The Archimedean urge
<p style="text-align:justify;"> In Aristophanes’ The Clouds, Socrates orders his hapless student Strepsiades to lie down on a couch to make him more receptive to philosophical inspiration. Instead he catches Strepsiades masturbating under the bedclothes. Aristophanes’ suggestion is...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Wiley
2016
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| _version_ | 1797064940381536256 |
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| author | Srinivasan, A |
| author_facet | Srinivasan, A |
| author_sort | Srinivasan, A |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p style="text-align:justify;"> In Aristophanes’ The Clouds, Socrates orders his hapless student Strepsiades to lie down on a couch to make him more receptive to philosophical inspiration. Instead he catches Strepsiades masturbating under the bedclothes. Aristophanes’ suggestion is that it amounts to much the same thing. Like philosophy, scepticism about philosophy has its modes and fashions. Sometimes the accusation, as with Aristophanes, is that a seemingly lofty activity is in fact chicanery, nonsense in the service of all too human desire. According to the sort of diagnostic scepticism associated with the later Wittgenstein, philosophy is a symptom of pathology or confusion. Scientistic scepticism impugns philosophy for falling short of some putative standard met by all respectable — that is, empirical — modes of enquiry. What we might call ‘genealogical’ scepticism complains that the building blocks of philosophy — the judgments and concepts on which it all hangs — are contingent features of whoever it is who is doing the philosophising: her or his particular history, culture, language, education, gender, character. </p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T21:21:30Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:419a589c-4620-4bff-b7d7-25ea4753be6a |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T21:21:30Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:419a589c-4620-4bff-b7d7-25ea4753be6a2022-03-26T14:44:39ZThe Archimedean urgeJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:419a589c-4620-4bff-b7d7-25ea4753be6aSymplectic Elements at OxfordWiley2016Srinivasan, A <p style="text-align:justify;"> In Aristophanes’ The Clouds, Socrates orders his hapless student Strepsiades to lie down on a couch to make him more receptive to philosophical inspiration. Instead he catches Strepsiades masturbating under the bedclothes. Aristophanes’ suggestion is that it amounts to much the same thing. Like philosophy, scepticism about philosophy has its modes and fashions. Sometimes the accusation, as with Aristophanes, is that a seemingly lofty activity is in fact chicanery, nonsense in the service of all too human desire. According to the sort of diagnostic scepticism associated with the later Wittgenstein, philosophy is a symptom of pathology or confusion. Scientistic scepticism impugns philosophy for falling short of some putative standard met by all respectable — that is, empirical — modes of enquiry. What we might call ‘genealogical’ scepticism complains that the building blocks of philosophy — the judgments and concepts on which it all hangs — are contingent features of whoever it is who is doing the philosophising: her or his particular history, culture, language, education, gender, character. </p> |
| spellingShingle | Srinivasan, A The Archimedean urge |
| title | The Archimedean urge |
| title_full | The Archimedean urge |
| title_fullStr | The Archimedean urge |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Archimedean urge |
| title_short | The Archimedean urge |
| title_sort | archimedean urge |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT srinivasana thearchimedeanurge AT srinivasana archimedeanurge |