The quote then is:
Grice in
"Philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends - Richard E. Grandy, Richard Warner - 1986.
"Though it is no doubt plain that I am not enthusiastic about odium theologicum, I have to confess that I am not very much more enthusiastic about amor theologicus."
Source? Invented, I would think.
"The sounds of fawning are perhaps softer but hardly sweeter than the sounds of rending."
Grice´s later rhetoric at his very best!
"Indeed it sometimes happens that the degree of adulation which for a time is lavished upon a philosopher in in direct proportion to the degree of savagery which he metes out to his victims."
A former gladiator reflects!
"To my stomach it does not make all that much difference whether the recipient of excessive attachment is a person or a philosophical creed;"
I can hear old Herbert (his father -- a nonconformist) extending that to read "religious" too!
"zealotry and bandwagoning seem to me no more appealing than discipleship."
I loved it when Schiffer wrote, "I trust Paul will forebear my apostasy". The cheek!
"Rational and dispassionate commendation and criticism are of course essential to the prosecution of the discipline, provided that they are exercised in the pursuit of philosophical truth;"
Do we need a qualifier here? One might just as well speak of "ichthyological" truth, as he doesn´t!
"but passion directed towards either philosophers or philosophies is out of place, no matter whether its object is favoured or disfavoured. What is in place is respect, when it is deserved."
Credit when credit is due, rather than overdrawn.
"I have little doubt that it is the general beastliness of human nature which is in the main responsible for the fact that philosophy, despite its exalted nature, has exhibited a tendency to become yet another of the jungles in which human beings seem so much at home,"
I´ve never been to a jungle, so can´t say! But Grice does speak of a Meinongian jungle, elsewhere!
"with the result that beneath the cloak of enlightment is hidden the dagger of diminution by disparagement."
I hope he is not referring to Quine!
This is p. 62-63 of "Reply to Richards", available online. (books.google.com.ar/books?isbn=0198244649...) He immediately proceeds to sketch the epagoge (or "gladiatorial", to use Jones´s label) versus a "diagoge", or "conversational" to use Jones´s label, again) as contrasting methodologies, a footnote to which we dedicate in "CarnapGrice" by JonesSperanza.
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Thanks for drawing out the connections so well, with the other matters on which we are engaged (though rather quietly of late). I had not appreciated how central abhorrence of adulation might be.
ReplyDeleteI am diverted at present by the implications (thought perhaps remote) of this kind of thinking. for you have now connected love and admiration with minimalisation, via my preference to talk of Grice as disliking certain dogmas (just the dogmatic minimalisations) and then (not yet discussed) going on to think that more subtlety is required (for classification as "dogma" is unsubtle) and may be supplied as "epistemic retreat" and discussed minutely by a new formulation of my "X-Logic".
From there the step into elementary lattice theory is small, and Gricean exegesis slips into a low gear, while the brain regroups. Meanwhile carpenters, decorators, visitors, conspire to reduce progress.
I seem to have wandered off-track.
RBJ
Not at all. Since the system I´m using right now won´t allow me to paste this here most likely, will open a new post.
ReplyDeleteWell, it did. But still. New post coming its way.
ReplyDelete