Alt Text
Show parent replies
the critique of holism is good and fair
i think the fact that the question of scientific realism vs antirealism not being a conscious or central issue should tip you off to something, and you'll need a great deal of caution attributing and constructing that position to knock down
i imagine it'll be treated as lack of rigor or as cowardice or some other similar deficient trait but i think theres benefit to ignoring something and seeing what comes of it
"anarchists with the stench of humanism"
damn straight
ugh lmao i know this is like one of the main points of the book but "the hard sciences are radicalism and the humanities are reactionary" is so weak man
like im being reductionist in that attribution, certainly at this early stage, but you can see the seeds being planted for it
:sob: even like the characterization of the opposition's position can't avoid your humanism
yes please keep repeating that science is radical because it seeks the root of all things thats so insightful and brave and has so much carry-over to the political context youre so right
lol. the poor analytic philosophy "that was out of step with the popular narratives of the humanities which greedily followed adorno and horkheimer in wildly misrepresenting the logical positivists." lol.
lmao bro this is so embarrassing. look like i'm not a staunch defender of everything adorno ever did and certainly im not like hard-line supporter of all these specific guys and movements, but like.. really?
"aronowitz correctly perceived that the inclinations of the frankfurt school (and marxism more generally) towards "holism" and "dialectics" were existentially challenged by physics' radical focus on underlying root dynamics".
if you repeat it enough its true, surely.
but also it just completely misunderstands the err of this era. the focus on "instrumental reason" was not dialectical enough, that was the good part you got right with your critique of holism. i guess i have to take that back now
also like, to be clear, i have no dog in the race of defending pomo as a movement, i really couldn't care less. there were undoubtedly a lot of quacks and maybe they had outsize influence. tbh im not deeply informed on the history of may 68 and all its subcurrents, so i dont care the litigate that.
i'm also sympathetic to the argument that the way a philosophy is used matters a lot and reflects upon the thought itself, and of course there's a reciprocal influence there. that isn't being spelled out but i just want to make it clear that i'm chill with that if used carefully.
at the same time though, and for that very reason, some distortions of thinkers and what your broad gloss of them are do matter, especially because you're building to a throughline and generating a historical account leading up to the present