To me the philosophy of Eclecticism seems like a cop-out. I find it hard to believe that all philosophies, as different as they might be, can be tied into one— forced together in some sort of “natural” way, gathered, sewn together— without being downsized. I feel as if Eclectics are just little the middle person in the argument who agrees with both sides, saying that both arguments are right in some way, just so that they won’t have to think to hard about solving the problem. I know that this school of thinking developed because there were no new philosophies coming out and everything was falling into repetition, but I would rather repetition than submission. I believe that it would be better to continue being Epicureans, Stoics, Pythagorean, Aristotelian, etc. than just abandoning logic and metaphysics, putting everything into a big bowl, mixing it up, and saying “this is what I believe!” There is no reason or sense in substituting one set of logical foundations for another; this leaves philosophy shallow and weak. This philosophy can also be interpreted as weak because of its lack of a purpose. Yes, it unified the philosophies but what ultimate question was it trying to solve? Or was it just trying to make everyone from Rome to Greece happy (appeasement of the masses)? I honestly don’t know but hope to find out. Some of the theories presented by this philosophy, especially those on the soul, seem to have some worth and seem to be very complicated to understand (I have come to learn that the more complicated the theory that the better the concept turns out to be in the end) so this philosophy seems worthy of further investigation. I just hope that I can understand the explanation of the soul given by Plotinus because I think that that would be something interesting topic to talk over with a stranger on the streetcar when there is a delay.
I see where you are coming from but I disagree that there is no sense in having this kind of world view. Though there may be no completely novel ideas in the writings, there is a novel way of putting the philosophies together. The best way I can illustrate this is in an analogy to music. Music has been building upon its predecessors in a very similar way, just listen for Pachelbels Canon in D. The most obvious refutation to this kind of argument would be that the analogy if slightly off because in the cases of new music building off the old there is still some novel idea that the composer throws into the piece of music, like adding a different refrain or chorus. Just as Aristotle built off of Plato by adding new ideas instead of just mashing multiple philosophies that have little to do with each other together. To that sort of argument is submit to you Girl Talk. Just as the eclectic philosophers took great care to take multiple philosophies that you wouldn't think work together and weaved them together in a way that they keep much of their original qualities but still work together to create a novel system of philosophy; Girl Talk takes multiple songs that didn't originally go together and made a completely novel song. Eclectic philosophy was the beginning of the remix revolution.
ReplyDeleteI am actually inclined to agree with you in the respect that I do not feel as though all of these philosophies can be neatly bundled into "one," especially because many of these schools were competing with another and had varying ideals. Having said that, however, I also agree with the comment posted above... there is a sort of strength in building off of what has been previously written or spoken of. When one takes a song, or philosophy, and "remixes" it, so to speak, sometimes the product is better than the original. Other times, however, it is a complete failure. I guess it depends on how you look at it.
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