> the Archimedean point
Are you not getting the cart before the horse? Surely this is a fairly new product of philosophical thought despite it's grounding in old Greek philosophical imagery. If one wants to know what 'philosophy' is, then one best learn who came up with the word and why though, praps that's what you were getting at. Is 'philosophy' an attempt to reflect on an overall coherence and sense of purpose we feel in life (see 'God'), despite the man-made factioning (and thus corrupting) of it? Maybe so. It's odd, for example, that a Westerner's standard way of examining and understanding an animal is to first kill it and dissect it - so as to see what it is made of. I don't think many secular thinkers are very comfortable with the notion that in attempting to explain things you will perpetually retreat from, or 'kill' direct truth, but this notion is, or should be, self-evident to those who are religious, for to question the 'totality' becomes redundant when you evoke the notion of God. But isn't God then too totally redundant? For distilled into a word it becomes a corruption of 'true' God so-to-speak. What a funny quandary!
Clearly to argue that our theoretical thinking is in any way neutal or absolute would be a dificult task, as the Archimedean Point, erm, points out. But doesn't this therefore defeat the whole purpose of philosophy? No, it just gives thinkers more to talk about.
