> ravi wrote:
>
>> i see value in someone (pretty assured
>>to be in the minority) playing the contrarian, keeping alternative
>>theses, even weaker ones, alive
>>
>
> You offer a perfect description and defense of Alex Cockburn -- who
> shows the logical extension of taking in isolation Marx's demand for the
> ruthless criticism of all that exists. What that quote, in isolation,
> asks for is the kind of attitude Hugh Kenner thought he detected in
> Wyndham Lewis who, Kenner suggested, occupied a machine-gun nest in
> no-man's land, firing away in all directions. It is the essence of
> individualism: not truth but originality, "independent thinking," is the
> object of the intellect.
>
but i did not suggest "ruthless" criticism and its not originality that i find valuable over truth, but the notion that "truth is a very slippery thing" over the notion that "i have exclusive access to truth". my point assumes of course that for the moment we have joined hands towards a somewhat unambiguous if perhaps short-term goal of some sort.
no doubt i have jumped into the middle of a conversation here without tracing the origin (and my apologies for that). i am not defending some person who chooses to attack every idea in sight. i am proposing that it is valuable to keep ideas, especially weaker ones, and alternatives alive, on our way towards some common goal (increasing knowledge, gaining equality, etc). since i may be speaking tangential to the main thread here, i will keep this explication short!
Carl Remick wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> ravi wrote:
>
> a valuable point, i would agree. but is there anything wrong or
> valuless with that stance? i see value in someone (pretty assured
> to be in the minority) playing the contrarian, keeping alternative
> theses, even weaker ones, alive (jks might detect the pkf
> influence in this view).
>
> Not to mention the Old Man, with his call for the ruthless criticism
> of all that exists.
>
> Like everything else, useful disputatiousness can yield diminishing
> marginal returns and become counterproductive when carried to merely
> peevish extremes.
>
but this begs the question regarding the terms "useful" and "peevish". it is our inability to beforehand know what is useful, and our lack of a universal objective viewpoint which helps determine what is "useful", that suggest that all viewpoints should be kept alive.
gordon fitch pointed out that ruthless criticism of the idea of ruthless criticism itself should result. and why not? since there are no hard conclusions that one can reach (or so it seems to me, since human affairs is not an exact science), let that position too enter the fray. but also, may i use a russell theory of types like device
to escape this self reference? i am only talking about particular view points about particular concrete situations, not general theories about ideas and method... that doesn's sound convincing even to me, but i hope thats because of my poor choice of words!
--ravi