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PHILOSOPHYPHILOSOPHY AND ITS RELATIONS
In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche described Socrates as that ‘despotic
logician’ who proclaimed the philosopher as one whose mission is
to make existence intelligible. With Socrates enters the belief that
rational thought, guided by knowledge of the true causes of things,
could penetrate the depth of being, capable not only of knowing but
even, thereby, of correcting being. Nietzsche described this philosophical
ideal as a sublime and metaphysical illusion. Might there be a realm
of wisdom, he asked, from which the logician is excluded? Dr Wilde used
these passages to describe and compare some different aims and strategies
in contemporary philosophy across the divide between the Analytic and
Continental traditions in order to focus some of the issues about truth
and meaning in the so-called Postmodernist debates about art, science,
religion and politics. |
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