The Wildebeest's Wardrobe

The Post-modern Gnu

I think that I am finally beginning to concede the futitlity of trying to salvage analytic philosophy from scepticism and overcoming the suspicion that all my beliefs are illegitimate, thanks to resources and friends off the beaten path. After teaching history of philosophy for awhile it seems clear that philosophy has taken a post-analytic epicycle several times in history ever since Aristotle dissed Socrates on "The Good", Leibnez recovered a dynamic view of substance, and Hegel saved metaphysics from Kant's analytic. The key is the realization that there is no solution to problem of scepticism except the fact that were their is no solution there is, after all, no problem.

Another factor is the fact that professional analytical philosophy is also a trap for my personality flaws, which are something for me like obsessive perfectionism. The threat of having morally illegitimate beliefs in the absence of some cunning detail left out by a likely lack of imagination on my part played right into all my self-destructive tendencies and made it difficult to even see the institutionalized programmatic "obsessiveness" as something that can be entertained with detachment.

Consequently I find myself able to get back to more classic themes like positing the intellect of St. Thomas as a starting point of thought and as providing a defence for theology on the basis that the value such an account is more apparent when one realizes that what really matters to us finite thinkers is not certain reasoning but successful reasoning.