The problems of philosophy...
The problems of philosophy...do they really exist, as in having some correspondence to reality? Or are they simply artificial constructs of philosophical thought?
The philosophic tradition has raised many problems (epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, &c.), which have been inherited by the most recent traditions of reductionistic and analytical philosophy (amongst others, but these seem to be prevalent on TPF).
My position is that the problems of philosophy are phantasms, and that modern day reductionism/analytics is not only guilty of perpetuating the nonexisting problem, but compounding it, mutilating it beyond recognition and into a greater delusion that, again, thinks something might actually be resolved.
I'm interested to hear the different opinions concerning the problems of philosophy, and why or why not they might be resolvable.
The philosophic tradition has raised many problems (epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, &c.), which have been inherited by the most recent traditions of reductionistic and analytical philosophy (amongst others, but these seem to be prevalent on TPF).
My position is that the problems of philosophy are phantasms, and that modern day reductionism/analytics is not only guilty of perpetuating the nonexisting problem, but compounding it, mutilating it beyond recognition and into a greater delusion that, again, thinks something might actually be resolved.
I'm interested to hear the different opinions concerning the problems of philosophy, and why or why not they might be resolvable.
Comments (124)
Yes, Nietzsche. I've read a ton of his work.
Nietzsche rejects the correspondence between concepts and the particulars of experience, or "nerve stimuli". I prefer to interpret his notions of Dionysian/Apollonian, will to power, and eternal return in relation to this. What he is saying, in essence, is that there is no true ground (the Dionysian) upon which to construct a conceptual scheme (the Apollonian). For him, there is only the 'will to power' in creating and imposing a conceptual scheme, and the ultimate and inevitable demise of rational truth - the 'eternal return' to an irrational dream.
Yes-haven't gotten to that part yet!
I regret replying now-I am by no means qualified enough to answer your question.
I agree, at least when it comes to much of philosophy. To keep metaphysicks going, such critiques must be (falsely) assimilated by those too attached to metaphysicks to let it go. So we get metaphysicks^2, metaphysicks^3, and so on. To play these 'anti-metaphysickal' games, one of course has to steeped in the lower levels of metaphysicks. This is like having to master A Course In Miracles before one is allowed to dismiss it. Life is short. We have to make choices.
Am I mistaken to say that Nietzsche also does blame language/interpretation for issues in philosophy?
Quiet with that nonsense. I appreciate any input you make. I wasn't even thinking of Nietzsche until you mentioned him. And it was very relevant.
In response to your contention - I would argue that philosophy is a subject, with a curriculum, and a recognisable set of problems and issues. A lot of people dismiss it without understanding that, in the same way as a lot of people use the word 'metaphysical' for anything 'vaguely spiritual', without understanding that metaphysics as a formal subject has likewise a body of content and domain of discourse.
My view is that even if philosophy does indeed comprise phantasms, they are nevertheless phantasms that continue to exert considerable influence over the mind. So just saying 'boo, phantasms', might not show any insight into what those phantasms are and why they are the subject of philosophy. In fact, in our day and age, I think that is the most common reason.
Another factor is that philosophy is profoundly rooted in history, particularly, the history of consciousness. By that I mean, the ancients lived in an imaginative universe utterly different from our own. This wasn't simply because they believed the world was held up by elephants or surrounded by crystal spheres. Rather it's because their conception of man and nature was different to ours, in ways we can barely fathom. So being able to be critically aware of that, instead of (as is most usual) dismissing the ancients as scientifically uninformed, takes considerable imagination in its own right.
I could say more, but that's enough for starters. (Although I have sometimes reflected that it's impossible for the same person to at once admire Nietzsche and Plato. And I admire Plato.)
Yes, but Nietzsche pretty much the dark psychologist of philosophy trivialized much of philosophy into psychobabble like the will to power and some other crap about ethics belonging to the ubermensch. I refer to him as the drama queen of philosophy...
Well stated. That is getting at the heart of my position.
I was excited to see your post. I had to pipe up and support it.
Absolutely. Philosophy has a unspeakable personal value for me. I might say it has saved me in a strict eschatological sense of the term saved.
Yes I'm getting that vibe only a dozen or so pages in! But it is a refreshing view point, and I appreciate his defence of the anti-realists of his time, he says at least they are willing to shun the prevailing views and so on.
Thanks. :smile:
Same here. I love philosophy. I consider it a central expression of what some would call my spirituality.
My distaste for phantasms is connected to a pursuit of the true and the real. Since philosophers generally want the true and the real, I'm ultimately just calling many approaches dead ends. What these approaches have in common is getting lost in language, including getting lost in language about getting lost in language. The goal is roughly the same, something like virtue.
I want to address your point about Witt.
But first I will say Nietzsche's psychobabble is highly open to interpretation, but he does make some extremely valuable contributions when you can get past his insanity. I think of Witt. as a sane Nietzsche, although he was insane in his own right.
I agree.
And, speaking of Nietzsche, he's largely valuable as one more eloquent attitude to have spent some time with. In my mind, being educated is connected to having exposed one's self to many ways of looking at the world. Our own attitudes are often made more virtuous and eloquent this way, or so I continue to think and hope.
I understand the antithetical relation of Nietzsche to Plato, but I personally admire both for what they have to offer in themselves. The notion of perspectivism, introduced by Nietzsche, excuses Plato from his criticism by regarding them as independent conceptual schematics or systems of thought.
I don't know. He despised a lot of philosophers before him and hated Christianity. Can you imagine a world full of people admiring Nietzsche? Not a pleasant world I think.
Just looked him up.
[quote=Wiki]
Wittgenstein had claimed that philosophy was an illness of language and Hadot notes that the cure required a particular type of literary genre.[7]
[/quote]
Sounds fascinating. But what one often sees is Wittgenstein himself becoming part of the disease. The disease is a hungry Hegelian hippo. Before long one needs Wittgenstein^2 as a cure for Wittgenstein.
Yep, good philosopher.
It would definitely be anarchistic. But I also admire Plato, and a world full of people admiring both Plato and Nietzsche would result in a populace with a very balanced understanding.
Nope, tell me more...
Hadot's recurring theme is that philosophy in Antiquity was characterized by a series of spiritual exercises intended to transform the perception, and therefore the being, of those who practice it; that philosophy is best pursued in real conversation and not through written texts and lectures; and that philosophy, as it is taught in universities today, is for the most part a distortion of its original, therapeutic impulse.
[/quote]
The 'real conversation' theme is great, as is insisting on the gap between academic concerns and philosophy that matters to us as worldly mortals. We also largely read to become better people. So books are merely an aid to our lives outside of books.
I think this connects to the phantasms theme. It's in the interest of some academics that the water remains muddy. Insider jargon also helps to disguise the ignorance of professionals not only from non-specialists but also from those professionals. The 'ignorance' I have in mind is not of the body of metaphysicks that they preserve but of the limited power and relevance of metaphysicks.
IETP.
I only have his Plotinus, but I've also read Philosophy as a Way of Life. I think his insight into philosophy as being a practice - praxis - is important.
What in my opinion happened is that a great deal of value in Greek and ancient philosophy got incorporated into Christian theology and was often seriously mis-translated in the process. So with the turn away from Christianity in Western culture, a great deal of the original philosophical insights were lost along with it - hence the flatland of modernity.
Actually I think one recent influential philosopher who has explored this theme, apart from Hadot, was Habermas, in his dialogues with Catholicism.
I agree, but I'd also stress that new phantasms are created in the science of phantasms, and this is what I mean by metaphysicks^2 and metaphysicks^3. If we take the phantasms too seriously, then we have to become ghostbusters who...only pay attention to the ghosts we are supposed to be busting. But the whole point was to turn our attention to better paths to virtue in all its forms
I don't see many philosophical problems prior to Cartesian philosophy. I am inclined to attribute all philosophical problems to modern philosophy.
I always saw a major distinction between ancient and modern philosophical thought. One example is the contrast between Socratic ignorance and Cartesian doubt. My fundamental philosophical presuppositions definitely align more closely to the ancient than the modern.
Thanks. :up:
That is very insightful. So, by the time of copernicus, it only took a tiny nudge to flip it all on its head. And we are dealing with its consequence in the present.
:lol:
On a side, I also think this problem is analogous to the atheist who discusses God.
Indeed.
Of course here I am targeting phantasms, a ghostbusting ghost. I justify that by insisting that the earlier critics of phantasms got it pretty much right. They were either ignored or assimilated by metaphysicks --a metaphysicks that has changed its name without changing its prioritization of theory over practice.
Hungry Hegelian Hippo...hey! That's what I was going to call the philosophical problem. Verdict: Wittgenstein, guilty.
Quoting Wallows
My question is: why can't philosophical problems that are attributable to psychology be further reduced to our use of language, like everything else? It seems that Witt. is conveniently multiplying variables. Why not more variables, like sociological, historical, cultural, political, economic, &c.
I would say these were the ancients, everything preceding Descarte, and I'm open to call it even earlier. Everything deriving from Descartes has been fucked.
I agree. What do you think of Hobbes? I'd call him one of the good guys. In Hobbes the subject/object game is downplayed, and he focuses on the practical use of the mind. It largely calculates consequences. By merely ignoring some of the problems that drive other philosophers mad, the game is won by refusing to take it seriously.
[quote=Hobbes]
I have said before, (in the second chapter,) that a Man did excell all other Animals in this faculty, that when he conceived any thing whatsoever, he was apt to enquire the consequences of it, and what effects he could do with it. And now I adde this other degree of the same excellence, that he can by words reduce the consequences he findes to generall Rules, called Theoremes, or Aphorismes; that is, he can Reason, or reckon, not onely in number; but in all other things, whereof one may be added unto, or substracted from another.
But this priviledge, is allayed by another; and that is, by the priviledge of Absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man onely. And of men, those are of all most subject to it, that professe Philosophy.
[/quote]
I like that you get what I mean by the Hegelian hippo. Since the theme is lit up for me right now, I'll expand. By this I mean that intellectual fantasy that one person or mind can genuinely include all other minds, including those with radically different attitudes /perspectives. I'd say that we can be everyone at the same time --that we really are forced to make choices as mortals, and that we can't justify all of them with some mathematically secure System. We are embodied, finite individuals who are indeed also blinded by the same torches that otherwise light our way. One commitment makes another impossible, in other words.
What Hegel gets right may be individually appropriate, though. We can understand the perspectives we have sincerely embraced but transcended. I guess I just don't think any little mortal can experience and synthesize them all, given the shortness of life and the variance of circumstances.
I'm open to your interpretation. But I feel his notion of human nature to be a bit too pessimistic, which is not to diminish his contributions. I put him in the same category as most prevalent modern philosophers, he meant well, all while being ignorant to the detrimental consequence of his thought.
Hobbes was most interested in sociological/political philosophy, while Descartes (who was more or less his contemporary) focused more on epistemology. Both are founding fathers of modern philosophy.
Fair point. And I don't agree with all of Hobbes' theories. But I would stress that he was doing 'my' kind of philosophy by concerning himself with something other than language and other pseudo-problems. Note in that quote his focus on the intellect as a forge of decisions about what is to be done. Contrast this with endless discussions about what it is to know something in some endlessly elusive and seemingly useless absolute sense.
For me some of the moderns or pre-moderns are great. I'm fascinated by Bacon at the moment. I kick myself at times for having felt the need to read certain 'pomo' thinkers when I should have been grounding myself more in 'mo' thinkers (the good ones.) The pomo thinkers IMV are often more style than substance (metaphysicks^3).
Because propositional attitudes have no epistemic content. Thus, philosophy is concerned with life as a practice and not a problem that can be solved.
An apt assessment. I think Nietzsche is a philosophical landmark. After him, philosophy began to lose its soul. Wittgenstein had crazy soul, but did everything to kill the soul of philosophy. Like @Wayfarer points out, there is a critical need for a return to the ancients.
Nice!
So, do you think Witt. had an essential concern that transcended the great importance he placed on language?
Nietzsche has been huge for me. He's such a pleasure to read. Obviously he's extreme at times, but that's part of the fun. What's excessive in him unfortunately puts some people off of what is profound and noble in his thinking. His personality was large. He contained multitudes.
I recently bought Of Truth and Non-Truth: Selected Writings. Some of the passages were new to me. The first one is a killer (about Heraclitus). Taylor Carmen does a great job translating.
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Where ever they agree, you can be certain it is Fire (fire of the gods).
I also love the ancients. I just got around to seriously reading Aristotle's Ethics. I thought it was great. I also like the stoics, Epicurus, etc. That said, it's nice to read later philosophers who wrote in powerful English. That's something like a maximum connection.
I have read some K that I really liked. There's so much stuff by K that I think I need to find a great intro that skillfully chooses the highlights.
Do you mean Epictetus? I doubt many on TPF have read 'The Discourses'.
I meant Epicurus, but I had Epictetus quitely in mind when I mentioned the stoics. I like all of those guys who focused on living life well and used theory as a mere tool. It's not that I don't like theory at all: it's just that I have mixed feelings about the transformation of philosophy into an intellectual game.
It's called "Provocations". You can find the pdf for free on Google.
Yes, pretty much everything concerning ethics and the mystical.
Awesome. Thanks. Though I might look for a paperback too. Philosophy is great in the tub. The hot water heater and the air conditioner are my household gods.
Was Epicurus stoic, I thought he was the founder of Epicurianism? Stoicism was Roman, Epicuras was Greek.
No. I didn't mean to imply that he was. I was misleading in my prose, perhaps. Epicurianism is (in my mind) the same kind of thing as stoicism. It's a grounded strategy for life.
No big deal. :wink:
Of course. And I hope my clarification didn't come off rude, because it was meant in a friendly tone.
I am under the impression that he felt everything mystical and metaphical should be excluded from philosophy due to the vagaries of language they provoke.
You may be right. I have read most of Epictetus, though, I think. There's a certain amount of redundancy, so it's hard to remember if I got it all. But great , essential stuff.
As far as I'm concerned, every post made on this thread so far has been respectful and relevent. I'm actually very surprised at the direction this discussion has taken so far. I would have never predicted it.
FWIW, what I get from Wittgenstein is his disgust at the idea that the higher things can be treated scientifically. What's wrong with metaphysicks isn't its target but the phoniness of its method.
Word! And it's a nice thing to see!
And most modern philosophy is constructed so as to adhere to scientific facts, given this, he was right to eliminate metaphysical and mystical concerns from philosophy. But in doing so, he cut the balls off.
This is a great point. The shrewder philosophers must assimilate these criticisms. So Wittgenstein and Heidegger become the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, for instance. If an anti-philosopher is sufficiently exciting, he gets interpreted as a philosopher.
His demystifications are repackaged so that yet again experts are needed as sage-whisperers. Heidegger played into this big time, at least at first. Later he's just a naked poet-sage. Wittgenstein's style in Philosophical Investigations is so informal and anti-systematic that it backfired! The anti-systematic point was presented so anti-systematically that experts are called in to connect the dots...into a system.
I think both H and W are great, by the way. To what degree, though, did they catch on because their styles were strange? And because of their cult-leader charisma? To what degree is the novelty of their insights exaggerated within philosophy ? As others have said, many have anti-philosophical insights that are manifested by just not becoming a philosopher. Maybe some of them write novels. Others study psychology or physics.
Good point. How much of philosophy is left over once part of it becomes literature-mysticism-politics and the other part of it becomes science? Others who know more might illuminate me here, but it seems to me that obsessing over language is largely what's left over.
:lol: nice point. That is why I prefer the ancient spirit in which there is no mediation. They bring it to your face, and if necessary, a hammer to the back of the head.
@Wayfarer where are you?!?
Thanks. And when I look into the ancients or the moderns I like...it seems to me that not much has really been accomplished since. Admittedly some important insights were made explicit, and that can be valuable. When Hegel isn't being too metaphysickal, he's great, for instance. And he's even a great writer at times. I also think that some of Marx is powerful.
As I see it, the moderns rehashed the ancient ideas into new terms. And in their unique cleverness, they created a bunch of fantastical problems.
So do you not like Hume?
Here's another quote from Hobbes that impressed me. It's something that we 'already know.' And yet I find it a plausible image of the human intellect.
[quote=Hobbes]
And because in Deliberation the Appetites and Aversions are raised by foresight of the good and evill consequences, and sequels of the action whereof we Deliberate; the good or evill effect thereof dependeth on the foresight of a long chain of consequences, of which very seldome any man is able to see to the end. But for so far as a man seeth, if the Good in those consequences be greater than the evill, the whole chain is that which Writers call Apparent or Seeming Good. And contrarily, when the evill exceedeth the good, the whole is Apparent or Seeming Evill: so that he who hath by Experience, or Reason, the greatest and surest prospect of Consequences, Deliberates best himself; and is able, when he will, to give the best counsel unto others.
[/quote]
Reason-experience is directed at future consequences. I like all that is packed into this way of framing it. It looks outward at the world and prioritizes experience.
Hume's guillotine is invaluable. But as great and original a philosopher as he was, all his contributions amount to is material for discrediting empiricism. Nevertheless, as much as Hume's ideas failed to be carried further, he gave us closure in regard to the system of empiricism. So I consider him one of the few philosophers who adequately solved a problem of philosophy. Because of Hume, empiricism has been rendered obsolete, and no longer a problem for philosophy.
Fascinating. From my point of view the metaphysicks of empiricism in Hume, admittedly obsolete, is perhaps less important than what that obsolete metaphysicks was successfully aimed against.
Along the same lines, Kant's preface to the CPR has arguably aged better than the details of his system. It's as if these guys were trying to beat metaphysicks within metaphysicks. But they also eloquently explained their general project while doing so.
I understand. TPF is a terrible distraction in my own life. :grin:
Thanks! :grin:
I appreciate your input, especially your original insights. :up:
Well stated. Every generation contains it's own internal politics, and the eventual abandonment of tradition over time seems inevitable. That tradition becomes the incidental victim is the great tragedy of all progress (philosophy included).
To begin, Hobbes was essentially an empiricist. But he slightly preceded Locke, who is considered the founder of empiricism. I do not mean to discount his lasting contributions, but Hobbes laid the groundwork for modern collectivism, which came to a head in the thought of Hegel and Marx, which continues to impose its influence in everything we witness in the modernized world. The ancient view generally considered the individual to be primary to the collective (an essential factor), whereas the modern view tends to assume that the individual is predicated on the collective (an accidental variable). This is something I have trouble overlooking. Democracy only monetizes the individual, as a quantity or numerical unit in relation to the whole, it does not factor in the qualitative importance of the unique value of each individual in itself.
I agree. But for me that's not bad thing. I guess we agree about the negative influence of Descartes --or part of Descartes, because his math was great. So I thought that the subject-object metaphysics was what you most objected to, not the emphasis on experience.
I recently read Locke for the first time. Overall I liked the spirit of his book. Before Kant we already get the theme of humans figuring out what kind of thing they are...good at figuring out. I think the empircists had their eye on the right ball. They wanted an escape from superstition and linguistic confusion.
Your points about politics are food for thought. I suppose I read Hobbes largely for his prose style and his vision of human nature. I found his politics more fascinating than convincing.
I definitely empathize with this. Taken to extremes, we get some of the scarier moments of the 20th century. At the same time our free society seems aimed at letting ten thousand different flowers bloom. When it comes to politics, I take off my hat. That's a supreme challenge. One of the things I like about stoics & epicureans & various other strains of philosophy is the distance it allows the individual from the madness and trouble of the passing day. It's not that a person must tune out but rather that they can. Some measure of transcendence seems almost necessary to a strong personality. It's like a battle against total absorption in the moment's fury, a quest for cool-headedness.
Their fascination is part of what makes them so convincing. These guys are original geniuses, the like of which we have never seen in our lifetimes.
Quoting ghost
That is a near perfect assessment of their intention. The consequences did not turn out so optimal. Nevertheless, the consequence of empiricism was not as detrimental as the that of Marxist or Hegelian thought, which produced ideologies that resulted in the worst travesties in history.
I'm glad we agree on the empiricists were really about. I also agree that Marx and Hegel are dangerous. What's a little sad about Marx is that he was a great anti-metaphysician in The German Ideology. But yet again the anti-metaphysician is transformed into a positive system, by others if he doesn't do it himself. It's one thing to note the 'force' of the concrete-economic situation on human consciousness and another to think one can see the future this way.
Bingo! That's what I meant about the newer stuff largely being more style than substance. It's not easy to be that creative, and the low hanging fruit has been plucked already.
Good point. And my dig at the Hegelian hippo is an attack on the idea that tradition can be transcended and included in its full vitality. It can't! Most of us just can't walk around as if we are in God's creation anymore. The night was dark and full of terrors. If it still is, then the nature of that darkness has nevertheless changed. And my image of what to strive for has changed in an acceptance of my mortality. One can't 'transcend and include' the after-life or the certainty that a human-like God created the world for our benefit as a kind of game show with infinite stakes. It's either/or. And I remember believing in God as a child, but that memory is faint and ineffective.
I don't think that's all that is left. Rather, the people who get into Philosophy these days seem to, a lot of them anyway, have a huge obsession with words, to the extent that what were once substantial normative, logical or metaphysical issues are turned into fuss about the meaning of words.
PA
The problem with philosophy in general these days is......how to cope with technology. When the learned can actually see parts of what the brain is doing, as opposed to theorizing all the things the mind is doing, philosophy itself loses some of its power. Now, rather than standing as the explanatory paradigm of all human mentality and/or abstracted physiology, philosophy must limit itself to that which the pertinent science has not yet found the means to address.
For the non-academic closet philosopher in particular, the problem is more personal, insofar as he pretty much rejects anything outside his favorite metaphysical system, and consequently laments the discourse the professionals deem worthy of being called philosophy. In other words, he grants the improvements his choice of doctrine evokes, but frowns on what may even be a subsequent improvement on it, and may even see such pseudo-improvements as merely a business, or a need to be published, rather than a better way for man to understand himself.
My....non-refundable....two cents.
Outside of our desires, reality has no problems, needs no solutions, etc.
I have always found some philosophy to be disconnected from real life. And I have always wondered why we bother with it. On a more positive note, there is plenty of philosophy that is genuinely relevant and useful in the real world, and that is where we should concentrate our efforts. IMO, of course.
Surprised no one has mentioned Dennett on "Chmess" yet as far as I could see. I linked a short account if you're interested. It seems he has a partial answer to his question and makes a distinction between genuine problems (which are interesting to people outside of philosophy departments) and spurious problems due to philosophical inbreeding.
(As others have mentioned, a pleasure to see a reasonable and decent philosophical discussion).
Great link. I've looked at that paper before. Good stuff!
Incidentally I used to love making strategy games. One of them involved a king that could indeed move twice in a row. Other pieces could move again after every capture, and they could capture friendly pieces as part of a blitzkrieg. I ended up with so many ideas like this that I never did settle on a game and try to market it. Add it to the shelf with all of the other ideas I'll never find time for. Life is too short.
That seems solid to me. Like anything it can be taken too far or interpreted crudely. Nevertheless, I think we have a rough sense of the difference between inbreeding and relevance. I've read papers that were clever enough but basically repeated old ideas in whatever terminology was fashionable.
That's actually pretty deep. :rofl:
Hegelian dialectics always in need of a job I suppose.
If it [metaphysics] is a science, how comes it that it cannot, like other sciences, obtain universal and permanent recognition ? If not, how can it maintain its pretensions, and keep the human mind in suspense with hopes, never ceasing, yet never fulfilled? Whether then we demonstrate our knowledge or our ignorance in this field, we must come once for all to a definite conclusion respecting the nature of this so-called science, which cannot possibly remain on its present footing.
It seems almost ridiculous, while every other science is continually advancing, that in this, which pretends to be Wisdom incarnate, for whose oracle every one inquires, we should constantly move round the same spot, without gaining a single step. And so its followers having melted away, we do not find men confident of their ability to shine in other sciences venturing their reputation here, where everybody, however ignorant in other matters, may deliver a final verdict, as in this domain there is as yet no standard weight and measure to distinguish sound knowledge from shallow talk.
[/quote]
http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20306/kant_materials/prolegomena2.htm
In short, this is an old theme. And Kant was already reacting against it, basically defending a place for philosophy as a kind of metaphysics squared, proof against metaphysicks of the first power. And later thinkers can generalize Kantian approaches and out-Kant them. And so on forever, to the limits of the number of books a human can plausibly pose as having mastered. But then people turned away from metaphysicks to some degree because they were busy and mortal in the first place.
If anyone has not read this bitchy response of Kant to one of his early reviewers, I recommend it. Kant comes off as lovably human.
http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20306/kant_materials/prolegomena9.htm#specimen
A taste:
[quote=bitchy Kant]
My reviewer speaks like a man who is conscious of important and superior insight which he keeps hidden; for I am aware of nothing recent with respect to metaphysics that could justify his tone. But he should not withhold his discoveries from the world, for there are doubtless many who, like myself, have not been able to find in all the fine things that have for long past been written in this department, anything that has advanced the science by so much as a finger-breadth; we find indeed the giving a new point to definitions, the supplying of lame proofs with new crutches, the adding to the crazy-quilt of metaphysics fresh patches or changing its pattern; but all this is not what the world requires. The world is tired of metaphysical assertions; it wants the possibility of the science, the sources from which certainty therein can be derived, and certain criteria by which it may distinguish the dialectical illusion of pure reason from truth. To this the critic seems to possess a key, otherwise he would never have spoken out in such a high tone.
[/quote]
:up:
We would do well to remember the Aristotelian saying that metaphysics is useless. (I've searched for it a few times and can't find it again.) But what I take it to mean, is that metaphysics, for Aristotle, served no other purpose; that the ability of the mind to contemplate the eternal verities was an end in itself. (There's a blog post about Aristotelian contemplation here.) So, I'm sure Aristotle would say that metaphysics doesn't progress because it is contemplation of the eternal, and the idea of the eternal 'progressing' is an absurdity. Certainly science continuously progresses, but mainly nowadays in terms of utility and instrumental value/power. There is not the remotest sense of being nearer to a grand unifying truth, a vision of the Cosmos as a unified whole; in fact it's never seemed more remote than it does now.
Jacques Maritain, the neo-thomist, says that there is a vital 'intuition of being', which, he believes, escaped Kant, and was absent generally in modern philosophy, except, he says, for some of the existentialists (I can't imagine whom he was referring to - possibly Heidegger?) in any case, Maritain, whom I haven't studied enough, was I think probably one of the few real 'metaphysicians' in current culture.
I have immense respect for Kant's 'copernican revolution in philosophy', but then, I first encountered it reading T R V Murti's Central Philosophy of Buddhism, which has become one of my core texts. I feel as though Kant was right on the edge of a genuine epiphany, but didn't quite get there. Same for Schopenhauer. But between them, they're nearer to what I consider to be the great tradition of philosophy, than anyone since.
I agree, but perhaps the essence of Kantian style philosophy is the separation of religion and science. The truths of religion can be endlessly contemplated and enjoyed, but some wanted this kind of truth in its own box, both for its own sake and for the sake of natural science. Or that's one perspective.
But perhaps that's its essence, for better or worse. Slapping the word 'gravity' on a pattern in measurements that we expect to persist doesn't really explain anything. Some want to puff up these patterns into a metaphysicks...so that they can club other metaphysicians over the head with their kind of (lifeless) Platonism.
IMV it's better to not worship our tools, or something like that. Worshiping human-like divinities (our own 'species essence') makes more sense, is more popular, and is probably the root of scientistic Platonism (the forms being those dead 'laws of nature').
Could be Sartre or Heidegger. Look at Sartre on freedom. Old school theology! Stripped of all the baggage. It's apparently atheist, but it's arguably mystical. To say that man is free is to pluck him out of the causal nexus. And Heidegger was a heretical Christian, deeply influenced by Luther, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky. Both were fascinated by radical politics. But primitive Christianity was pretty radical too. The question is whether religion should be tangled up in politics. It's a deep question. If we separate religion from politics and leave it to individual preference, then in some sense we are no longer serious about it. Or at least our religion is framed in terms of private transcendence.
Codswallop!
I agree. I'd be quite the puritan to resent such relatively harmless pleasures. If my tone was a little harsh, it's about clarity rather than contempt. Of course we have our preferences. I'd guess that you also look around TPF and sometimes (not all the time!) see wheels spinning in old mud.
I'll just add (and perhaps you'll agree) that I find all of those vectors tangled up in single personalities.
Exactly! And this theme runs through everything. Some would abolish all distinctions, however useful, in a useless, feel-good mist. Or maybe a genuine mystical high that probably shouldn't bother with argument but just write great music or poetry.
Others would shut their eyes to holism, which is what I think Hegel means by 'idealism.' Philosophy (for the holist-idealist) is a war against abstraction (in the sense of yanking out of context.) I say pass the stereoscopic vision. Each in its place...and as much precision as the matter allows or requires.
Quoting Janus
I also find that a questionable notion. Nietzsche is maybe no less mystical than Plato, and Plato is maybe no less of a 'monster.' Again, give me stereoscopic vision, to the limits of mortal personality. A case can be made that we can't fit all perspectives under our hat, but I think we can certainly synthesize from both Plato and Nietzsche. And both contain multitudes. Who is Plato? Who is Nietzsche?
This came to my mind with those last questions:
[quote=Larkin]
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
[/quote]
Why is that? The usual understanding of Nietzsche was that he was virulently hostile towards Plato. Plato was said to value the colorless, lifeless abstract over the immediacy and vitality of actual life - the 'thinnest promises of all', of something of that kind, was the expression. And also Platonism was a major plank of Christianity, which Nietzsche likewise despised.
One problem is that I don't think the way that Platonism was understood and taught in modernity, really captured the vitality of the original Plato. The Platonic academy was intended to produce fully-formed humans and athletics, askesis, and other physical pursuits were an important part of it. I think it became vitiated over the centuries, by analysis on a purely discursive level, which seems to reduce the gist of the tradition to these 'ethereal forms'. But I'm sure, had we met Plato in the flesh, he would have been a figure of immense vitality, humour and physical presence.
And I don't agree the Nietzsche was mystical. Of course it's going to be almost impossible to make that case, as unless you have some sympathy for mysticism, then the word can mean almost anything. Actually, coming to think of it, the original definition for mysticism was 'initiated into the mystery schools' - those being such religions as Orphism, into which Plato might indeed have been initiated. So Plato was literally a text-book mystic. But I read Nietzsche as being hostile to the notion of 'the spiritual' except as refracted through literature and culture.
http://krieger.jhu.edu/philosophy/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2013/02/Nietzsche-and-Plato.pdf
I haven't the time to read it, but a cursory glance confirms that it argues for a more nuanced view than that Nietzsche unequivocally despised and disvalued Plato.
In any case, all that aside, one can admire any thinker without necessarily agreeing with what she or he says.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is pure speculation and is, in any case, irrelevant to his philosophy. I wonder, have you read much of Plato's actual work?
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not saying he wasn't mystical, but unless I am mistaken, I haven't said he was, either. :confused:
I guess it doesn't matter much whether Nietzsche is called a mystic, but still...
[quote=Nietzsche]
With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness.
[/quote]
[quote=Nietzsche's demon]
"Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. - Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, - a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:- and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon".[5]
I'd say that he was an 'art mystic.' As I'm sure you know, he was powerfully influenced by Schopenhauer.
His first book hurt his reputation. It was too flaky for his peers, I guess. But he was hanging out with Wagner.
[quote=Nietzsche]
In so far as the subject is the artist, however, he has already been released from his individual will, and has become as it were the medium, through which the one verily existent Subject celebrates his redemption in appearance. For this one thing must above all be clear to us, to our humiliation and exaltation, that the entire comedy of art is not at all performed,[Pg 50] say, for our betterment and culture, and that we are just as little the true authors of this art-world: rather we may assume with regard to ourselves, that its true author uses us as pictures and artistic projections, and that we have our highest dignity in our significance as works of art—for only as an æsthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified:—while of course our consciousness of this our specific significance hardly differs from the kind of consciousness which the soldiers painted on canvas have of the battle represented thereon. Hence all our knowledge of art is at bottom quite illusory, because, as knowing persons we are not one and identical with the Being who, as the sole author and spectator of this comedy of art, prepares a perpetual entertainment for himself. Only in so far as the genius in the act of artistic production coalesces with this primordial artist of the world, does he get a glimpse of the eternal essence of art, for in this state he is, in a marvellous manner, like the weird picture of the fairy-tale which can at will turn its eyes and behold itself; he is now at once subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spectator.
....
Here it is necessary to raise ourselves with a daring bound into a metaphysics of Art. I repeat, therefore, my former proposition, that it is only as an æsthetic phenomenon that existence and the world, appear justified: and in this sense it is precisely the function of tragic myth to convince us that even the Ugly and Discordant is an artistic game which the will, in the eternal fulness of its joy, plays with itself.
[/quote]
I can relate this to eternal return of the same. If we can affirm this existence (forgive the ugly and discordant through a perception of the beautiful and good), then we can welcome the news of the demon, that we'll live it again and again, after a dip in the river of Lethe.
With this chorus the deep-minded Hellene, who is so singularly qualified for the most delicate and severe suffering, consoles himself:—he who has glanced with piercing eye into the very heart of the terrible destructive processes of so-called universal history, as also into the cruelty of nature, and is in danger of longing for a Buddhistic negation of the will. Art saves him, and through art life saves him—for herself.
For we must know that in the rapture of the Dionysian state, with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence, there is a lethargic element, wherein all personal experiences of the past are submerged. It is by this gulf of oblivion that the everyday world and the world of Dionysian reality are separated from each other. But as soon as this everyday reality rises again in consciousness, it is felt as such, and nauseates us; an ascetic will-paralysing mood is the fruit of these states. In this sense the Dionysian man may be said to resemble Hamlet: both have for once seen into the true nature of things, —they have perceived, but they are loath to act; for their action cannot change the eternal nature of things; they regard it as shameful or ridiculous that one should require of them to set aright the[Pg 62] time which is out of joint. Knowledge kills action, action requires the veil of illusion—it is this lesson which Hamlet teaches, and not the cheap wisdom of John-a-Dreams who from too much reflection, as it were from a surplus of possibilities, does not arrive at action at all. Not reflection, no!—true knowledge, insight into appalling truth, preponderates over all motives inciting to action, in Hamlet as well as in the Dionysian man. No comfort avails any longer; his longing goes beyond a world after death, beyond the gods themselves; existence with its glittering reflection in the gods, or in an immortal other world is abjured. In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolism in the fate of Ophelia, he now discerns the wisdom of the sylvan god Silenus: and loathing seizes him.
Here, in this extremest danger of the will, art approaches, as a saving and healing enchantress; she alone is able to transform these nauseating reflections on the awfulness or absurdity of existence into representations wherewith it is possible to live: these are the representations of the sublime as the artistic subjugation of the awful, and the comic as the artistic delivery from the nausea of the absurd.
[/quote]
Note phrases like 'the true nature of things' and the 'eternal nature of things.' Nietzsche and others (all of us at times?) transcend what's terrible by a mystic experience through art.
These "philosophers" use poorly defined terms and often find that they are either talking past each other or just using different terms to refer to the same thing.
The eternal return from Dionysian to Apollonian, is found in creative willpower (will to power), which transforms the absurdity and awfulness of existence into something tolerable. This is what philosophy attempts to do.
For Nietzsche the true nature of things is embodied in the Dionysian - that existence is an intoxicating dream state and there is no true nature of things. This is, indeed, an appaling truth to behold - a truth that negates all truth, the paradoxical knowledge that existence is entirely irrational, and all reason is illusory. In present day philosophy, the postmodernists take these ideas to the absolute extreme (complete nonsense), while the rest of the cutting edge of philosophy completely disregards it - preferring to exacerbate the problems of philosophy.
Nietzsche made some important points, unfortunately the modern trend is not creative enough to shift through his insanity for his essential meaning.
I definitely think he is calling out his reader, to become Dionysian - 'amor fati'. In my opinion, he is quite religious and evangelistic in his regard for the Dionysian. And, he proceeds forth with the erraticism of a crazed prophet.
I feel the hallmark of traditional philosophy is the idea that the getting of wisdom is an endeavour or something difficult to achieve which can only be undertaken by arduous discipline and deep contemplation. That is why Hadot could write of 'philosophy as a way of life'. As he points out, it's different from religion because not reliant on dogmatic belief; but also different from science, because not concerned with instrumental mastery over nature, but rather the introspective mastery of self-knowledge and disciplined understanding.
'It is a perennial philosophical reflection', says the SEP's entry on Schopenhauer, 'that if one looks deeply enough into oneself, one will discover not only one’s own essence, but also the essence of the universe. For as one is a part of the universe as is everything else, the basic energies of the universe flow through oneself, as they flow through everything else. For that reason it is thought that one can come into contact with the nature of the universe if one comes into substantial contact with one’s ultimate inner being.'
I agree with this, but would qualify it by saying that 'energies' is a poor choice of word; that it's something much nearer to the Stoic sense of 'logos', i.e. the organising principle of both the mind and the Universe. So my intuition is that in the rational intellect, nous, in the Greek sense, the universe is coming to a new level of self-awareness, that it's able to realise ways of being that were never available in non-organic form; that we are in some sense, 'the universe becoming aware of itself'. ('A physicist', said Bohr, 'is just an atom's way of examining itself').
I think these kinds of ideas were implicit in the neo-platonic tradition, albeit never expressed in bald terms, as man has only become aware of himself as something other than the Universe since the advent of modernity. Indeed it is precisely that sense of 'otherness' which is the hallmark of modernity proper (although harbingers of it can be seen in gnosticism.)
As Hadot says, much of Platonism and neo-platonism was absorbed into, and you could almost say, appropriated by theology, which then converted ts terminology into the lexicon of popular religion (for example, the conversion of the ancient sense of 'logos' into 'the word of God' and thereafter, simply, The Bible), which has, regrettably, concealed a lot of what was distinctively original in the philosophical tradition. As a consequence, in the turn from dogmatic religion, the distinctive understanding of the Greek philosophical tradition was rejected along with dogma - for all but a few scholars and specialists in the subject, anyway.
There is a deep tension in Christianity between the Platonic philosophy that it absorbed through the Greek theologians, and the Hebrew religion which was amalgamated with it. I sometimes feel that the real mainstream of philosophy proper became lost as a consequence. That's why it has now become mainly concerned with language and analysis; the sense of philosophy as a discipline through which to 'plumb the depths of being' seems mainly lost (although perhaps not so much in the Continental tradition).
This is the theme of the essay I often refer to, Thomas Nagel's Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament. It's particularly valuable, because Nagel himself doesn't have a religious bone in his body. Yet he recognises, on purely philosophic grounds, the basic absurdity and meaninglessness of much that goes under the banner of philosophy nowadays, and gives a good account of what he thinks has become lost in translation.
Of course, whenever I say this, I am suspected of being an evangelist of some stripe. Perhaps that's true, but I feel I've become somewhat religious by accident, or at any rate unintentionally. And I am also attempting to resist the temptation to simply believe; I want to feel that sense of integration and relatedness that I think is suggested by a philosophy proper. Whether that is possible, is still open.
Nice! :up:
In regards to Nietzsche, you are correct about the "crazed prophet" part.
But he did have this other register: We know stuff because of this huge apparatus of words that we use while understanding only a portion of it.
He was a philologist.
Perhaps. Nietzsche's work is wide open to interpretation. There is no claim that can be made, that is not contradicted somewhere within his writing.
Nietzsche says he is a complete skeptic when it comes to Plato because both he and Plato are skeptics. We are accustomed to thinking of Socrates as a skeptic (“I know that I do not know”) but do not think of Plato as a skeptic because of his talk of Forms. We assume that Plato knows the Forms or at least defends a “theory of Forms”. Nietzsche is skeptical of this. He thinks that Plato was a skeptic, that he too knew he did not know. Laurence Lampert’s “Nietzsche and Modern Times” discusses how Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche all read Plato as a skeptic. There is a growing number of prominent scholars of Plato who now read him in this way as well.
[quote=Raphael Demos]Plato hardly claims the power to grasp absolute truth for himself. Very often, when approaching the territory of final metaphysical ideas, he abandons the style of logical exposition for that of myth or poetry. There is something characteristically unfinished about his thought; he eschews neat systems and his intuitions often jostle one another. ... The dialogues are, each one, a drama of ideas; in their totality, they depict the voyage of a mind in which any number of ports are visited before the anchor is finally east. And at the end, it is as though the ship of thought were unable to stay in the harbor but had to cast anchor outside; for according to Plato the mind must be satisfied with a distant vision of the truth, though it may grasp reality intimately at fleeting intervals.[/quote]
Introduction to Plato: Selections.
I think this makes the important point that Plato was not, and didn't claim to be, a systematic philosopher, especially when it comes to first philosophy. In many of the dialogues there are aporia, resolutions considered and rejected, sketches of ideas, possibilities explored. But it is animated throughout by a kind of faith in the Form of the Good (which later was appropriated into Christian theology), and by the hint of glimpses of some 'distant vision of truth', which in my judgement is often omitted from later readings. Not the faith in religious dogma that came to replace it - let's not forget the Academy was closed by Christians - but a striving towards a rational demonstration of the ultimacy of the good.
Lloyd Gerson identifies five doctrines of the Sophists which Plato and later Platonists particularly sought to challenge:
* Materialism, all there is is just material bodies and their physical properties
* Mechanism, all events happen because of physical cause-and-effect
* Nominalism, only individual objects exist, and any properties which they share have no reality beyond the names we may give them
* Relativism, what is "true" or "good" is simply what is true or good as it appears to me
* Skepticism, gaining knowledge of truth, or of what truly is, is impossible
(From Plato to Platonism, 10-14)
All of these themes are of course current in today's philosophy, and are arguably ascendant in Anglo-American philosophy, in particular.
What you say is accurate. But, Nietzsche essentially accused Plato of being a system builder, particularly in "Birth of Tragedy", where he relates Platonic rationalism to the Apollonian, and contrasts it with the irrationality of pre-Platonic Greece, what he associates with the Dionysian.
When Socrates tells Glaucon about the turning of the soul to what is and the image of the Good, in response to Glaucon’s exclamation: “Apollo, what a demonic excess." Socrates’ response is:
Opinions! Not the truth itself as he knows it to be, or even an image of the truth, but opinions.
At 532d Glaucon says:
Why can’t Socrates insist that the truth as it looks to him is the truth? And why should seeing "some such thing" be insisted on? The answer is because he does not have knowledge of the Forms. He has not escaped the cave. What has been disguised as revelations of esoteric, mystical truths, is a noble lie, a salutary public teaching. He has banished the poets and replaced them with his own philosophical poetry, new images on the cave wall.
Quoting Fooloso4
The character of Socrates as depicted by Plato is not always consistent with the historical personage of Socrates. Plato offered the largest body of material that included Socrates as a central figure. But when we cross reference the other accounts, we find that Plato took great liberty to embellish Socrate's philosophical scope.
I can only interpret Socrates theough the light of Socratic ignorance.
He knew nothing. He was not a skeptic, he was absolutely ignorant. So he made it his mission to find men who did know something. And through his method, he discovered these men did not know what they believed themselves to know. And even worse, he discovered that these renowned wisemen did not even know themselves.
Socrates came to reject the notion that "man is the measure of all things". Everything that can be said by a man is mere opinion. But he never assented to a knowledge of the forms, that was a Platonic fabrication. In fact, "The Republic" is entirely Platonic, not Socratic. Yet, if we were to examine Socrates in the terms of the cave, we could say he escaped his shackles, but remained in the cave to converse with the puppeteers about their shadow figures (Plato would be included amongst them). He did not leave the cave until he drank the hemlock.
Right, I am referring here to Plato's depiction of Socrates, "made young and beautiful" (Second Letter). The Socrates depicted in the other two main sources, Xenophon and Aristophanes, is not historical either. But we should keep in mind Aristotle's claim that poetry is more philosophical than history.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I agree he was a skeptic, although not in the modern sense of skepticism. True to his reputation for irony, he claims to know that he does not know, which is not the same as absolute ignorance.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Someone who knows nothing would not possess the skill needed to reveal the ignorance of others or to persuade the likes of Plato and Xenophon to learn from him. Plato's Socrates acknowledges the craftsmen's knowledge of their crafts. He also refers to the physician's knowledge, the ship captain's knowledge, and others who possess some form of knowledge. The problem is, being knowledgeable about one thing they wrongly believe they are knowledgeable about all others. Xenophon's Socrates also recognizes those who possess some form of knowledge.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
The point of the passages I cited from the Republic is that he does not assent to knowledge of the Forms. It is not a Platonic fabrication, but an assumption the less than careful reader is led to. It should also be pointed out that in the Theaetetus, the dialogue devoted to the question of knowledge, there is no mention of the Forms.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
At one time, a great deal of effort was exerted attempting to distinguish Plato from Socrates. There are probably a few around who still try to identify the historical Socrates, but we simply do not have the evidence to do so. The problem is compounded by the fact that Plato never speaks in his own name in the dialogues. In the Seventh Letter he states:
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
We do not know this. If we look at Plato's dialogues, however, and after all the discussion is about Plato, things are not as simple as they may appear to be on the surface. If we do not have knowledge of the truth and must rely on opinion, then man is the measure. This does not mean that whatever man says is true but rather that in the absence of the truth as the measure we are left with what Socrates calls in Plato's Phaedo his "second sailing", that is, his reliance on speech. This is skeptical in a double sense. The Greek term 'skepsis' means both to inquire and to doubt. His reliance on speech is not an acceptance of whatever is said, but an inquiry or examination of it. It is sometimes referred to as zetetic skepticism. It is the method of dialectic.