Writing is an art of sincerity, a science of progress, a means to criticism, so as to ensure that no received sermon would be able to avoid the reflection of rationale gaze. Thoreau, one of profilic writers of all time writes in Walden:
"I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my mentors said nothing about".
The value of criticism is often ignored by many intellectual minds of modern age, somehow they have failed to appreciate that egotism is antithesis to wisdom. The value of criticism was recognized by one of leading intellectuals of 18th century, Immanuel Kant. He writes in his celebrated essay, titled What is Enlightenment?:
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed tutelage. Tutelage is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. ... [dare to know] Have courage to use your own understanding!—that is the motto of enlightenment".
The history of criticism starts with the Socratic dialogues, followed by Cynism, and later on Heraclitus develops the antonyms like an "intimate enemy". After medieval period when St. Augustine wrote the City of God, the "leap of faith" (Kierkegaard) became the sole driver of human geist. After the Protestant movement against the dominant Church European political life witnessed a relative sense of stability, especially after the peace of Westphalia treaty. It is the development of printing press, compass, and gun, the real journey of discovery started. Though it is obvious that the colonial subjugated history followed after the Renaissance, which is labeled as an epoch of humanism and progress. And of course, the spirit of criticism witnessed its height in Hegelian historical process of ideas. Hegelian dialectical logic became the prime source of negative philosophy, which later on developed as the Frankfurt critical school.
As per Paul Ricour, there are at least two different streams of philosophy we may trace in Western categories, the "master of orders", like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Rawls, and the "masters of suspicion", like Marx, Freud, Nietzsche. People often wonder if negative philosophy has any role in construction? None other than Jacques Derrida has an answer to this question. If you read his unreadable text, Of Grammatology, for Noam Chomsky secretly admires the irony of masked expression, you may appreciate how the history of western knowledge has been relying over Eurocentric world view and logocentric traditions. There are many budding traditions of knowledge, which today we recognize as traditional knowledge have never got the due respect what they always deserved at the first place. These forms of knowledge systems didn't get a chance to be criticized at least. Instead they were "condemned to be silenced" within the zone of mystical curiosity. The real worth of human progress lies in the cultivation of critical attitude towards what is offered by various narratives by predominant narrative artists. Each one of us is a writer in a sense that writing is an ethical pursuit to seek truth and justice. It is a symbol of life. There is no other reason why freedom is the greatest blessings we have been endowed with by nature. And to cultivate it we must have heroic vigilance to guard it zealously.
"I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my mentors said nothing about".
The value of criticism is often ignored by many intellectual minds of modern age, somehow they have failed to appreciate that egotism is antithesis to wisdom. The value of criticism was recognized by one of leading intellectuals of 18th century, Immanuel Kant. He writes in his celebrated essay, titled What is Enlightenment?:
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed tutelage. Tutelage is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. ... [dare to know] Have courage to use your own understanding!—that is the motto of enlightenment".
The history of criticism starts with the Socratic dialogues, followed by Cynism, and later on Heraclitus develops the antonyms like an "intimate enemy". After medieval period when St. Augustine wrote the City of God, the "leap of faith" (Kierkegaard) became the sole driver of human geist. After the Protestant movement against the dominant Church European political life witnessed a relative sense of stability, especially after the peace of Westphalia treaty. It is the development of printing press, compass, and gun, the real journey of discovery started. Though it is obvious that the colonial subjugated history followed after the Renaissance, which is labeled as an epoch of humanism and progress. And of course, the spirit of criticism witnessed its height in Hegelian historical process of ideas. Hegelian dialectical logic became the prime source of negative philosophy, which later on developed as the Frankfurt critical school.
As per Paul Ricour, there are at least two different streams of philosophy we may trace in Western categories, the "master of orders", like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Rawls, and the "masters of suspicion", like Marx, Freud, Nietzsche. People often wonder if negative philosophy has any role in construction? None other than Jacques Derrida has an answer to this question. If you read his unreadable text, Of Grammatology, for Noam Chomsky secretly admires the irony of masked expression, you may appreciate how the history of western knowledge has been relying over Eurocentric world view and logocentric traditions. There are many budding traditions of knowledge, which today we recognize as traditional knowledge have never got the due respect what they always deserved at the first place. These forms of knowledge systems didn't get a chance to be criticized at least. Instead they were "condemned to be silenced" within the zone of mystical curiosity. The real worth of human progress lies in the cultivation of critical attitude towards what is offered by various narratives by predominant narrative artists. Each one of us is a writer in a sense that writing is an ethical pursuit to seek truth and justice. It is a symbol of life. There is no other reason why freedom is the greatest blessings we have been endowed with by nature. And to cultivate it we must have heroic vigilance to guard it zealously.
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