I’ve never formally studied philosophy, but lately it has come up in my work on electronic document management, especially file plans, classification, taxonomy, ontology – call it what you will. I need simple ways of teaching basic concepts, so I’ve been grappling with questions like How do we know things? How do we differentiate one thing from another? And guess what – it’s called metaphysics, and epistemology.
So I’ve been reading some introductory books from the Parramatta City Library, right near where I work. Some are hard going, some incomprehensible. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy is just so badly written! But Stephen Hetherington, Roger Scruton and the wonderfully lucid A. C. Grayling have really got me thinking. Great stuff.
Right now I’m trying to understand postmodernism, post-structuralism and deconstructionism. I know it’s hard to write simply when you are trying to explain complex ideas, but frankly most of what I’ve read so far is hard going, dense, turgid and incomprehensible. It’s a shame because there are some good ideas hidden away in there. I’m also not sure about starting with useful linguistic tools and extrapolating so far as to question the validity of pretty well everything written or spoken. Its also a pity some mediocre intellects have used all this to wreak havoc in history faculties and secondary education literature syllabuses.
However, as I said, there appears to be some useful stuff in there. I’ll persevere a while yet.
