[PEN-L:2540] Re: Dennis re Butler

[Colin Danby <danbyc@xxxxxxx>]

In response to Paul Meyer.

1. The divide betweem continental phil and the anglo-american
tradition has been widening for, what, almost 200 years.  At
this point they're really quite separate projects whose
results are not mutually translatable.  I'm not sure how to
deal with

> In America, we don't have to be on guard against the "will
> to power" among Hegelians or phenomenologists

but I suppose it's true that the U.S. of A is not gravely
threatened by whatever danger phenomenologists pose (mainly
secondhand cigarette smoke, in my experience).  However there
surely is no need to take the anglo-am phil tradition as given
anywhere.

2. There is at least one wholly admirable aspect of the
anglo-am tradition, which you allude to: the insistence on
careful definition.  In the interest of definition and
distinction, I have to protest the use of "postmodernism" as a
portmanteau term to include post-structuralism, which is a
distinct project.  I also protest the tactic of making claims
about continental phil at a very broad level of generalization,
then attacking that generalization, and using that attack to
impugn every descendant of that tradition.  It's very easy to
make any broad generalization in philosophy look fatuous.

3. Your "negative moment" -- critique -- is surely ample
justification for using a variety of philosophical tools in
soc sci, whether drawn from Quine or Baudrillard.  Re "positive
philosophy," the obvious point to make is that any soc sci
requires some base notion of ontology and epistemology -- you
can't avoid it, so that you do end up resting on some
philosophical system in that sense.   It is not a question of
"insight into the world" but logical coherence in the way you
look at the world and present conclusions about it.  Marx
would seem to be exhibit A for the essential role of philosophy
(and continental philosophy in his case) in grounding a social
ontology.

Best, Colin


PS to Lou: Sounds like you escaped phenomenology in the nick
of time.  If there really are disoriented grad students who
believe that teaching and writing for journals is political
work, isn't their disorientation at a rather more basic level
than anything that can be blamed on the likes of Butler?