Skepticism of Philosophical Thought
From Huben's Wiki
(Created page with "Published on: December 16, 1998 Innumerable people naively and indiscriminately turn to philosophy in their search for truth. I've long thought that such writings were like a...") |
|||
| Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
In his rather direct Australian fashion, Stove puts it baldly: | In his rather direct Australian fashion, Stove puts it baldly: | ||
| − | "From an Enlightenment or Positivist point of view, which is Hume's point of view, and mine, there is simply no avoiding the conclusion that the human race is mad. There are scarcely any human beings who do not have some lunatic beliefs or other to which they attach great importance. People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx." | + | |
| + | :"From an Enlightenment or Positivist point of view, which is Hume's point of view, and mine, there is simply no avoiding the conclusion that the human race is mad. There are scarcely any human beings who do not have some lunatic beliefs or other to which they attach great importance. People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx." | ||
| + | |||
And after some truly dreadful examples, he tops that with: | And after some truly dreadful examples, he tops that with: | ||
| − | "But no! Let us, for pity's sake, as well as for horror's sake, draw a veil... But let us never forget, either, as ''all conventional history of philosophy conspires to make us forget'', what the 'great thinkers' ''really'' are: proper objects, indeed, of pity, but even more, of horror." | + | |
| + | :"But no! Let us, for pity's sake, as well as for horror's sake, draw a veil... But let us never forget, either, as ''all conventional history of philosophy conspires to make us forget'', what the 'great thinkers' ''really'' are: proper objects, indeed, of pity, but even more, of horror." | ||
| + | |||
That's the introduction which justifies the need for the main point of Stove's argument: that while it is obvious that much thought has gone wrong, there is no good way of identifying it by specific syndromes. Stove calls for a NOSOLOGY, a classification of diseases, for thought. The classical fallacies of logic and argument are insufficient. As an example, he lists: | That's the introduction which justifies the need for the main point of Stove's argument: that while it is obvious that much thought has gone wrong, there is no good way of identifying it by specific syndromes. Stove calls for a NOSOLOGY, a classification of diseases, for thought. The classical fallacies of logic and argument are insufficient. As an example, he lists: | ||
<br> | <br> | ||
