Is philosophy good for us?
I read an anecdote the other day about Wittgenstein giving a lecture and how he would stop in mid sentence to deal with a thought that had suddenly occurred to him. His whole concentration went into it, as if the others were not in the same room. Most of us probably don’t have the inclination or ability to keep on burrowing down like that. Most of our time is spent on more immediate matters, some important, some trivial, but most of them chaotic and messy. So, typical day to day life.
The philosophers throughout history (though my understanding is very rudimentary) who have addressed big and small questions and written so much about how they reached their conclusions, powerful intellects in action, also lead such messy, emotional lives.
But their intellect seems to be like an attached section of the brain that operates independently, like a hat they put on and take off. Because despite their intellectual prowess they don’t seem to connect the logic or honesty of their thoughts with their actions.
Heidegger snuggled up to the Nazis, Sartre treated young women as objects, Schopenhauer had a problem with Jews and looked down on women, Aristotle thought women were “deformed men”, Hume and Kant were racists, Nietzsche despised sick people, Rousseau abandoned his children, Wittgenstein beat his students, Mill condoned colonialism, Hegel disparaged Africans and Frege was anti-Semitic. (https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2018/07/17/responding-to-morally-flawed-historical-philosophers-and-philosophies/).
Obviously some of these attitudes were social norms of the times, but it begs the question, why, with their powerful intellect, could they not discern the wrong and if they did why go along with it? They don’t appear to have applied their thinking and discrimination to themselves.
Which makes me wonder if it’s possible that philosophy has nothing to do with life or how ones mind operates. Like I said, it’s as if philosophy is attached to the mind inorganically, that it’s completely alien to what we are.
Is it a useless development like wings on a frog? It throws up more questions than answers and creates doubt about all possibilities. Is it an aberration that holds respect and meaning because of its attachment to the mind, the intellect being superior to all other things, like emotion or intuition? Which, of course, would be the position of the intellect.
Is philosophy good for us?
Comments (79)
Lol. Hey teachers used do that allover. Meet "Ol' Spanky" the paddle. You either teach them actions have consequences in a controlled, safe manner or life will take over that role for you, and it can often be fatal.
Quoting Brett
I'm not saying either of these things are good. Just, are you willing to coddle up with a plague victim or give your house back to whoever lived there before and live on the street? No? One quickly loses the ability to chastise and weight of argument toward what inclinations or rather beliefs behind inclinations one himself would have done. Sure, it's now passive vs. active (ie. plague is virtually non-existent/we have vaccines and as far as nations and borders, someone already did all the hard work for you). Still, just like one who uses medical research from Josef Mengele should not criticize him... Well, more broadly speaking in regards to these flawed philosophers you mention, you learn to separate the art from the artist.
Quoting Brett
It can be a tool to unleash new methods and avenues of discovery, not just in debates, concepts, and other non-physical ideas but even science and innovation. There are quite a few parallels between how thoughts and ideas form and interact with one another and the physical world in which we dwell.
Quoting Brett
I like to think so.
As a Hegelian thinker might say, it takes time for the social human mind to make progress. For the most part, 'men are as the times are.' Most of the time, I am anyone, no one, a mere follower of conventions that I've perhaps never even become conscious of as conventions. These invisible conventions, too obvious to even notice and therefore criticize, and perhaps the most important. A philosopher can become great by becoming aware of only a little of taken-for-granted mass and winning some distance from it, and therefore the possibility of changing it.
Quoting Brett
I can understand a certain slice of professional philosophy being viewed as inorganic artifice, but you mention Schopenhauer, Hegel, Hume, Heidegger,... Those guys seem very involved with life, issues of grave concern for human beings. In some ways, though, I see how philosophy is alien, transgressing, transcendent. But instead of making philosophy inhuman, it reveals the disruptive core of the human being. Humans are haunted. That's our glory and curse.
In moderation. Would be the boring straightforward answer. Also the one I'm going to give.
I do think in those terms for the purposes of addressing the climate and ecological crisis, but for everyday use - I'm stuck with the ideological description, everyone else seems to believe is true. Thinking about things in terms of a scientific understanding of reality necessarily takes me out of the world. Conversely, I have to form opinions about things that are purely the products of the ideological world, today. Those views say nothing about the validity of my philosophy, perhaps because philosophy is about how the world could be and should be - and not so much about how it is.
I find it difficult to think of things specific that philosophy might have had a major part in creating. It might help in disentangling difficult issues but it doesn’t actually give an answer that one can act on, confident that it is the answer. It doesn’t help in deciding how many soldiers it’s worth sacrificing for a cause, or how many civilian deaths are acceptable, or if euthanising is ethical, or abortion, or if God is real, or if all men are equal.
The whole subject about philosophy has not been about creating morality but understanding it. If philosophy has addressed morality then morality already existed. Nor has philosophy, as far as I can see, actually nailed down anything substantially true about morality. I know I can read a book on morality and the writer will lead me through their rational argument until I reach their conclusion, but in the end it’s their conclusion which will differ from others.
Someone could refer to the American Constitution as a philosophical driven argument but isn’t it more the case that it’s based on a sense of morality, cultural to be sure, that was already present in the minds of the men who wrote it and that, as a consequence, determined right from wrong. And once again we have this dichotomy of men stating that all men are equal while at the same time owning slaves. Not to mention that many historical acts that may have been philosophically driven or influenced are later repealed or ditched because they were considered flawed. That might, again, be due to variance of social norms over time, which then suggests that philosophy is not universal. If it’s cultural then fine, but what use is it if it can’t be applied universally?
Kant’s ideas about phenomena and noumena are very interesting, but in what way can people apply them to knowledge and their life?
Philosophy never created anything, it just shone a light on things. But once seen it became impossible to define.
I was thinking about Zen Buddhism and koans.
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Your intellect will not solve this puzzle, your philosophy is not up to it.
Though I do see, for instance, how a law may be drawn up, based on a set of morals , that addresses the guilt or innocence of an act. When it’s then decided just how the law should be applied, how it addresses nuances and other subtleties then that would be philosophy in action. But this is reasoning and argument, which logic, a field of philosophy, studies. So they do not appear to be the same thing.
Quoting Olivier5
In your experience which ones have helped you through the day?
Quoting Olivier5
Okay, but can you give me an example of philosophy in action!
I’m not sure of your meaning.
I can give you a few.
1. You can't deny that Marxism had an effect on the world, good or bad.
2. Whitehead and Russel founding modern math and the computer revolution in Principia Mathematica.
3. More generally, the scientific method was developed by philosophers, historically. Science is an off-shot of philosophy.
4. Popper's political philosophy (and many others' eg Raymond Aron) is at the root of modern social democracy. George Soros' Open Society Institute openly refers to Popper.
5. Freud's hypothesis of the existence of unconscious thoughts and desires has generated a whole industry of shrinks of all kinds (some good some bad).
That’s fine, but how do you apply them throughout the day with issues bugging you at the time?
That's a good question. My answer would be, in moderation. A good analogy might be our relationship with food. Some is clearly necessary, but more is not automatically better, and can in fact be fatal.
You mentioned some famous philosophers and their personal problems etc. Their deep immersion in thought and their personal issues are related, a product of the same process.
Quoting Hippyhead
What is that?
Oops, someone beat me to it...
Personally? This stuff helps me deal with all sorts of issues: professional, emotional, sexual, social... Professionally it helps me keep calm and understand my capacity of action, ie where I can more usefully contribute to stuff I care about. Emotionally, I am a bit autistic and deficient, raised by rationalists who did not display their emotions, so thinking about the limits of rationality and the usefulness of emotions has helped ground me a little more. Let's not get into sex... Socially, navigating widely different social and ethnic groups is part of my job and life, so I need to know who I am socially, where I come from and how people may perceive me because of that, but I also need to know how to bracket my culture for a period, to 'chamaleon' into another self so to speak. Thinking about the universality of man (we're all the same, deep down in spite of skin color and cultural differences) helps me tread that line. Eg I can interview a Trumpian madman intent on civil war, and understand him, in spite of being at core his opponent. Philosophy helps there.
We tend to think of our own moral intuitions as being universal and objective. But can you prove that they aren't a product of your own culture? I am not saying that any of these things were right. I am saying that we have no guarantee that people 500 years from now won't look back at some of the things we are doing and say "Wow... I can't believe they did X".
Do you use just one branch of philosophy for all these situations? Because I can’t imagine myself going into a room full of executives and thinking “Hmmm I might need to use some of that Nietzschen will to power in this room.” and then meeting a girl and applying the same thing.
Quoting Garth
That wasn’t really the point I was trying to make. The list of philosophers was in reference to their intellectual abilities, their deep questioning, and yet they couldn’t resolve their personal issues with that intellect. So my thoughts had turned to the idea that philosophy is not really relevant or helpful to our lives.
And what do you go by in those situations, if not some 'philosophy'? (explicit or implicit)
:rofl: Reminds me of the joke about how a priest talks to his congregation about god first creating Adam, the first man, and then Eve, the first woman. Someone in the crowd goes "ah well, everybody makes mistakes the first time round" :lol:
Quoting Brett
HIndsight is always 20/20. The philosophers you mentioned didn't have the benefit of facing the consequences of their beliefs - the ideas were still incipient, just born in a manner of speaking, and didn't have adequate time to reveal their malignant nature - some ideas are as insidious as cancers, remaining hidden until it's tool late to do anything about it. Too, my hunch is that beginnings of the antidotes for the pernicious ideas that spawned in the minds of some philosophers are to be found in these very same philosophers or their contemporaries.
Your accusing philosophers of coming up with dangerous ideas, ideas that can lead and have led to disasters of epic proportions. However, approaching it as a disinterested observer, how good are the arguments in favor of such "...dangerous ideas..."? If it doesn't go down well with someone, it's only fair that that someone make it a point to show why the relevant arguments are flawed. Without good justifications, any criticism is empty and will likely fall on deaf ears.
That said, philosophy is a work in progress and we should expect some mishaps along the way. My suggestion is we continue our quest for understanding reality and our place in it. There's no guarantee that the truth will make us happy but there's no necessity that we should be imprisoned by truths in such ways and to such a degree that we're completely helpless.
Quoting TheMadFool
This isn’t in my post. It’s not even the subject.
This is:
“Which makes me wonder if it’s possible that philosophy has nothing to do with life or how ones mind operates. Like I said, it’s as if philosophy is attached to the mind inorganically, that it’s completely alien to what we are.
Is it a useless development like wings on a frog? It throws up more questions than answers and creates doubt about all possibilities. Is it an aberration that holds respect and meaning because of its attachment to the mind, the intellect being superior to all other things, like emotion or intuition? Which, of course, would be the position of the intellect.”
If you really think philosophy is such a waste of time why do you keep writing posts? As it is, I think that many people do regard philosophy as a waste of space. Surely, the best way forward is to try to make philosophy a meaningful and enjoyable activity, which engages with the dilemmas and struggles of life.
Quoting Jack Cummins
That is not the subject of the post.
Okay, you have written three paragraphs but reading through them, that is what appears to be the subtle underlying message. I am also answering the title of your thread question. However, I am not really sure what you are actually trying to say or ask.
Well stop trying to read “ the subtle underlying message” because there isn’t one.
Just because we like philosophy and just because some people have the intellect to drive down into questions then present a rational theory about what they think doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the best way of addressing problems. It may well be, but for one, not everyone possesses this ability to this degree. Many cannot keep a number of ideas in their head at the same time. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid, it means it doesn’t come naturally to them. So it’s interesting, if I’m right,that this is not a universal ability. As I said, it seems to me we already had an understanding of morality before philosophy began taking it apart to see what it “really” was. Philosophy is a tool, it’s not the answer. In fact evolutionary wise it may be that it’s not a very good tool, it may be the wrong tool for us.
What do you propose as a better tool than philosophy? I would certainly say that we need other disciplines but surely philosophy is one which can lead the way on the subject of reason. You say that there was morality before philosophy, but we are talking about primitive society. Also, surely we need to go forwards not backwards. I am not saying reason alone is important but, at the same time, surely we need more reason rather than less of it in these chaotic times.
Quoting Jack Cummins
So you think it’s lack of reason that’s behind the whole violent, tangled up, troubled world? Just keep piling on more reason, eventually it’ll work. Is it working?
You write very good thread questions and I think that you should take pride in that. But, I think that you need to look into yourself more rather than project all your anger outwards. Of course, I am not saying that the need for self examination applies just to but to every one of us.
Actually, I think part of the problem of our time is that people project onto others. Sometimes all the problems are projected as political ones and perhaps we need to examine ourselves and our own assumptions more as a starting point, whether or not this is viewed as the territory of philosophy.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Unbelievable hubris.
You see you project straight back. When I interact with you, I come away so frustrated. You seem to write with such a tone of passive aggression. I think that it something that you do need to address because you do have a lot of good points to say as well.
How old are you @Jack Cummins?
I don't see the relevance of the question. Most of the people on this site are more anonymous than I am. We are not meant to have disclose our personal details.
Of course. So I don’t see why you feel you can make judgements about my mental state.
I am not making any judgements about your mental state but about the tone of the writing. But I don't really feel that we should continue this conversation because we are not getting anywhere. I have already said points in your favour as well. So, I will leave it there and allow the flow of your thread to continue.
Philosophy is good for those who recognize that they are congenitally unwise; for them, striving to mitigate, if not minimize, their unwisdom becomes both possible (via patiently habitualizing various reflective practices) and desirable.
An apology is in order then. Sorry. I must've gotten carried away by certain suggestive statements in your post.
Quoting Brett
Well, speaking from an evolutionary standpoint, thinking is a brand new skill for life; my guess is only a handful of recently-evolved species are capable of it. Among all animals capable of some level of thinking humans stand out as species that's taken thinking to the next level, thinking properly, and by that I mean to point at our attempts to get thinking properly down to a science: logic, critical thinking, philosophy and allied subjects. If you're willing to grant that, it seems obvious, doesn't it?, that philosophy, the acme of thinking properly, will be alien to us. After all, as I said, it's a cutting edge evolutionary ability and just as we have trouble using novel technology, we should expect some hiccups using our brains.
The OP seems to be concerned about whether your philosopher's prescription above is the right medicine for what ails us. For my money, I'd say our understanding of our world seems to be a couple of steps behind our ability to bend the world to our will and the entire planet has to bear the cost of this seemingly innocuous asynchrony. Shoot first, ask questions later is our modus operandi: we invent new technologies and ideas without the requisite "...reflective practices..." that should've gone into them. Thus my personal version of the question is, is philosophy destined to be always late to the party? If it's a habit, it's a very bad habit.
Yes and this is one of the great qualities of philosophical enquiry! You commence a path that appears to be singular and linear (due to ignorance and presuppositions) and continue along as the path transforms into an increasingly rhizomatic, multiplicity of directions. Slightly lost, you see that you know less than when you started but there is an heightened sense of awe and wonder. Little by little ignorance is chipped away in the realisation that there are no easy answers, no closed circles. Philosophy proliferates difference. Enjoy the journey.
Is philosophy good? Depends what good is. Depends what philosophy is. The answers are, of course, diverse.
Nothing! A Conceptual Paradox!
:cool:
Quoting Brett
I disagree. The personal actions of philosophers don’t occur in spite of their expressed worldiview but because of it; they manifest the possibilities and limitarions of that worldview. That’s precisely how Derrida, Levinas , Karl Jaspers and other philosophers who were close to Heidegger or his work treated his ideas in relation to his politics.
Splitting their philosophy off from their actions gives readers an excuse to avoid having to interpret their actions in a more complex way than just :’ Heidegger wrote Being and Time but he was a Nazi.’
And all the scientists in say medicine and physics are good guys? Einstein asked Roosevelt to make nuclear bombs. He was quite a bad husband too. Pretty sure Fleming and Semmelweis were azzholes in some way too.
Thats an interesting one. Where do you find Hitler in Sein und Zeit? I’m not ironical, I am seriously interested.
By those standards, we'd have literally nothing to talk about or discuss or discover.
You may want to read Levinas’ Totality and Infinity. The whole book is essentially an attempt to show how Heidegger’s way of understanding Being lent itself to his political entanglements. Or Derrida’s “Heidegger and the Question”
Sorry, I have a daytime job and a family. Can you give me a resume?
It was struggling with how to overcome practical real-life problems that lead me to find a foundation to the more abstract philosophy I was already building:
"It may be hopeless but I'm trying anyway".
I use this all the time, and advise other people in ways that amounts to it, and it shows results. Trying is scary hard work: much easier to either assume you will succeed without trying or assume you will fail even if you try, so in either case no use in trying. But only by trying is success possible, even though it's still not guaranteed. So may as well just give it a try. If you fail anyway... well that's the same outcome as if you didn't try.
Applies to finding a job, a romantic partner, getting better customer service at a business, etc etc etc. Just ask. Just check. Just try.
If you do that with regards to the search for wisdom -- philosophy -- that gives you the core principles of my abstract philosophical system -- universalism and criticism -- and the rest of my philosophy builds from there.
:mask: Well, ...
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
I haven’t started this OP to prove anything but to follow a vague thought I had, which may be seen as the hat representing philosophy. Your post suggests that we may need to be introduced to philosophy, to be instructed in it. Otherwise we would be unwise, unless it developed under it’s own steam, which you suggest it cannot be. My list of philosophers was to indicate how, despite their philosophical investigations, these people remained unwise in other ways that those who do not take part in philosophy did not suffer from (my assumption of course). So it seems to me that philosophy is like an appendage or the hat placed on the head.
Quoting TheMadFool
Quoting TheMadFool
That’s an interesting take on things. We’re still babies on the earth. So philosophy is still very rudimentary. And taking into account our recent appearance and then even more recently our application of philosophy then it’s a very new and untested thing. So certainly not perfect by any means, but nor necessarily true that it’s a good thing. Like the centipede asked how he walks with all those legs.
Quoting emancipate
On the surface that seems like a wonderful thing. But what is the benefit? If we can’t use philosophy to hone in on something, slowly reducing it to the kernel of truth, then as I said it creates more doubt than truth, as if there’s some wonder to an eternity of questions. That’s interesting for those who like to bend their minds around things and wrestle with meanings, but what does it do for the man in the street who, having been told God is dead, then asks are morals real?
Quoting Joshs
I’m not quite sure what you mean. You seem to be saying, for sample, that Aristotle’s thoughts regarding women was the result of his intellect. But it does seem to me that anyone applying their intellect to the world around them would reach the conclusion that women are not less than men.
I’m saying that all us carry around our own personal
worldview through which we interpret the world and through which our values and opinions are determined.
If it seems to you that anyone should act in a way different than the way they do in fact act, I’d suggest the reason is that you’re applying your own worldview to them rather than effectively grasping their vantage on things.
“Hume and Kant were racists,”
Quoting Joshs
I’m not asking anyone to act in the way I think they should. It just seems to me that anyone who applied an intellect of the sort these two possessed, then why would they not deduce that racism is destructive to others, or that anti-Semitism is a dangerous point of view.
What exactly should I grasp about Kant’s racist beliefs?
Edit: I guess this adds to my query about philosophy being some sort of add-on. I mean why didn’t Kant’s philosophy permeate all of his thinking?
I believe it did permeate all his thinking.
Quoting Brett
We live in a much more interconnected world than past philosophers did. They had limited exposure to groups unlike themselves. Had Kant ever met a black person? I heard he never travelled outside of Prussia.
Quoting Joshs
Frege was an anti-Semite. Jews aren’t that alien to Europeans.
Edit: Frege, “ Hmmm, what is meaning? Get that Jew out of this building!”
“ Far from establishing a rational consensus about what is morally right, and about what the ground and meaning of this rightness is, moral philosophers have produced a perplexing array of possible moral systems—consequentialist, deontological, con- tractualist, virtue ethical, you name it—but no agreed method to decide which of these system is the sound one. Indeed, it is even controversial what ‘soundness’ here is tantamount to, whether moral judgments can be true in the same sense as factual judgments, and true independently of our affective or conative attitudes, or whether moral judgments are merely non-cognitive expressions of such attitudes.
If it had not been for the fact that moral philosophy is often too esoteric to be grasped by the public, the substantial disagreement that is raging among its practitioners might have had a deleterious effect on public morality. Philosophical disputes about the foundation and content of morality might have eroded the authority that common-sense morality has acquired over centuries as a result of the exposure effect, and weakened the motivation to abide by it.
It seems unlikely that this substantial disagreement will subside, for even though our moral responses must converge to some extent if we are to be able to live together in functioning societies—which is a pre-requisite of our evolutionary success—they are surely not so finely attuned that we should expect them to converge with respect to the manifold of fanciful scenarios that our philosophically trained cognitive powers could construct. http://www.jpe.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JPE0049-Persson-1.pdf
Again, Brett, you've misread me. I wrote
Quoting 180 Proof
... which "suggests" the unwise remain unwise even if "introduced to philosophy". I neither claimed nor implied that 'philosophy is a cure-all' in either of my posts to this thread. Read the three old posts linked – or just read past the semi-colon :roll: – within my initial post.
Quoting 180 Proof
Nor am I suggesting that. What I meant was that if it does not come to us naturally then we would need instruction. And if we did not get instruction then we would not have it to use and so remain unwise.
In no sense do I think philosophy is a “cure-all”.
Quoting 180 Proof
So, to paraphrase, philosophy is good for those who are born without the talents of the wise and realise this. They can minimise this condition in life through philosophy. But my question is can it be learned without assistance? If they are congenitally unwise then they would need a teacher.
But you said I had misread you, and
.. "suggests" the unwise remain unwise even if "introduced to philosophy".[/quote]
which reads a bit contradictory. So can we clear this up, whoever is the cause of confusion?
What it does for the man on the street is provide authenticity; it provides him a way of making sense of his existence from his own explorations, not from a tradition or preconceived idea that was merely handed to him. Anyway, what is behind this will to absolute epistemological certainty? Is it anxiety? A reluctance to accept that we are Finite beings? A desire to omniscience?
Quoting emancipate
Did you read the quote from Persson in my post?
Quoting emancipate
Is this sociological or addressed to me?
Asking this question means that you're implicitly aware of the difference between the social and the individual - yet you are stuck on the question of the usefulness of philosophy, precisely because it might not reveal a universal morality.
No I hadn't read the Persson quote.
Quoting emancipate
That’s not what I meant. My question was are you asking me personally what is behind this will to absolute epistemological certainty, or were you referring to the question that so many out there are concerned with?
Why rude?
Cannot see the quote mark, so I don’t know if its all Persson or partly you.
But anyhow, reading this nice text reminds me of reading the dialogues of Plato. Seldom do they end up in consensus. A something is discussed, and a heap of arguments for and against are presented. And you end up in a kind of tradeoff situation. Isn’t it like that with all the isms, and with the life in society in general? All countries are ruled by a local mix of socialism, liberalism, conservatism and some other. And people born in rural parts will think one thing, hipsters in the city another. And isn’t that what philosophy kind of is? Getting a lot of info in an area and wisely finding the best possible tradeoff? If there is a simple answer to something, like a formula for something in physics, it’s not philosophically interesting, really?
And converging into something common, Its not really what we have seen in Washington, is it?
I didn’t mean to be rude. Am not sure how to answer your question without summarizing the whole of Heidegger’s philosophy.
(Although Quoting Ansiktsburk did strike me as a little abrupt.)
Well, my comment wasn’t exactly top class...but when people tell me to read original works, well my time is limited. I read a blog post by a academical philosopher, who said that one pros with his profession is to have the possibility to read on office time. I do not have such time. My time to read is very limited. So when I saw your suggestion on reading Levinas and Derrida, I suppose thats what guys in the academy say to each other...
politics with his philosophy, one has to conclude that , from their vantage, if Heidegger could be drawn into such entanglements, then all of us in the West are as vulnerable to similar thinking, not specifically with regard to Jews , but to others that we feel
alienated from.
Thing is, Sein und Zeit was one of the first ”difficult” books I read after coming in contact with philosophy 12 years ago (wish it was 35 years) and I was really surprised to later learn that Heidegger became a member lf the NSDAP. It’s a book which gives me a deep feeling of solitude and an ernest look on life, not in any way racist. The only thing I see that could give me a clue are the chapters towards the end of the 1st part when he quite openly looks down on bourgeoisie gossiping, those kind of social mechanisms. One might maybe see a germanic indivuality preference, whereas Sartre, allegedly inspired by Heidegger, brought up with the support of a wealthy family saw greater value in the contact with the other. Which in turn might be more in line with the mediterranean and arabian greater emphasis on family(hijo de puta do not have a Scandinavian counterpart, here you are just personally stupid). Thats my best and it seems very far-fetched. The Nazis were a highly collectivist bunch,and I cannot for my life see why an author og S und Z would want to have any kind of philosophical contact with Hitlers. One can see other reasons to join the party...
It is true that Heidegger spoke of authenticity in terms of one’s ‘own most possibilities’ as against at the inauthenticity of das man and idle talk. But he also saw the capability of this type of ‘authentic’ thinking as linked to groups. For instance, the early Greeks understood Being but the West went off the track afterwords. He connected German language to Greek language and thought that Germans have a special ability because of this to get back on the track of authenticity. He thought American and Soviet culture both represented the worst examples of inauthenticity, and may have seen the Jews in terms of the extremes of capitalism and socialism. . Given that Heidegger had undergone a revolution in his own thinking, he was inclined to see this sweeping self-conscious nationalism in Germany as somehow an expression on the part of the volk of a reclaiming of authenticity. I don’t think he gave a damn about Hitler , but misread their utopianism
for his utopianoism. There were many who thought they could ‘steer’ the movement.
What do you have to say about this:
[quote=Paracelsus]Dosis sola facit venenum[/quote]
?
Is there such a thing as too much philosophy? I'm sure you're fully aware of how some people look down on philosophers as an band of overthinking men and women stuck in their ivory towers, completely detached from reality.
Ars philosophica is poison (i.e. "too much") only for those who are (as you quoted) dogmatic.
I second that. The problem, as I see it, is not too much philosophy but actually too less philosophy. Do you have any examples of philosophy solving problems in the real world? I'd very much like to have one or more of such real-world instances in my arsenal so as to defend philosophy against its detractors. :smile: