Thinking Inside and Outside the Fly-Bottle: The New Poverty of Philosophy and Its Second Copernican Revolution–A Podcast.

In his essay, “Thinking Inside and Outside the Fly-Bottle: The New Poverty of Philosophy and Its Second Copernican Revolution,” Robert Hanna formulates and defend two metaphilosophical theses. The first thesis is what he calls The New Poverty of Philosophy, which says this:

I. So-called “hard” problems in philosophy are actually institutional artifacts of Anglo-American professional academic philosophy since 1912—the year in which Russell’s immensely influential book, The Problems of Philosophy first appeared—and in particular, they are institutional artifacts of the ideologically disciplined social-institutional structure of Anglo-American professional academic philosophy since the end of World War II.

And the second thesis is what he calls Philosophy’s Second Copernican Revolution, which says this:

II. In order to end and reverse the new poverty of philosophy, instead of assuming that philosophy is really possible only inside the professional academy, we postulate that philosophy is really possible only outside the professional academy.

In so doing, we substitute the rabbit of real, extra-professional-academic philosophy for the duck of professional academic philosophy. Hanna’s conception of “the new poverty of philosophy” is therefore a way of reinterpreting and updating Wittgenstein’s deep insight that philosophy as he knew it by the end of World War II—that is, professional academic philosophy—is, in a cognitive, emotional, moral, and political sense, just like a fly buzzing around and around, forever trapped inside a fly-bottle. Correspondingly, Hanna’s conception of “ending and reversing the new poverty of philosophy” is therefore also a way of reinterpreting and updating Wittgenstein’s deep insight that

[t]he real discovery [about “the philosophical problems”—cf. Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy (Russell, 1912/1999)] is one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to. –the one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §133, p. 51^e)

And finally, Hanna’s conception of “philosophy’s second Copernican revolution” is a way of embedding those reinterpreted and updated Wittgensteinian ideas within a broader and deeper Kantian philosophical context, just as Kant’s first Copernican Revolution in philosophy substituted the rabbit of transcendental idealism for the ducks of classical Rationalism and Empiricism.

REFERENCE

(Russell, 1912/1999). Russell, B. The Problems of Philosophy. Indianapolis IN: Hackett.

You can find an accessible but also fully detailed podcast on Hanna’s “Thinking Inside and Outside the Fly-Bottle: The New Poverty of Philosophy and Its Second Copernican Revolution,” created by Scott Heftler and other friends of Philosophy Without Borders, HERE.

And you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the full text of “Thinking Inside and Outside the Fly-Bottle: The New Poverty of Philosophy and Its Second Copernican Revolution,” by clicking on the Download tab directly below.

Download