From what I have read in philosophy and my experience speaking with those who do I am not well impressed.
Being frank, a lot of it seems to be just dumb(inb4 dunning Kruger effect) but really I've had talks with philosopher heads and they hold many pretentious opinions that dont follow normal logic and can easily be dismantled with common sense. I dont think one learns anything of value or use from philosophy.
If you have an illness there are treatments for it that specifically address the issue, where as philosophy has no specific goal to help, even Nietzsche who wailed on about the Übermensch was a wreck by most accounts, he doesn't give solutions to problems that will help you become better. From what I've read philosophy is an art form, an art of writing in an elaborate and academic manner on the most non-essential things the better to entertain others' thoughts. I can see why one would enjoy it just like one may enjoy music or painting it is interesting to see where one may go with these arguments, but all in all they are silly arguments I feel like I'm listening to cavemen boomers. I ask to those who have read a lot what great idea have you learnt, and it is mostly silly stuff, or really mostly just simple common sense repackaged in a pretentious manner.
Good thread user, I used to be a philo minor and in my personal experience, a philosophy degree is pure academic wankery. It's the epitome of the 'pointless academia' stereotype at this point. You could just write and publish essays on your own as long as you're not looking to get a pat on the head by professors.
Also, who are some essential philosophers that weren't in academia apart from Mainländer?
Tyler Barnes
Common sense eh? How do you know your common sense is right?
Ryan Bell
Strange that most philosophy professor are extremely shitlib politically despite agreeing philosophically with many philosophers of the past who would be ultra conservative by today's standards. Makes you wonder if knowing philosophy is of any use.
Juan Collins
I think you're dead on with academia, however, having never had an academic philosophy class, I will say that philosophy done properly is incredibly fulfilling. Here are some thinkers never mentioned on Yea Forums that will expand your opinion of philosophy: >McLuhan >Ernst Becker >Levi-Strauss >DeLanda >Braudel
These off the beaten track thinkers are all incredibly useful. They find the forms underlying human society, not the forms underlying the forms.
Noah King
I think you are coming from a place of mental dissonance. Its fine if you dont want to get into philosophy, but literally everything you do, everything you feel you should do is a form of philosophical exerciser. its fine if you dont want to engage with it in detail, which is basicly the difference between a philosopher and and average person, and keep motives abstract, but once you want to get serious about what you should do you will ultimately get philosophical about it.
Jackson Gutierrez
Much of philosophy is in the wrong direction. I tend to agree that the tradition is useless as it never produced anything of value. People should stop paying attention to it, and it this point I think you can argue it’s done more harm then good. At least some religious texts are actually beautiful and contain wisdom that hasn’t been all abstracted to hell.
Nathaniel Sanchez
>I dont think one learns anything of value or use from philosophy. People will jump on me for this but the questions posed by analytic philosophers are now better answered by Linguists and Mathematicians. You are going to be studying analytic philosophy for the most part, and there isn't a single aspect of modern philosophy which isn't better covered by other subjects. >I think you are coming from a place of mental dissonance. Its fine if you dont want to get into philosophy, but literally everything you do, everything you feel you should do is a form of philosophical exercise This is a problem. There is nothing idiosyncratic about philosophy. As a discipline, there is now nothing it examines with more exactness and insight than any other discipline.
Noah Hughes
There is no such thing as "common sense"
Mason Reed
>There is nothing idiosyncratic about philosophy. As a discipline, there is now nothing it examines with more exactness and insight than any other discipline. What do you mean? I completely disagree. Are you referring to different sciences? but a science predicates philosophical empiricism. It is a subset of it more than anything. I agree that the sciences help to better streamline some aspects of phil, but Philosophy is the justification for those processes in the first place. Its about how we know what we know, thats why science was called natural philosophy. It is an exercise in probability, not truth. you cannot prove that causes are predicated by specific effects, but we take this on faith. Higher Philosophy is an analysis of meta knowledge.
World war one started in 1914. OK. why should I care. Science can provide a process, but it does not determine ends or reasoning for anything.
Saying it in scientific terms, if we are all part of a logical system, we as parts of this system cannot discount our biases in the observation of the system. How can you seperate the human from reality, or more practically, how can we better aproximate the human condition.
Im pretty sure there is a concept in science where by the mere observation of a phenomena, you inescapably effect it. Likewise, we cannot separate even empirical study from the human perception.
Hudson Anderson
The point of this excersis is that yes, outside of humanity, philosophy does not exist, but we can only perceive through humanity. and as such philosophy is the goggles through which we are forced to see. ignoring the goggles completely just makes you more predilection towards whatever color it is tinted as.
Josiah Edwards
I think you should read Hume’s Enquiry concerning human understanding. He has very similar critiques to yours about the more lofty philosophies and logically details the extent and bounds of the medium. He was an empiricist and explains the topic quite well.
Caleb Jones
There are many prior to the 19th century. I’ve been looking for people who weren’t academic philosophers post-19th century and I haven’t discovered any yet. All of the ones I’ve found were at least doctoral students in some discipline at some point. Not to say there aren’t any. I just haven’t found them. Hopefully other anons can mention some.
Matthew Morris
Idk any, but I’m just getting finished with Hume.
Jonathan Foster
This. Not all philosophy is Hegelian or Platonic jargon. Pragmatist, analytical, and empiricist philosophers have very definite and concrete things to say about what can be known, how to use it, and how it is useful. If you reas guys like Hume, Wittgenstein, or Rorty and think "ah these guys are just wankers dressing up nonsense in a veil of pretentioussness" you're lost.
Andrew Bennett
>OK. why should I care. There is no "should." There is only "why I care" ultimately. And this question will one day be better answered by psychology and neuroscience, with reference also to history, as opposed to philosophy.
Luke Thompson
Did you literally just ignore the whole rest of my post, how science relies on epistemology?
Anyways in my second post I basically admitted this. That’s the difference between “what is” and “what aught”. I’m personally deterministic, so I do believe that everything is more or less explainable empirically even free will being an illusion. That’s besides the point though you said “why do I care” well, scientifically I know why, it’s because my brain gives me endorphins or whatever when I interact with this thing, but that explains the process, not the particular cause for that particular interest. In this cause the start of wwi.
>And this question will one day be better answered by psychology and neuroscience, with reference also to history, as opposed to philosophy And tell me why will people use psychology and neuroscience to explain why I care (which I already adiquetly believe has been explained through chemicals). I would say it’s because people think they SHOULD learn why we care. Which leads back to my previous quandary.
Jaxon Lopez
Philosophy was never intended to create an instruction manual for living a good life. Throughout history, philosophy has been mostly reactionary. People have problems in their lives and looked for some solution, then called it philosophy. Most of the problems of history are things like: >how do I know if I will be alive tomorrow, and how do I cope with death? >If fortune determines life outcome more than skill/effort, why bother with such things? >how can I know good from evil?
In truth, the modern man is so far divorced from any of these questions that philosophy is useless to him. If entrust doctors to keep you healthy, state welfare to keep you from extreme misfortune, and dismiss good and evil as relativism, then what is there to gain from dwelling on these things. Lower men see no value in philosophy, because they do not have the autonomy to make any meaningful differences in their own lives, which are governed for them. You have misinterpreted Nietzsche's superman to be about self improvement, when It is nothing of the sort. You can only view it this way because you have a crippled view of life where you are only a gear in the machinery of society seeking to maximize productivity to increase your own rewards, but you have not considered whether the rewards are even worth seeking. There is no such thing as to "become better" as you describe. You should read the complete Essays of Montaigne. It gives good historical account of the philosophy of the Greeks and Romans in it's modern European context. It is the best book for bridging modern and ancient thought IMO. After reading enough historical philosophy, I now find it impossible to judge the modern man as anything but inferior compared to the peoples of the past.
To rephrase what others have stated, it's mostly about dealing with how we think about what we can perceive/know and how we go about understanding it.
I doubt very many people genuinely believe in Plato's realm of becoming and being, but people learn it in order to be able to abstractify and understand the conclusions reasoned by it. Seeing how a philosopher was able to come to those conclusions and understand their arguments for it is the meta-game of philosophy. Sure the language they utilize for making claims can be obtuse and purposefully obfuscating (Hegel, Kant, Heidegger...) but that's part of the fun. It's rewarding to read or study something difficult so that when it finally clicks, you get a wondrous feeling of accomplishment though it basically means nothing to the world. You obviously don't have to believe it, especially if it is so nonsensical and abstract that its existentially irrelevant. It is kind of like a hobby along the lines of art or music, but it transforms your thinking in a way where you can recognize things that are existentially relevant to yourself.
It is best to have a holistic grasp of thought from a range of fields and disciplines to inform yourself, but it will be impossible to have all the answers you seek laid out by one particular field. Philosophers for this reason attempt to learn newer scientific theories and evidence that expands their worldview. This in turn enters a reciprocal cycle in which philosophy informs and develops new fields of study. Take psychology, sociology, or anthropology for example, these fields basically developed off the back of 19th century thinkers like Freud, Marx, and Kant who all had strong philosophical backgrounds. These fields in turn have developed newer fields like linguistics which then reshape philosophy. It's a graduated process of informing academic disciplines.
Eli Gray
I can't tell if this is bait but it's bizarre that people are indulging it. It sounds like it was written by a kid. "I'm not impressed" why should anyone give a fuck lmao, we're not impressed by you either
Joshua Reyes
>>philosophy is useless wankery and a waste of time >lol define usefulness >*puffs his cheeks* filthy pleb >implying time exists >dont you dare to have an opinion on philosophy without reading these 25 tomes of brain spew >ur just brainlet wojak > *commits suicide from what he perceives as "seeing the true nature of reality" Here is a great tip for detecting midwits: Every single man who thinks philosophy is worth his time is a midwit - in the making or fully grown. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Jack Stewart
is the thinking man wearing a hat or does he just have fucked up hair
Benjamin Howard
Why would anyone give credit to any philosophy based on some random esoterism such as ideas or essence of things ? I always thought of philosophy as interesting when it makes me think about what direction or meaning I should give to my own life and how to deal with it's fragility. I think it's a good way of defining and confronting values based on observable facts. But why would I take seriously any speculation on what is above our observation as anything could go by definition. Why should we ask ourselves about an hypothetical truth above our experience as long as we can't experience it ? Why would I make the hypothesis that there is a world of pure ideas when I could make with the same level of incertitude an hypothesis about the fact that I'm the original idea giving form to my own concepts ? We live in a realm with enough mysteries to solve so that we don't need to make such useless speculations abour abstract and arbitrary concepts.
The only use I find about it is that seeking the implications of such arbitrary concepts is a good exercise for the mind and opens it to novelty. But it seems foolish to me to take any of these seriously and see those as something more than arbitrary speculations.
I'm sorry if I'm not being clear about this subject or if my english isn't correct as it's not my main language.
Adrian Rogers
Guenon, Schuon, Commaraswamy, Lings. The whole traditionalist school comes to mind.
