> On Oct 24, 2015, at 2:56 PM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote: > > Sorry, I think, I have had a misunderstanding based on the problem of > translating "power" to German: "Macht" (mightiness) is only the power, a > human or an institution has to achieve their particular iterests, but English > "power" is a much more general term: In this case perhaps a universal > teleology or telos?
I tend to see it as potential to act in a certain way. So increased power increases the ways one could act. However the term picks up connotations from the major philosophers using it. Especially Nietzsche’s who see “will to power” as an irreducible fact of human nature. This then gets picked up by Foucault and others. At the same time you have its use, especially in physics, with slightly different use. There power is the rate of doing work. You can see the two main senses are similar but there are important differences. In this case it’s even trickier since the main philosophers like Foucault are using Nietzsche’s sense which is wrapped up with the German connotations. Yet but Foucault and Derrida given it slight twists. With respect to my earlier comments I see the final interpretant as tied to power as it is the interpretation that objects determine in their aggregate or wholeness. (The universe as an object) That relationship between object and interpretant via the sign is due to how objects act or (since we’re talking of an indefinite future) how they could or would act. That could or would puts us into potential action over time and is why I used the term power. In physics we’d more readily use the term potential energy. For Derrida this notion of truth is wrapped up with Nietzsche’s thought experiment using the Stoic notion of eternal recurrence. That is truth is what objects determine. The two ways of reading Derrida are whether truth is thus always at best a local point of semi-permanent belief or if we can talk about stable beliefs in the long run. The former is how those who read Derrida as a relativist or a nihilist tend to see this play of power. The latter is how those who see him as a realist tend to see it. The key issue though within a Peircean context is fallibilism. That is if we are in a point or relative stability of belief we can’t really know if this is the same as the final stability. So we must always be open to being wrong. There are implications of that for philosophy - especially philosophy done with a strong Cartesian background. Often those attacking philosophers embracing a thoroughgoing fallibilism are called relativists or worse. I think Peirce gets away with it simply because he’s a neglected philosophy in the history of philosophy. When people do read him it tends to just be one or two papers (typically from his early periods) and the full extent of his thought is never encountered.
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