‘Philosophical analysis’ here means a combination of conceptual, logical and linguistic tools [1].
‘Standalone’ means we’re going to assume that the only sentence we know from this particular thinker and from that particular text is this:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, is to change it.
Anonymous author, unknown date
We don’t even know the name of this philosopher and we don’t know when exactly this sentence has been written or published. No extra historical insights will be used from the past, expect well that it was written sometimes in the past, so only our current world situation factors into the interpretation directly. Brace yourself for an isolated analytical philosophy incident [2].
Wait a sec, we know something else attached to this sentence as part of the standalone package, is that it was originally written in German as:
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt darauf an, sie zu verändern.
Anonymous author, unknown date
We give this sentence a go with a simple analytical toolkit. We try to understand this sentence or get a bit closer to what might it mean by rephrasing it using the tools of philosophical analysis. Continue reading “Thesis Eleven without steroids: standalone philosophical analysis”