The Wright Stuff 1.0

Listening to Drop Kick Murphy's, thinking how "Captain Kelly's Kitchen" is narrative, is story, and thence my mind goes back to Wright's book.

I have been impressed, yes, and I find his writing style quite engaging. But for what it's worth, I read with all my critical arsenal locked and loaded. I can't help it. I'd like to keep a running commentary up here. These are posts which will interest few readers, but then I have few readers! If you've read Wright, great, if not, cool, enjoy or skip these posts at will. I'm sorting and sorting out.

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I am not sure how much Wright's epistemology tells me about the world at large and how much it tells me about the world of NT scholarship, and NT scholars! He admits he isn't going to take a long time arguing his theory of knowledge and in fact cites longer works by others. I was disappointed, sorry, to note that a major one was by a NT scholar. The works cited for this book has nothing by Kant, by Plato, though these are mentioned in passing. In short, I'd like to know what professional philosophers are saying about what Wright calls 'critical realism.' (I have to admit, though, it sounds cool: what's your epistemic orientation? oh, I'm a critical realist; two of my favorite words).

My own mind is deeply affected by empiricism, by scientific method and materialism, by what Wright equates here with positivism. I know that the logical positivism of Ayers got into trouble, I even remember years ago reading why, but I forget and Wright doesn't tell me. He merely discounts Ayers and hence positivism and by connection pure empiricism. The thing about empiricism, the reason why so many thinkers have comfortably, and sometimes smugly, parked their behinds on that stool is that, as Wright says any successful philosophical theory should, it explains things, it offers predictions which can be re-enacted ad infinitum. Water, at 1.0 ATM will always boil at the same temperature. Reduce the pressure and the boiling point can be calculated exactly, tested, known.

Is that kind of 'story' the same thing as a cultural creation myth for example? Wright is rewriting (no pun int.) epistemology, pieces of psychology, learning theory, and he does it awfully quickly. For Wright argues that all knowledge is ultimately story knowledge, narrative knowledge, and I can't deny that all researchers, scientists included, operate from within presupposition, expectation, story. Sometimes that story grows too large, incorporates areas that are beyond testability, or more often, it simply denies the discussability of anything beyond it. But I'm taking Wright's narrative idea with a shaker full of salt for now. Sure that works in NT studies (as he notes, all we really have are stories) and as an English major, I like the metaphor. Still, I need time to think about this.

And the one time Wright does mention Plato (33) I'm not sure I agree with his application. I know the passage from Symposium well, have discussed it in many classes. Socrates argues that there is middle ground between true knowledge and ignorance (and how frustrating to work here with a translation only; I have to learn Greek some day). That middle ground is true belief, something like faith, I guess. I've puzzled over that many times. Socrates is simply trying to decenter the arguments (the stories, actually) about Love which have gone before. Socrates likes to make his opponents admit they're wrong about anything he can, and that happens here. Love is also a spirit, a mediator, between Gods and Men. Spirits operate in the realm where true belief is, the in-between.

I'm not even sure how metaphysically serious Plato was here. But Wright quickly says that Plato is saying there are some things we can know for sure and some we can't, a form of positivism. Wright seems to be assuming that Plato is saying we can know the physical world the way scientists do; he doesn't say this, because it's clearly not true. Plato was concerned with his universals, his transcendents. Those we could only access fleetingly in this life. The world around us was transitory, mutable and imperfect.

So I didn't like that passing reference to P, even if Wright may be onto something with that challenging text. I believe Wright is a well-educated NT scholar who knows his field very, very well. But how well he interacts with larger philosophies only time will tell.

Whatever, he writes very clearly considering his content.

Should all knowledge be understood as embedded in story? That is very intriguing, and while Wright doesn't write an entire book on it, he should. I would enjoy it, probably, as much as anything else in this series. And again, how could he write this chapter without engaging Kant's epistemology?

I note the next chapter begins with a poem. How fun. I'm being serious now, not ironic. Why he chose de la Mare is another question.

Love to all. Gotta go.

t

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