Richard Rorty on Purity
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 เม.ย. 2022
- A clip of Richard Rorty discussing the notion of purity. This comes from the documentary "Of Beauty and Consolation". More Short Clips: • Shorter Clips & Videos...
#Philosophy #Rorty #Pragmatism
I just wanna be pure.
Purity is the 'value' pursued from vertical, logical asceticism and horizontal, perceptual altruism. Kantianism is its 'best' philosophy, environmentalism is its practice.
I studied psychology at university (personality theory in particular) and I have learned that there’s one thing personality theorists and clinicians don’t say often enough but they should. That is “person’s personality has to be understood in relationship to personalities of other people”
It’s very common for people to describe others as having personality X (ie conscientious or extroverted) But there’s no one who’s conscientious on their own terms. You are only conscientious when you compare yourself to other people.
Can’t really explain the downside of failing to emphasizing this point but it is worth pointing out in and out of clinical situations.
I think this relates to what Rorty is getting at.
You might be interested in Rorty's lecture on Pan-relationalism in the book "Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism."
Heidegger spends an enemorous time laying out the groundwork for what you're saying in his work Being and Time, especially in the chapter of the World hood of the World, where we as living beings are not reduced to static self sufficient substances, our ecstatic relations with the world prevent us and it from ever being quantified, as we are mutually defined by these ever evolving significances. It's truly genius, and sets the foundation for the positive human sciences
the downside is that you throw out the idea that there is a "ideal" personality" one we all strive to be. If you compare yourself to others you just become part of the herd, you are no longer a individual and you become homogenised
Good example of how we confuse ourselves with ideas, concepts, words. If he just changed the idea of purity that he has in his mind into something slightly different, like "pursuit of an ideal" --- then it would perhaps not a bad thing anymore. Such games with words can be played forever because language is imprecise. There are infinitely many meaningless and confusing discussions we can have, which waste our time, and get us talking and thinking in circles. Perhaps it is this kind of nonsense that zen masters whack students on the head for.
But what sparks this quest for purity?
One could say that Man attempts to renew his nature through the shedding of his impurities as a snake does its own outgrown old skin. Or the externalization of inner need? Should Man not want his outer world to conform to his inner? I mean isn't this Will to Purity just another expression of the Will to Power itself? It's not enough just to "be", but Life can only experience value through struggle. If there is no struggle, then there is no sense of Self. That said, this Self abhors stasis. It craves "danger", because only through this struggle can Man individuate himself.
Purity then, I mean that never-ending search for it, may be likened then to Jung's star that beckons Man to find expression of his higher Self at the end of his Seven Sermons.
One wonders why this fear of purity then?
Zarathustra or a Last Man? The choice is yours.
isn't the choice actually yours?
I don't think everything is as dirty as everything else. A condition of actual purity is that it is always - in a sense - impure. But it is less impure than actual impurity.