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The author's conception of philosophy seems to be heavily biased towards Western analytic philosophy whose pretension towards logically underpinning sciences an
by nihils 11y ago
The author's conception of philosophy seems to be heavily biased towards Western analytic philosophy whose pretension towards logically underpinning sciences and reliance on formal methods means that is more of a theoretical computer science or physics. Plenty of Continental philosophy: post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, and non-Western philosophy (such as decolonial thought) speaks to and about daily life.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoMaybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't see post-structuralism or deconstruction as having all that much to say about daily life. (Almost) nobody actually lives that way. That is, when you go out for a beer with your friends, you talk to them as if humans can actually communicate, and as if the message sent will be (approximately) the message received.
- VLM 11y agoWRT post-structuralism, consider the stereotypical interdepartmental procedure coordination meeting, not beer with buddies.
- steveklabnik 11y agoI go out for a beer with my friends and talk to them about post-structuralism. ;)
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoSure. But you probably don't deconstruct what they say during the conversation (except for example or for entertainment).
- steveklabnik 11y agoThat's true. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't have an _impact_ on daily life. In other words, descontruction, specifically, is an analysis technique. The outcome of doing said analysis is separate from doing the analysis.
- nihils 11y agoThis is a fair point, in the that conventional definition of post-structuralism as representation being bound to an interpretative context can be difficult see in daily life. However, such a view's application in Foucault's work I see manifest in my life all the time. For example, the concept of governmentality explains how we come to internalize the mandates of the state or capitalist power structure to say obey traffic laws (even when a cop is not there to observe and violating the law would not lead to harm). I should augment my list to say critical theory and Marxism as well. Such schools could explain a great deal about increasing income inequality, patent law, the insufficiency of 'nation' as a unit of analysis in a globalized economy...
- thescribe 11y agoI thought that continental philosophy was having the same if not a harder time staying relevant?
- maldusiecle 11y agoIt depends who you ask. Anglo-American philosophy departments tend to stay pretty far away from it, but it has a decent-sized popular audience--and literary studies, art criticism, and related disciplines often draw pretty heavily from it.