philosophy Zitate

Doing philosophy was an opportunity to learn something new. I expected this to be an adjunct to my practice of architecture. But it turned out the other way. It turned out that the philosophy of science gave me the opportunity to design social systems, and I was more interested in people-oriented systems than in buildings. They were both design, but different kinds of design. I like creating

things.

I began graduate work in the philosophy of sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 where I came under the influence of the grand old man” of the department, the eminent philosopher E. A. Singer, Jr. Because of the informality of the department he created I began to collaborate with two younger members of the faculty, both of whom were former students of Singer, Thomas A. Cown and C.

West Churchman.
Three aspects of Singer's philosophy had a particularly strong influence on me. First, that the practice of philosophy, its application, was necessary for the development of philosophy itself. Second, that effective work on real” problems required an interdisciplinary approach. Third, that the social area needed more work than any of the other domains of science and that this

was the most difficult.
We developed a concept of a research group that would enable us to practice philosophy in the social domain by dealing with real problems. The organization we designed was called The Institute of Experimental Method.”

It's not very fashionable nowadays to have a philosophy that demands a lot of life. I tend to be drawn to people who are emotional - now they'd be called 'crazy'. Pollock, Jasper Johns, Toulouse-Lautrec. People said, 'They're off their nut!' Was Faulkner off his nut because he stayed in his house for eight months at a time writing books, and then you'd find him drunk up in a tree, making out with

some old black woman? I think that's fuckin' great!

This is the criminal left that belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary. The criminal left is not a problem to be solved by the Department of Philosophy or the Department of English—it is a problem for the Department of Justice…. Black or white, the criminal left is interested in power. It is not interested in promoting the renewal and reforms that make democracy work; it is

interested in promoting those collisions and conflict that tear democracy apart.