Quote:
Originally Posted by Lloyd Gillespie  Wisdom is intuitive reason combined with scientific knowledge." Aristotle
"First principles are products of intuitive reason." Aristotle
I think you may find what is missing isn't really missing at all___it's just been thrown out by the post-moderns, pragmatists, and analyticists. It's been there all along___it's simply the sensible employment of intuition. All the older philosophies included some form of such intuition, it's only the purified/unpurified newer ideas that are at fault. We must return again to the beginning and build anew on the old foundations. All foundations must include the absolute middle ground of intuitive reason and logic___or plain old metaphysics and ethics. IMO Aristotle's are the best in this area. Here's a short description of the era and his most important ideas; http://www.interlog.com/~girbe/ethics6.html
regards
P.S.
Just as a short example I include this; "Demonstrable truths, and every kind of scientific knowledge (because this involves reasoning), depend upon first principles. It follows that the first principles of scientific truths cannot be grasped either by science or by art or by prudence. Nor are these first principles the objects of philosophic wisdom. If, then, the states of mind by which we have truth and are never deceived about things invariable or even variable are scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and intuitive reason, and it cannot be any of the three (i.e. practical wisdom, scientific knowledge, or philosophic wisdom), the remaining alternative is that it is intuitive reason that grasps the first principles."
Until we get this back in our heads, once again, we are dead in the water___intuition rules...! |
LLoyd, thank you again. I must set forth here that I also appreciate the previous one liner post, "Absurd, illogical simplicity, taken too far, is imbecility.."
I have yet to understand the insistent need for the concepts of absurdity, the illogical, and simplicity when it comes to understanding those things philosophy is meant to bring down to earh in such a way as to establish the foundations which describe, mould and imbibe a society with meaning, purpose, and a sense of conduct. In the history of "society" is where, so far, I have found this need, as though to teach the need for a low threshhold with an imperative to paying attention to it. You see these terms have no objectivity. They are clouded by the comparison value of what isn't absurd, illogical, or simple to be treated and used in the negative as an alibi to justify their necessity--The round robin effect to justify throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
And you are absolutely right about those who so acted to erode, destroy, and dilute the founding principles. Apparently their interest in consistency in the present required them to destroy (and thus redefine by re-interpretation and re-writing of histories) the natural, intuitive, and well established knowledge of the concept and meaning of consistency. Much of this involves one of those things we don't talk about at social parties: politics. Though this is much accepted in the ways of establishing order in the disorderly, it also is well understood of it's potential for corruption, and, how more often, if not entirely, throughout history it fell victim to the latter.
J.J. Rouseau, author of The Social Contract, was well aware of this even in this well known work which was published in 1746. Many remain unware it was a response to another writer who previously asserted how some people are leaders and some followers, as though born into a caste. Obvously this would be the well popular view to those feudal lords of the time. We sometimes overlook and take undue advantage of the freedom we enjoy in postulating and shaping a free socieity, one where those from any part of the spectrum of peoples could own property.
Benjamin Franklin even wrote of the great hypocrisy of not including the slaves, not freeing them, in a 1789 letter to President Washington, whose response was primarily, "....[T]he issue was to not lose the south, for now." Pholosphers they all were, almost all able to speak Greek, Latin, some even Aramaic, as well as English and a few other languages. Jefferson's library became our Congressional library after the British destroyed our original. Understand this history please, it is a history that says some founding pinciples lead to an uprising, a rebellion of a people to the entire societal idea of feudalism, to a caste system, and the pholosophies that made it so, philosophies that were behind this maintenance of servitudes, including keeping the serf knowing only what they are told, a servitude of knowldege to maintain a lack of ideology. Can you see the threat these founding principles and their knowledge continue to provide today? Feudalism as a societal model is dead, however the fine line between a feudal lordship and a dictator who acts according to tribal values to destroy their own contrymen in the name of "purification," (e.g Saddam Hussein, Darphur, and other African Nations.) unless those decreed the lesser by their dicatator submit to servitude. This caste principle, this remanant of a darker time, remains intact, and yes, it's a philosophy for this societal model due to those intellectuals of these last 200+ years in free societies focusing on identifying enemies who generally represent the pinnacle of man's accomplishment to cast stones at versus work on promoting those things that lead to the masses knowing the freedom that Crowns and other dictators enjoyed at the expense of the masses in those darker ages and before. Look at the foundations from this perspective and you'll see their purpose was to lead to a greater freedom for man through understanding what things mean intuitively, naturally.
Apologize for the lengthy post. I got going and just, well, to me it needed to be said. Apologize too for grammaticals.
One last consideration, I am sure the slide rule and calculus were invented after the existence of the planet and all of what is upon it. Certain I am that mathematics can be a tool to help explain and express things, however, always from the perspective of the respective mathematician. So too with these concepts of doubt of mankind's ability: Absurdity and illogical simplicity. We need to know what we can do, not what we can't or what is wrong with what we do, or that there is someone who can tell us we are wrong at every turn. Freedom came from pholsophy, isn't it time philosophers looked to grow freedom from what it means instead of evaluating everything for what it "intends to imply should a and b continue without the couse of d which is effected by c, although it is only an impending possitibility that is highly unlikely and e will remain stable?" :P
Posted in the interest of this site, and not to elicit or otherwise argue whatsoever, however feel free should any feel so strongly the necessity to do so, though I will not provide a rebuttal, for binary oppoition formulations in lineal precessions have no useful purpose so far as I have found.
Cheers
Re: Identifying the Branches of Philosophy -
01-07-2007, 08:11 PM
Linear Mode
