harvey young
The New Culture Forum
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Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "Britain's Had the Most Profound Change in 2,000 years. It's in a Very Bad Place (Laurence Fox)" video.
Part 1: On the discussion point raised in the first 10 mins, that asks why do "our" politics seem to be orientated towards "particular" ethnicity and gender issues, I want to try and elucidate this: why? It easy to say "the elites", but they will cite many historical reasons for this: the 20th century fascism was racist, and often following an economic crisis like 2008-10 onwards history has shown that it is easy for people and particularly bad positions to blame minorities since they can be subtracted as a groups from the need to get their votes. Perhaps a better question before going to the "who" is to look at the "how" here. The "how" question has the above reason but politically it is "done" though policy and legislation. In this, the how question involves certainly not just demographics of voting, but the economic and the legal. But these themselves are framed within concepts and categories. Here then concepts laws and institutions of human rights represent, mediately though the idea of global equality and justice. This as an idea is put into practice as a process an aim, which is not a person as such but an ever changing formulae of legal economic calculation. This formulae is in the place of a person, a dictator, etc but functions in a similar way except without anyone being there that is responsible. In practice, politicians and so on, just refer to aspects of the formulae. So they might justify ie legitimate their policy in terms of utility happiness maximisation, pain reduction calculations and predictions. Now since this structure is about all human rights, its scope is not first the Sovereign State and its people but the whole world, the whole of humanity. This has become the Grand narrative of the left and the proximate method, if not the aim, of the far left. What this means in local national practice, is that all events are viewed firstly under the schema of international Rights. This logical conceptual a priori framing, means people in any State are compared first through the lexicon of race and gender under and in the scope of the whole world. Now a minority or de-privileged person here is already viewed as a member of a set, that is "with" all the people in the world with that ethnicity or gender. It begins in economic difference, which is is quasi universal like law, and then moves over to law of anti racism and sexism and so on. The law then trades on the global economic difference, while the economic claims the legal institutions are the engine and control room of this difference in terms of its repetition and its possibility of levers of change. Left politics triangulates with both at the same time in its activities in a sovereign State: they justify changes in legal like institutions for economic reasons and and changes in economic institutions such as distribution policy is justified through legal changes with respect to justice and equality. Its not circular, its just that the instituional form and economic content are not really separable. That is one conceptual consequence of, or inference from, of the rejection of Sellars "myth of the given" in a political context.
Given this legal economic nexus then, proposed legislation in this sovereignty places citizens in this country with and along side members of the same race and ethnicity and gender "set". there is a very Western even German Rationalist hubris still at play here that sees this as a one way street, or rails that carry trains that only go outwards from the State. The universal justice concept is thought of as action as only a set of single directional vectors in through and with a time arrow of one direction. That is then justice flows outwards to an kind of assumed passive receptive foreign group that have members of the set also in this country with the power to vote. The thin (Bernard Williams) and wide (me) conceptual logical legal framing then assumes the political change is still the West active on a passive world of people. but these individual rights holders of people of the world are organised also by many associations and belongings and inclusions of their own as well as the West's race ethnicity and gender schemas. indeed the later Western active minorities schema constructs, with the ordinances and mechanisms of international law, new Western modified Hegelian networks of people. In a way its Hegel's revenge, that the left took "their own" economics and law as political givens that are primary determinants of actions and membership. Hegel's revenge then is that this Marxist economic materialist is a false master determinant, meaning they have a false Grand Narrative in Social Justice. False because people outside this sovereignty can be and are determined by many other thing ideas associations than just those posited by Western 19th and 20th Century socialism. the "other" is not a sociological blank slate ready to be constructed or re-constructed through the Western model of Rationalist notions of Social Justice. it has to be said that the left do recognise this as a layer of "complexity" but only in terms of fine tuning and tweaking praxis in accord with the actual psychological social dispositions of their agents targets. however Social justice as a formulae is absolute and the dispositions are seen as changeable towards a pure economic focus. Praxis serves and is orientated first under justice globally. For example when i started getting into politics, people recommended me to get into Rap music Gangster Rap and stuff so as to be able to talk to people on the level of the Street. They gave me a CD, but i couldn't stand it. It remined me of when someone gave me a Heavy Metal "cassette tape" back in the 80's for me to get into their music but i thought that was rubbish too.
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Part 2: Anyway, this is the logical legal economic frame of world orientation for the left. It means in media terms of representation, there will always be a non British man or women or group worst off than anyone here. This also allows people here who embrace the lefts placing of them into a global ethnic gender set, to claim additional distribution or moral privilege by virtue of association with their set members in another country. This member ship and set model claims to be scientific over a representation of a passive grouping. This grouping in accord with axioms fails to represent all the other connections of peoples and often more strongly held local and immediate relations. For example i can't imagine how to represent family relations globally as well formed formulae conforming to the axioms of set theory, which must be priori and limiting to content and membership.
Indeed it seems that the events in the rest of the world now, are journeying from their to here. Some Critics of the left see it under the schema of "decolonisation " or reverse colonialism, but this misses the key point that the Journey from there to here is on the same rails as the Western Humanist Rights project. Effects from overseas have been transported here through the very legal and conceptual schemas of justice of the Western left. It manifests in many ways then beyond just family ties but in the political as rights issues and here then it the formulae is set as sovereign over but incongruous to the Sovereign State. For the far left the global orientation is absolute and the formulae for global justice is sovereign, political activity here will always be primarily globally interested, with policy here a mere tactical concern for this greater global good. They need to stop thinking of human nature like early enlightenment philosopher Bacon did about mother nature.
the deep problem here is seen though the above conceptual legal logical frameworks but really the issue is the metaphysics, ontology and cosmology these systems of representations pre-reflectively smuggle in. For example the secular modern scientific nomologicical world view brings in with it a behavioural or cognitive behavioural image of man which posits a self interested individual but not an agent just a causal effector. This is the indicator of the deep metaphysical ontological problem, man is subject to external causes drawing on self interest, but as reactor the individual is passive, no real agent act or responsibility. Of course the attack people personally and for their dispositions, but his usually is after they are deemed privileged in some way. but really the target is more left leaning psychology and re educational training in bias for the person and ultimately about reason to alter instituional rules or add more. all of which is managed and run by their lefts preferred academic and professional assemblages. Which are Legion and International.
In the day today politics then people of the left have developed a way of speaking wherein questions are always answered by deferral to the committee or the manifesto or some rule and law or some rule and law that needs change. But really all this deference goes up to the formulae for global justice. Kind of like the journey of measurement of length from the "yard", to the "Standard Meter in Paris" and now to something only physics experts in physical optics and light wave/particle interference can even understand.
Only the formulae is responsible only the formulae is to blame. I imagine its the old Platonism that mathematics is universal and non prejudicial, the former view collapsed in the Maths science and logic Crises around the end of the 19th century, the later view is perhaps undesirable even if the former was universality was true. For the people of the left they are mere reactors too not to blame, no one there, anonymous formulae needs an expert etc.
Our moment in history though is these sciences are now routinely used to track measure and engineer voters attitudes in polls and so on. it looks on the surface as democracy in action they are just finding out what people want so as to make good fitting representing and effective winning policy. But at the metaphysical level they treat man as an object reactor subject to cause and effect behaviour modification. That is when it comes to "The people" the voter, the subjects, sovereignty, they think "there is no one their" only dispositions to manipulate. This makes for a very strange end to the enlightenment project of science and law, when it consumes the Social Contract, and eliminates any real notions of consent and legitimacy and authority and responsibility.
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Part B The essay on Derrida in the above Skinner collection is I think too early to include Derrida on law. However i can say that Derrida does set up an aporia or antinomy or conflict between: the notion of Justice I discussed above as i) form of the law universal, general, repetitious, equal treatment under general concepts or laws, the kind of thing we call non prejudicial, non ad hominin, on the one hand and ii) justice for the individual, which involves context and agency intention and so on but central non ad hominin. that is Derrida does not want to make the formal aspect of law absolute here.
Interestingly, ad hominin features in both, and this kind of aprioria manifests also in attempts to solve the mathematics Crisis of late 19th century early 20th century using logic and set theory. Indeed it seems to reappear in different ways in many very different attempts to do this. see for example Russell on names and the Russell paradox and then this keeps appearing up to at least Robert Brandon's "Making it Explicit" of 1990.
Its is very close to the problem of definitions and what is necessary for them, verses the use of a word and how this has as life so to speak. From the point of view of a definition frame the use seems unclear multiple ambiguous, context layden, while from the point of view of the use life of a word the definition is too tied to logic and mathematical like structures and requirements. Of course in a court we have the definition being used, and of course someone might utter a word in use in life in context only to have it stolen from their understanding and abducted from its context and then placed into the definitional frame to make laws and so on, that they probably wanted to do any ways and this was the excuse as opposed to the reason. this political personal use of the law and use of definitions to move word context from one place into another, is not really ad hominon. They are only interested in legal institutional social change, at most you are a tool for this. its the new normal now from the US in the 1980's for not just the left but everyone the "jurisprudential turn in politics" or I say the "political turn of jurisprudence". its so ubiquitous that people of the praxis left and anyone else, now begin with the existing laws and desired laws, and then go about looking at the world through this schema. Its a kind of Extreme Rational Practical reason: you begin with the structure and concepts of law and definitions, have in mind what you want and then look at the world though legal affordance lenses. its regarded as a measure of intelligence to be able to do this a virtue. But one they owe to some other intellectual. What i have said would sound like good left praxis 101 lesson.
One deep problem is that law is man viewed though error and error constrained by its equality structures and standards. it often involvers scientific measurements classifications and ordinality and cardinalities of harms. Along with this law involves an assumption of innocence but joined onto sciences that treat man as self interested. it thus re-presents a very bizarre vision of the world and man the view form the law and science. It does though cohere well metaphysically with the left's materialism. and the Hegelianism that sees inter-human relations modelled after a court as essentially conflictual.
Since the above is also the world of politics its seems difficult to think of policy and action since the above terms and frames are all, if not antithetical to real human life at least in conflict and tension with it. the very term Conservative is ontologically metaphysically and cosmologically in a deep tension with current uses of the law and science.
Not only are the left wrong about justice and consent and so on but they are wrong metaphysically. So I think, not only should we not adopt the white man archetype or ectype that the left have made for us, but we ought not to follow the metaphysics of the left either by for example trying to set them up lay a trap and try and get them to make a legally abductable error that we have waiting for them. While for many left detractors the lefts Social Justice framework is wrong, most of them still think the conflict behavioural strategic approach they sue is jsut pure politics and that's the rule of the game all political action must do even if conservative anti-materialist and responsible.
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Part C1 Some brief working notes on "British".
There is already from the discussion the question "What is it to be British?". "What is Britishness?" Is the object "x" before me British?
One thing is clear perhaps, this question cannot be simply foundational, because the language and terms of the question are already in play, and in play in a field beyond and perhaps before (a priori maybe) the specific question. That can be put, disclosed, elucidated, shown, using the notions of semantic space. So take "British" here in the question. Semantically this "British" can sit with "German", but it does not sit "with" Human it is viewed as a subset perhaps of "Human", or a type of "human". A certain model of language and logic and metaphysics, wants to begin with "definition". The rationalist tradition seeking foundations and relations of all things to the foundation, determine "definition" to be about establishing clear and distinct ideas. Its from Descartes and Leibnitz, the idea being that a clear and distinct definition must determine what the thing is, but also at once what it is not eg "British" is not "German" We could also put this as nothing is both British and German. Are these two expressions one beginning with the general concepts "B" and "G" the other beginning with an object, and putting limits on the object, it cannot be both a "B", and a "G". the question then sits in ambiguity, you wanted to know what "Britishness" is, and i have opened this up to, or transformed it, or appropriated it into a different question, more like What does the word "British mean?". But this is not so surreptitious of me, in your discussion you already raised this question from the context of law and definition, so the apparently basic stand alone question "What is it to be British" is already in the field or context of the discussion. But that is fine, even useful, because many people will find themselves dealing with this question in terms of seeking a definition, maybe like Leibnitz a definition that determines the necessary and sufficient conditions. Its interesting to note that Descartes also made contrast in terms of distance and clarity, he had fought in the 30 years War. While Leibnitz, was a government official in his day job, a beurocrat. We think of definition as basic to reason and meaning and understanding. Descartes to connect definitions or statements together (ie a logic) also drew on his method "rules for the mind", while Leibnitz saw such logical meaning connections of two types: a priori where the content, conceptual content, definitions connect or conjunct statements eg if he is a Londoner then he must be British, and disjoints like if he is German then he cannot be British. We feel we must add here both British and German are human, and humans are type or kind of mammal and mammals are a type or kind of animal, and animals are a type or kind of living things and perhaps also then living things are a type or kind of "thing". Now we see how the first person subjectively of Descartes, centring on a metaphysics of consciousness in this question, is replaced for the question by Leibnitz into a whole system of definitions and logic, which are ready and appropriate for a burocracy, a legal system, and for man, as opposed to God ( who knows all definitions and connections) man has to discover a posteori relations in nature that is find empirical relations experimentally causally, in a way to go proxy for knowledge by Gods standards which is all a priori. The empirical is guided by method of finding Principle of sufficient reason(s) for the thing.
Now, already then the apparent basic question What is Britishness, seems to have been displaced subsumed and relegated into apparently more basic questions, and inquiries about what lot of other things are. ie it seems we are logically and semantically committed have to know about a lot of other things that are “not man” or of which “man is only a part of”, in order to know British, we have to know what is “not British”, or at the very least the semantic/logical/metaphysical space commits us into saying what is not British in even just enquiring what British-ness is. I put this in my modified or extended Sellarsian terms in his “logical the space of reasons”. We also see that Leibnitz’s idea of a closed logical system for God at once is pretty close to set theory ie Venn diagram appropriate, but it is empirically open with respect of our knowledge. That is for Leinbitz, the human point of view is limited incomplete finite and subordinated under God as complete and maybe infinite (?), at least total. Leibnitz also viewed many scientific statements that were thought of as empirical discoveries were really conceptual metaphysical necessities. My favourite example of this is the rate at which gravitational force diminishes with distance is by an inverse square law. While the constants and so on are to be discovered by experiment or definition, the inverse square law can be seen to follow logically when we view the question in terms of field density or number of lines of force flow though a fixed area section. This means the constant pie will necessarily be part of such an analysis. (I came across something like this in an essay many years ago, I can’t remember if this is my example or I’ve got it from someone else.)
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C1-2 footnote: I went over some of this stuff with my Mum and Dad this afternoon. I want to connect the Leibnitz work forward to Frege and Russel and where the conflict with say post World War Two Oxford and Aristotle might arise.
So two notes: first is the significance of the Russell paradox, second that a name can be replaced by a series that makes up a definite description (e.g if the substitution preserves truth conditions of the proposition (statement judgement?) ), and that it can deal with substitution over belief or intentional contexts, eg i might believe Napoleon lost at Waterloo but not know his definite descriptions and so i cannot say necessarily i believe the definite description object also lost at Waterloo, or indeed they are referring to one and the same object (ie like Frege it would be a discovery i might have to make, Frege also held that objects were organic like wholes but then could be broken up so to speak into predicates as functions ) identity of in-desernables, object in different ways, and can deal with existence in some way as perhaps a kind of definite description or in the end a translation to expose the error of equating subject predicate logical form with grammatical form. c.f Kant "Existence is not a predicate"/Anselm God's essence means his existence is necessary not contingent. This will lead onto Aristotle the problem of unity there and of essence and accident and so on, and what happens to this distinction when run though the Leibnitz Frege Russell kind of approach.
One thing i can say as many artist know and do, the accidents of an object can be made to become its useful purpose as a tool, Sartre saw this as a model for reversing the traditional rationalist essence existence privileging. Now the things accidents, contingent predicate and rules can be subverted into its purpose or technic. But for those existentialist this means existence prior to essence, where essence was thought of a purpose or first cause, making accidents the new purpose is to reverse the difference ie man as creative is in a open context with the thing where contingent predicates of the thing can be utilised as purpose given the appropriate context.
I should say my move into this area although now all in an Aristotle Kant context, first arose from work on relations and unities in the work of the Hegelian F. H. Bradley, that Russell and all his mates took on together.
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Part D1: OK So if someone came out of a play and said something like “That was great it gave me a real buz. The high, the feel good factor was well worth the money.” Or “I knew the ending so it was like when you record a late night live football game, but in the morning before you’ve seen it someone tells you the score.” Or at half time, while we are getting our pre-ordered drinks at the bar, we might hear someone say “It made me feel depressed like when my cat got run over”. Now in one way we might feel they just aren’t getting it. The listener or eve’s dropper might whisper to their mate “They have no context or education to understand it, I recon their partner dragged them along. Maybe next week they will have their justice by dragging them to a boxing match”. Two things might strike us here: firstly that a play is not meant to be judged or Critiqued using in appropriate Criteria, ie Criteria we might think belong in evaluating a football game or a football team or a player. Also we might add that the generation of feelings of pleasure and is not the central point of the play. We might add that the play has to be pleasurable has to excite us, has to be an experience, but the meaning of the play is not pleasure and excitement and private experience. We could say then that the pure utilitarian principle for private evaluation, is ill fitting here. I mean it could be evaluated that way, we might wire many people up to a pleasure measuring machine in a psychology experiment to test and measure its utility value. Indeed the whole play and theatre the event could really be primarily a psychologists experimental set up, that they don’t reveal to the subjects till after so as not to distort by subjects reflection the immediate data. Indeed cognitive linguistics might be used to evaluate what is said by counting words and so on. In one sense then an inappropriate evaluation is really to evaluate it under the criteria of another familiar event, and then utilitarianism could even be used as General Theory or General practice of universal assessment that can cross compare between different sorts of events. A scale that includes all human activities and allows cross comparisons between these different forms of life. We really have then a Grand Theory or Grand Practice here. In this we can compare listening to a Rolling Stones album, with watching a Rolling Stones concert with seeing Richard Harris on stage. We might attempt an ordinarily, even a cardinality, we might, with Mill though, want to order these experiences as higher and lower by some further or other criteria. Maybe recognise then there can be no cross comparisons, rather different categories with their own Criteria that are mutually incommensurable. In contrast to the utility universality then people might say this is a relativism, this is post modernism with no objective value. But this isn’t really postmodernism at all. Post modernism here really means the boundaries between different sorts of events practices cannot be delimited, each category is not a defined as clear and distinct, closed and separable from other categories and activities, even ones we might not view as aesthetic at all. For example what “is” the “movie” of Panchot Villa’s armed push from the North of Mexico? Check out the funding and so on. Indeed we might say the “Performativity Turn” in politics is really one of taking the form of life of the theatre and stage into the street: the whole, world is a stage. Is this a political protest, or theatre for the masses? If the former any pleasure from the event is both necessary, but also completely subordinated to the political purpose. If the latter, then we might say its not a genuine earnest protest it’s a day at the theatre with their mates, a impromptu day at the fair. Remember like Pancho Villa subversion is always on the boards in Zizek interstitial spaces.
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Part D2: Now the left on the other hand coming out of a Marxist aesthetic Critical tradition from Marx, Lucas, Gramskie, Adorno, and so on, sees these aesthetics as really masks to stop our critical reflection on Capitalism, and pacifiers and channelers of our energies and disquiet and discontent. That is they are sublating, transferring our Critical and questioning and feelings of harm and injustice, and misdirecting us, instead of political action for change, we indulge ourselves in theatre spectacle and are subjected to artificially manufactured techniques by the author, to cause certain feelings, like being on a roller coaster, or in a 180 degree movie of being on a roller coaster.
The movement of art into politics, politics into art, is not just a political Critique of aesthetics for doing proper politics it is what they means by doing proper politics. That is Critical Theory Aesthetics is not just trying to reorganise the “aesthetic industry of reproduction” as a means for another political aim there as an objective anyway, rather as Gloria Steinman puts it the means are also the end. Thus the boundary between the aesthetic and the political, even as means ends boundary is compromised. But of course the boundary between politics and art has never not been so “compromised” according to them, so they are not simply doing Critical reflection, they are also reconstructing it. The question is then by what Criteria, or criterias, is it just chaos or have the left got their own Universal Grand Theory here. Or if it necessarily involves interdisciplinary moves, highly contextualised praxis affordances, then is there a Grand Praxis here, that would have to mean at least something like interconsitancy or non contradiction or non-hypocrisy between different sites of praxis different events. I might want to go so far and say just as too much to drink can go beyond pleasure, to death, so too much contextualised praxis can lead to self contradiction and a disunity, a de-solidarity, and the internecine contradictiosn pull apart what were originally thought of, and practiced as unified. That is, either: a self-destructive internal battle happens or they come apart and fight each other. Such a contradiction in praxis of the left has been well elucidated recently by Douglas Murrey, but the left have been to my surprise very resilient in holding these parts together, particularly because the different parts can even abide in one person’s body as well as their mind. I think the reason is that ironically the intersectional solidarity left have been able to maintain a priority or at least the theory of a priority of theory over praxis. That is they defer even in multitudes of praxis, to the idea of universal justice and equality. Then the contradictions of multiple praxis are mere transient local details and difficulties requiring ever changing ad hoc solutions. The idea is that under the idea of justice and equality in the future, in the course of time, the contradictions will be ironed out sublated and different pars will coalesce. If this is right then the Marxist performing Critical praxis of the left is really still under the cognitive sort of idea of justice and praxis serves this. The idea of justice then is like a regulative idea over praxis. Indeed it is as regulative ideas that the notion of justice for the left has entered (“infiltrated”? “taken over”?) aesthetics though their institutions and funding’s. Yes this is linked to money of course. On the one hand money paid private for pleasure, or expanding ones horizons, or just to be able to keep up with the conversation at the bar at half time. Funding for justice orientated projects can come from its practitioners and patrons, but since these usually have little money and no massive long run private support, they tend to need public funding not locked into capitalism rules and logic. Same for non left traditional aesthetics, it can be funded by tourism, theatre like a living museum, and not of mass popularity but deemed cultural important and so subsidised. Two competing groups for money each with its minister of culture.
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Part D3: The problem of justice and equality aims regulating over aesthetics, is not the limitation on creativity and truth, there is an internal limitation to the meaning of aesthetics itself. That is aesthetics as a tool for some other say political and/or economic purpose, more a techne a technology impinging up on us. It is suddenly appropriate to conflate it to advertising. But beyond this, as Kant tells us, when we experience the actual rules of formation, or regulation, in the aesthetic, this has the effect of killing the experience. I think because we realise and get the feeling we are being trained like a dog, the feeling of not being treated as free agents in ourselves by the author come from our reflection on the rules in the aesthetic. Of course for the left this is the whole point hey want you to come out of the play talking about justice and rules but starting off doing a bit of Critical aesthetic theory on the play. Left Critical theory, like lots of the lefts techniques of Critique later because the method. So the left in Critical aesthetic constructions, use many of the same technique they discovered in the advertising aesthetics of Capitalism. This means the left even in its praxis turn still has to have the idea of justice as their Grand narrative. So Rawls and re workings of Rawls are still relevant even in the far left. See Skinner’s book referenced above.
Another role for aesthetic criticism is just to bring people from the life world and from of life they are familiar with and mediate their getting attuned to new aesthetics.
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References. My discussion above obviously draws on much 20th century analytical philosophy i am particularly influenced by Sellars and McDowell here, but my emphasis has focused on modality Necessity possibility actuality as arranged "together" by Kant as a group of three (out of twelve) metaphysical categories. it should be noted these 3 have to be thought with the others especially the relational categories (substance: permeance in time, Causation: if... then as necessary relation agent patient, Community etc) In Sellars these are translated into or become logical semantic questions, ie for intervention in the Quine/Lewis debate on modality. McDowell however uses this to prompt a return to Aristotle unity teleology substance causality "potentiality and actuality" essence here looks like an ultimate cause absolute actuality which is depicted in the Metaphysics as like an aesthetic attraction (this notion of purpose in Aristotle's metaphysics was in the A level philosophy and ethics syllabus if you can believe it.
My way of setting the contrast between Aristotle and the modern must be influenced by the discussions during my post grad work, and probably the work of David Webb now published "Heidegger, Ethics and the Practice of Ontology", especially essays 3 and 6 versions of which i read as pre publication drafts.(David Webb 2009). I'm sure my use of this is very different from Webb though.
Much of my interpretation of the left here must come out of discussions, indeed years long argument with colleagues. I should say i spent my time arguing against them, but i didn't have anything like this position formed then.
I can add also that there was a post grad there who was working with us on this but his thesis was on Shakespeare. i though it very odd at the time, we did quite a lot of work on Leibnitz metaphysics which i thought strange. He told though later that Shakespeare was writing at the "cusp" between the old medieval Aristotelianism, and the new world of reason freedom Right and science. He said he believed all these metaphysical issues were in play beneath the surface of Shakespeare's plays. It remined me of my first post grad philosophy project on Galileo in London many years before. i was researching the shifts from medieval impetus theory to early inertia and momentum understandings by Galileo. It was this problem that drove my work on Leibnitz and how he had dealt with the problem differently than Descartes and Locke.
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Conclusion: So now we need to look at the view of, and the role of, and the context of “definition in Aristotle. The place to begin is Aristotle’s Metaphysics zeta. I will draw on Huge Lawson-Tancred The “Aristotle” chapter in “Philosophy 1” edited by A.C. Grayling Oxford 1998. Page 425 3.1.2. “Definition and essence (Zeta 4-6)”. Tancred begins with the problem of the separation of “thisness” and form. We might say the reworking of the Platonic problem of change appearance and form, and the modern matter and form. It will turn out to be discussion of hylomorph. In Zeta though Aristotle begins with the problem of definition and essence, essence is not a noun, but a phrase “ti en einai” “what it was to be”. But this is in play in a very different cosmology in Aristotle than Leibnitz or Plato. Anybody getting in to this has to bring in Aristotle on subject predicate, substance/essence and accident, four causes, categories, actuality potentiality. Then elucidate what Tancred describes as 3.1.4. “The Philosophy of definition (Zeta 10-12) pg 431. One thing is its not Plato as this is used to take Plato down.
To say there is no shortage of commentaries on this is an understatement. Many people have discussed this. Indeed in the middle ages, the Islamic and Christian worlds were both very interested in Aristotle and their respective religions. This followed the former’s rediscovery of Aristotle and its translation to Arabic and then its spread to the Christian world. Both religion were in a centuries long debate over Aristotle, each wrote an incredible amount of commentary on Aristotle many tens of thousands of books. In the Islamic world Aristotelian Islam (if I can put it that way) paid the philosophers huge amounts of money for their work. For a time they were the most highly paid group. Aristotle became a context or frame within which Christianity and Islam could discuss and debate. It is deeply incorrect then to try and differentiate the Christian West from the Islamic world, they are not just connected as Abrahamic religions, but there intellectual and instituional origins, share a deep regard for Aristotle and dialectics. I have discovered that just as Heidegger’s work seemed to have a connection to traditionalism and Volkish views, his work was very influential in re shaping Catholic Christianity after World War Two, and then later greatly influencing revolutionary Islam through an Iranian philosopher who was influential for the Iranian revolution of 1979. I am of course drawing out the Aristotelian aspect of Heidegger here as expressed by colleagues many years ago.
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