It feels like I need a hell of a lot more background to adequately interface with this material. As when I was first studying Nietzsche in a class on modernism, it feels like I've wandered into a big lecture room where a debate has been raging for hundreds of years. The lecture stage is brimming with some of the greatest thinkers humankind has produced, living and dead, and as I'm stumbling around trying to find my seat a spotlight suddenly illuminates me and a voice demands "What do you think?" I don't know what I think, I just got here.
I have metaphorically described my experience reading the article. Rorty has something to say about that. From what I gather, I have not actually conveyed a message, or at least not one that can be considered a "truth candidate"? I have done the textual equivalent of italicizing some words or using odd puncutation. Metaphors are impotent, just like the language they inhabit, as conduits of "truth" - which might not exist, since this idea of "truth" might just be a fetishized ideal of something, some nebulous "realm" beyond the human.
To stop seeing language as a medium, Rorty via Davidson proposes, a step in the right direction is to stop viewing metaphors as having distinct meaning apart from the literal meaning of their component words. I've just imagined what that would be like and realized I owe all of you an apology.
I am sorry for any confusion I have caused with my opening paragraph. I did not actually enter a lecture hall with a zombie Schopenhaur, Nietzsche, etc, debating on the stage. If I had, I would certainly have taken pictures.
Print len(python) from datetime import datetime
9 years ago
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