousness, organisms striving), ex intellectualis certamen cm sit (the result of intellectual struggle with real corporal existence), always inclusive of undue duress. Philosophies born of struggle, I contend, should include corporeality of health and avowed valuations – whether regarding epistemic, metaphysical or aesthetic claims they should always seek to admit their background assumptions, up front.
