Philosophy Now Forum

Mikhail Epstein feels that philosophy is not only thinking.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/101/Phi ... l_Feelings

There are many points I could make on this since it has been a central concern of mine since I have started to focus more on philosophy: that of defending it from a complete takeover by the analytic factions of philosophy (those who, out of a self conscious guilt and inferiority complex in the face of science, would prefer to reduce it to little more than lip service to science) and defending its more poetic aspects as that which defines and distinguishes philosophy as a discipline and is, in my opinion, its reason to be. And Epstein’s article typifies the import of Philosophy Now’s project and it’s openness to more continental approaches.

First of all, Russell rightly recognizes that philosophy lies in that no-man’s land between science and theology. But we live in a different situation and time than Russell did. Therefore, I would revise his statement to:

“Philosophy lies in that no-man’s land between science and literature.”

Some may shrink at the thought of philosophy being a form of literature, or having anything to do with fiction. But I take it as a point of pride. Take, for instance, Baudrillard. Now most of those who are open to him accept the description of him as a Sci Fi writer who happens to be writing philosophy. Furthermore, we all know that there is no empirically describable entity we can point to as the Simulacrum. Still, if we open ourselves to the suspension of disbelief and apply it as a perspective, we get a lot of interesting understandings of how our world may well be working: the way that media buries us in a frenzy of appearances and thereby leaves us powerless against the status quo that owns the media –a kind modern day Land of the Lotos Eaters as Tennyson described it. And we can say as much for Sartre’s being-for-itself and being-in-itself, Deleuze’s difference and repetition, and any number of concepts produced by more continental approaches. And if there is a flaw in the continental approach, it comes more from its analytic detractors than its practitioners in that the detractors base their argument against it on taking it too literally, on the questionable assumption that philosophy should only be seeking The Truth rather than truths or understanding.

The thing to consider here is the role that resonance and seduction (lyrical philosophy) plays in all this, whether we want it to or not. We build our arguments on facts, data (formal and informal), beliefs, and shared assumptions in the hope that it will win the other over: in other words, resonate and seduce. And we build our process on what resonates with and seduces us. We start with certain sensibilities and build from there.

Of course, those who lean towards the more scientific side of the spectrum between science and literature will scoff at this. They believe (and believe because they want to) that they have found a path that bypasses resonance and seduction –hence the smug dismissal of more continental approaches. But isn’t it possible that resonance and seduction had everything to do with their choice to do so? Isn’t it possible that their choice to defer to the rigor of science, logic, or mathematics was more about a dispositional (and anal) aversion to chaos than a rational decision to choose reason over feeling?