A whole lot of what Socrates and Plato (and later Aristotle) try to do is go after the essence of things, and I'm not convinced that this is a noble activity.
Even if things have an essence (which is a dubious claim), and one can reason about them, if they exist in the world, then they must exist a context.
So, just trying to search for the essence and digging and breaking apart the contexts in a rabid search for what lies underneath – what something 'really is' —strikes me as relatively profane.
A whole lot of what Socrates and Plato (and later Aristotle) try to do is go after the essence of things, and I'm not convinced that this is a noble activity.
Even if things have an essence (which is a dubious claim), and one can reason about them, if they exist in the world, then they must exist a context.
So, just trying to search for the essence and digging and breaking apart the contexts in a rabid search for what lies underneath – what something 'really is' —strikes me as relatively profane.