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SOME REMARKS ON PHILOSOPHIC METHOD
Author(s) -
Nielsen Kai
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9973.1978.tb00025.x
Subject(s) - citation , library science , sociology , philosophy , computer science
Perhaps we should say that there is no such thing as meta philosophy. 'What is philosophy?' is itself a philosophic ques tion. To talk about the nature of philosophy, its end (with its double-entendre), or its worth (or lack thereof), is, if this talk has any depth at all, to engage in philosophical discussion and argument. And while an obsession here can keep us from doing what may be—if philosophy has a point or some intrinsic worth —fruitful work in philosophy, Wittgenstein's obsession with such 'meta-philosophical questions' was neither irrational nor pointless and it surely did not keep him from doing probing philosophical work.1 Some have said that meta-philosophical interests are a sign of a wanning interest in philosophy, but while this has never been true for me, I do remain ambivalent about philosophy and caught up in doubts about what (if any thing) we can achieve in philsophy and about the worth of our achievement. (Recall Marx's famous remark in the German Ideology. "Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love.") A. R. Manser in his interesting inaugural lecture "The End of Philosophy: Marx and Wittgenstein" hit just the right note when he remarked: