Quietism (philosophy)
Quietism in philosophy sees the role of philosophy as broadly therapeutic or remedial. Quietist philosophers believe that philosophy has no positive thesis to contribute; rather, it defuses confusions in the linguistic and conceptual frameworks of other subjects, including non-quietist philosophy. For quietists, advancing knowledge or settling debates is not the job of philosophy, rather philosophy should liberate the mind by diagnosing confusing concepts.
Status within philosophy
Crispin Wright said that "Quietism is the view that significant metaphysical debate is impossible." It has been described as "the view or stance that entails avoidance of substantive philosophical theorizing and is usually associated with certain forms of skepticism, pragmatism, and minimalism about truth. More particularly, it is opposed to putting forth positive theses and developing constructive arguments."Quietism by its nature is not a philosophical school as understood in the sense of a systematic body of truths. The objective of quietism is to show that philosophical positions or theories cannot solve problems, settle debates or advance knowledge.
It is often raised in discussion as an opposite position to both philosophical realism and anti-realism. Specifically, quietists deny that there is any substantial debate between the positions of realism and non-realism. There are a range of justifications for quietism about the realism debate offered by Gideon Rosen and John McDowell.
History and proponents
Ancient
Pyrrhonism represents perhaps the earliest example of an identifiably quietist position in the West. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus described Pyrrhonism as a form of philosophical therapy:Some have identified Epicureans as another early proponent of quietism. The goals of Epicurean philosophy are the decidedly quietist objectives of aponia and ataraxia, even dismissing Stoic logic as useless.
The neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Hao is also associated with advocating quietism. He argued that the goal of existence should be calming one's natural biases and embracing impartial tranquility. This aversion to bias is nevertheless quite distinct from Wittgenstein's position.
Contemporary
Contemporary discussion of quietism can be traced back to Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work greatly influenced the ordinary language philosophers. While Wittgenstein himself did not advocate quietism, he expressed sympathy with the viewpoint. One of the early 'ordinary language' works, Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind, attempted to demonstrate that dualism arises from a failure to appreciate that mental vocabulary and physical vocabulary are simply different ways of describing one and the same thing, namely human behaviour. J. L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia took a similar approach to the problems of skepticism and the reliability of sense perception, arguing that they arise only by misconstruing ordinary language, not because there is anything genuinely wrong with empirical evidence. Norman Malcolm, a friend of Wittgenstein's, took a quietist approach to skeptical problems in the philosophy of mind.More recently, the philosophers John McDowell, Irad Kimhi, Sabina Lovibond, Eric Marcus, Gideon Rosen, and to a certain degree Richard Rorty have taken explicitly quietist positions. Pete Mandik has argued for a position of qualia quietism on the hard problem of consciousness.