Q: Can we speak about philosophy in terms of a specific role? So where did philosophy play its normal role? One usually evokes Germany -- however, is it not already a commonplace that the extraordinary role of philosophy there was grounded in the belatedness of the realization of the German national political project? As Marx has already put it (taking a cue from Heine), Germans had their philosophical revolution (German idealism) because they missed the political revolution (which took place in France). Is there then a norm at all? The closest one can come to it is if one looks upon the anaemic established academic philosophy, such as neo-Kantianism a hundred years ago in Germany or French Cartesian epistemology (Leon Brunschvicg, etc.) of the first half of the twentieth century -- which was precisely philosophy at its most stale, academic, dead and irrelevant. What if, then, there is no normal role? What if it is only exceptions themselves that retroactively create the illusion of the norm they allegedly violate? What if not only, in philosophy, is exception the rule, but also philosophy -- the need for the authentic philosophical thought arises precisely in those moments when (other) parts-constituents of the social edifice cannot play their proper role ? What if the proper space for philosophy consists of these very gaps and interstices opened up by the pathological displacements in the social edifice? Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Zizek, Polity Press, 2004, pp.52-3
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 22:48:25 +0000