Analytic Philosophy and the Long Tail of Scientia: Hegel and the Historicity of Philosophy

CHAPTER 15 Analytic Philosophy and the Long Tail of Scientia: Hegel and the Historicity of Philosophy 100 INTRODUCTION. Unresolved and often ill-understood issues of both substance and method have divided Hegelian philosophy from analytic philosophy since the latter’s inception early in the Twentieth Century. Here I focus on one persisting strand of Cartesianism: the demand for infallibilist justification, even in empirical domains. Used in the Mediaeval period as their Latin counterpart to Aristotle’s episteme, to designate the highest possible form of knowledge, con- sidered to be perfect, infallible, demonstrative knowledge of necessary truths, the term was not univocal; there were a host of distinctive theories of knowledge, but their forms of demonstration drew upon Aristotle’s Posterior An- alytics (Grellard 2011); not only his Prior Analytics. Only upon Tempier’s con- demnation of neo-Aristotelian heresies in March 1277 were the demands upon scientia elevated to deductivist Infallibilism by the demand to demon- strate the impossibility of all logically possible alternatives to what is (claim- ed to be) known. Few epistemologists now affirm such stringent standards of justification, whether regarding empirical knowledge or philosophical ac- counts of empirical knowledge. Nevertheless, substantive commitment to infallibilism remains widespread, not only amongst critics of fallibilist ac- counts of empirical justification, but in the wide-spread use of mere logical possibilities as (purported) counter-examples to an otherwise credible form or instance of cognitive justification. Examining these issues is not only aided by careful philosophical history, examining these issues helps to highlight the crucial roles of historical philosophy in formulating, assessing and justifying any credible contemporary philosophical view. Restricting discussion to epistemology and history and philosophy of science, I shall examine some important though neglected links between philosophical method, rational justification and philosophical history. 101 WHY BOTHER WITH PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY? I begin indirectly, with this question: What reasons favour ahistorical philos- © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi �0.��63/9789004360�74_0�6 320 ophy? Two are familiar to me. One is triumphalist: according to many prominent analytical philosophers, philosophical ‘analysis’ (however understood) is the sole legitimate philosophical technique and province; other philosophical approaches are bankrupt.1 Because very few if any historical philosophers used such ‘analytic’ methods, most history of philosophy is philosophically irrelevant. The second reason formalist: many prominent analytical philosophers hold that genuine philosophical understanding and insight is only possible to the extent that issues and terminology can be rigorously defined and analysed formally and that philosophical justification requires logical deduction. In its extreme form, formalism rejects not only the history of philosophy, but all non-formal substantive domains of philosophy. More gener- ous forms of formalism welcome all substantive and historical domains of philosophy, though only to the extent that they admit suitably rigorous for- malisation. Now I do not claim that all analytical philosophers fall into one of these groups; here I examine two tendencies characteristic of those philosophers who eschew the philosophical importance of philosophy’s history. Both reasons favouring ahistorical philosophy are heirs to Hume’s (En §4) Verification Empiricism, according to which the only propositions which can be justified a priori are analytic, whereas synthetic propositions can only be justified, if at all, empirically. Generally speaking, ahistorical philosophers – whether broadly analytic or specifically formalist – assign synthetic propositions either to commonsense or to the empirical sciences, retaining for philosophy only the a priori domain of analytic propositions and their philosophical analysis.2 Starting in the 1950s this overt empiricism was subject to sustained criti- cism by analytic philosophers. Nevertheless, the presumption that rational justification requires strict deduction remains very influential in mainstream analytic philosophy. In this regard both empiricists and many self-styled post- empiricists remain committed to the post-1277 rationalist ideal of scientia, according to which any claim can be justified only by deducing it logically from some set of rationally acceptable and accepted first principles. Commit- ment to the infallibilist, deductivist ideal of scientia is an enduring legacy of 1 Likewise, according to many prominent phenomenologists, Husserlian ‘phenomenology’ is the sole legitimate philosophical technique and province; other philosophical approaches are bankrupt. I do not pursue these issues here; much more credible contributions to epistemology and philosophy of science were made by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The Humean inheritance of phenomenology is indicated by Husserl’s praise of Hume as a proto- phenomenologist (Ideen I, §62). Unfortunately, Husserl’s Logical Investigations (1901; Part 2, §§32–39) and his student’s dissertation on Hume (Sauer 1930) are over-confident and super- ficial; contrast Meinong’s (1877, 1882) two splendid Hume studies. 2 An important exception is Wittgenstein’s attempt to understand realism whilst dispen- sing with empiricism, in part by appeal to ‘hinge propositions’ (1969, §§337, 341, 343)..

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