A PROBLEM FOR CONTEMPLATIVE PHILOSOPHY

This book runs parallel, in some ways, to my Philosophy's Cool Place. That work, too, is concerned with a contemplative conception of philosophy. In it, I contrast Kierkegaard's qualitative dialectic with Wittgenstein's philosophical methods, arguing that although Kierke-gaard makes conceptual (philosophical) distinctions in the service of clarity, his desire for clarity is not rooted in the wonder at reality and the possibilities of sense that comes from philosophy. Kierkegaard is a religious thinker whose main concern is with clearing away confusions about Christianity. Wittgenstein, unlike Kierkegaard, does not take the categories of the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious for granted. He is prepared to leave the relations between them, the problems they pose for each other, the ragged scene that it is. More importantly, he wrestles with the sceptical possibility that these categories have no sense, in bringing out the senses that they have. He says: ‘My ideal is a certain coolness. A temple providing a setting for the passions without meddling with them.’ He wants to contemplate the world without meddling with it. This is extremely difficult to achieve. In the remainder of Philosophy's Cool Place I illustrate this difficulty by reference to the work of Rorty, Cavell, Annette Baier and Nussbaum, all of whom, it seems to me, fail to settle for contemplative understanding, and want to provide us with some kind of message to guide us in life; a message said to be underwritten by, or to emerge from, philosophy.