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Thought For The Day (The philosophy thread).

Started by Ciarán2, July 26, 2006, 12:23:09 PM

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Ciarán2

Edit: Thread originally subtitled (The not-at-all-pretentious philosophy thread), changed to (The "well alright then it turned out to be a little bit pretentious" philosophy thread). and although the thread probably does require subtitles (hem hem), I've gone for simplicity.

I've been considering this for a while, because we've had a few threads on philosophy but they tend to be very esoteric. Here are a couple of them...

Jacques Derrida dies

Slavoj Zizek

Jean Baudrillard and intellectual chicanery

A quick philosophy question

They're mostly to do with 20th century continental philosophy, but anything goes in this thread, from the pre-Socratics to Peter Ustinov. Anything you might want to add to do with Eastern philosophy is especially welcome. Hopefully it will lead to some interesting discussions. This morning I was reading Arthur Schopenhauer's "Essays and Aphorisms" and thought it'd be good to bounce ideas off you lot. The essay I read this morning was "On The Suffering Of The World", right bloody pessimistic it is too. Here's the first paragraph...

Quote from: "Arthur Schopenhauer"If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full, and which arises out of the need and distress pertaining essentially to life, should be purposeless and accidental. Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule.

He argues that "if we are to become conscious of what is agreeable to our will, if we are to notice something, our will has to be thwarted". So suffering is fundamental to man's existence. He illustrates this by pointing out that we don't think of animal's "suffering" as man does, and says that this is because animals have no (or at least, a less-developed) concept of anticipation or memory. So animals have a death instinct but they don't fear death as man does. He then writes that it is absurd that evil is portrayed as negative, when in fact it is evil that is positive and good which is negative. Working by analogy he mentions how we are not usually acutely aware of our health, but we concentrate on where our shoe pinches, that is, we are made explicitly aware of pain. And it is only this which leads us to conceptualise happiness.

Here's another bit which made me chuckle...

Quote from: "Arthur Schopenhauer"If two men who were friends in youth meet in old age after the lapse of an entire generation, the principal feeling the sight of one another, linked as it is with recollections of earlier years, will arouse in both will be one of total disappointment with the whole of life, which once lay so fair before them in the rosy dawn of youth, promised so much and performed so little. This feeling will dominate so decidedly over every other that they will not even think it necessary to speak of it but will silently assume it as the basis of their conversation.

That's a whole thread in itself, that paragraph, isn't it? He's also into the whole idea of the Fall of Man and says that he considers this the only metaphysical truth in all of the Old Testament. The idea that man is born guilty into this world and must suffer. I've never had much truck with that idea, myself, but he comes up with a good argument. He argues against Spinoza's idea of an infinite creator , pointing to the flawed nature of his most powerful creation - mankind - as evidence that God cannot be infinitely wise.

But beyond all of the pessimism there's an almost Buddhist like serenity, which I like. Here's another paragraph which sums that up quite well...

Quote from: "Arthur Scopenhauer"As a reliable compass for orientating yourself in life nothing is more useful than to accustom yourself to regarding this world as a place of attonement, a sort of penal colony. When you have done this you will order your expectations of life according to the nature of things and no longer regard the calamities, sufferings, torments and miseries of life as something irregular and not to be expected but will find them entirely in order, well knowing that each of us here is being punished for his existence and each in his own particular way. This outlook will enable us to view the so-called imperfections of the majority of men, i.e. their moral and intellectual shortcomings and the facial appearance resulting therefrom, without surprise and certainly without indignation: for we shall always bear in mind where we are and consequently regard every man first and foremost as a being who exists only as a consequence of his culpability and whose life is an expiation of the crime of being born.

Any thoughts on this?

Mr. Analytical

... and that's a bit like Jesus, isn't it?

Ciarán2

Quote from: "Mr. Analytical"... and that's a bit like Jesus, isn't it?

Are you pre-empting some kind of sermon about the relevance of religion from me?

It's a reference to the religious programme isn't it. Doh!

Mr. Analytical

Well if you will title your thread "Thought for the Day"...

Sherringford Hovis

Quote from: "Arthur Schopenhauer"view the so-called imperfections of the majority of men, i.e. their moral and intellectual shortcomings and the facial appearance resulting therefrom

Arfur will have to resign his job as England manager now...

Quote from: "Glenn Hoddle"
You and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and a half-decent brain. Some people have not been born like that for a reason. The karma is working from another lifetime.

Ciarán2

It seemed appropriate, with the overlap between philosophy and theology. That's why you should never get into a discussion with a Catholic priest about whether God exists, they'll run rings around you because they've studied philosophy in great depth. They're read in pragmatism, liberalism, nihilism, existentialism and being trained to think slippery they'll out-fox you in no time. My mother used to get on well with our Parish Priest and he was a very articulate man, quite intimidating really.

I've been interested in philosophy of religion recently, but I thought I'd give it a break for a bit and re-read the atheists and nihilists, the Nietzches and Marxes. And I've gone back to Schopenhauer's anti-reason, pro-will philosophy. I'd love to hear a debate between him and Spinoza.

Blumf

Who are the big political philosophers of our time? Or put in another way, what is/will be the 'Das Kapital' for the 21st Century? (not specifically a left thinking tome, but a potentially widely influential work)

Could such a book exist now? Or are people still reelling from the consequences of Marx and similar's works?

Ciarán2

Quote from: "Blumf"Who are the big political philosophers of our time? Or put in another way, what is/will be the 'Das Kapital' for the 21st Century? (not specifically a left thinking tome, but a potentially widely influential work)

Could such a book exist now? Or are people still reelling from the consequences of Marx and similar's works?

I would say that since a great era-defining book on political philosophy doesn't seem to exist now, that it couldn't exist. (Stating the obvious.) I blame post-modernism for this. The closest we have to a genuinely philosophical political thinker is probably Jean Baudrillard. Not a popular chap, I know, but he is the first one who springs to mind. That his writing is so divisive is part of the post-modern thing too, really. If you consider the collapse of grand-narratives like Marxism, it seems impossible that a book could come along now and sum the whole shebang up and speak to everyone. The best a book can hope to do now, it seems, is tackle an area of politics or philosophy and investigate it really well. But at the end of the day it remains kind of localised, it's repercussions don't seem to spread as far as they might have done in the 1840s when Marx was writing. And this is in spite of us having the fastest, supposedly most democratic press we've ever had in the form of the internet! so philosophy an politcal writing seems to have been broken up into lots of tiny categories (or "micro-narratives"), which we, the consumer, can peruse and choose from.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteYou and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and a half-decent brain

Fucking hell, he wasn't wrong was he?

humanleech

QuoteAt 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
George Orwell

SetToStun

Quote from: "humanleech"
QuoteAt 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
George Orwell

Tell that to Simon Weston.

actwithoutwords

Quote from: "Blumf"Who are the big political philosophers of our time? Or put in another way, what is/will be the 'Das Kapital' for the 21st Century? (not specifically a left thinking tome, but a potentially widely influential work)

Could such a book exist now? Or are people still reelling from the consequences of Marx and similar's works?

Depends on what you define as 'our time'. A Theory of Justice by John Rawls is by far the most influential book in political philosophy in the last hundred years. But he did die a few years ago. As for other major recent works, Thomas Scanlon is very good, Ronald Dworkin is interesting but far from correct. Even further from correct is Robert Nozick (also just recently dead), but Anarchy State and Utopia is a cracker of a book, he's definitely the most entertaining right-winger I've ever read.

As to who is going to produce the next great tome, obviously nobody can really know. Thomas Pogge is becoming more and more infuential, Matthias Risse is promising and Richard Arneson is apparently going to unleash some sort of behemoth on us at some point. The next big thing I think will either be progress in integrating evolutionary theories of morality with contractarian justice (Ken Binmore wrote a fascinating and accessible book on that topic recently) or it will be sorting out the theoretical mess that is justice on a global scale. Rawls didn't do a great job of it so there is a lot of work to be done sorting that one out.  Maybe my current dissertation will solve the current problems of legitimacy, fairness and democracy in a global context, but I can't say I'm overly hopeful...


EDIT: to add more people

hencole


thepuffpastryhangman

Quote from: "Blumf"Who are the big political philosophers of our time? Or put in another way, what is/will be the 'Das Kapital' for the 21st Century? (not specifically a left thinking tome, but a potentially widely influential work)

Could such a book exist now?


Ciarán2

I've been fascinated by a couple of paradoxes which people have mentioned on here, like Zeno's paradox of the lamp, and the maths one about the difference (or non-difference) between 9.99*(recurring) and 10. I was asking my 8 year old nephew if he could come up with a solution to the lamp one. He said "how would I be able to look at my watch to switch the light back on if I was sitting in the dark?" Kids have a great way of dealing with these problems, don't they?

Today I bought "Paradoxes From A-Z", a book by Michael Clark. It's been tempting me for weeks now.

Mr. Analytical

Quote from: "Blumf"Who are the big political philosophers of our time? Or put in another way, what is/will be the 'Das Kapital' for the 21st Century? (not specifically a left thinking tome, but a potentially widely influential work)

 People write books like this all the time.  It's just that you're too busy reading Whizzer and Chips to notice.

Ciarán2

Back to Schopenhauer, I've just been reading his essay "On Women" and it is quite funny in its old-fashioned-ness.

Here's a typical quote:

Quote from: "Arthur Schopenhauer"Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex.

If you track it down it'll give you a good laugh.

Pinball

Quote from: "SetToStun"
Quote from: "humanleech"
QuoteAt 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
George Orwell

Tell that to Simon Weston.
What about Joan Collins then?

Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer

Schopenhaur's great, the first Western philosopher to integrate Buddhist and Eastern thought into Continental philosophy, and to really discard Christianity. He ripped the piss out of Kant too, which is always good. It's a shame he has a bad press for being a misogynist (which he wasn't) and a loony who followed the same, unaltering regime for thirty odd years. But he's not a nihilist and I'll fight anyone who says he was.

Contemporary philosophy is a bit depressing really. Alain de Botton? Roger Scruton?

actwithoutwords

Quote from: "Ciarán"
Today I bought "Paradoxes From A-Z", a book by Michael Clark. It's been tempting me for weeks now.

brilliant book. hours of mind bending fun.

Quote from: "Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer"
Contemporary philosophy is a bit depressing really. Alain de Botton? Roger Scruton?

Contemporary rock and roll is a bit depressing really. Busted? McFly?

Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer


Ciarán2

I haven't bothered with Alain de Botton, but one of the first books I ever read on philosophy was Roger Scruton's "History of Modern Philosophy" (published by Routledge). At the same time I was reading Hegel's "Aesthetics: Book 1". Scruton was constantly having a pop at Hegel which I thought was a bit fishy. So I haven't bothered to go back to Scruton, I think he's really narrow-minded.

HKmA

Scruton is alright, he can be a bit sniffy about some philosophers but not as many as you would imagine from the political stuff he does. By all accounts he stirred things up a bit in british philosophy earlier in his life so you have to give him credit for that.

De Botton on the other hand is atrocious. I was reading a book of his the other day and was sorely tempted to throw it at the wall. It's just not philosophy in any meaningful sense, well written fluffy crap. The most annoying thing i saw was an attached diagram for a concept that required no illustration.

humanleech

Quote from: "Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer"He ripped the piss out of Kant too, which is always good.
Yeah, that was a brainfuck. Kicked the crap out out of Hume too. Totally puked on his head.

Borboski

Alain De "Bottom", will call him in my house.

I have just bought that Straw Dogs(?) John Gray book.  Not really opened it yet.

Mr. Analytical

De Botton's a charlatan.  A sunday-supplement journalist and hack passing himself off as a deep thinker.  He's a pseud and he doubtless spends the money he makes from his attrocious books on getting himself buggered by shire-horses.

Allegedly.

EDIT : When talking of Scruton I'm reminded of Ted Honderich who once described him as "the unthinking man's thinking man" largely because Scruton gave up on being a proper philosopher in order to come up with questionable justifications for anything that posh people felt like doing.

 Having said that, he does have a background as a proper philosopher and you can tell that from the fact that he has a go at Hegel.  Outside of France you'd struggle to find a professional philosopher who has anything but contempt for the obfuscatory gobbledygook that Hegel passed off as philosophy.

 He's part of that exclusive coterie of thinkers, next to Freud and Marx who are considered worthless by people who work in the same field of them, but are kept around by virtue of literary criticism types who are too lazy to go off and read something written within the last 100 years.

 So no psychologist considers anything Freud wrote to be worthy of contemplation but when it comes to "analysing" what's going on in a character's head, the litcrit types reach for their freud.  Likewise political scientists or economists consider the original Marxian ideas to be horrifically out of date but the Litcrit people still see all social dynamics in Marxist terms... the same goes for Hegel.

 Being into Hegel and Freud are the first signs that you're a pseud.

Ciarán2

***Ciarán reacts***

Quote from: "Mr. Analytical"...that exclusive coterie of thinkers, next to Freud and Marx who are considered worthless by people who work in the same field of them, but are kept around by virtue of literary criticism types who are too lazy to go off and read something written within the last 100 years...Being into Hegel and Freud are the first signs that you're a pseud.

This is twaddle. Hardly even know where to start arguing with you. Well done, you've flummoxed me! The rest of your post, I can put up with as your opinion, but if you really think in terms of "pseuds" and believe that Hegel, Marx and Freud are worthless, then you're barmy. The majority of my reading has been on things written in the last 100 years, so I don't really accept any point about laziness. If you dismiss these , you dismiss phenomenology, Marxism, most philosphy of language, many of the great works on psychoanalysis, structuralism...really you dismiss everything which has come since Hegel! Now it's one thing to criticise Hegel, or to say that you dislike his writing style or his methods, but to dismiss his work in this way and all of the work which is influenced by him is ridiculous. If you think Hegel is "gobbledygook", well I'm sorry, but you just haven't put the effort into reading it. But then, I suspect you knew your post would wind me up and you're having a bit of a jape.

P.S. I fucking hate the use of the word "pseud".

Mr. Analytical

Popper wrote about Marx and Freud being unfalsifiable and while I'm no fan of Popper's, I think he's right about the fact that they're both essentially immune to reason.  Regardless of new discoveries made in the respective fields that falsify the theories, there are still legions of tenured and un-tenured flunkies to build work-around patches to keep Big Theory afloat.

It's quite a common phenomenon this, in fact, it's what made Kuhn so famous and you can even see it in the works of modern system-builders like David Lewis who had one big idea (explain everything using possible worlds) and despite the clear flaws and endless counter-examples, there's always a work-around...   It's also a common attitude among philosophical historians as a whole.  Talk to an expert on Plato and no matter how cutting edge or radical the idea, a bit of hermeneutic gerrymandering assures that Plato stays fresh, as if you were punping a fresh load of embalming fluid into a rotting corpse.  Keeps him frisky dontchakno.

What is remarkable about Freud, Marx and Hegel is that the people pumping the chemicals tend to be historians and literary critics rather than people in the respective fields that Freud, Marx and Hegel worked in.  Freud's the best example of this as psychoanalysis (an activity and body of knowledge about as useful to human understanding as heroin addiction) has essentially opted out of the psychology business.  Now, if you want to become a psychoanalyst you have to study approved courses at approved institutes and with the right background.


The reason why these people are still mentionned is because they were system builders and system builders are fantastic for bluffing with.  all you need is a good basic understanding of the theory and EVERYTHING can be explained.  So when you come to writing your little essay on a play you saw or a piece of art... no need to get fresh insights, just unfold the rusting decaying Victorian edifice of these huge systems.  There you go... instant narrative... all neat and tidy.

As for Hegel's gobbledygook, Jung said that Hegel's style of writing suggested he might well have suffered from some form of megalomania and schizophrenia.  I look at his words and see autism.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Alain de Botton = the Mark Lawson of philosophy

Mr. Analytical

Hmm... I think De Botton's far worse than Lawson.

Lawson's no more intelligent than any university graduate but by virtue of being on the telly and by interviewing intelligent people, he gets tarred with the same brush (something I'd say was also true of Bragg).

De Botton makes sure that whenever he's on TV, he gets introduced as "the philosopher Alain de Botton".

Lawson doesn't correct people when they think he's intelligent.  De Botton feels the need to let everyone know how bright he is despite the fact that he has all the intelligence and depth of insight than his other friends who write for sunday colour-supplements.