Intertextuality or Philosophy Ex Nihilo?

by Paul Austin Murphy (September 2018)

Making Connections, Lee Booth

 

Take the “radicals” in the tradition of analytic philosophy.

 

Eliminative materialists and “anti-realists”, for example, needed to share some kind of a philosophical language with their contemporaries (as well as with the tradition), otherwise their chosen language and positions would have been inscrutable.

 

Perhaps at another possible world there are other philosophies which are completely alien to our own. We can now ask:

 

Schopenhauer once asked the following question (to paraphrase):

 

Why do philosophers never step outside books [or “texts”]?

 

explain it:

 

Thus if Schopenhauer had spoken in contemporary terms, he might have said that (philosophically speaking) intertextual webs trap philosophers within them.

 

Philosophy Ex Nihilo

 

What would a philosophical a priori (as it were) be like? A philosophy untouched by other philosophies—untouched by other philosophical texts? Take the British broadcaster, politician and populariser of philosophy, Bryan Magee, and his account of his own ex nihilo philosophising:

 

Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey Through Western Philosophy.]

 

 

The Last Word, believes this to be the case.) Nonetheless, they certainly aren’t, say, Kantian or Wittgensteinian givens. And any any givens (uncovered by empirical research) tend to be more theological, mystical or spiritual in nature; rather than (strictly speaking) philosophical.

 

 

Intertextual Philosophy

 

 

Thus perhaps Magee simply felt inclined to squeeze his own childhood questions and problems into a Kantian hole.

 

 

As for intertextuality as it applies to other philosophers.

 

Take William G. Lycan’s medium-length paper ‘The Continuity of Levels of Nature’: it includes fifty-two references to other philosophers’ texts. And, in addition, Jaegwon Kim’s ‘Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept’ has fifty-one such references.

 

And since two analytic philosophers have just been mentioned, it can be said that when a student of analytic philosopher thinks about the nature of the mind, all he primarily does is read and think about what, for example, Jerry Fodor and Daniel Dennett have said about the nature of mind. This must mean that he too may well be caught in his own intertextual trap. (Though, of course, it’s unlikely that any philosopher of mind would rely on just two philosophers of mind.) Indeed, all his responses, reactions and commentaries on the nature of mind may also be largely intertextual in nature.

 

 

‘Violence and Metaphysics’ ) in a slightly different context (as well as to paraphrase):

 

The apriorist philosopher would still think or speak Greek.

 

“Jew-Greek”. He said that he lived in a “house” which had been built for him by (religious) Jews and Christians; as well as by philosophical Greeks.

 

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