Certainty vs. Fallibility

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

For the West the middle or dark ages was a time when ideas of what truth entails were carefully guarded by dictatorial authority. It was a time when scholarship meant exegesis of texts in an attempt to wed Platonism with Christianity. It was a time sufficiently lacking in a democracy of ideas to usher in a renaissance of creativity or to allow philosophy to engender objective science.

Contemporary philosophy, that since Nietzsche and Heidegger, appears torn between concepts of some fixed, absolute certainty about the nature of human knowing and concepts about the fallibility of truth statements by virtue of historical, evolutionary flux. If philosophy is to be more than an intellectual chess game, how can it address the basic human need for stasis in the teeth of change?

For a really good discussion of this matter, read “After Philosophy: End Or Transition”, eds. Baynes, Bohman and McCarthy, MIT Press, 1987.

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From the end of the Roman empire until Francis Bacon, philosophy had very few champions. Why was this?..any ideas?

3

Thanks, Oldphil,
IMHO, it is because the prevalent Platonism of the time supported the idea of ultimate and final ends to all questions about truth as espoused by the Church. To consider change in ideas was to be considered a heretic.