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Modern philosophy, from Descartes onwards and including the present generation of philosophers, can be defined as belief in the devil. What gives post-Cartesian philosophy unity is the daemon. Descartes invented him, but all the others believe in him. Why and how did Descartes invent him? As is well known, Descartes, surveying the chaos of past errors, and noticing that even the greatest absurdities were believed by someone, hoped that reason could lift itself by its own bootstraps and liberate itself from all possible error. But to do that one had to start from scratch. Now, if you want to start from scratch the main difficulty is to find the scratch; to find that firm point from which the totally new but safe departure is to be made. This is where the assumption of the devil comes in. Assume an evil-minded and all-powerful devil whose aim is to frustrate you, and above all to frustrate you in attempts to know anything about the world.
[...]...Part one Philosophy in general Chapter 1 The devil in modern philosophy Modern philosophy, from Descartes onwards and including the present generation of philosophers, can be defined as belief in the devil What gives postCartesian philosophy unity is the daemon Descartes invented him, but all the others believe in him Why and how did Descartes invent him? As is well known, Descartes, surveying the chaos... back to the German thinker G.W.F Hegel, and which include the following: the world is in some important sense a unity Nothing in it exists on its own, or can be understood on its own The proper understanding of anything involves seeing its place in the context of everything else, and hence involves everything else, indeed the grand totality The totality is somehow spiritual in character This doctrine and... to the running of a motor car: they indicate that some bit of the machinery is doing too much or too little The job of the philosophic thinker or tinker is to remedy this, to restore the status quo ante by identifying and readjusting the misbehaving piece, and to eliminate the noise (See pp 16 and 22.) This theory is not true But why did it seem true to some? In the case of the inventor of this theory,... the spectrum separating the two extremes One may consider oneself capable of outwitting the daemon in some spheres and not in others Thus, for instance, Kant stood somewhere in the middle His major work, the 6 THE DEVIL IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY three great Critiques, is essentially a study of the various habits and doings of the mental daemon The daemon was held to be invincible to the extent that we could... lacking in external graces and polish—with those long hours in the lab, their nondescript backgrounds, their ill-balanced training, one can hardly expect anything better in that respect—but that they are also gormless, lacking in imagination, independence, and enterprise, content to carry on in hidebound routines But it isn’t really surprising A scientific THE CRISIS IN THE HUMANITIES AND THE MAINSTREAM... doubting virtually everything This new school has started another by systematically doubting nothing (This is known as Common Sense or respect for ordinary usage.) Or to THE DEVIL IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY 7 use another parable; philosophy is still seen in terms of Plato’s cave, but the philosopher’s job is now said to be to lead us back into the cave 1958 Chapter 2 The crisis in the humanities and the mainstream... At present they are such enthusiastic collaborators that their main joy is hunting out resisters caught with some of the old logical weapons still in their hands The most recent version of the linguistic devil is interesting in that the sphere in which the devil must be fought has shrunk very much indeed All the common activities, scientific or ordinary, are fairly free from undesirable machinations... some kind of a clinical picture The diagnosis which can be offered is of an interest far beyond the subject diagnosed THE CRISIS IN THE HUMANITIES AND THE MAINSTREAM OF PHILOSOPHY 25 Philosophy may not be the queen of the sciences (or indeed a science at all), but it is in a very real sense at the apex of the ‘humanist’ disciplines I do not mean that it is necessarily superior to the others in its... things were really there, and quite independent of the observer or knower The Idealists, who always stressed the interdependence and unity of everything, tended in the end to fuse knower and object known into one indissoluble whole In general, they tended to see everything as a cosy bundle—mind and object, citizen and state, etc The realists by contrast insisted on breaking things apart, and this, in. .. a result of the new attention it received, though philosophy in the end did not Problems arose even in logic, and in consequence of investigations into the foundation of logic, it came to be held that logic is not such an error-impervious strong-hold after all Logic is rooted in language: and thus the modern linguistic devil came to be born THE DEVIL IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY 5 There is also the quite celebrated . one Philosophy in general 1 The devil in modern philosophy 2 2 The crisis in the humanities and the mainstream of philosophy 8 3 Reflections on philosophy, . lead us back into the cave. 1958 THE DEVIL IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY 7 Chapter 2 The crisis in the humanities and the mainstream of philosophy The state of