i think i picked up the idea of "conversation" from a b3n w4tson backlash argt against de saussure!

[dubdobdee]

geuss on rorty on "conversation" (and some discontents)

have only skimmed this: am totally back-achey and mentally fuzzy today and not getting my ideas in order on ANYTHING, least of all chumpdom left right or elsewhere

am tryin to do a (small) bit of spring cleaning -- or at least its pintsize cousin "putting stuff away"

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this sounds like the modern 'German' idea of a university - the older idea is far more pragmatic as far as I know i.e. it's where people go to learn useful stuff, since rhetoric, dialectic, etc. all have quite well-articulated ideas of their purposes. But this (i.e. the German idea) is philosophy conceived as the science of sciences, i.e. a ground which is precisely not religious, political, social etc, but self-certifying and validating. It's obviously unstable, since it can't compete with the results produced by enquiry on the natural science model, which leads to the shrinking realm occupied by philosophy as a discipline. I guess Hegel sees philosophy as the Brawl of all Brawls, i.e. looks a bit like Rorty since he sees everything as conversation, but a lot unlike Rorty in that he sees the conversation as the absolute, i.e. truth in a way Rorty seems to deny. But my feeling is that yr Oakeshotts, Gadamers etc are 'soft' Hegelians in that they want the shape of total knowledge, but without the distinctively philosophical claim (i.e. that what they know is true).