Conversation

If you classify western philosophers by what they led with, I think it is: Epistemology-first: Spinoza, Descartes, Hume, Kant Ontology-first: Hegel, Marx, Heidegger Phenomenology-first: Nietzche, Husserl, Arendt Treating these as stocks I think E is down, O is up, P is up a lot
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Admittedly this is a Wikipedia level pattern spotting. I’m sure they all spilled across all 3 But point is, we talk of an “epistemic crisis” but our philosophical response in terms of renewed interest in ideas suggests it is a P-crisis first, O-crisis second, E-crisis last
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In other words, we are re-examining, in order of priority: - How to be in and experience the world - How to recategorize and rearrange our experience of being - How to know about the world through this renewed being
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Heh, applying the cultural history template to philosophy 1. Choiceless: Hot-take era (Greeks) 2. Counterculture: Spinoza to Hume (early Modern) 3. Subcultural: 1800 - 1945 4. Atomized: Wittgenstein and after 5. Fluid: Post-digital/software eats philosophy
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A general, and somewhat valid critique of analytic philosophy (see paul graham rant for example) is that it is arid language games. But I suspect it was a necessary period of refactoring of the relatively careless thought of the subcultural period.
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I'm reluctant to classify the postmodernists and beyond on the continental side "philosophers" per se. They were a parallel reaction to the sloppiness of the 19th century, operating at the level of language, but with considering the logic of power rather than the logic of logic.
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If there is to be a fluid, multitemporal philosophy, it will need to up-end the stacking order of classical western philosophy. Instead of phenomenology --> epistemology --> ontology, it will be reverse. Think constructionism with phenomenology as last rather than first step.
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Why? Take your typical early modern philosopher -- supposedly observing the "real world" and advising kings and scientists about its true nature, and the the true meaning of their behaviors. Post-modern philosophers: advising VR world designers about fake-world design
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You see a curiously parallel evolutionary path in Indian philosophy, but it pretty much gets abruptly cut off around Madhva (1238-1317), roughly coinciding with the Islamic takeover. His thought roughly rhymes with that of Leibniz in the Western tradition.
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There's probably at least an n=2 generalization here about the phylogeny of philosophical inquiry (which is often recapitulated by the ontogeny of an individual path of inquiry).
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Constructionism is a bad word for what it purports to describe. It suggests brick-by-brick arbitrariness. No, it's more like "directed evolution" in the sense of world-building, where you define some pieces and evolutionary rules, and hit "go".
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If your constructed philosophy manages to persist forever -- an infinite game API, you get an A+. If it can survive long enough to sustain the life of a multigenerational community, it gets a B. A single individual, a C. A single individual for >10y, D. Failure <10y = F.
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