Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Magically Hollow
One of Plato’s most successful strategems was the redefinition of presupposed virtues. Courage and justice, for instance, were words that people commonly used and understood in a shared and synchronized context. Plato presumed that the words represented something real but rejected their common use on the grounds that no one could give him a universal definition free from example. That left him with hollow terms into which he could introduce his own reality. Plato should have been called a magician, not a philosopher. For the foundation of Western metaphysics was a sleight of hand.
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8 comments:
He's a teacher... you've got to read more indept missy! No gold star.
How is phenomenology not part of metaphysics? Bah metaphysics, you know I'm a fan of eastern philosophy! Now I'm arguing with myself over this. Taoism vs. Metaphysics: Fight Night Live tonight at 7...
Nim, are you asking for spam?
Only if it's porno spam.
I read the thing about what he did but I forgot...my short-term memory is a casualty of my youth.
I'm not sending porno spam... Subscription only I'm afraid. Can't go giving away freebies... anyway - back to the discussion!
Metaphysics is rarely well defined. It's a highly disputed subject. Some people, myself included, think it's a hoax. The easiest way to understand it is to think of its Greek meaning: 'after physics.' It's a name given to the work by Aristotle that followed his work on physics. Now, physics comes from 'physis,' which means "nature," which in turn comes from the verb 'phuein," which means "to bring forth, beget, produce (as in reproduce)." The world of nature, so to speak, is a world in which things are born and things die. Each of us, as mortal creatures, is part of this world. On the other hand, there is something unchanging about things that are born and things that die. There is an ultimate reality about being human, or about being a dog, or about being an herb. Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate essence of things. The subject, though, comes to be dominated by universal morality as the ultimate dictator of how humans ought to live and then God (or something similar) as the ultimte essence of everything. To keep it simple in your mind, though, metaphysics embraces anything that is of an unchanging or eternal nature vs. those things that live and die. Again, it is arguable that there is something both mortal and eternal about each of us, and those two aspects represent our physical and our metaphysical selves. Think of the Greek meanings of the words. To me everything becomes understandable if you trace it back to its origins.
I'm anxious to pursue your remarks on phenomenology, but I want to see your defnition of the word first.
How do you plan to yank me out of my anonymity. Unless you are a publisher or know one, I don't see how you can do that. Even if I were to give more of my life story than I gave previously, I would remain anomymous. Letting a couple people online know who I am doesn't change that. I would add that I am sharing thoughts here that people who see me every day have no idea are in my head. In that regard I am less anonymous to you.
I appreciate the offer to chat via email. This forum seems sufficient to me, however. I should think that I could answer your many questions here.
'Meta' more successfully means 'beyond' in Greek rather than 'after' and 'physics' (as you've already stated) equals 'nature'. This more successfully targets what metaphysics was all about.
I know a publisher but I'm really not that bothered about tracing anyone.
Phenomenology has several definitions but we're talking philosophical here and even then you have a whole evolutionary use of the term; existential and transcendental (respectively). I'm not a philosopher though so I will accept that I may be wrong.
'Beyond' gives it a more philosophical meaning, but I'm afraid in its dull, literal sense (where I think knowledge is usually to be found), the preposition 'meta' simply means 'after' (I'm a classicist by trade), and 'metaphysics' is the subject that comes 'after physics.' Again, it is also important to understand what nature is to the ancient Greeks. It will perhaps help to know that the word 'nature' itself is Latin, and its root is the word that means 'to be born.' The natural world is that which is subject to birth and death. What comes after that? The study of those things that are 'essential' ('to be' in Latin is 'esse'), that is have an essence that is not subject to birth and death. The word 'ontology,' by the way, comes from the Greek participle 'on,' which means 'being.'
P.S. I want to see what Nimiwey's definition of phenomenology is before I remark on that. If we each have an idea of what it is, maybe we can help each other out with it. I'm not positive it means anything at all.
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