> Why would you want to purge them? These are basic human cognitive schema
> (good/bad, life/death, meaningfulness/meaninglessness). You might as well
> try purging gravity.
>
>
> --- On Thu, 11/20/08, Philp Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > This is what I was getting at when I said earlier that the
> > worship of logic
> > and supposed rationality was just as easy as religious
> > worship and had many
> > of the same effects - the footholds are still in place, its
> > simply a
> > question of if people want to use them or not...
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>
>
>
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>
I never said I wanted to purge them, on the contrary. But that's not to say that other people haven't tried. Nietzsche certainly did, Derrida, Heidegger and Sartre tries to go down this path, Althusser tried to do so to an extent in Marxism and Foucault has made the enterprise extremely popular in academia.
All I'm opposed to is a dogmatic approach to the matter, that's why I really like that Hamann quote above. I believe (hehehe) that often people can approach these things in a passionate way and that they shouldn't, they should approach them in the same way as the well-bred girl approachs the love letter.
Another point which deserves to be made: often those who do try and purge these elements end up coming out the other side and being complete dogmatists. Althusser here is a case in point.