Eubulides wrote:
> Yes, but really! Aristotle has been demonstrated to be immensely erroneous
> on matters of metaphysics, biology, anatomy, ethics, politics, astronomy,
> logic, the list goes on --and thinkers in Egypt, India and elsewhere were
> every bit as deep earlier and in the same epoch as he. And no doubt JD
> will be shown to be erroneous as well, as will Einstein, Darwin, Watson &
> Crick, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Rawls, Arrow, Keynes etc.........What's up with
> the quest for epistemic finality anyway.................
>
>
>
> Don't confuse the limitations of an obit. writer with the limitations of
> the person they're writing about.........
>
>
I don't know if "erroneous" is a word I'd use in relaltion to Aristotle. He inhabited a reality vastly different from ours. For all his interest in empirical things, Aristotle was ultimately a dualist, i.e. he believed that being was comprised of two fundamentally different substances, matter and form. As a monist-naturalist-athiest, I of course think that Artistotle's philosophical standpoint was, in the end, "erronious." I agree with Marx that much of classical Western philosophy is at bottom "esoteric religion," a religion that worships "Reason" as opposed to a personal god. Marx applied this characterization to Hegel as well. But this never prevented him from appreciating Hegel's towering greatness as a thinker... or that of Aristotle. Marx argued that, even within the framework of religious alienation, these philosophers developed both incomparably valuable ways of thinking about reality, as well as insight into its contents.
I don't necessarily seek "epistemic finality" in a thinker. I do, however, look for a little content. And, from my admittedly second-hand view of Derrida and other pomos, they, like the notion of the middle class, seem a trifle content-challenged. I think I, like many others, decide whether to acquaint myself with the writings of an unfamiliar thinker by first reading reviews and critical essaays to determine if s/he is worth pursuing. I haven't read many postmodernists. But no commentator I've ever read would make me want to pursue them.The only idea anyone ever attributes to them is relativism--the assertion that any given theoretical framework is no better suited than any other for apprehending reality. They seem to be asserting that reality, if it exists, is inherently unknowable, although they also tend, if pressed, to deny that they are saying this. So what are they saying? I invite any Derrida fans out there to summerize, in theiri own words, at least one major concept of his, apart from what I and the NYT obit have already said.
I don't think it was Chris Doss who likened Derrida to Aristotle, but I've lost that particular thread. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20041029/85f944f4/attachment.htm>