Thursday, March 22, 2012

Tractations II

Everything is the case.

The world is the totality of facts, not things.

Science represents the facts (not things).

Philosophy presents concepts, not thoughts.

Art renders the image.*

Poetry presents emotions, not feelings.

Politics represents the acts (not people).

History is the totality of acts, not people.

Everyone is on my case.

_______
*Added March 24, 2012.

2 comments:

Presskorn said...

Neat!.... I am, however, a bit unsure about "Politics represents the acts (not people)."... What does "represent" mean here? All the obvious possible canditates seem excluded: It is not the sense of e.g. "representational democracy", because politics does reprensent the people. It is not the sense associated with the representation of "facts", because politics is not science. And it doesn't jibe well with the determination of politics as the construction of injunctions, because injunctions are a paradigm example of non-reprensentational sentences...

(("Politics presents precepts, not concepts"???))

Thomas said...

There is clearly a difference between political and scientific representation. In both case, however, its about "standing in the place of". It is tempting to think that science represents things, and therefore that politics represents people, but things and people (a moment's reflection confirms) always speak for themselves. It is the arrangement of things (into facts) that science can speak for. And the arrangement of people (into acts) that politics can speak for.

I haven't yet gotten to subjects and objects. It's going to be killer.