Philosophy Changes Practice

Paul Feyerabend, Philosophical Papers, (Problems of Empiricism, Chapter 7, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations).

p. 130. “Finally, a critical comment on Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophy. Wittgenstein assumes that philosophers want to provide a theory of already existing things, and he is correct in pointing out that what exists is much more complicated than any philosophical theory. However, philosophical theories have not merely reflected things but have changed them, i.e. the (sham) conflict between theory and practice was resolved by a change of practice. This fact refutes the idea that philosophers, and for that matter all mythmakes, only erect castles in the air, and introduces a fruitful relativism of the kind explained in my Erkenntnis für Freie Menshen (Frankfurt, 1980).”


Posted

in

by