They serve as the scientific disguise of philosophy.
Clarity (difficult to achieve in natural language), evidence,
and certainty seem guaranteed in the language of science. In
addition, objectivity and the ever seductive truth, for which
philosophy was never known, are also apparently within reach.
There is to philosophic discourse an internal reason for its
continuous unfolding: People constituting themselves as
philosophers change as the world they live in changes. Human
reasoning is part of the world; the ability and, moreover, the
desire to think of new questions, attempt answers, and doubt our
own ability to reach the right answer are part of what defines
the human being. The consequences of mediation in philosophy
should not be ignored. Mediation implies, on one hand, a high
degree of integration of human praxis (to the extent of making
individual contribution anonymous), and on the other, a no less
high degree of the subject's independence in respect to the
object of work or reasoning, or the object represented by the
other participants in human praxis. While it seems appropriate
for science to know more and more about a narrower range of
subjects, it contradicts the image of philosophy as it is formed
in language and embodied in the ideal of literacy. Due to this
metaphorically defined deepening of knowledge, each philosopher
is more independent of the other, but more intensely integrated
than ever before due to the necessary interconnection of this
knowledge.
Pages:
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754