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| three philosophers |
Re Prof. Huemer's attack on "the history of philosophy" (as he describes it therein; 'Against History') and in particular his (grounds for) saying, "Please don't be an Aristotelian."
As per the previous post I'm transferring over from what is addendum/digression there to main body here:
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Obviously he's not aware, for instance, of state of the art interpretations from the likes of David Charles and Allen Gotthelf that a final cause or telos is irreducible to the other causes and associated with this idea is that the final cause achieves a good (so we're in normative/value-theory territory, not the realm of mechanics, physics, chemistry, or unevaluative(?) biology). And more generally, from the standpoint of a perfectionistic methodology: if we learn nothing else from the history of philosophy, and if we're good learners, we glean from the study of the past greats just what about their thinking styles made them first-rate thinkers with such lasting influence (such as Aristotle has in ethics, specifically with the recently-revived virtue-ethical tradition - duh).
And if we're really perfectionistic we should be able to devise methods by which to reliably and accurately rank-order the great thinkers on a scale of greatness (be it in cardinal or ordinal terms). By any good measurement system Aristotle comes out pretty much well ahead of the competition in virtue of a monumental body of writings (and lost dialogues likened by some of the ancient wisdom-lovers to rivers of gold to Plato's silver).
(By virtue of her identification of the principle of ordinal rankings in terms of teleological measurement, as well as the identifications made throughout the rest of the Ayn Rand Lexicon, does(n't) Rand rank pretty high on the scale of overall philosophical greatness? By parity of reasoning, if indeed Rand along with the other giants of the history of philosophy - all by repute and nearly all in fact first-rate minds - each had their own well-edited and cross-referenced Lexicon demonstrating with great effectiveness what first-rate minds they pretty much all are, wouldn't that increase people's interest in doing philosophy? Huemer seems to short-change this possibility or something, in which case I suggest he get more dialectical/thorough in reasoning through what value things like history of philosophy provide.)
Also, I've explained in my book (namely in the most-important second chapter, 'Aristotelianism') that I'm an Aristotelian in terms of a tradition of thought defined by certain fundamentals but not beholden to all of Aristotle's arguments (as he himself would have wanted it, duh). And fundamental to his very-impressive-results-getting intellectual enterprise was his philosophic method, which the scholar writing about Aristotle in the Oxford Handbook identifies with dialectic.
But the dialectical method should be treated most fundamentally, not merely as a matter of consulting, giving a fair hearing to, etc., the varied learned and reasoned-sounding opinions, weighing them and deciding on a best explanation; it is most fundamentally the art of context-keeping, for which Huemer can consult Sciabarra's Total Freedom, where Aristotle is treated as the fountainhead of this methodological tradition while its being formulated in terms of Sciabarra's art-of-context-keeping fundamentals (and in terms of the proper application of "both-and" reasoning to competing and partial claims to the truth, in addition to the proper "either-or" reasoning involved). So far as I know, no one's presented any good reason to doubt Sciabarra's thesis, not even the ultra-wisdom-loving Prof. Huemer. Also not widely known: for Rand, her concept of mental integration is, well, integral to her concept of context(-keeping). And that is integral to her concept of hierarchy of thought. (A proper approach to hierarchy would help inform us on if-then style hypotheticals that philosophers to pose; what are not just the implications of the if-clause but the presuppositions? Like, "if the Aristotelian end of history as defined in UP's book were to eventuate, then...". Like, for instance, would UP's book have to have been written first? Is it a realistic hypothetical in the first place? That kinda shit you should get stoned and think through very carefully and thoroughly.
Darn it, I lost a certain train of thought here, for which I blame the weed. Oh wait, now I remember: I supersede 'Aristotelian' and 'dialectic' in the sense that I identify my methods in terms of a principle of intellectual perfectionism, which means (among other things) doing the activity of philosophy as close to perfectly as one feasibly can, but also learning a bunch of shit (for which don't ever trust AOCs under 30) and also possibly fanatical attention to (hopefully the most crucially relevant, philosophically essential) detail. Like Aristotle, Aquinas and/or Rand, for instance? (Also, I think with a probability approaching 100% that a Hegel Dictionary of the sort built by, who was it, Solomon in the 1980s perhaps or Houlgate ca. 2000?), might be part of a whole revived "understanding Hegel" effort that may actually pay off for once, but idk. Just call it the Hegel Lexicon and voila, we've got a volume 2 in a much-anticipated-by-me series. I just get a bit of a kick out of inductively identifying tantalizing principles like that one there.)
[Background music/soundtrack to the foregoing: Pink Floyd favorites, a listing of which is available]
