From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Wed Feb 04 2004 - 19:27:14 GMT
Matt
I disagree with this overall, although pluralism is great, freedom
is great, let's support them, but we also have a perfect right to value
certain things above others, and we are going to judge people by what
they value. So here are my problems with what you say:
What is so wrong with trying to understand the cosmos as a whole?
This seems a very wonderful human aspiration, rejection of dualism
and essentialism does not lead to this extra conclusion post-modernism
suggests.
You make a strange figure standing at the sidelines crying 'pointless' let's
wait and see
what human genius can come up with post-essentialism and post-dualism.
I am not asking do we need philosophy to be happy, I've left that up to the
reader, but interesting what you choose. I would say we need it to
understand
ourselves, our culture, our science, etc and therefore to save us from
making
this planet unable to sustain human life and/or to finding better, less
violent
ways of living together. I find most people are not interested in
philosophy, but
most people are alienated from any engagement with society, politics,
culture,
history. I find that most people who are engaged are interested in
philosophy.
I don not think you can undertake any really serious study without having to
tackle
philsophy at some stage. I don't think you can read the best 500 books in
our culture
without doing quite a lot of philosophy. The best critical thinking we have
has probably been
done in philosophy, sure there is other good stuff, but without philosophy
you would be
making the job of improving your critical powers perversely marginal. I am
not talking about
philosophy as some sort of abstract subject matter, rather as some of the
best/creative
books we have. I don't think I would make much of a start on the meaning of
life without
the help of books/culture. Therefore it is far from being a private affair,
the concept of culture
is that it is a human matter.
The history to date is that people who are interested in the meaning
of life are more than likely to take a look at philosophy and religious
writings.
I think generally that those who are not interested in philsophy are just
not interested in the meaning
of life, and that is a clear lack of ambition and even a sort of despair.
And, come on, politics without philosophy, would Rousseau, JS Mill, Marx,
Hobbes, Plato agree with you?
And the really great thing about philosophy is that it almost guarantees
that you will not also like Britney
(OK now I'm joking). Now I accept your anti-elitism, but I ask, is the
low-expectations approach
to the Britney--lovers not a form of inverse snobbery? Now does any of this
bite, any feelings
that your good post-modern pluralism has gone too far and turned into bad
relativism?
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT" <mpkundert@students.wisc.edu>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 8:21 PM
Subject: Re: MD Do we all need philosophy?
> Dan,
>
> DMB said:
> Welcome. Don't worry. This thread was probably started by one of our
resident nihilists, one who believes philosophy and metaphysics are
pointless activities. Fooey on them. Was it Socrates who said that the
unexamined life is not worth living? I suppose its also true that the
unlived life is not worth examining, but these two truths do not cancel each
other out.
>
> And insofar as philosophy is means of learning not WHAT to think, but HOW
to think, yes. We all need philosophy - all the philosophy we can get. Go
for it.
>
> Matt:
> Because DMB is certainly refering to me as a "resident nihilist" (though I
didn't start this thread), I'd simply like to clarify my actual views, as
opposed to the ones foisted on me by DMB. I do think metaphysics,
understood as the attempt to get at reality behind appearance, is pointless.
I do not think philosophy, understood as the attempt to see how things hang
together, is pointless.
>
> Under this guise, do we all need to do philosophy? I don't think so. I
don't think all of us need to engage in this activity to lead an eventful,
happy life. On the other hand, with such a bland, broad definition of
philosophy, there aren't many people who do lead lives without engaging, if
even inadvertantly, in "philosophy."
>
> When I said earlier that I don't think philosophy will help everyone, the
definition I was using was something like "what is being done by the authors
grouped together under the heading 'Philosophy' at your local library." In
other words, I was answering the question, "Do we all need to read Plato and
Kant?" No, we don't. As I said before, if it helps you live your life,
like it has mine, than do it. If not, then don't worry about it.
>
> But under DMB's definition, where philosophy is roughly synonymous with
"critical thinking," then yes, we all need philosophy. However, under this
definition, I would be led to saying that there isn't anything distinctly
philosophical about philosophy books that couldn't be learned by reading and
engaging with sociology books, history books, literature, or politics. This
is, again, why I still maintain that nobody _has_ to have a profound and
life-long relationship with Plato.
>
> I think a lot of people here get frustrated when their friends aren't
interested in philosophy or don't take it seriously. From my point of view,
however, this frustration is the same frustration that _everybody_ has with
their friends when they aren't interested in something that you take very
seriously, be it football, politics, or philosophy. You really want them to
like this book you read, but they just won't read it. Its not because
they're stupid or there's some gigantic conspiracy in the education system
to get people to stop thinking. I think we need to stop making "philosophy"
synonymous with "thinking." I take philosophy to be a specific kind of
thinking, a kind of thinking that's typically enormously private, roughly
the attempt to answer "What is the meaning of life?" Only an individual can
answer that question for themselves.
>
> When I erect a public/private continuum and say that philosophical
pursuits are more private than public, I'm not saying that we shouldn't
teach philosophy or that philosophy is pointless. I'm saying its something
we shouldn't legislate. However, philosophy, I would say, is less private,
in this sense, than football. On the continuum I erected, I would say that
politics is something we should all learn, philosophy is further down the
continuum to something that would be nice if people learned, to football,
where if it fell off the face of the earth, civilization would continue
unabated (so far as I can tell, at least; I could be wrong, football may be
the glue keeping our society together).
>
> So, when your friends enter into a conversation with you, and you keep
trying to turn the conversation to things you care about, like philosophy,
think of it from their point of view: you sound like a religious evangelist.
For the evangelist, everything is about God or Jesus or the Bible and they
are always trying to turn the conversation to that and get people to
believe, like them. My advice to everyone is to more or less do what Mati
suggested: just let the conversation go where it will. I wouldn't even try
directing it like Mati said. Just let people talk about what they want. My
friends don't appreciate it when I ask leading questions. They know I do
philosophy, and if it sounds like I'm trying to teach them something rather
than have a conversation, they rightly get pissed off. God knows I don't
like it when you're at a bar and people are trying to teach rather than
talk. Its all about context.
>
> If you want to martyr yourself like Socrates and Rousseau, who had no
sense of timing or context or social grace, by all means, go ahead. But
don't be surprised if you start to lose friends, or you find it hard to make
friends. If this is a problem for you, then you might want to amend your
social excursions. If it isn't, then continue the pontificatory streak (I'm
not saying you or anybody has one (except me, Socrates, and Rousseau), I'm
just painting a stark picture).
>
> And I'm not saying that everybody needs to bow down before the Social
Gods. Far from it. I'm just trying to get people to lead their lives the
way they want to without regard for the way others want them to. This kind
of antiauthoritarianism requires you to leave people alone to make the
decision to _have_ a regard for others if they want it. My claim about
philosophy is simply, if it makes you happy, great. If not, then skip it.
If it drives you crazy because you are obsessed with it, then try and cope
with it somehow, either by stopping it or continuing with it. It you
couldn't give a rat's ass about Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, then don't
worry about it at all. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules in
the area about how to resolve these questions (except when it involves
people's lives or their own personal freedom). I think they are completely
personal and idiosyncratic.
>
> What pisses me off to no end is the kind of high and mighty feel that is
exuded by people such as the existentialists. They eschewed the Great
Authority, God. But then they went on and on about how great they were for
being "authentic," and shit like that. To me, Authenticity is just one more
God that needs to be popped. When I was a teenager (not too long ago), I
used to love all that existential, angsty junk. Not a lot, but just enough.
Now I read it and go, But what if they _really_ like Brittany Spears? Is
that really so bad? Are they really hurting anybody? Need we be so
socially sadistic as to sit around and care about what other people are
doing so much that the only thing we do is make fun of and rip on what
others do because they aren't "authentic" like we are? If the only people
Brittany Spears fans are hurting are themselves, and they seem happy and
fine, shouldn't it be enough for us to dislike Brittany Spears and let
everyone else decide on their own?
> Shouldn't it be enough to give our own opinion when asked ("What do _I_
think about Brittany Spears? Oh, I think she rots."), but not try and erect
it as the TRUTH?
>
> I get the same feel of social snobbery from those on here who pity those
who aren't "philosophical" in whatever idiosyncratically relevant sense
given to the term. I have two standard answers: either it is a pity that
they aren't "philosophical," but that's not because they don't read Plato,
its because you've made "philosophy" synonymous with "thinking," or why
don't you mind your own idiosyncratic business and stop trying to foist your
own desires on others.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
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