Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 08:14:55 -0400
Subject: Just Do Philosophy


Jim wrote:

>The point I was trying to make, not to you, but to ALL,  is simply that
>characterizing the position in question in those terms does not
>philosophically engage the position. Now, by the very same token, if
>you should raise a philosophical issue about H's views on human Being,
>and someone kept insisting that if you don't know the German word
>"Sein," or "Da," of "Zwischen," etc., then you don't/can't  understand
>H's views, then they also would not be engaging the philosophical issue
>at hand (there are, of course, some questions which relate to the
>intricacies of German). In any case, the issue is not philosophical
>BECAUSE Heidegger raised it. H was possessed by the problem
>because it is philosophical. Philosophy is not the possession of some
>small collection of thinkers, nor is it the possession of any one
language,
>whatever that means.

One problem with this is that a great deal of what passes on this list is
not philosophy at all, but Heidegger scholarship.   And that is surely
fine.   THe problem seems to lie in thinking that this scholarship is
philosophy.   Surely, part of what it is to do philosophy well is to write
well in the language one is engaging in.   And this surely means presenting
one's case in  seamless English with as few technicalities as possible
rather than in  what comes across as neither English nor German.   Is there
good philosophy in bad English besplattered with neologisms, hyphenated
terms, and an assortment of German expressions?    Scholasticism does
belong to contemporary philosophy, but letting it show is not only bad
manners but placing technology before thought.    And just as Linguistic
Analysis was anything but Wittgenstein, so scholasticism is anything but
Heidegger.

Daniel McGrady



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