In case of any mistake: What is written in this post is wholly serious and straightforwardly the case. The issue is of great importance for all life on the earth.


I sense your comments want to be deprecatory in some cheep way, though they can't and wont be understood by the thinking part of the community since they are simply rhetorical static attempting to pass itself off as an argument.

Such as gravity or displacement? Or being or life? True, this is what is most human: To be utterly forsaken amidst being, alone experiencing the world as a problem or question.

"Personally, I think philosophy is for those who are not focused enough for STEM study and research.[/quote]"

However, since philosophy is the human being itself, this is a starkly senseless claim. E.g., since you yourself are a philosophic being producing a drearily naive philosophy (or, merely retailing what has been placed in your soul by your experience, i.e., of your environment, which is culture). One can show reaction norms predict you(s) will oft be produced by the current conditions. That is patently obvious!

Of course, surely it is a simple enough word, Russel says: philosophy is the unknown, science is what is known. All that is science, was once philosophy.

I would modify that to say, there is no certainty with respect to the knowing of the known. And so the pervading storm of philosophy is one's most serious concern.

" I think that's a misguided view and so react negatively when philosophy is portrayed as the study of something superior in some profound sense to life as lived."

Rutherford isolated the nucleus of the atom. He wasn't, however, concerned with its possible applications. He died believing nothing would come of that discovery, and that the release of the energy from the nucleus would not mean much. He gloried in the knowledge for its own sake, i.e., real knowledge. Not "stamp collecting".

Weber in many respects controls the universities today. The notion of the "ideal type" is very powerful. The notion of a "fact value" distinction (which, make no mistake, became powerful through Weber, though it was developed by Simmel and stems from Nietzsche, Hume is only accidentally and retrospectively credited with this because of Kant/Nietzsche) controls the whole academic product and the methodology of each field (just as much and more in the those social sciences were it is explicitly rejected, because it still founds those disciplines in their methodology:, e.g., sociology, ethnology, anthropology and the rest of the Kulturwissenschaften). The systematic expulsion of subjectivity, political science, not political philosophy.

Ergo, the point is, philosophy is no other world. Think of living in a tribal life of scarcity and without education. Is it not closer to barbarity? According to the Roman historian Florus, Numa tamed the barbarous Romans, and prepared them for human life. This was through his piety, what piety is, is the subject of the Euthyphro. It is quite instructive to see how the way of experience exercised through speech, which is not something added on to the body, but since understanding is bodily, it is the body, comes to live in the race, human beings. Ergo, the raising up is what you are now because of what has been philosophized.

"What he actually said was "The unexamined life is not worth living". Well that was his opinion anyway, I have never seen any evidence to back it up though."

That's the brilliant classicist Jowett's translation. Often classicists are quite impossible when it comes to philosophic meaning. What Socrates said is closer to what I put down. It was a definition as a formulation of his soul's opinion. He held this, we hold this, just as we hold that Crete is an Island. As, I believe, even given the intervening millennia, it still is.


"You do not have to be a philosopher to examine your life"

Exacto! Now you are closer (you already were) to seeing it, the path of Socrates', and what he knew. To be human is to philosophize.

"From the premises you stated it could just as easily be all humans that don't inquire are not alive. Or not human."

Humans can sink bellow the level of human beings, become beasts. Only true philosophic exercise tempers the barbarous animal, makes it human. Such is true education. Think of the harrow of beastliness under which Nebuchadnezzar was stricken. Hitler and his fellows, for instance, were fittingly called wild beasts. They sank bellow the level of the human being.

"In the end all that philosophy really tells us is what we already knew"

Not sure how the whole of human life could be described as showing what one already knows. Since philosophy and the human being are the same, this does not persuade me.

"I disagree that the rest is "stamp collecting." So, I think that to characterize it as "stamp collecting" is at best erroneous, and indicates neither an understanding of nor appreciation for the rest of "what is" beyond philosophy. And, because characterizing it as "stamp collecting" seems to me express contempt for it, I don't think any useful, fair or insightful inquiry will take place regarding that which is not philosophy (at least as to other human activities) by those who say it is "stamp collecting."

I'm following the remark of Rutherford, as you perhaps know. One can take up any cause in the style laid out by Max Weber; so long as one sets down a framework and keeps to it, it is wissenschaft, careful study, but not true knowledge. It is no more the real stuff than is stamp collecting done in a serious and rigorous manner. Which is to say, it is ultimately arbitrary. I appreciate the view you propound, however, its weight, its truth or non-truth, it seems to me, is a matter for philosophic research. Only the essential truth of the human being has the piercing power to ask this question and move into this question as though to measure it. Ergo, it is the human being and it is the most serious pursuit of the human being.

I'm not with your view because one would have to ask it, rather than take it up as a conviction that does justice to mankind as what sounds right to a man of sound heart and mind, but... prior to investigation.

What if someone were to answer: 'Because he is the most ugly of them all.'? Clearly, the Greeks were lovers of bodily beauty, and so, in part, the dreary glint floating upon the ever alive icon of Socrates, forever captivating the ordinary limited Athenian, took him from healthy enjoyment of the real things, into deluded and inchoate lands of utter shadow.

" philosophy doesn't involve inquiry into "what is" "

At first blush I disagree, since it presupposes what the human and what philosophy is. But I'm not sure what you mean by this. What is the reason? Do you mean because "what is" is determined as what always is, as something fixed?

Give one high-quality example of "destructive power" in action.

"Or maybe its that the space of wonder is guarded by artillery, so i want to get there but can't without going through a seemingly endless prepatory reconnaissance phase."

Brilliant image.

" ironically and seems to have been an alcoholic (how else would he have outdrank everyone, and remained conscious, in the symposium?"

In order not to be accused of being too loose, I must introduce pedantry. Socratic irony seems to mean, chiefly, dissembling of a real superiority, in order not to offend. However, he was slaughtered, and so, one might suppose, there is some flaw in his method of concealment. Think of Lieutenant Colombo! That is another kind of deliberate masquerade for a purpose. Hehe..

It is said Socrates could remain teetotal as readily as he could imbibe fulsomely.

"irrelevant nonsense."

Have it your way, you bore me.

"Why do you think it is otherwise?"

For the reasons already given. You bore me unutterably. Courage is obviously not an external goal.

In what respect?

I don't know, I don't think it has a "clear understanding" in any sense, not just of the view towards an "end-product".

One speaks as much of "epistemic drive" as of death drive. Are they the same? Is Socratic wonder a military bombardment in the psyche?

There's some glimmer in the post, but it is beset by the stark trickster fool of political hubris, unavailing of reason.

Which is to state nothing but rhetorical static.

Of course, I grant, e.g., Marcuse is worthy of study. Since he had some education worthy of the name. But, that is something quite different from this claim of yours that the post is the work of an extraordinary being.

I take that as a confession you were talking nonsense the whole while. In order to justify your dreary claim that the poster is a genius.

There's a mission for you. Fine. Others pursue diverse goals.

"I'm not talking about sex."
Then what?

"Can we overcome the pretense to only satisfy psychological needs and wants?"

It's not patently cogent to say that sex is not psychological, if that's the kind of issue you mean. Observe squirrels. Sex is muthos, eros is in the psyche. Madonna says, thinking about sex is sex. Heidegger says, the being of a leg of lamb is the same in memory, so does Bergson in another way, less intense experience as memory. So the thesis starts by assuming something that not everyone grants. Question begging for those who don't grant the premise.

Put another way, if I judge something has happened, I drink water, my psychology is the ground of certainty. Think of the phrase "an enviable lunatic", i.e., someone who takes the greatest pleasure from gaping thoughtfully at a wall, e.g., Leonardo de Vinci.

Now, one must answer: Why would one want to reach empty "reality" without story or muthos? It is an artificial production of the technology of manipulating the human being as thing (mystical powers of the cosmic material as haunting dream). However, it is not cogent that it exists, some say it does, some the reverse, of those serious persons who have carried out an examination of the issue.

What assumption?

I asked: "Why is the world totality not an "artificial role playing game"?"

I asked: "What can artificial mean here, bad?"

I asked: "Or, does it mean constructed rather than by "nature", i.e., by the constructed Western conception phusis, said in order to distinguish form art and law."

--

"Will you address it?"

What question?

Are you going to wait for me to invest time in answering (again) and then make an absurd answer to keep up appearances, i.e., in order to pretend that you are reasonable for polemical purposes?

Why is the world totality not an "artificial role playing game"? What can artificial mean here, bad? Something one doesn't or ought not like? Or, does it mean constructed rather than by "nature", i.e., by the constructed Western conception phusis, said in order to distinguish form art and law. If artificial means produced, then wouldn't any collective activity be an artificial, i.e., a productive act? A conscious rather than a blind or natural act.

Someone who is unable to see that taking away one set of myths, and setting up another is not a "resolving of hierarchies" is an idiot, not a genius. One might consider the word muthos here.

This reminds of the American hippies of the 60's, with their absurd claim to be without laws. They were arrestingly counter-cultural in the full sense of the word counter: they were against; setting up another set of laws or nomoi. Long hair, not short. This dear one puts out one more thoughtless political missionary position among the infinite boring constellations and claims to be the end all and be all of openness. One more political person alongside each other senseless political person we herein catch in the fruitless act of doing contemporary poli-art; nothing to see here but a sleepy lack of acumen in thought. And an appalling refusal to learn.

Nonsense.

OED gives: "A Traveller is not to imagine pleasure his object." 1665

It's a confused meaning, in connection to this subject matter, since what it says is someone makes the object of their senses, e.g., gold, into their object. Their thang, as it were. The thing they are about, e.g., a man greedy for pelf or gain makes money his goal. His[/i] object. This is somehow not what telos or even 'final cause' in Scholastic usage means. Aquinas may have played a role in bringing this into the language. Phusei dikaion, natural justice, refers to a way of being, not a getting of something. A just man lives according to Dike or justice. He doesn't seek it as an objective.

More starkly: A courageous man is courageous, he doesn't seek the ends of courage as a goal or as his object. Courage is not his objective, but what he is according to nature.

So far as one does not trace back through the "second cave", that of historical usage, one becomes a sophist arguing about title cards and signaling fealty to slogans. The whole of the contemporary philosophic professoriate are sophistic puzzle solvers in this sense.

"But most humans are not philosophers, they resist it. That is why I asked why you see it s a duty for people to be philosophers."

I'm with Socrates so far as he made the starkly patent truth vocal in propounding that a life that does not inquire is no human life. Ergo, all humans are philosophers.

Of course, as it seems, one can resist one's highest possibility. That is so, but it is also something perplexing.

"obsessive neurosis"

What does this mean? That philosophizing is an aberration? Like pedophilia for the moderns, or the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy period? Or, the bright gleam of the bowers built by the Bower bird? An animal, which, however, it seems, is not quite aware of its own work as work.

"
But why do you think of it as a duty?"

It seems to follow as corollary of philosophy's status as the highest activity vouchsafed to human beings. The rest is "stamp collecting".

For a reason quite alien to us. Because before the French Revolution except by small groups of "Free Thinkers" the notion of mocking the ruled was thought as akin to the idea of children laughing at parents or the young making sport of the old, as the rich gorging themselves on superfluity while the poor starved, or any other common moral rule of thumb. It was thoroughly immoral by the common notion of natural morality, it was something unnatural. It should be mentioned that Mozart altered the play, as he was forbidden to adapt it, as comes out in the film Amadeus.

The word objective is ambiguous. It can mean "bright line rules", things most people in a given society understand such as speed limits, it can also mean "independent of humans". The sciences are the current most powerful authority on what exists without humans, on knowledge. Many hold the sciences to be the authority on knowledge. Correspondingly, conviction is not scientific. The whole humanity can hold a view scientifically false. You aren't a moral realist, you simply hold yourself to be due to nascience. It happened sometimes under the former South Africa that people were certain there were two kinds of sex, illegal, between men, and licit, between man and woman. When it was explicitly raised that women have sex, and thought through, it came to be seen these people believed also that women could have sex. That was simply ignored by law and popular culture, but nonetheless, it was there as unkown known.

I believe this roughly corresponds to the current notion of natural Right, i.e., what is held essential by the current population. With the difficulty that it is in question whether one can any longer speak only of a closed geographical locality, and not of universal humanity, since, amoung other reasons, we hear constantly about what happens in parts distant and can not help pass judgment.

You mean The Marriage of Figaro?

"a consensus"

It's not wholly clear what consensus means. One speaks of "the tyranny of the majority" at some point. One must correspondingly consider the minority views. There is a question concerning what counts as consensus and on what bases one decides where the line is drawn. And from where is the hoop of those who decide described, i.e., a certain country, the whole world? The currently living human beings, there was a moment when The Marriage of Figaro was held impermissible!, utterly impossible for moral reasons!, the humans of every age up until know? Kant, for example, says, what has been held up to now is a temporary and local rumor.

However far you go, to be sure, some human would affirm it as good by the standard of their own certainty based on their psychology. One would be compelled to judge some persons insane. Which raises certain questions about the exact criteria, and the judges of insanity.

"Really. Who likes to be in constant pain? Tell me."

Penitents, stylites, various yogies, peculiar people, Martin Luther who said: leiden leiden croix croix, Suffering Suffering the Cross the Cross! A great many people. Communists devoted to building the rational society under the claim the party truth demands perpetual and painful sacrifice. Artists who hold a struggle with society for the sake of an obscure goal is the most worthy zenith. Those who hold the tap roots of what is most great are made firm through hard exercise, i.e., through going painfully against the grain of humans as they now exist in order to change what is. Crazy people. So forth.

"It's true there is not a uniform agreement. At the same time however, there do seem some things which can be agreed upon, for instance being in constant pain is bad."

This isn't true. It may be true for you, and it may be the current general opinion of mankind. Or, perhaps the general opinion of mankind in all ages up until now. But many disagree, and even for reasons. Also, one may disagree irrationally, i.e., without reasons, why not? Such is liberal society, it allows one to be human, to choose. Or, perhaps it is no choice, but what their psychology compels them to treat as a certainty.

One who would maintain your thesis would be compelled to deem those who choose against this, or who believe against this, defective.

One needs some preliminaries though. Does agreed mean the same as ordinary certainty? In the sense that when I see water, I say, there is water in that cup. That's a psychological certainty, a judgment based on the possibly fallible psychology of a human being. Supposing one start with that as a measure of "agreeing"? Would you grant that. Ergo, we would be setting aside questions concerning the status of human psychology in relation to the universe as such. The standard is, when something is said, a sentence, one that says something, i.e., a proposition, being affirmed, due to really being judged so, by some psychology. Would you grant this standard, or something like it of your own formulation?

Ouch!

That's what you are being.

You waste all our time by not following the thread. And so retailing vapidities.

You're rehearsing vacant general questions. Follow the conversation to learn what philosophy is.