While on his campaign trail for the presidency, Barack Obama talked to no end about the \u201cchange\u201d that would visit upon America, a change so profound, so sweeping, that it would \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d America.\u00a0 To understand the implications of this, we would do ourselves a good turn to subject the concept of \u201cchange\u201d to philosophical interrogation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cChange\u201d is a concept with a storied history in the annals of Western philosophy.\u00a0 In fact, it is no exaggeration to account for Western philosophy itself as an enduring conflict over the nature of change and its place in the world.\u00a0 From its inception in ancient Greece 2600 years ago to the present day, philosophers have realized that inquiries regarding \u201cchange\u201d are inseparable from those concerning \u201cpermanence,\u201d \u201cidentity,\u201d \u201cknowledge,\u201d \u201cbelief,\u201d \u201cparticulars,\u201d \u201cuniversals,\u201d and, in short, a plethora of other philosophical concepts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pre-Socratic philosophers set the stage for the issues that would arrest the attention of their successors for the next two-and-a-half millennia.\u00a0 Parmenides thought that change must be an illusion, for change is identity-extinguishing: if change were real, than neither the objects that constitute our world nor our knowledge of them would be possible.\u00a0 Heraclitus, on the other hand, thought that it was \u201cpermanence\u201d that was illusory: it was he who famously said that \u201cyou can\u2019t step in the same river twice.\u201d\u00a0 Another partisan of \u201cthe flux,\u201d Cratylus, grabbed hold of the logic of this reasoning and ran with it further: if change is the only constant, so to speak, then you can\u2019t step in the same river even once, for nothing <\/em>remains itself from one unit of time to the next.\u00a0 Thus, nothing can be known.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plato thought that Cratylus was correct, that change precludes both identity and knowledge. And he agreed as well that there isn\u2019t a single entity in our world that is immune to change.\u00a0 But to avoid Cratylus\u2019s skeptical conclusions, Plato posited another<\/em> world, a supra-sensible or \u201cintelligible,\u201d heavenly-like world constituted by, not the corruptible and temporal \u201cparticulars\u201d that compose empirical reality, but invisible, incorruptible, immutable, and eternal \u201cUniversals.\u201d\u00a0 What stability and identity each particular possesses it derives from its \u201cparticipation\u201d in the Universal to which it corresponds.\u00a0 Knowledge, then, is attainable, for its objects are Universals that, as such, remain exactly one and the same forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plato\u2019s premiere student Aristotle was among the first to identify the problems with his master\u2019s \u201cTwo Worlds\u201d theory.\u00a0 He rejected it, but the language of \u201cuniversals\u201d and \u201cparticulars\u201d that were its central terms he preserved, even if in a significantly modified form.\u00a0 Still, Aristotle refused to abandon the belief that \u201cthe universal\u201d is the immutable essence that ultimately invests each particular with its identity and renders it a possible object of knowledge.<\/p>\n Western philosophy had assumed an identifiable shape and the argument over change and permanence, particulars and universals, was well underway.<\/p>\n Along with others, I do not think that change is necessarily incompatible with identity.\u00a0 Because neither \u201cchange\u201d nor \u201cidentity\u201d is a theory-neutral term, it is indeed possible to construe each so as to reconcile it to the other.\u00a0 Only a conception of identity that equates it with exactness <\/em>finds it impossible to accommodate change: if something doesn\u2019t have exactly<\/em> the same properties at any one moment as it has at any other, then it isn\u2019t the same thing.\u00a0 But why endorse this understanding of identity?\u00a0 More plausibly, identity doesn\u2019t preclude change but, rather, requires that whatever changes occur be continuous<\/em> with one another.\u00a0 Since changes that are gradual or incremental are readily absorbable by the entity that undergoes them, the identity of that being isn\u2019t impaired by them.<\/p>\n However, to paraphrase the twentieth century philosopher Michael Oakeshott, change that promises \u201cfundamental transformation\u201d is emblematic of death.\u00a0 <\/em>Every change involves loss, it is true, but dramatic changes of this kind are designed to destroy <\/em>the being upon whom they are visited.\u00a0 It is crucial that this is grasped.\u00a0 When Obama pledges to fundamentally transform <\/em>the United States, he is not pledging to improve<\/em> upon his country, but to replace <\/em>it with another entity altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is what a \u201ctransformation\u201d involves.\u00a0 It is but a euphemism for \u201cdeath,\u201d really.\u00a0 Anyone with any doubts on this score ought to ask himself how his wife would respond to him if, in addition to vowing to love and cherish her, he as well vowed to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d her?\u00a0 The desire to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d one\u2019s wife is nothing more or less than the desire for a new wife.\u00a0<\/p>\n Similarly, the desire to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d a country is the desire for a new country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While on his campaign trail for the presidency, Barack Obama talked to no end about the \u201cchange\u201d that would visit upon America, a change so profound, so sweeping, that it would \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d America.\u00a0 To understand the implications of this, we would do ourselves a good turn to subject the concept of \u201cchange\u201d to philosophical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n