as I am studying the enlightenment right now, I do cheat
and look ahead to modern philosophy occasionally…
I have notice that questions that drove philosophy for
centuries no longer are even an issue… for example,
the problem of the certainty of knowledge which drove philosophy
for 200 years, from Descartes to Kant, no longer is even an issue…
either it has been ignored or declared solved… I don’t know…
but it isn’t a topic in modern philosophy except as a historical
understanding of philosophy past… what drove Descartes was
his attempt to understand how we can be certain of knowledge and this
is how he approached the problem… but this isn’t a modern question…
today we work with language and science and techniques and …
but not, not how is knowledge certain…
this evolution of philosophy tells us a couple of things…
first of all, philosophy must be understood historically, within
the context of its time and we understand that the understanding we
reach with philosophy will change even historically…
for example, our understanding of say, Hume, changes with
new historical research into his philosophy and new research into
his times and other theories current during his times…putting
Hume within a historical context helps us better understand what
Hume is trying to say…take past, present and future of Hume
and we get an better overall understanding of Hume…he was part
of a system, he had context in his historical times… he was part of the overall
system of the 18 century and he was part of the philosophical system of that time
and he was in turn influenced by cultural and philosophical events of his past
and his present…could we say for example, he was, to use a 19 century phrase,
“alienated from his times”… and it is quite clear from his biography, that this man,
David Hume was a man of his times and existed quite happily in it… to approach Hume
with 19 century or 20 century or even modern terms or idea’s is to rip Hume out of his
times, his system… and to do so, means we falsify or take out of context his person
and thought…David Hume can only be understood in terms of his times and his
place within the 18 century systems… he must be understood within the context
of his times and not with modern ideas or philosophical idea’s current in our time…
the next aspect of the changing understanding of philosophy is that
the philosophy of tomorrow will be different then the philosophy of
today which is different then the philosophy of yesterday…
which means idea’s like language understanding of philosophy is
historical driven… they exist as part of the times, within the context
of the times and may or may not be part of philosophy in 5 or 10 or
a hundred years… just as we no longer pay any attention to the
question which drove philosophy for 200 years, the question of the
certainty of knowledge, the questions that drive us today, won’t be
applicable tomorrow because of the changing nature of our systems
and the changing nature of who we are and the changing nature
of philosophy itself… questions that drive us today will most
likely become meaningless tomorrow… and that is a rather depressing
thought, for me anyway… all this hard work of understanding and my
understanding of what is philosophy and its nature will become moot
as I change and philosophy changes and our society changes and our
systems change…the philosophers of tomorrow will simply
ignore my work and work on the questions of their time… it is the
nature of things and philosophy…
Kropotkin