Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge (Routledge Revivals): Popper or Wittgenstein? by Munz Peter

Author:Munz, Peter [Munz, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

The Defence of Closed Circles

The Defence of Closed Circles

The Defence of Closed Circles

The Verdict of the History of Philosophy

Historical Doubts

The Paradigm behind the Verdict of History

The Alleged Strength of Closed Circles

The Real Merits of Mirrors

The Relevance of Biology

How Valuable is Knowledge?

The Defence of Closed Circles

The methodology of closed circles has been advocated and supported by the most diverse people for very diverse reasons. One could not imagine philosophers further apart from each other than Foucault and Wittgenstein. Equally absurd is the proximity of Voltaire to Spengler. For this reason, we find that no matter how the method of closed circles is practised, its advocacy is based on very different grounds by its practitioners. Voltaire advocated it because he was a sort of cultural ‘catastrophist’. Herder advocated it because he wanted to promote nationalism. Spengler favoured it because he saw it as a device for pricking the balloon of progress. Malinowski took it up because he had doubts about historicism. Wittgenstein took it up because he recognised it as a convenient alternative to Positivism. Basically, in other words, he was reacting against himself as he had presented himself in his Tractatus , though he never said so. Kuhn followed Wittgenstein, said so in so many words, and stated so in chapter 5 on ‘The Priority of Paradigms’. Foucault, on the other hand, sought a way of analysing knowledge in terms of its structure rather than in terms of its content because, initially, he had been interested in showing how relative our treatment of criminals and lunatics is and how we persecute them or imprison them irrationally in obedience to prevailing paradigms, rather than to a rational appreciation of their difficulties when they are suffering and of our difficulties when they make us suffer. 1 Foucault, more than any other closed-circle thinker, started from the heart of the matter, which is: Where is the boundary between people who are in a closed circle and people who are not in a closed circle. In some cases, these different reasons advanced in favour of closed circles are plausible (e.g. one can certainly understand why Wittgenstein should have found fault with his Tractatus !), and one sympathises with Foucault’s initial problem about crime and insanity. Equally, one can sympathise with Spengler, writing during the First World War, when he wanted to disabuse Europeans of the delusion of progress. But in all cases, one finds that the advocacy of the closed circle is partial and partisan. The advocacy is always a response to a particular problem. Even when the advocacy ends up by assuming the shape of a general argument – as in the case of Wittgenstein – the plausibility of the advocacy remains heavily weighed down by the initial partisan reason for the advocacy. Richard Rorty’s defence of closed circles is the first and only argument for closed circles which is genuinely general.

During the last decade, the most sustained and reasoned defence of closed circles has come from Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature .

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