I have stumbled upon a very interesting online philosophy journal while engaged in some obscure Google query ("Metaphysics as an Operating System" ). Anyway the search returned a rather good essay on Kant, who, despite the fact I that I am barely literate in him, continues to fascinate. The first paragraph recaps a point I have tried to articulate previously on the Forum, not realising that what I have argued is like an excerpt from an encycolopedia entry on Kant:


Source

This article goes on to compare Kant's approach to the Buddhist understanding of Conventional and Ultimate Reality and it's connection with Skepticism. These are also themes that interest me a great deal.

So I went to the Index page of this site (it is very badly formatted, I regret to say, white text on black). But the content is great.

Intro to the main theme:



It goes on to tear strips off 'the sterility and agnosticism of positivistic, scientistic, and merely analytic schools' as well as the 'nihilism, relativism, pseudo-science, and frequent political authoritarianism and dogmatism' of the continental schools.

There are a large number of entries on this 'non-peer-reviewed online journal', the main thrust of which is neo-Kantian and which can be found here: The Proceedings of the Fresian School, Fourth Series

First, the sterility and agnosticism of positivistic, scientistic, and merely analytic schools, characteristically, if not always originally, Anglo-American, which have frequently denied the possibility of knowledge in metaphysical or ethical matters, and sometimes the possibility of constructive philosophical knowledge at all, with, according to Karl Popper, a "concentration upon minutiae (upon 'puzzles') and especially upon the meanings of words; in brief .... scholasticism." As Allan Bloom said, "Professors of these schools [i.e. positivism and ordinary language analysis] simply would not and could not talk about anything important, and they themselves do not represent a philosophic life for the students." Students and the intellectually curious looking for some concern, any concern, about the truths of being and value, the content of wisdom, or some humane purpose, found instead what has aptly been called a "valley of bones." Although continuing analytic philosophy sometimes appears as a small island of some sanity in a sea of increasing nonsense, as with John Searle, it retains almost all of its sterility, futility, and what could even be called autism.

There's no "Methinks" in the quote.

The full quote is:


I have generally found this to be the case with modern philosophy. While aware of my own deficiencies of learning with regards to the details of the subject, my motivation has always been the intuition that there is indeed a philosophic life and a practical wisdom that enables a better and truer understanding than can be obtained through other means. I can only ever see parts of it, like light shining through the tears in a piece of fabric, and there seems to be so much more that needs to be studied. But this site I have found seems a great resource and 'rings true' from what I can tell.

A good summary of this Friesian school is here.

The full quote is:


I have generally found this to be the case with modern philosophy. While aware of my own deficiencies of learning with regards to the details of the subject, my motivation has always been the intuition that there is indeed a philosophic life and a practical wisdom that enables a better and truer understanding than can be obtained through other means. I can only ever see parts of it, like light shining through the tears in a piece of fabric, and there seems to be so much more that needs to be studied. But this site I have found seems a great resource and 'rings true' from what I can tell.

A good summary of this Friesian school is here.

My point is the one that Wittgenstein expresses when he writes that philosophy is not a theory, but an activity. That was, of course, Socrates's view too. It was Plato who began the downward path.

"The Origin of Philosophy" argues for the vital importance of philosophy as a human endeavor, even while noting that each generation of thought reveals the past as 'a defunct world of errors'. (from Product Description)

That is Ortega's view also. See his book, The Origin of Philosophy, which I have previously referred to in regard to the Heraclitean vs. Parmenidean question:



.

I meant that it's Ortega's view that "philosophy is not a theory but an activity." Ortega had high regard for Plato.

Among many other definitions, Ortega said that "Philosophy is the quest for the "Being" behind appearances. This quest began with Parmenides, abetted by Plato. He believed that this quest was misguided. Instead he proposed a method that he called "Historical Reason" that he claimed went "Beyond Philosophy". In his essay "History as a System," he said that "Man does not have a nature but rather . . . a history." Here he meant "nature" as an unchanging set of characteristics or "being" in the philosophical sense. We now know that nature does not have a "nature" either. Instead it also has a history.