Philosophy

Why do you people study Philosophy?

For reasons of enjoyment or fullfillment? Perhaps possible explanations/answers?

Knowing the same questions we are asking now have been asked 2000 years ago.

It seems like a lost cause

Peace n love

I’ve actually been wondering the same thing especially recently. I wonder why I spend my time reading about philosophy instead of spending it doing other things that would be more productive. I mean like you said the questions have been asked 2000 years ago and we still don’t really have a clear answer for any of them.

As far as a reason I don’t know. Maybe personal exploration. A better understanding of what we as individuals are thinking or feeling. My opinion so far though. I just recently started to put my thoughts into words.

Consider that the emotions we have today are no different than the emotions men have had for thousands of years. Our own individual emotion of love is a repetition of the same behavior that moved our ancestors to lose sleep. Our love today is in no way more advanced than was theirs. Since this endless repetition of love is getting us nowhere, one might ask, “What’s the point?” Is love a lost cause?

My reply is that the value of love is in the process of loving. Love isn’t a machine that cranks out an end product. The act of loving is the end product. Similarly, the value of philosophy does not rest entirely with its end product; the process itself has value. The very word “philosophy,” bespeaks the love of, rather than the possession of knowledge.

Beyond this intrinsic value there’s also a pragmatic value to philosophy. Philosophy, not unlike pure mathematics, is a study of possible worlds. The scientist Edward O. Wilson wrote:

“Pure mathematics is the science of all conceivable worlds, a logically closed system yet infinite in all directions allowed by the starting premises. With it we might if given unlimited time and computational capacity describe every imaginable universe. But mathematics alone cannot inform us of the very special world in which we live (for that we need observation).”

Science begins with philosophy but science further employs the tool of experiment to select the probable from the possible. Scientists are philosophers when they imagine what is possible. Philosophers become scientists when they perform the experiments that verify or reject their imagined possibilities. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity began as a thought experiment; a philosophical possibility. Experiments have since verified the scientific standing of his philosophical speculation. The latest version of String Theory likewise belongs to metaphysics. If experiments could be devised to verify String Theory, then it too might one day become science.

Science is especially esteemed because it makes progress. Technological innovation often follows close on the heels of experimentally verified theories. Given our intense focus on the end product we tend to forget the debt technology ultimately owes to philosophy.
No philosophy, no science. No science, no technology.

It requires a certain boldness to look open-eyed at what Blaise Pascal called “…the nothingness from which man emerged and the infinity in which he is engulfed.” Proper philosophy is both the search for answers to our most difficult questions and the courage to accept these answers no matter how disquieting they might be. Religion on the other hand, begins with the answers. The answers religion begins with are specifically those which men wish were true. Religion is the search for that which would make these answers true.

My philosophy is the reasoned emotion that gives meaning to my life. It’s possible for a philosophy to confer meaning without providing all the answers (if we had all the answers then we wouldn’t need philosophy). The questions men have asked themselves for thousands of years are some of the most difficult of all, yet these are precisely the questions that are worthy of our lost sleep. A human mind devoid of self-reflection is similar to a powerful locomotive pulling a trainload of feather pillows. Having read Hume, Kant remarked that he was awakened from his dogmatic slumbers. Above being merely awakened, men are ennobled by the consideration of these questions.

In a historical sense philosophy might appear to be chasing its tail. But in a personal sense, the sense that truly matters, my philosophical understanding has advanced enormously. I have answered some of my questions. This doesn’t imply that my answers won’t continue to evolve; I expect they will as long as I live.

If the world could be thought of as a house, my philosophy has helped turn this house into my home.

Michael

for as many different reasons as there are answers to philosophical questions. there is no reason for water, and it leads no reasons, but it was around 2000 years ago also. personally the answer is to bring my feelings into alignment, though on a higher level I would have to agree with Michael.

I found it amusing reading Micheals Signature

One could argue philosophy is in sense useless.

Youngman stated:

Well, if your going to say that, you might as well include everything else.
You could use that to argue anything being in a sense useless. Many environmentalists see all technology and industrialization as exactly what Polemarchus’ signature states, doing something well that shouldn’t be done at all. The better they do it, the more harm they cause. This would go for architects, construction workers, accountants, economists, lawyers, police officers, shop attendants, etc, etc.

What’s your take?

If you’ve read Polemachus’s thread, it’s difficult to understand what ‘useless’ means here.

What do you mean by that?

I don’t know about you guys, but I read philosophy because it makes me feel smart. :laughing:

LOL

Answers. I find more answers in psychology, theology, sociology and literature, but philosophy has its moments.

Even if all one’s philosophical inquiries only lead them to absurdity, meaningless, etc and whatever, then it raises the questions why NOT study philosophy as much as why TO study philsosphy (although the motivation does change).

What is productive? What has utility? Again, if there is nothing to be learned, understood, appreciated better through philosophy, then there is no “meaning” external to what we create. So why is philosophy any less productive than anything else? Philosophy contributes to the economy through countless channels.

The only reason with warrent that I can see to chucking the whole philosophy thing is if you decided to be “procuctive” through dedication to humanitarian ends - but I would suspect such a true dedication would take a profound philosophical/theological insight.

http//www.thethinginitself.com

I think the reason I have an interest in the study of Philosophy is not to discover what IS, but what could be. I like to keep my options open, and that part of me extends into my belief system.

What I mean to say is… all my life I’ve been told I can’t walk through walls. If someone tells me a reason why, just maybe, I could… and I can find a way to look at it as believable, why not consider it? As opposed to just believing what I’ve been told since birth just because I’ve been told it since birth?

I see no more reason to believe something that’s always been drilled into my head than something that hasn’t. That’s the only difference, how much it’s been forced on me. The actual level of possibility does not change with that. We can’t “know” anything, except that we exist… so instead of striving to know things, I’ll just strive to keep my options open.

I think? heh

I have been wondering if philosphy is a vain attempt for understanding. I don’t wanna be confused all the time like I am now, but even if I know what I support or why I think certain ways, I am doubting if a resolution will ever come from it.
Does it mean anything? What does it help me with, or what should I be searching for? I’m not concerned with rationalism or absolute truth.

I would think philosophy ought to be an anonymous job. That’s one of the reasons I really enjoy these forums. Do you think philosophers are vain a priori?

And as far as its modern relevance, it goes without saying that we need people to distinguish good ideas from bad ones. Political compromise ends up deflating our ideals until we all become anxious, over-productive insects: we need art, music, dancing to get us back to reality. Yet these too are overtaken by the consumer-society, tie us back into an oppressive system.

Is philosophy free of the culture industry? No, nothing really is. But it’s in the contradictions and inconsistencies that we find the truth of the situation, the possibility of a passage beyond it.

We’ve got to move forward as a society. We can’t give in to the nihilst conceit that everything important has already occurred. This is like defecting to the opposite side in the heated pitch of battle. As though you wouldn’t be caught, insect! :slight_smile: Is it guilt that keeps us up late at night… worrying about ‘metaphysics’ as an intellectual mask, a proxy for deeper insecurities? But philosophy is about casting off guilt, and actually taking responsibility: interpreting for yourself. Philosophers know that feeling guilty is just as repugnant as trying to be someone else’s guilty conscience. (Weird ambition, kind of like a cop, to want to be someone’s guilty conscience…)

Philosophy isn’t ‘trapped’ and there’s nothing to ‘admit to’: if you feel like you’re wasting your time, then stop. Criticism can’t be done with one foot in and one foot out. Either you stay, and listen, and try to understand… or you leave immediately. You just can’t do it any other way. Without actually engaging with reality, without participating in the process of human social life, there’s no way to proceed towards the truth of any event at all!

The fate of humanity rests in its philosophies - and philosophers. I say this with as much literalism, conviction and emphasis as is possible.

What you’ve highlighted with this observation is not that there’s any problem with philosophy, but that there’s a problem with humanity. Saying philosophy seems like a lost cause is no different than saying humanity seems like a lost cause. Indeed, they’re almost the identical concept if you ask me. Maybe it’s a lost cause and maybe it isn’t, but the fact remains that philosophy, and the people who engage in it, are the benefactors of the entire species, and will determine its fate.

Is that a good enough reason?

Philosophy is critical thinking. Critical thinking occurs when problems are present. Problems are present because of conflicts. For Dasein (think Heidegger for a second), conflicts are a social part of human reality in the world. They are always present, and nothing but humans create moral conflicts. An inanimate object, like a tornado, does not create a conflict…it creates a scientific problem, which is accessible to all people in conflict or not. Therefore, the extent of a conflict, or real philosophical problem, is the social relations of people who share a language, and this languaging creates relative cultural values based on the influence on society, by that class.

Philosophy in a class struggle, as Marx put it, is the struggle to begin changing conditions immediately. Since the conflicts are rooted in the class oppositions, which is the “moral realm”, critical thinking begins when problems are noticed and solutions are sought out. The origins of philosophy are in the moments when problems which science could not solve, psychological problems, became apparant. The various forms of minor neurosis and compulsive, obsessive behavior patterning conditioned through specific class habits and customs became a philosophical subject…since neurology and behaviorism did not yet exist.

Anyway I believe that the answer is simple. Critical thinking is not in vain- it does not happen because one wants to take it up, or become a philosopher. A philosopher is someone who suddenly finds himself involved in astonishment after realizing how the typical, commonsense answers for everything we ever hear asked, are all bullshit.

But you can link your philosophical development to your cultural conditioning…everything from your job, to your vernacular and speech, your clothes, your deepest desires, your worst nightmares, whatever…all of it is the sum total of your having been exposed to critically unsatisfactory conditions in society which you have experienced. These things are, I might remind you, reducible to material relations…and as such, are in praxis. They are happening. You are in it. There is no time for contemplation and Hegelian ivory towers. You must act now!

Workers of ILP, unite!

Why do I study philosophy?

I’m searching for something. I’m searching for the best way of structuring my world, and I suppose I’m searching for meaning. I want to discover an outlook on life from which I can interpret everything through and come to understandings. I want the lava I find myself in to solidify, but not totally. I want to be able to defend my integrated view of the world with the passion of the infinite. I want to fill in the abyss. I want to forcefully unite nihilism with anti-nihilism and release an energy that reverberates around the world.

I want to drink my hot chocolate. It’s good. :smiley:

In many ways it is.