As per my previous post on the enormous difficulties one necessarily has, in writing within a context of cultural anomie, I'd like to address a related issue.
This second issue concerns intellectual paradigms, and the difficulty one necessarily has in figuring out their presuppositions. For, it is the rarest thing in the world for the writer of a paradigm to announce (that is, self-reflexively) the very presuppositions of their own paradigm. The reason for this is that the premises on which any paradigm is based cannot be taken to be artificial or arbitrarily imposed. Much rather, they need to pass as "common sense". Otherwise the whole value of the paradigm is in doubt, in terms of its ability to point us to a deeper level of truth.
So it is that one must do a lot of intellectual sleuthing in order to try to find out the hidden premises, (those unstated presuppositions about the world) without which the paradigm would not be effective as a means for interpreting reality.
One way to find these out is to approach the paradigm with one's own particular version of "common sense", and then wait to see what produces a sense of dissonance. This dissonance does not imply anything about premises being right or wrong, but rather suggests the presence in the paradigm of presuppositions that one experiences as alien.
Let me demonstrate how this works. Let me consider, for example, the intellectual presuppositions of Freud.
The aspect of Freud's work that produces dissonance most within my mind is that which seems to be a wholly uncritical positive regard for the status quo. To depart from acquiescence to the status quo, indeed, to become critical of the status quo, marks one in Freudian terms as a "discontent". This is Freud's "polite" way of saying that one is starkraving balmy. Yet to accept anything -- including and up to the status quo -- in an uncritical way is not the mark of an intellectual. So what is going on here?
Mike has clarified the issue for m, yesterday, with his suggestion that the intellectual anchor for Freudianism is actually a particular appropriation of Darwinism. This particular appropriation lends itself to the idea that those who define the status quo are the healthy members of society (and thus, on the basis of this implicitly Darwinist argument) guaranteed to be sane. Conversely, those who do not adopt the standards defined by status quo are those who are less fit to survive. If this is so, then we can say that Freud has high estimations of the value of the status quo on the basis of a certain appropriation of Darwinist theory. (In other words, he is not uncritical of the status quo at all, but rather positively applauds it.)
Once one has discovered what seems to the intellectual anchor -- the hidden presupposition -- of any particular paradigm, one understands what it is capable of doing, or not doing, as a whole.
Freudianism does not lend itself well to making a radical critique, simply because it is a core part of this paradigm to affirm the value of the status quo.
Some paradigms have inherently different capabilities, and should be able to do some tasks better than other ones can.
This second issue concerns intellectual paradigms, and the difficulty one necessarily has in figuring out their presuppositions. For, it is the rarest thing in the world for the writer of a paradigm to announce (that is, self-reflexively) the very presuppositions of their own paradigm. The reason for this is that the premises on which any paradigm is based cannot be taken to be artificial or arbitrarily imposed. Much rather, they need to pass as "common sense". Otherwise the whole value of the paradigm is in doubt, in terms of its ability to point us to a deeper level of truth.
So it is that one must do a lot of intellectual sleuthing in order to try to find out the hidden premises, (those unstated presuppositions about the world) without which the paradigm would not be effective as a means for interpreting reality.
One way to find these out is to approach the paradigm with one's own particular version of "common sense", and then wait to see what produces a sense of dissonance. This dissonance does not imply anything about premises being right or wrong, but rather suggests the presence in the paradigm of presuppositions that one experiences as alien.
Let me demonstrate how this works. Let me consider, for example, the intellectual presuppositions of Freud.
The aspect of Freud's work that produces dissonance most within my mind is that which seems to be a wholly uncritical positive regard for the status quo. To depart from acquiescence to the status quo, indeed, to become critical of the status quo, marks one in Freudian terms as a "discontent". This is Freud's "polite" way of saying that one is starkraving balmy. Yet to accept anything -- including and up to the status quo -- in an uncritical way is not the mark of an intellectual. So what is going on here?
Mike has clarified the issue for m, yesterday, with his suggestion that the intellectual anchor for Freudianism is actually a particular appropriation of Darwinism. This particular appropriation lends itself to the idea that those who define the status quo are the healthy members of society (and thus, on the basis of this implicitly Darwinist argument) guaranteed to be sane. Conversely, those who do not adopt the standards defined by status quo are those who are less fit to survive. If this is so, then we can say that Freud has high estimations of the value of the status quo on the basis of a certain appropriation of Darwinist theory. (In other words, he is not uncritical of the status quo at all, but rather positively applauds it.)
Once one has discovered what seems to the intellectual anchor -- the hidden presupposition -- of any particular paradigm, one understands what it is capable of doing, or not doing, as a whole.
Freudianism does not lend itself well to making a radical critique, simply because it is a core part of this paradigm to affirm the value of the status quo.
Some paradigms have inherently different capabilities, and should be able to do some tasks better than other ones can.
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