2/11/2008
R: Serious Man vs. rhetorical man....
In this argument between homo seriosus and homo rhetoricus, i tend to veer towards the latter. (As a forewarning, this is where sore feelings surface.) However, I'm also beginning to see the correlation between two statements: "Of all things the measure is man, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not," written by Protagoras and re-interpreted by Plato; and Alain Badiou's comment - "Ontology is mathematics." From Protagoras' maxim, so it has been explained to me, is derived the fundamental principles of epistemology and ontology. What Plato, as a(n) (elitist) revisionist, attempted to do was separate rhetoric from truth procedure, and transpose it upon an ideal "State" of being. However, by limiting "humanity's" subjective nature, Plato incited a division between the retrieval of knowledge and heightened awareness (of being), intended by the Sophists to be wholly foundational. Hence, we have an epistemological infrastructure that feigns to be objective, able to hide quite securely behind the facade of scientific method. [According to Badiou, mathematics, which extends from human beings much like language, can only prove the predominance of "infinite" possibilities rather than concrete solutions, an unending chain of whole numbers. Analogous with the philosopher's attention to awareness and being.]
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2 comments:
I don't know where to jump into this chain of reasoning, but I basically agree with most of what you've written. The sophists before Plato and Aristotle had a different world view, as far as I can tell. They didn't believe in "truth" as a stable entity (as did Plato and Aristotle, even though they arrived at "truth" very differently). I find James Berlin's explications of the distinctions very helpful. I come down on the side of a contructivist view of epistemology. Good thinking behind all this, Sean. I can see the exchange between Dr. Rollins' class and ours. --Dr. L
Hobbes writes that we cannot speak of "infinite" objects/beings (as does Badiou). Knowledge comes from our senses, then memory, then experience, and the result being knowledge. (Hence the reasoning that only the finite can be sensed, recalled, understood)
Yet still, despite all this, we reach the same conclusion: There are no concrete solutions; only awareness and being.
Oh, the Rhetorical Man!
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