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7/05/2018 3:15 am  #21


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

John West wrote:

What about you, Calhoun? I know you've read a lot of analytic literature.

And where is our glorious Frenchman? I've studied under French professors, so I have an idea of the kind of rubbish you probably have to deal with whenever philosophy comes up. (Anglos have to contend with lots of naturalists, but at least they're still objectively-minded. The French have to contend with rampant postmodernism.) How does someone surrounded by all that get to Thomism?

​This is slightly off topic but...I listen to the radio most of the day while I am working, about 6 months ago I got back into listening to France Culture programs for part of the day. (Bar one or two exceptions British speech radio doesn't produce content of the same depth or quality on history, philosophy, literature etc.) 

The Philosophy coverage is pretty wide ranging but does seem heavily slanted towards existentialist and postmodernist stuff and often obviously politically engaged (on the left). Occasionally it looks like left-wing political commitment is conflated with philosophy itself, however... they have some strong religious programs/religious affairs programs and sometimes good stuff on thinkers and ideology of the 'old school' far-right. 

​I get the impression that the left-wing existentialist post-68 stuff is quite dominant but, there are smaller pockets of people strongly committed to different world views with their own deep traditions to draw on. I guess you could come to Thomism via remaining a practicing Catholic, maybe more smoothly than would be the case in the UK.  
 

Last edited by FZM (7/05/2018 3:15 am)

 

7/05/2018 8:52 am  #22


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

John West wrote:

And where is our glorious Frenchman? I've studied under French professors, so I have an idea of the kind of rubbish you probably have to deal with whenever philosophy comes up. (Anglos have to contend with lots of naturalists, but at least they're still objectively-minded. The French have to contend with rampant postmodernism.) How does someone surrounded by all that get to Thomism?

It's a bit out of place, and maybe too much personal, but I'm curious: on what circumstances did you study under French professors?
Apart from that, even if I'm not sctricto sensu from France, only a francophone, I wouldn't say that they got a big problem with postmodernism: maybe the academics aren't very much "analytics", but on public matters, I would say that the USA are ahead on this level.

 

7/05/2018 9:06 am  #23


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I like Daniel's division of life and academic influence. E. F. Schumacher may not be an academic philosopher, but his Guide for the Perplexed was a big influence on me, in the sense that when I read it in my late teens, I first realised there were rational anti-materialist arguments.

Although I am a huge Chesterton fan, C. S. Lewis in particular made some arguments of continuing philosophical worth. His famous chapter on the argument from reason, is a must be read for anyone interested in that argument, and anti-materialist accounts of the mind more generally.

 
Victor Reppert has written a whole book that broadens Lewis's argument from reason--its worth a read.

 

7/05/2018 9:37 am  #24


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

John West wrote:

What about you, Calhoun? I know you've read a lot of analytic literature.

Well It seem have read a lot more than I understood, haha.

I would say Edward Feser, Alex Pruss and WLC. Their work probably made me interested in the literature.

These days I am trying to read and understand some Phil. of Science literature , focus on Ontic Structural realism. 

 

7/05/2018 3:32 pm  #25


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

I might check out that radio program some time.

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7/05/2018 4:10 pm  #26


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

Haha. Don't worry about being off-topic in this thread.

A lot of Canadian universities insist on having both French and English versions of courses. (Or if not, they at least prefer bilingual professors.) The end result is that their faculties end up with lots of Frenchmen and Quebecois, who are often the only ones who speak both languages at an academic level.

Contemporary continental philosophy is heavily influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger, and the French seem to have been hit by the postmodern side of that particularly hard—Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida. They also seem to have had more influence on the art, architecture, and film worlds than most other countries' philosophers. You're right that I was thinking mainly of the French intellectual world. (I think Nietzsche, Heidegger, and some of the others are worth studying, but that isn't my point.)

Anglo philosophers, by comparison, are more often influenced by the objectively-minded analytic tradition.

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7/05/2018 4:13 pm  #27


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

(The French, historically at least, also played an important role in the skeptical tradition, via Montaigne and the French skeptics. I'm not sure how much this shows up today.)

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7/05/2018 4:31 pm  #28


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

Calhoun wrote:

These days I am trying to read and understand some Phil. of Science literature , focus on Ontic Structural realism.

Is this Ladyman's view? There are some interesting papers on it in The Metaphysics of Relations (eds. Marmodoro and Yates).

(Also, since Nietzsche has come up, I found this paper by a Matthew Meyer while trying to find a PDF of Ladyman's The Metaphysics of Relations paper to post. Based on the first couple pages, he argues that Nietzsche might have been a proto ontic structural realist.)

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7/06/2018 4:14 am  #29


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

John West wrote:

And where is our glorious Frenchman? I've studied under French professors, so I have an idea of the kind of rubbish you probably have to deal with whenever philosophy comes up. (Anglos have to contend with lots of naturalists, but at least they're still objectively-minded. The French have to contend with rampant postmodernism.) How does someone surrounded by all that get to Thomism?

"HAIL KANT! GOD CANNOT BE PROVED SO LOL 1111!" This is what I heard for a long time.

It took me Dawkins to realize that this point is flawed. Moved to Aquinas.

Biggest three are Aquinas/Aristotle, Eurigena & Eckhart. I like Bingen, Plotinus, Anscombe, Wittgenstein and a few dozen others.

 

7/06/2018 3:56 pm  #30


Re: ​Who are your three biggest philosophical influences?

I see. Well, don't let some bad interactions with students and laymen, who probably aren't actually that versed in Kant, spoil him for you. Kant does tend to focus on proof and apodicticity a lot. (I was going after all circular justification in part of the most recent Kant-related thread, which is a bit different.) But he's doing so because he's trying to deal with problems prominent in the early modern tradition, and his work is meant to make sense within that context. If you don't recognize the problems (or don't recognize them as problems), then you're going to wonder why anybody bothers to take him seriously.

I do think that the French tend to overstate his case a little. (I once wrote to a friend, "Kant is like God to the French".)

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