Philosophy 101 #1 – Philosophy is Not Doctrinal

We cannot learn philosophy;  for where is it, who is in possession of it, and how shall we recognize it? We can only learn to philosophize.
– Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781), A838/B866
I thought it would be a good idea to run a series of posts entitled ‘Philosophy 101′ – posts which are short [...]

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On the Modernity/Post-Modernity Distinction

About two hundred years ago, the idea that truth was made rather than found began to take hold of the imagination of Europe.
– Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p.3
Modernity is often characterized as arrogant atheists asserting the autonomous and apodictic authority of reason. Post-Modernity is often characterized as lily-livered liberals playing loosey-goosey with [...]

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Sydney University Summer School 2010

In January-February 2010 I am going to be delivering some lectures for a philosophy course being offered at Sydney University Summer School. The course is a first-year introductory subject called ‘Reality, Ethics, and Beauty’. I will be teaching the ‘Beauty’ component of the course, presenting 8 lectures on aesthetics and the philosophy of art.
If you [...]

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Know Thyself

 
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1938)
 
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
– Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
 
Humanity never achieves a clear knowledge of itself unless it has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating Him [...]

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Kant on Human Evil

 
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
– Immanuel Kant
I am always surprised by this quote. Kant is renowned for his monumental attempt to elucidate the proper functioning of human reason, his insistence that such reason could guide human ethics and government, his rigorous and comprehensive philosophical defense of freedom, and his great [...]

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Reflexivity: The ‘Essence’ of Philosophy?

Positing that any one idea, aim, method or habit is the essence of philosophy will never be a popular move. Philosophers are particularly capable of pointing out the exceptions to the rule, and resisting generalisations. But one of the more promising suggestions I have heard which I am currently entertaining is that reflexivity is the [...]

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Christianity as Comprehensive Cultural Tribunal?

Once conversation replaces confrontation, the notion of the mind as the Mirror of Nature can be discarded. Then the notion of philosophy as the discipline which looks for privileged representations among those constituting the Mirror becomes unintelligible. A thoroughgoing holism has no place for the notion of philosophy as ‘conceptual’, as ‘apodictic’, as picking out [...]

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