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May 2, 2007
Back to my digging through the electronic archives of the Canadian electronic journal Surfaces. On this occasion up comes Jacques Derrida engaged in a panel discussion on the crisis of humanities and philosophy. This discussion is based on papers previously published in this issue.
In challenging the exclusionary nature of departmental philosophy that is entrenched in Anglo-American philosophy departments--- eg., an analytic philosophy that has little to do with the humanities and defends the opposition between literature and philosophy---Derrida says something that I utterly agree with.
Now this question of the place for philosophy, the topos for philosophy, is a very strange question. For instance, in the German debate between Kant and Hegel, Schelling, about Humboldt - the place of philosophy within the university. As you know, some of you are, like myself, interested in this problem of the conflict of faculties. On the one hand, you have Kant, who says, well, philosophy is and should be a department, a faculty - - the lower one, under the theological, medical, and law school, but at the same time, the only place where we should be absolutely free to say whatever we want, provided that we simply speak directly and don't try to make performatives. You have this view of philosophy, occupying a circumscribed place, however privileged it may be. And then you have Schelling's (I think it's Schelling's) view. He said, well, the university is philosophical through and through. We don't need a department of philosophy; philosophy is everywhere.
It may have been Schelling but this conception of philosophy runs through Hegel as well as well as Nietzsche.
Derrida continues:
So is it a choice between two logics? Is it a choice? I would say no. Philosophy must be everywhere, is everywhere - not only in the university, but on the radio, within the speeches of the politicians, and so on and so forth. It is everywhere. It is everywhere in the academy. There is philosophy at work in literature, in physics, and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, in addition to that, we should have a specialized training, professional training for philosophy. Otherwise, this, philosophy everywhere, could become a terrible dogmatic weapon. So that's a paradox in the topology of the discipline.
Philosophy is everywhere, but it requires professional/specialized training to be able to practice it. This open conception of philosophy is one that understands philosophy to be part of the humanities. However, this training or education is difficult to acquire, given the entrenched power of the sciences and technology in the corporate university that is run as a business.
The humanities have their roots in romanticism and in the self-questioning, self-critical, auto-critical enterprise, attempting to point out presuppositions, metaphysical assumptions of romanticism exemplified by Nietzsche. The humanities remains a subject of contest and a subject of reinterpretation. The older understanding of the humanities--- their central axis as it were---was been a notion of culture as the synthesizing of symbolic life into something that can be both an object of study and a process to be taught-- has disintegrated.
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Must admit this is the first time have had a serious look here, although have been meaning to for some time. Am well and truly challenged.
"Public Opinion" refers itself to this space for investigation concerning epistomological, ontological, metaphysical issues that enable a continuance of the discourse back there. This can work for those who are intrigued further and have at least some basic understanding of the underlying metalanguages of political conversation that relate to the structure of many of the propositions offered by yourself and contributors there.
Could you elaborate on your final paragraph, commencing:
"The humanities have their roots in romanticism..."
and finishing:
"...have disintigrated"?
Aren't the humanities a language one learns through effort that enables discourse on the world that is palpably necessary for survival as well as being an enjoyable part of life.
I think Kant apparently maintains that, in effect, we cannot by the preconditions and conditions of our nature, reality and life, understand and live it necessarily to the ultimate. But I thought he was offering this asessment itself as a tonic or warning that might enable a less conceited and more realistic aproach to seeking, being and investigating.
OK, I'm a novice at this sort of thing. Hope you will feel a little tolerance and offer a way out for me.