So... Descartes, Aristotle, Wittgenstein-all non-philosophers? I can honestly think of no one who misrepresents philosophy more than Charles Mudede. Certainly there is no bigger sophist.
If you accept the premise that Marxism is the most robust interpretation of the world-text of human affairs, then it follows that only Marxists can be called philosophers. This position doesn't deny that the philosophers of previous ages were unimportant, or even wrong, merely that their contributions are, as it were, concluded. In this era, the reasoning goes, any philosopher who isn't focused on the material conditions of human life in this world is focused on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
"Only communists can be properly called philosophers," my ass. Even among left-leaning political philosophies that's preposterous. What is Habermas then? A poet?
That kind of grandiose and normative over-generalization makes the pragmatic wing of Marxism look like an archaic relic of a mode of philosophy that rightly passed out of favor in the nineteenth century - these global theories and systems of the high German variety.
Certainly it is possible to be focused on the material conditions of human life without endorsing Marxist philosophy specifically. Any school of thought that accuses its competitors of sophistry is probably guilty of the same charge. Marxism today is, after all, much closer to an organized religion than a robust philosophy.
So, "Philosophers study the truth, Marxism is the truth, therefore Philosophers must be Marxists"? Righto.
If you ask me, advancing a hypothesis by selectively "defining" certain words and drawing rhetorical conclusions from those definitions is more sophistry than philosophy. But that's just me.
Charles, do you chuckle as you write your posts? That's how I've always imagined you. Even if you believe every one of them to be your closest expression of truth at the time, you've got to be anticipating the reaction in the comments.
That kind of grandiose and normative over-generalization makes the pragmatic wing of Marxism look like an archaic relic of a mode of philosophy that rightly passed out of favor in the nineteenth century - these global theories and systems of the high German variety.
If you ask me, advancing a hypothesis by selectively "defining" certain words and drawing rhetorical conclusions from those definitions is more sophistry than philosophy. But that's just me.