Heidegger and Derrida are out, and with them the various approaches to philosophical discourse that proceed via commentary. Suspicion of system-building is out, and accordingly Hegel is reemerging as a major point of reference — and one must have very firm convictions about the proper reading of Hegel, dismissing vast swathes of the existing traditional commentary. More generally, caution and qualification seem to be out. We must boldly speculate into new realms, it seems, having developed our own axiomatic ontology by the age of 23...
I am unwilling to speculate out into the air, without the guardrail of working through the thoughts of those who have gone before me. The world will have to look elsewhere for a bold new form of jargon purporting to capture the essence of the things themselves.
I am, in short, an old man now.A few weeks back there was a kerfuffle in the blogosphere about "tradition" work. As usual we got the same old response of "Saying that our speculative work has been done before doesn't contribute to the debate!" (a response that I have grown more than annoyed in hearing).
Absolutely, let's go beyond the commentary - let's go beyond name-dropping here and there or resurrecting the dead to do our work for us. BUT, let's call a spade a spade. When what you are doing is basically concept for concept in a new language game the same exact moves of philosopher x and y before you, then admit it.
What's funny about Adam's response is that it's true. I enjoy all of Hegel, Derrida, and Heidegger. I also enjoy Whitehead, Hartshorne, Bergson, and Peirce. Consider me an old man, consider me unfashionable.
Back to reading my unfashionable and irrelevant Gilles Deleuze. He is "just so 2009" you know.
