Clarify both definitions so I/we can evaluate them.

I'm not sure about this one. Early philosophy was closely aligned to mysticism (eg Plato's cave). — EnPassant

In my commentary I noted that I was referring to today's philosophy. In any case, Plato's dialogues are debates that make explicit the modes of reasoning of his time and have served as a model for centuries. Socrates never says "believe it because I say it". Platonic thought has nothing to do with the visions of Saint Teresa. As much as he called the world of ideas "divine". He meant that it was a perfect world that generated the existence of the real world or the best of it.

Surrealism is an artistic movement that sometimes expresses a content similar to certain philosophies, but in a different way. What differentiates them is the form. When Albert Camus says "if you want to be a philosopher, write novels", he thinks that the philosophical form is exhausted and that one can say the same thing as philosophy but in a more attractive way. Although, like all aphorisms, it is debatable, there is some truth in it.

See, here it's tricky in my view. On the one hand, of course philosophy isn't science or religion -- they differ in many ways. But on the other hand, they deal with very similar questions. — Xtrix

Being interested in someone's work does not mean interfering with what they are doing. The philosopher and the scientist who operates on a certain theoretical level are interested in similar problems, as you say. But philosophy cannot claim to rival the scientist in establishing the facts. It can interpret what science is doing (philosophy of science), but it cannot correct or replace it.

On the other hand, the scientist would do well to have a philosophical background if he wants to get into the field. Usually theoretical scientists confuse the philosophies of the past with those of the present. They think they have refuted "philosophy" when they have dismantled some beliefs of Plato or Thomas Aquinas. Although there are often contacts between scientists and philosophers, the great popes on both sides are often surprisingly misinformed. A matter of egocentricity, I suppose.

Clarify both definitions so I/we can evaluate them. — 180 Proof

I agree that this is necessary. Many centuries of empty metaphysics have made me apprehensive about these kinds of "universal" tasks. When I hear the word "Being" it gives me chills. A conditioned reflex I suppose.

I think most of today's philosophers do the same. They wouldn't see themselves reflected in these kinds of philosophies.

Platonic thought has nothing to do with the visions of Saint Teresa. — David Mo

Both of them would say that there is an order beyond the physical image. As the hydrogen atom is an image of energy, the physical world is an image of a non physical order. In this way science and religion are based on a similar idea: that there is an order beyond physical particulars. Scientists call this order 'the laws of nature' religion/Platonism may call it other things, but it is 'the world beyond the world.'

Philosophy is the theoretical conceptual interpretation — Xtrix

I'm thinking of philosophy first and foremost as an activity, one of many types of human inquiry. Rather than "an interpretation," I see philosophy is a way of arriving at an interpretation.

Scientists call this order 'the laws of nature' religion/Platonism may call it other things, but it is 'the world beyond the world.' — EnPassant

I think it's a very weak relationship. That way you can equate St. Teresa of Jesus with Albert Einstein. It seems to me much more what separates them.

I think it's a very weak relationship. That way you can equate St. Teresa of Jesus with Albert Einstein. It seems to me much more what separates them. — David Mo

Only, perhaps, in the way that the elephant's foot is very unlike its ears. They are both 'elephant stuff'. The non physical 'world beyond' is equally a quantum world and a divine world. The universe is immense and looks different from different angles. The Platonic realm and Teresa's world and quantum energy fields my well be the same world.

Whether being and conscious awareness ("thinking") are the same is an interesting question. Again I find Heidegger a very interesting resource on these issues. I don't want to make this about Heidegger -- I have another thread for that -- but needless to say your question is a good one. — Xtrix

Suppose we define philosophy as 'knowing the world'. Then a cat is a philosopher because the cat, through consciousness, knows the world. And knows it in ways we cannot easily imagine. I don't want to be facetious but extend this to human consciousness; don't we know the world through consciousness? If you eat an apple you know what an apple is in a way that the intellect will never explain to you.

But we 'sophisticated' people in the 21st century are addicted to 'reason' and are conceited about any kind of knowledge that does not come from 'reason'. Reason is abstract, consciousness is concrete. Which is more truthful about the world?

Missing half the picture. Philosophy isn’t just about being and ontology, i.e. reality. It’s also about morality.

Maybe instead of my planned series of threads on the demarcation of philosophy from other things, I should just do a series of posts in this thread since we’re already touching on all the same issues.

Something like this was going to be my first post in that thread series:

As regards the definition of philosophy, a quick and general answer would be that philosophy is about the fundamental topics that lie at the core of all other fields of inquiry, broad topics like reality, morality, knowledge, justice, reason, beauty, the mind and the will, social institutions of education and governance, and perhaps above all meaning, both in the abstract linguistic sense, and in the practical sense of what is important in life and why. But philosophy is far from the only field that inquires into any of those topics, and no definition of philosophy would be complete without demarcating it from those other fields, showing where the line lies between philosophy and something else.

The first line of demarcation is between philosophy and religion, which also claims to hold answers to all of those big questions. I would draw the demarcation between them along the line dividing faith and reason, with religions appealing to faith for their answers to these questions, and philosophies attempting to argue for them with reasons. While it is a contentious position within the field of philosophy to conclude that it is never warranted to appeal to faith, it is nevertheless generally accepted that philosophy as an activity characteristically differs from religion as an activity by not appealing to faith to support philosophical positions themselves, even if one of those positions should turn out to be that appeals to faith are sometimes acceptable. The very first philosopher recognized in western history, Thales, is noted for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world, instead practicing a primitive precursor to what would eventually become science, appealing to observable phenomena as evidence for his attempted explanations.

Missing half the picture. Philosophy isn’t just about being and ontology, i.e. reality. It’s also about morality. — Pfhorrest

Is not morality a part of reality?

Clarify both definitions so I/we can evaluate them. — 180 Proof

I'll try: philosophy is, essentially, ontology -- the science of being. It's the activity of interpreting being through theories and concepts.

So in Aristotle, "First philosophy" is (although often translated anachronistically as "metaphysics") ontology; "Second philosophy" is essentially natural philosophy, and so all the positive sciences in our time (many of which he founded).

I think that's a decent place to start. This raises a welter of questions, of course. But I'm being deliberately provocative.

By “therapeutically satisfying way of life” I meant to distinguish between philosophy as it is practiced in academia today, and, for example, that of the Hellenistic philosophers for whom philosophizing was a kind of medicine. — Statilius

I'm still not sure what you mean by a "kind of medicine."

See, here it's tricky in my view. On the one hand, of course philosophy isn't science or religion -- they differ in many ways. But on the other hand, they deal with very similar questions.
— Xtrix
Being interested in someone's work does not mean interfering with what they are doing. The philosopher and the scientist who operates on a certain theoretical level are interested in similar problems, as you say. But philosophy cannot claim to rival the scientist in establishing the facts. It can interpret what science is doing (philosophy of science), but it cannot correct or replace it. — David Mo

You're presupposing a difference, though. When does philosophy end and science begin? Or religion and spirituality, for that matter. I agree wholeheartedly there are examples where it does appear to be fairly clear-cut and obvious, but other times not so much. So, for example, we could ask whether Kant or Newton or Galileo were "doing" science or philosophy, but that question wouldn't really arise in their day. Was Aristarchus a scientist? I'd say absolutely. Was Thales or Anaximander? Democritus?

You see what I'm getting at. Like I said before, I'm not saying there is never a difference. In today's world there certainly appears to be in terms of university departments and the kind of papers being published, etc. But like many things, we don't have a real rule or solid "definition" for determining which is which -- although we may feel like there's one. Maybe we simply have to say "So much the worse for definitions," and leave it to intuition and specific situations.

On the other hand, the scientist would do well to have a philosophical background if he wants to get into the field. Usually theoretical scientists confuse the philosophies of the past with those of the present. They think they have refuted "philosophy" when they have dismantled some beliefs of Plato or Thomas Aquinas. Although there are often contacts between scientists and philosophers, the great popes on both sides are often surprisingly misinformed. A matter of egocentricity, I suppose. — David Mo

Very true. It's no big surprise that the real trailblazers in science are the individuals who engage with the thinkers of the past, rather than dismissing it all as useless (while inadvertently presupposing the philosophy of 80 years ago).

Many centuries of empty metaphysics have made me apprehensive about these kinds of "universal" tasks. When I hear the word "Being" it gives me chills. A conditioned reflex I suppose. — David Mo

Rightfully so. What did Nietzsche say about being -- that it's an "error" and a "vapor"?

Particular instances of people acting in moral ways and holding moral opinions are part of reality or course, but the question “what is moral?” is separate from the question “what is real?”. That’s the is-ought or fact-value divide there.

As regards the definition of philosophy, a quick and general answer would be that philosophy is about the fundamental topics that lie at the core of all other fields of inquiry, broad topics like reality, morality, knowledge, justice, reason, beauty, the mind and the will, social institutions of education and governance, and perhaps above all meaning, both in the abstract linguistic sense, and in the practical sense of what is important in life and why. — Pfhorrest

A very good interpretation, in my view. Philosophy as asking fundamental questions, which traverse all other fields. This is partly why I also like philosophy as ontology (in the Greek sense). You mentioned before that you believe this isn't quite right, because philosophy is also about morality -- but I'd say that morals, values, justice, "good" and "bad," actions, etc. -- are all "beings" as well. Maybe a better way to say it: they're all "things," after all. So taking "being" in a very broad sense, philosophy as ontology also includes morality.

The first line of demarcation is between philosophy and religion, which also claims to hold answers to all of those big questions. I would draw the demarcation between them along the line dividing faith and reason, with religions appealing to faith for their answers to these questions, and philosophies attempting to argue for them with reasons. — Pfhorrest

A very good place to start. On the other hand, even "formal" philosophy starts with axioms of some kind. Granted, it does not justify it's propositions by appeals to "faith" as often as some religions do. But the problem then becomes: what is "religion"? Is religion simply beliefs held on faith and not reason? In that case, I'd argue Buddhism really isn't a religion at all. There are no gods, no supernaturalism, no accepting anything on faith. Other religions, including Christianity, use the faculty of reason a great deal, as in Scholasticism. Those thinkers weren't idiots, of course.

The very first philosopher recognized in western history, Thales, is noted for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world, instead practicing a primitive precursor to what would eventually become science, appealing to observable phenomena as evidence for his attempted explanations. — Pfhorrest

This is the usual story, and probably correct in many ways -- although I have a hard time believing no other thought was occurring prior to Thales. Regardless, this is what is extant and so he earns his place. It's interesting that from his case alone we can shed light on what we're discussing here. He was certainly a believer in the gods, but also asked fundamental questions, and sought to answer them with reason and evidence. He's often said to be one of the "founders" of what would become (much later) "science," but he alone embodies all three aspects we've been discussing -- religion, philosophy, science.

Particular instances of people acting in moral ways and holding moral opinions are part of reality or course, but the question “what is moral?” is separate from the question “what is real?”. That’s the is-ought or fact-value divide there. — Pfhorrest

Although it can be useful, the fact-value dichotomy was never very compelling to me. But this is beside the point: even morality as a concept is a being. Hence, morality and ethics is part of philosophy, because philosophy is ontology.

Or one could argue.

But we 'sophisticated' people in the 21st century are addicted to 'reason' and are conceited about any kind of knowledge that does not come from 'reason'. Reason is abstract, consciousness is concrete. Which is more truthful about the world? — EnPassant

Very good point.

Consciousness, awareness, attention, concentration -- all very similar in many ways. The latter two have perhaps more specific connotations as sustained or unwavering awareness.

Regardless, it's no wonder consciousness is where "modern philosophy" starts in Descartes. It's striking how often this is overlooked or misunderstood, but Descartes' cogito, ergo sum is not simply "thinking" as in the reasoning and abstracting you mentioned above, but rather "conscious awareness." He makes this clear in his Principles of Philosophy, which unfortunately almost never gets assigned to students but which I would argue (as would Descartes himself) is a much more important work than the Meditations or the Discourse.

The question becomes, in reaction to Descartes, what is "consciousness," what is the "I," and what is "being"? Heidegger essentially says that this should really be flipped: "I am, therefore I think." He'll claim that Descartes largely ignores ontology, taking up the Scholastic variation and moving on from there. I think this is very much true, and that we've thus almost completely ignored the question of being and have been stuck in a mind/body or subject/object divide for a long time now, wrapped up in our scientific pursuits while what's called "philosophy" gets relegated to simply an analysis of the results of science in college and university departments.

It's exactly the lived life, the average everyday life, that we ever begin to philosophize. Yet this either gets ignored, or else interpreted in the same light we interpret anything else in nature -- by de-worlding it. So your point of differentiating abstraction and consciousness is important indeed.

On the other hand, even "formal" philosophy starts with axioms of some kind. — Xtrix

Not necessarily. It can start with a survey of possibilities, reduce to absurdity some of them, and then proceed from whatever is left. I’d argue that to just put forth some unquestionable axioms simply is religion.

But the problem then becomes: what is "religion"? Is religion simply beliefs held on faith and not reason? In that case, I'd argue Buddhism really isn't a religion at all. There are no gods, no supernaturalism, no accepting anything on faith. — Xtrix

Yes, religion is anything that appeals to faith. And it’s not only claims about the supernatural that appeal to faith. Buddhism just stipulates its principles and asks you to accept them. Even if those principles make no appeal to the supernatural (which, inasmuch as they talk about reincarnation and escaping the cycle thereof, they actually do), just asking us to accept them on faith in the wisdom of Siddhartha makes it a religion still.

I'm still not sure what you mean by a "kind of medicine." — Xtrix

Regarding “philosophy as medicine”, Martha Nussbaum speaks of this in her book, “Therapy of Desire.” The publisher's book blurb says: “The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life.”

On page 21 of the book, she says, “The idea of a practical and compassionate philosophy—a philosophy that exists for the sake of human beings, in order to address their deepest needs, confront their most urgent perplexities, and bring them from misery to some greater measure of flourishing—this idea makes the study of Hellenistic ethics riveting for a philosopher who wonders what philosophy has to do with the world.

It is perhaps expressed best by Epicurus in Fragment 221:

“A philosopher's words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind. For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul.”

And, again by Seneca in Epistle XX,2:

“Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak; it exacts of every man that he should live according to his own standards, that his life should not be out of harmony with his words, and that, further, his inner life should be of one hue and not out of harmony with all his activities. This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom, – that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all conditions, and always the same.”

I hope this is helpful. Thank you for your question. I appreciate it. -- Stabilius

“A philosopher's words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind. For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul.” — Statilius

I love your definition of philosophy Statillus. It and the above quote highlight how truth is not enough. Truth must be accompanied by a pleasant emotional response / result.

For me this provides a glimpse into how consciousness works - a computation in consciousness is accompanied by either a positive or negative emotional response.

I wonder, what if we were able to define philosophy logically and irrefutably, but it yielded a negative emotional response. Would we accept it? I doubt it . I think we would deny and repress it whilst we searched for something we were emotionally comfortable with??

philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul. — Statilius

Thanks much for your kind remarks. I appreciate it.

Today was an exquisite spring day, with a cheerful sun and gentle caressing breeze--with irises, tulips, sweet woodruff and poppies all coming into bloom--such a tonic for the soul. When I re-read the fragment from Epicurus (above) I was so moved once again. I just sat for a few moments looking out onto the meadow, just quietly looking, with a sad and tender heart, and a deep feeling for all of us, all across this planet filled with longing and distress. If nothing else, let my philosophy help remove the suffering of the world. Let this be its central aspiration:

May all beings everywhere
Plagued by sufferings of body and mind
Obtain an ocean of happiness and joy. - Santideva

Thanks again for your kind remarks. I wish you well. --Stabilius

The Platonic realm and Teresa's world and quantum energy fields my well be the same world. — EnPassant

St Teresa's world was governed by the will of a personal entity. Where is this personal entity in quantum mechanics? Neither in Plato's.
St. Teresa's "knowledge" was an extrasensory private perception of this personal entity. The facts of quantum mechanics are known through intersubjective experimentation. Plato's epistemology was based on rationality and debate.

They are not the same worlds but opposite worlds.

When does philosophy end and science begin? Or religion and spirituality, for that matter. — Xtrix

Philosophy ends when science establishes the facts. This has been the case since the time when science got a reliable method. Therefore, I do not include the philosophy of the past in my demarcation criteria. Aristotle is not Wittgenstein.

On spirituality: it is a vague word. It sounds like religion without god. I don't include spirituality as a kind of philosophy.

Maybe we simply have to say "So much the worse for definitions," and leave it to intuition and specific situations. — Xtrix

You can't avoid definitions. If you don't make them explicit, they will work in the background. And this is a source of pseudo-problems.

[

But we 'sophisticated' people in the 21st century are addicted to 'reason' and are conceited about any kind of knowledge that does not come from 'reason'. Reason is abstract, consciousness is concrete. Which is more truthful about the world? — EnPassant

I don't know how you use the term conscience. The way you use it is just like sensation. Sensations are not knowledge in themselves. They can be deceptive. In fact, they are constantly misleading.

There is no knowledge of the pure individual.
Everything we know is mediated by universal concepts, by forms that are applied to sensations to give them meaning.

This consciousness you speak of is nothing more than an abstraction.
So reason may be imperfect, but it's what we have and we should resign ourselves to it. Polishing it, perfecting it, handling it, but not inventing alternatives that are more lying than reason itself.

Clarify both definitions so I/we can evaluate them.
— 180 Proof

I'll try: philosophy is, essentially, ontology -- the science of being. — Xtrix

But insofar as "science" presupposes "being", "the science of being", at best, begs the question, no?

I agree that the real (i.e. MEon, or other-than-being) is fundamental, not as an object of "science" (i.e. academic) but as the immanent horizon, or enabling-constraint, of struggle (i.e. existential).

It's the activity of interpreting being through theories and concepts.

Okay, better - "being" as presupposed by "theories and concepts" (Collingwood? Spinoza?)

What do we think of this:

“Philosophy is the theoretical conceptual interpretation of being, of being’s structure and its possibilities.” — Xtrix

Okay.

or

"Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology."

Agree? Disagree? Incoherent?

Incoherent. Seems (implicitly) 'epistemically anthropocentric', or idealist-essentialist (re: hypostatization).

"What is geography?" is not a question addressed in the topic of geography. It is not pondered or debated by geographers. Rather, along with "What is philosophy?", it is a question in the topic of philosophy.

And one might notice that the questioner already knows this, as it has been put to a philosophy forum. Such a question is a reflexive problematisation, guaranteed to produce a fine collection of muddles, from the radically circular 'it's what philosophy departments study', to the equally radical denial of subject matter in favour of method or attitude. As if one were to ask 'what is government?' and the reply was that the government of a steam-engine is not the same as the government of a gardening club.

Sharpening the chisel is a part of woodwork, that works the metal with the stone and involves no wood at all.

The OP of the second thread in that series on the demarcation of philosophy I was planning: "Philosophy is not Sophistry". (The first one was to be titled "Philosophy is not Religion"; forgot to mention that before).

Despite turning to argumentation to establish its answers, philosophy is not some relativistic endeavor wherein there are held to be no actually correct answers, only winning and losing arguments. While there are those within philosophy who contentiously advocate for relativism about various topics, philosophy as an activity is characteristically conducted in a manner seeking out answers that are genuinely correct, not merely seeking to win an argument. Though the historical accuracy is disputed, a founding story of the classical era of philosophy ushered in by Socrates, at least as recounted by his student Plato, is that philosophers like them were to be distinguished from the prevailing practitioners of reasoned argumentation of their time, the Sophists, who on Plato's account were precisely such relativists uninterested in genuine truth, only in winning. It is from that account that the contemporary use of the word "sophistry" derives, meaning wise-sounding but secretly manipulative or deceptive argumentation, aimed more at winning than at finding the truth. And whether or not the historical Sophists actually practiced such argumentation, philosophy since the time of Socrates has defined itself in opposition to that.

philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul. — Statilius

Suffering of the soul is caused by believing lies. The task then of philosophy is to determine a process by which lies can be distinguished from truth. Admittedly no easy task.

On the other hand, even "formal" philosophy starts with axioms of some kind.
— Xtrix

Not necessarily. It can start with a survey of possibilities, reduce to absurdity some of them, and then proceed from whatever is left. I’d argue that to just put forth some unquestionable axioms simply is religion. — Pfhorrest

There is no way around it -- you have to start somewhere. Any proposition in philosophy presupposes something, and in the end it does in fact come down to matters of belief. These core beliefs I call "axioms," but call it whatever you want. It's not that they're unquestionable -- it's that you have to accept them only in order to proceed. Take Euclid's axioms in geometry, for example. Of course we can still question these, maybe even reject them -- it's not a dogma. Yet if you don't accept them, at least temporarily, the rest won't be very interesting or even coherent.

The same is true of philosophy -- it doesn't start from nowhere.

Yes, religion is anything that appeals to faith. And it’s not only claims about the supernatural that appeal to faith. Buddhism just stipulates its principles and asks you to accept them. Even if those principles make no appeal to the supernatural (which, inasmuch as they talk about reincarnation and escaping the cycle thereof, they actually do), just asking us to accept them on faith in the wisdom of Siddhartha makes it a religion still. — Pfhorrest

If we choose to define "religion" as anything that appeals to faith, then we should discuss exactly what we mean by faith. I say it's belief without evidence. But in that case, many things we do on a daily basis involves a good deal of faith as well, yet I wouldn't call it religion.

As for Buddhism -- no Buddhist, that I'm aware of, asks you to accept the "wisdom of Siddhartha" on faith. Quite the opposite.

The Buddhist ideas (in some traditions) of reincarnation really have nothing to do with the supernatural, any more than a cloud becoming rain is supernatural.

There is no way around it -- you have to start somewhere. Any proposition in philosophy presupposes something, and in the end it does in fact come down to matters of belief. These core beliefs I call "axioms," but call it whatever you want. It's not that they're unquestionable -- it's that you have to accept them only in order to proceed. Take Euclid's axioms in geometry, for example. Of course we can still question these, maybe even reject them -- it's not a dogma. Yet if you don't accept them, at least temporarily, the rest won't be very interesting or even coherent. — Xtrix

That's foundationalism, which is far from uncontroversial. As I said, you can instead -- as critical rationalism would have it -- start with a survey of possibilities, reduce to absurdity some of them, and then proceed from whatever is left. You're not starting out just supposing that something or other is true, you're starting out with no idea what is or isn't true, just a spread of possible truths. Then you find inherent problems with some of the options, and get rid of them. Then you build off of what's left. But you didn't just start off supposing that what's left was the truth. You only fell back on it because all the other options proved unworkable.

If we choose to define "religion" as anything that appeals to faith, then we should discuss exactly what we mean by faith. I say it's belief without evidence. But in that case, many things we do on a daily basis involves a good deal of faith as well, yet I wouldn't call it religion. — Xtrix

Just believing something yourself without adequate reason isn’t faith. To quote myself elsewhere:

I also don't mean just holding some opinion "on faith", as in without sufficient reason; I don't think you need reasons simply to hold an opinion yourself. I am only against appeals to faith, by which I mean I am against assertions — statements not merely to the effect that one is of some opinion oneself, but that it is the correct opinion, that everyone should adopt — that are made arbitrarily; not for any reason, not "because of..." anything, but "just because"; assertions that some claim is true because it just is, with no further justification to back that claim up. I am against assertions put forth as beyond question, for if they needed no justification to stand then there could be no room to doubt them.

As for Buddhism -- no Buddhist, that I'm aware of, asks you to accept the "wisdom of Siddhartha" on faith. Quite the opposite. — Xtrix

I am not aware of any Buddhist arguing for Buddhist principles in a way meant to convince someone who doesn’t already believe them. It’s all meant to be taken as self-evident wisdom that just needed someone wise enough to point it out, and now that it’s been pointed out, you’ve just got to either accept it and find peace or go on suffering in your miserable unenlightened life.

The Buddhist ideas (in some traditions) of reincarnation really have nothing to do with the supernatural, any more than a cloud becoming rain is supernatural. — Xtrix

The idea of any kind of self surviving death to live another miserable life of suffering is sort of a key motivating factor in Buddhism. If it weren’t for reincarnation, you could easily escape from suffering via suicide. Without samsara, nirvana and mundane death are the same thing.