Re: [xmca] Measuring culture

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Andy,  thanks for this post which I find exploring experience and culture.
These insights of Dewey's seems to parallel  themes I've been reading in
Gadamer's perspective on prejudice .

especially the section,

It [experience] is filled with interpretations, classifications, due to
sophisticated thought,
  which have become incorporated into what seems to be fresh, naive
  empirical material. It would take more wisdom than is possessed by
  the wisest historic scholar to track all of these absorbed
  borrowings to their original sources. If we may for the moment call
  these materials prejudices (even if they are true, as long as their
  source and authority is unknown), then /philosophy is a critique of
  prejudices/.


I would like to juxtapose, or put in play, these insights of Dewey's with a
quote from Owen Barfield,

More particularly, it (i.e. pleasure) can be aroused by a language which is
at an earlier stage of development than the one which is our own, because
it is the nature of language to grow less figurative, less and less couched
in terms of imagery, as it grows older.  We notice, we relish figurative
quality in older language, and we EXPERIENCE this figurative element in the
same way in which we experience those new metaphors which poets make for
us. But it does not follow from this (and this is where most of the
philologists of the 19th Century and the early twenties have really made
their mistake) it does not follow from this that that figurative element,
that presence of living memory, that we find in earlier language was made,
invented, created by the individual genius of a poet.  On the contrary, it
couldn't have been.  It was simply there in the language as such; it was a
'given' kind of meaning, a 'given' kind of imagery.

I also want to bring in Emily's comment posted today,

 I just wanted to call attention to play as in the way play ' plays ' us...
Gadamer talks about this in Truth and Method, noting that  when we engage
in in play, play can overtake and seem to become something more that the
participants.

As I read Dewey's, Barfield's, and Gadamer's notions of experience I see a
theme of experience and expression as playful.

Larry



More parti
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Wagner, your post sent me into my book of the writings of John Dewey,
> where I became happily lost for half an hour. I couldn't find the maxim I
> was looking for, but this one will do:
>
>   "Experience is already overlaid and saturated with the products of
>   the reflection  of past generations and by-gone ages. It is filled
>   with interpretations, classifications, due to sophisticated thought,
>   which have become incorporated into what seems to be fresh, naive
>   empirical material. It would take more wisdom than is possessed by
>   the wisest historic scholar to track all of these absorbed
>   borrowings to their original sources. If we may for the moment call
>   these materials prejudices (even if they are true, as long as their
>   source and authority is unknown), then /philosophy is a critique of
>   prejudices/. These incorporated results of past reflection, welded
>   into the genuine materials of first-hand experience, may become the
>   organss of enrichment if they are detected and reflected upon. If
>   they are not detected, they often obfuscate and distort.
>   Clarification and emancipation follow when they are detected and
>   cast out; and one great object of philosophy is to accomplish this
>   task." (PJD 276)
>
> The quote I was looking for and couldn't find made an allusion to Hegel's
> famous aphorism:
>
>   "As for the individual, every one is a son of his time; so
>   philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as
>   foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present
>   world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over
>   Rhodes." (Pref. Phil Rt.)
>
> and went on to say that while no philosophy worthy of the name can simply
> reflect the prejudices of its own times, it is given by its own times the
> prejudices against which it must protest. Those who are blindly swept along
> by the fashions of the times are quite incapable of doing this and are not
> worthy of the name of philosophy or science.
>
> Andy
>
>
>
>
> Wagner Luiz Schmit wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I don't know if you already saw this... I am still thinking about it and
>> what to say about it...
>>
>> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/**pt-br/what_we_learned_from_5_**
>> million_books.html<http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/pt-br/what_we_learned_from_5_million_books.html>
>>
>> A new tool or a new way to reduce human to numbers? In some places i
>> already see scientists from fields like neuroscience, evolutionary
>> psychology and etc pointing to me and saying "Marx? Vygotsky? Gosh you are
>> obsolete and should be in a Museum". And they have funding...
>>
>> Just trowing toughs...
>>
>> Wagner Luiz Schmit
>> ______________________________**____________
>> _____
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/**product/1608461459/<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608461459/>
>
>
> ______________________________**____________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
>
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca