Rustle in the Bush

This is where we see the historical bent of Wahl’s philosophy that becomes influential on Deleuze. Just look at the name-dropping in the Intro!

The intro is where Wahl addresses problems in philosophy and mostly as they constantly relate to the history of philosophy. Part of this is the importance of the textbook, and he hopes that in this textbook, he can bring out this relationship. He mentions that problems constantly shift, and we see new elements being entered around old problems as the East comes into the West. I like that he says that we are getting too quick to assimliate apparent similaries in Eastern thought to Wextern concepots that are dissparate and have their own history; Fuck the Baha’i. Zen and motorcycle maintenance.

“We must take account of the fact that the tradition of the philosophic perennis has perhaps put into the background some fundamental traits in man, has destroyed in a certain measure the feeling of our kinship with the universe, which poetry has better retained.” (Pg4)

I like this sentiment. When I read Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy (Again, never finished), I was disappointed by the religious and intellectual relativizing. It’s kind of a boring conversation, and a tactic apologists will use to start justifying for Gods of the Gaps; oooooo it’s all God somehow.

Dewey on relativizing the relationship between intellect and religion, and new strateggies in reponse by religions; also a kind of historicism

The scope of the change is well illustrated by the fact that whenever a particular outpost is
surrendered it is usually met by the remark from a liberal theologian that the particular doctrine or
supposed historic or literary tenet surrendered was never, after all, an intrinsic part of religious belief,
and that without it the true nature of religion stands out more clearly than before. Equally significant
is the growing gulf between fundamentalists and liberals in the churches. What is not realized—
although°per-haps perhaps it is more definitely seen by fundamentalists than by liberals liberals is
that the issue does not concern this and that piecemeal item of belief, but centres in the question of
the method by which any and every item of intellectual belief is to be arrived at and justified.

A Common Faith, Pg.32 (1949)

I’ll expand on this in a later post for a paper I’m working on.

A few common threads in his considerations are the shift from the ancient to the modern in terms of matter, motion, the infinite, and time. These, he says, were more of the real proponents who animated others because they caused religious tensions. The Hermetix podcast episode here covers Wahl’s relation to religion in his philosophy.

He then addresses flippancy in the buzzwords of philosophy’s history. He says we must continue to use them, though. First, because of their lineage, and second, because even ancient arguments and attitudes hold sway and validity over a long time.

His strategy, also echoed in Deleuze, is not a search for truth or the solution of problems, but to understand and bring to light the conditions and causes of how certain problems form in novelty and under their history. Wahl was right to say that it was a big time for philosophical revolution. He recognized a lot of what was going on in America and England with both their Logical Positivism and Pragmatism (Pluralism for Wahl). He also saw the eclipse of Hegel under Kierkegaard, and the lineage it birthed into Sartre, Heidegger, Jaspers, and the like (Discussed in Wahl’s Short History of Existentialism ). On different fronts, the success of Alan Turing’s computational ideas of mind was taking off, and the growth of Marxism out of its vulgar and Stalinist stages towards a kind of structuralism. There is also structuralism emerging in Claude Levi Strauss and the psychoanalysis of Freud. All the stuff Deleuze picks up on, all changing the landscape of philosophy radically. Again, just historically fun for me to know, but I only know the minimal amount for all these groups.

That’s the Intro!

Wahl’s Big 3! v