Prof. Tim Heysse
Jason Harley is a TA
The grade will be split between assignments and the exam;
Analytical philosophy tends to deal with ‘trivial’ things - ‘is the moon in a fairy-tale and the moon in science the same thing’ ∨ ‘what does it mean to speak of the present king of France’ - but this is a piece-meal approach which ultimately shows some (implicit) encompassing views.
The method of analytic philosophy is used by people on all sides of the aisle. Some will say it’s ‘ideologically neutral’ - in practice, it’s simply ‘ideologically inclusive’ (according to prof.)
The tradition ultimately comes out of the work of Frege, Moore, and Russell, and uses an ‘analytical method.’
Around the last quarter of the 20th century, humans get the ambition and self-assuredness to take their life into their own hands, and improve it themselves - [the age of mass politics?]
The 20th century is the rise and fall of modernism.
The Vienna parliament (or whatever) is incredibly ornate, and, in a sense, hides behind its facade; it is also a facade for an autocratic regime.
The modernist houses just keep getting more and more stripped down of their decorations.
One of the common threads of modernism is that renewal was good.
new = good.
Another is the opposition between collective and individual.
Finally, media and language. [LINGUISTIC TURN??????]
Evidently, all of this also reflects onto politics;
Wittgenstein was passionate about film.
The modernists were also kind of an avant-garde.
Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro pound was referencing a print by the Japanese print-maker Suzuki Harunobu, Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at Night - he knew the tradition, and while his poetry was unorthodox, it is still situated in relation to it.
Edouard Manet’s dejeuner sur l’herbe calls back to the judgement of paris;
Modernists do want to renew, and create a better painting, architecture, society, … , but one can only do this when they know their stuff.
The prof’s summary is - modernism = renewal of X through a better knowledge/understanding of X
Should a building be a facade, overloaded with decoration? Or should it be comfortable for living, and using?
Should poetry use academic, abstract language that is inaccessible to the masses, or vice-versa?
According to Sellars, philosophy aims to break out of discourse to an arche beyond discourse; this is related to the analytical philosophy’s pursuit of the renewal of philosophy after the rise of modern natural science.
In that sense, natural science does seem to break out of discourse; even if not really so.
According to Skorupski, modern science is what creates the problem of naturalism; you can reconcile it by admitting humans are part of nature, while still holding the idea that humans can have knowledge.
On the other hand, one can also say that, if humans truly are merely part of nature, then we cannot have knowledge (Kantian phenomenology/noumenology distinction).
To fix that, we can deem knowledge normative, and simply ‘tend towards’ it. [Absolute Spirit?]
How do we reach an arche beyond discourse?
2 parts to the course: modernist analytical philosophy, and criticism thereof.