Saturday, April 22, 2006

Knowledge Exacts a Mode of Life

From Stanley Cavell's "Existentialism and Analytical Philosophy" in Themes Out of School

"the term philosophy can refer either to a body of propositions supposed to comprise knowledge of some sort, or else to a mode of life, and that analyitical philosophy is an example of the former and existentialism an example of the latter." (p.220)

"a body of knowledge or a mode of life." (p.221)

"it is one of Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's best discoveries - or rediscoveries - that knowledge itself exacts a mode of life." (p.222)