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Document Details : Title: De leermeester en ik, altijd tussen twee stoelen in Author(s): MESKENS, Ann Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 84 Issue: emeritaatsnummer Date: 2022 Pages: 5-13 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.84.5.3290709 Abstract : For decades, a wide-spread belief amongst philosophers has been that philosophy should give up the eternal search for the one and only truth. Some degree of historic consciousness helps to understand that modern thinkers expected too much from Reason, science, and universal truth. Thinkers such as Montaigne, Nietzsche and Musil showed that essayistic writing and thinking was perhaps the most honest way to practice philosophy. Did you say Reason? Let us show some modesty instead, and practice perspectivism, pragmatism and relativism. Let us give a little bit less attention to Reason, and more to the feelings of the heart. And let us be honest: all philosophers are writers after all. Many years later now, new media, conspiracy theorists and a lot of ordinary people demonstrate what far-reaching relativism really implies. Fake news, alternative facts, everyone one’s own truth and a lot of sentimentality for everyone. Have we, postmodern philosophers, overlooked something? Did we explain ourselves clearly enough? Should we, once again, just like in the early days of philosophy, become more truth-seeking researchers and defend with full rigor and reason the endless and worthy craving for truth? |
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