Structuralism (oft' called post-modernism) is a decidedly elite philosophy that appeared after Heidegger and Derrida destroyed the previous metaphysics and built a new structure around authorship as the dialectical Spirit. Yet Spirit (geist in german) also translates as "Mind".
It seems that many of the early progenitors of Structuralism rejected, implicitly through out their writings, the idea of "Purpose-as-such". To them the idea of a higher calling or a divinely inspired "purpose" seemed absurd and tragically out of step with the post-modern age....
Well now that post-modernism is dead,
We can all focus on taking the authorship and dialectic of the main originator of structuralism, Jean-Jacques Derrida, and return it back to it's roots in "Agrarian" ethics. The philosophers of that time on the European continent had a great deal of respect for the rural and oft' times under-educated "man of the land". It's even been said that throughout all of Heidegger's obtuse and oft' times difficult verbiage is a profound sense of explaining the conceptualization of "Common Sense" (as in the agrarian ideal of reason and logic) in distinctly abstract philosophical language. Explaining the virtues of the farmer through philosophy proper.
I feel that in the years after Heidegger and Derrida philosophy basically, in a sense, collapsed under the weight of "Nihilism" or purposelessness-as-such. Heidegger never wrote at all about morality or ethics, keeping his prose of philosophical import more attuned to the phenomeno-existential. When he talks about two different kinds of being (the Ontological and the Ontical), or two different kinds of existentialism (the Existentiell and the Existential), he's delimiting the horizon upon which an apprehension of the Virtues of the Agrarian man, as the most everyday way in which one can approach the mysterious virtues of hermeneutics, can be understood.
So by making these primordial distinctions on the basis of Being vs. beings-as-such or the two different modes of phenomenal apprehension of the world as the existentiell and the existential, what the inherent morality of the author in fact is in facticity, comes out in the modus operandi of the authorship.
Later Po-Mo academic oxen seemed to take this lack of ethical rhetoric as an implicit denial of morality-as-such;
Yet the authors of the continent at the time, including Nietzsche, all seemed to succinctly reject the idea of absolute values not in favor of a kind of hipster existential nihilism but generally saw Passion as the main redemptive qualia of life. With the leaps in technology and science at the time, it seems interesting that many of the black outfit clad po-mo cultists of the last century reject Marshall Mcluhan. Around the time of Structuralism's prominence there was a great effort by many of the structuralists to explicitly reject the works of Mcluhan.
Well now that Mr. Mcluhan's (an early English lit professor who basically predicted the next 60 years of technological evolution) insights have proven to be unequivocally "on the mark", so to speak, perhaps we can inject a little "purpose-as-such" back into the publik dialectic.
I mean honestly,
Little counter-culturalist wanna be intellectuals rejecting all value in philosophy based on oxen like obedience to ethical nihilism all the while rejecting Teleological concerns? They do very little of the hard work and deep study & thought of the philosophers on the continent.
Maybe there's no point or purpose to our world as the Structuralists say.... who knows?
But I think the 1960's/1970's era of Post-modernism has failed society, failed philosophy, failed the litmus test of virtue and now resides in the graveyard for forgotten intellectual movements of the past.
Let's all approach the world and our Being-in-it as a careful dialectician such as Derrida or Hegel would have done. We should save no sacred cows... What we need as philosophers is to revaluate all values of Post-Modernism and come to the conclusion that Existential Post-Deconstructionism is the horizon of the New philosophers.
Cheers friends,
Hope you find some meaning in my useless drivel!
Brendan O'Connell
DDU2019
It seems that many of the early progenitors of Structuralism rejected, implicitly through out their writings, the idea of "Purpose-as-such". To them the idea of a higher calling or a divinely inspired "purpose" seemed absurd and tragically out of step with the post-modern age....
Well now that post-modernism is dead,
We can all focus on taking the authorship and dialectic of the main originator of structuralism, Jean-Jacques Derrida, and return it back to it's roots in "Agrarian" ethics. The philosophers of that time on the European continent had a great deal of respect for the rural and oft' times under-educated "man of the land". It's even been said that throughout all of Heidegger's obtuse and oft' times difficult verbiage is a profound sense of explaining the conceptualization of "Common Sense" (as in the agrarian ideal of reason and logic) in distinctly abstract philosophical language. Explaining the virtues of the farmer through philosophy proper.
I feel that in the years after Heidegger and Derrida philosophy basically, in a sense, collapsed under the weight of "Nihilism" or purposelessness-as-such. Heidegger never wrote at all about morality or ethics, keeping his prose of philosophical import more attuned to the phenomeno-existential. When he talks about two different kinds of being (the Ontological and the Ontical), or two different kinds of existentialism (the Existentiell and the Existential), he's delimiting the horizon upon which an apprehension of the Virtues of the Agrarian man, as the most everyday way in which one can approach the mysterious virtues of hermeneutics, can be understood.
So by making these primordial distinctions on the basis of Being vs. beings-as-such or the two different modes of phenomenal apprehension of the world as the existentiell and the existential, what the inherent morality of the author in fact is in facticity, comes out in the modus operandi of the authorship.
Later Po-Mo academic oxen seemed to take this lack of ethical rhetoric as an implicit denial of morality-as-such;
Yet the authors of the continent at the time, including Nietzsche, all seemed to succinctly reject the idea of absolute values not in favor of a kind of hipster existential nihilism but generally saw Passion as the main redemptive qualia of life. With the leaps in technology and science at the time, it seems interesting that many of the black outfit clad po-mo cultists of the last century reject Marshall Mcluhan. Around the time of Structuralism's prominence there was a great effort by many of the structuralists to explicitly reject the works of Mcluhan.
Well now that Mr. Mcluhan's (an early English lit professor who basically predicted the next 60 years of technological evolution) insights have proven to be unequivocally "on the mark", so to speak, perhaps we can inject a little "purpose-as-such" back into the publik dialectic.
I mean honestly,
Little counter-culturalist wanna be intellectuals rejecting all value in philosophy based on oxen like obedience to ethical nihilism all the while rejecting Teleological concerns? They do very little of the hard work and deep study & thought of the philosophers on the continent.
Maybe there's no point or purpose to our world as the Structuralists say.... who knows?
But I think the 1960's/1970's era of Post-modernism has failed society, failed philosophy, failed the litmus test of virtue and now resides in the graveyard for forgotten intellectual movements of the past.
Let's all approach the world and our Being-in-it as a careful dialectician such as Derrida or Hegel would have done. We should save no sacred cows... What we need as philosophers is to revaluate all values of Post-Modernism and come to the conclusion that Existential Post-Deconstructionism is the horizon of the New philosophers.
Cheers friends,
Hope you find some meaning in my useless drivel!
Brendan O'Connell
DDU2019
