The Fragmentation of Philosophy

"Keep your morality out of politics" is an historically aberrant and deviant mode of thought, and for the simple reason that ethics and politics are not really distinct fields; rather they are distinct expressions of the same thing, fields of inquiry which lead, ultimately, to the same object.

In fact, pretty much all the fields of philosophical inquiry are now conducted as if they were quite distinct from each other, so that ethics is totally unrelated to politics which is totally unrelated to epistemology and so on. Hence Rawls sought a theory of justice which was "political, not metaphysical." What a strange thought; its historical inauthenticity is one datum for the falseness of the endeavor even to find (that is, invent) such a theory.

For premodern man, ontology was the glue which held the philosophical endeavor together. Just as surely as talk of truth, beauty, and virtue are simply discussions about the good under different aspects, so too are talk about right action, right knowledge, the good life, the best government, and so on simply different expressions of the question of what it means for something to be. How can you ask what the "best government" is until you know what "government" is? What "best" is? What "is" is? Ontology made an organic and harmonious unity out of a philosophical enterprise that is now not even so much specialized or modularized as it is simply fragmented. The abandonment of organized ontology has loosed on the world a flood of errors.

What we have today are shards of philosophy: a vast number of schools of thought about different fields, the necessary connections between which have been severed, which may be mixed and matched arbitrarily to produce a functionally infinite number of combinations, with no real reason to pick any one of them or even a method for doing so. Had a revolution? Close your eyes, reach into the bag, grab seven metaphysical systems at random and see what social orders you can build on the resulting mix. Philosophy has reduced the social order to a generations-spanning game of Scrabble. A dress-up Barbie doll philosophy for a Barbie doll society.

One of the things that impresses me most about reactionary thought is its remarkable coherence: everything fits together; more importantly, everything points upward. Every so often, a thought strikes me (I need to get better about writing them down so I can blog them later), a necessary connection suddenly realized, another piece in the puzzle fit into place. It is not even that one arbitrary arrangement has been proved to me to be optimal; it is that the idea that there could ever be any other arrangement has been proved to me to be irrational.

All this convinces me that if the world is ever to be saved, a revitalization and revalorization of ontology will have some part to play in it.

Comments

[Scott W.]

"One of the things that impresses me most about reactionary thought is its remarkable coherence: everything fits together; more importantly, everything points upward."

Reminds me of Chesterton:

"This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key."

[bgc]

Niklas Luhmann (who was in favour of it) always argued that modernity was - in essence - a process of functional differentiation.

I think this is a reasonable definition at the sociological level.

The process seems to be a slippery-slope, unstoppable once started - until it destroys the society; for reasons I have tried to analyse in my forthcoming book (in relation to the phenomenon of micro-specialization in science).

So yes - this has happened to all aspects of philosophy. And I think it is inevitable unless philosophy is subordinated to religious control - for example that instead of universities higher learning ought to be done in monasteries, or controlled by them (or else universities should be run as more-or-less monasteries).

[Proph]

"The process seems to be a slippery-slope, unstoppable once started - until it destroys the society; for reasons I have tried to analyse in my forthcoming book (in relation to the phenomenon of micro-specialization in science)."

Interesting that you bring up science (I have not yet started reading your book) -- the funny thing in reading your response is that what reactionary thought offers (offered) was something very like a theory of everything!

[Samson J.]

****What we have today are shards of philosophy: a vast number of schools of thought about different fields, the necessary connections between which have been severed****

This is one reason I so sweetly savour the thought of homeschooling my kids: I can't wait to teach them the proper relationship between science, philosophy of science, epistemology, politics, ethics and all the rest of it. For instance, the ongoing refrain that "creationism doesn't belong in the classroom" only makes sense if "science" is artificially sundered from the philosophical question of **why any method of investigating the past is or is not reliable**.

I wish I had more time today.

[josh]

I can't get around to reading Bruce's book until Wednesday, but I wonder if he is aware that one of the findings of the Reece Commission on tax exempt foundations is that the fragmentation of science was a conscious attempt. Remember these were the same people who sought to cartelize industry in the name of "efficiency". Fragmentation and team research was supposedly meant to reduce wasteful overlap, though it also made control by outside organizations much easier.