Seriosuly all I hear these days are pedants and people repeating better men than them. Have we given up on thinking for oursleves, is philosophy dead. ATM I can’t see it surviving.
Discuss:
It would help if you added an ‘h’.
If you’re referring to discussion boards, there isn’t anything but vague references to philosophy. Here, it is philosophizing, quite a lot different than formal philosophical discussion and debate. In the main, philosophy is like a game of musical chairs, with different perspectives seen from each chair. Soooo, round and round it goes…
Just try to make sure your ass hits a chair when the music stops. 
Tab,
Ummm… errrr… didn’t you mean to say an “o”? Hey! A double typo! You guys is the shitz! 
Fuck. I can’t believe I missed that one. Gold star to Mr. T.
And jesus h. kee-rist. 2 typos in one title. That’s a whole new kind of low.
Whatever you’re drinking Mr. A. Don’t splash any on floor, or you’ll be out a few bucks on carpet tiles.
Perhaps this neurosis is symptomatic of modern day consumerism?
If something doesn’t immediately and perpetually succeed in delivering satisfaction, it’s time to move on - to the next fad perhaps? Over the course of history, relative to time passed between whenever philosophy (as it is now known) emerged (generally accepted as in the time of the ancient greeks) and now, have there not been only a miniscule number of minds who have remained predominant in perceived significance?
I imagine there were proportionally just as many minds aching to be among this select elite back in the time of ancient greece as there are now, and throughout, yet so very little were distinguished enough to survive over the ages. And ages need time to breathe.
There is no need for a continuous procession of new fixes outside of contemporary western attitudes.
I think you may be partly mistaking philosophy for what academia has become: a gross abomination of de-personalising utility and reactionary evaluation. However, this may give you more of a clue where what philosophy is now, is heading. Nietzsche is popular, leftist thinking is popular. Recent trends go towards having to deal with too many people in the world, tolerance and anti-capitalism, which calls for leftists, and a toppling of old idols and traditions (liberalism).
What you get on a forum such as this is an extremely biased representation of the world population, not actual philosophers who are a lot more practical to complement their theorising. Introversion is more common here - battles of the inward turned mind and the resulting problem of insufficient ability to communicate are what go on. Don’t let this representation of philosophy demoralise you (unless the next movement of philosophy is scheduled to be pronouncedly pessimistic).
Y’know, if you laid off on the high-brow stuff, you could be a model. And I’m not talking air-fix. They are too fiddly, what with the glue and everything. And those transfer things. Jesus. You’d have to have the patience of a stone head on easter island to put those buggers on correctly. Anyway, no, I meant model as in ‘sashay down the runway’ dressed in tights and a lot of moisturiser. you could do that. actually, screw it so could I. I could do those cauderoy jackets with the leather patches at the elbows, and you could do the bras or something, or vice versa. You’d get paid more, but eh, that’s my fault for not having ample breasts.
I’ll stick with the airfix.
Philosophy will never die so long as men think and question conventional assumptions.
Also, consider this: What happens to philosophy when it succeeds? It becomes something else. To wit: science, religion, politics, mathematics, logic, law, etc.
Ever since I was a little kid I would say “I want to be a philosopher” but was told that philosophy is dead or that there is no money in that. I guess our culture doesn’t want a philosopher. It isn’t a position easily filled.
Is anyone wondering why there are no new philosophers in our time? I was just asking because I’ve thought about it. I don’t know after reading a book entitled “Philosophy” written in 1963 by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain my views on philosophy have changed.
A philosopher’s nature, virtues and character:
His virtues- truthfulness, a quality of mind which we would expect in one whose soul is turned toward being, toward what really is. Also associated with the pursuit of knowledge are pleasure in learning and a good memory.
Linked with these intellectual qualities are certain moral qualities.
A philosopher is temperate. He is more interested in pleasures of the soul than those of the body. He is “liberal” or great-souled, as contrast with the petty and mean-minded person.
He is “the spectator of all time and all existence”
Thus the man whose mind is turned toward the whole of things is just, gentle and noble. Above all, his soul is marked by a harmony, a proportion, and a balanced unity of his various qualities, both intellectual and moral. The philosopher has “a naturally well-proportioned and gracious mind, which will move spontaneously towards the true being of everything.”
(The Republic) Adeimantus’ indictment of philosophy:
-that most philosophers “become strange monsters, not to say utter rouges” (1)
- that even the best of them “are made useless to the world” by the study of philosophy (2)
Argument against point 1:
The best philosophers are useless to the world, but that is the fault of the world, not of philosophy. We must “attribute their uselessness to the fault of those who will not use them”, who foolishly prefer sophistry to philosophy and opinion to knowledge.
Argument against point 2:
Socrates now turns to the other point made by Adeimantus, namely, that most philosophers become evil men. Assuming that the philosopher’s nature is originally noble and good, how, then, does it get corrupted? The cause lies in the community in which the philosopher is brought up and the perculiar susceptibility of the virtuous and gifted to nurture and education- good or bad.
The philosopher’s nature is a very rare thing and requires a propitious cultural environment, just as a rare plant requires the right kind of soil, climate, and nutrition. Furthermore, the more potentiality for good there is in man, the more potentiality there is for evil: and when the right kind of environment and nurture is lacking, most of those who start out with the noble nature of a philosopher may well end up as rouges and scoundrels. They have to be something in high degree, and if they cannot be good, they are going to be bad, and nothing in between, unless some change or miracle saves them.
“And our philosopher follows the same analogy- he is like a plant which, having proper nurture, must necessarily grow and mature into all virtue, but, if sown and planted in an alien soil, becomes the most noxious of all weeds, unless he be preserved by some divine power.”
Everything in the present state of society conspires against the young man with the soul of a philosopher to keep him from becoming a philosopher, and aside from the rare accidents assures the “ruin and failure” of his virtue and makes his turning evil almost inevitable.
Excellent post. As a surprising coincidence, while I have not read that book you refer to, I did just see it today in a local used bookstore, as I was browsing the philosophy section. I remember because I recognised the author’s name, although it was not the author I had imagined at the time. Anyways, strange coincidences. Maybe I will have to go back and get the book now.
You make a great point about philosophers and their relation to their environments. Everything which grows needs ideal or at least sufficient climate and nutrition - the more an organism is inclined to grow, the more input it will require. We might be tempted to say that philosopher’s natures are more resilient and diverse in that they can ‘grow’ in a wide variety of climates, that a part of their strength of mind lies in their ability to sustain themselves on numerous types of soil and nutrition, but I think this would be a mistake - I think rather it is the modern-day intellectual, the academic, the scholar, the priest who has this capacity for survival. Rather, the philosopher does seem to need very specific types of growing conditions in order to flourish, and, I think, this speaks well of his nature as opposed to imitators or dense, thick-skulled and dim-witted automatons of professors and modern intellectuals who lack a holism and awareness of mind, who lack self-honesty and self-consciousness and who are only seeking status and ego-recognition.
It might be a sad reflection of our times that there seems no place for the genuine philosopher. True these individuals have been scarce throughout history, but likely there have been many orders of magnitude more potential philosophers of as great or better calibur than the greats we know of throughout history, but who were for one reason or another never given the time of day, whose words and writings were lost to the past forever. What makes a philosopher historic? A co-incidence of numerous factors, likely, most of which are beyond his control to know or predict in advance, let alone manipulate to his benefit even if he were so inclined (likely he would not be so inclined).
Philosophers, true ones, prefer solitude of mind, secrect, although they are of course human, all too human themselves, as well as must scratch their own living in this physical existence like any other animal or living organism.
But the philosopher will not strive for wide recognition - it will suit his nature best if he is recognised by a select few of like-minded and gracious individuals, wide of intellect and deep in awareness and passion. He would rather remain unknown to most outside of his group of followers and like-minded thinkers, because the genuine philosopher would recognise that knowledge is not to be given away freely, but must be earned. And the more knowledge is whored out to the masses, the weaker and more dilluted it becomes, the more corrupted. Hence, all scientific knowledge which is, upon its world-wide dispersal to any and every mindless beast with a memory and a desire for personal power and status, led to the task of creating the means for slavery and torment as well as for freedom and joy. Knowledge is double-edged and can lead to the opposite of that which the pure and reasonable man might intend, if it is given half a chance.
Where does this leave philosophy in our modern world? Can we content ourselves to a view where philosophy’s usefulness has been only to give birth to the modern sciences, to those ‘advanced’ technical pursuits lacking in humanity, compassion and a higher perspective? Is philosophy left to be the destitute mother of all things grotesque and disfigured upon the face of this earth?
I think, rather, that philosophy is coming to itself, coming of age, necessarily slowly and ponderously. Philosophic knowledge in a true sense must be personally experienced and known directly and intimately, and this presupposes a certain type of individual, one that seems rare but also perhaps might be growing in number. As the world moves to invert itself even as it attains its own logical progressions in politics, economics, warfare, science, religion, we face certain disasters and dooms from all sides, but we must remember that in evolution it is the environment which dictates the organism. A life-form does not grow but for those pressures and strifes in its environment, over great periods of time. The human organism is no exception, although we do now possess the means of shaping our environments directly for ourselves. And therein lies the true task of philosophy: to make ready the transformation of man when such time arrives as he is forced to confront the contradictions in his nature, where the opposite poles of man’s spirit are brought closer and close together and the resulting magnetism generates so much friction and power that he is forced to confront himself. Then, science will be of no use, religion will be cast aside, politics and economics on the side of the enemy, of natural animalistic restriction and bounded control - it will be against these behemoths which man will need to struggle to find and determine himself. Thus far, man has been determined - the day may yet come when man is forced, against his will, to determine himself, or perish. And when that time comes, when our environments conspire to mold and shape man in this way, it will be philosophy, the preconditions of philosophic thought and knowledge and inclination, that is to say, the holistic, open, conscious, pure and creative in man, will become part of a new magical method of survival which we will cling to.
Philosophy has thus far given birth to man’s intellect, his reason, but, being the product of man’s self-awareness and deeper consciousness it has thus far failed to likewise give birth to a new self-awareness, a higher consciousness. . . but the time will come, I believe, when man will be pitted against himself, and the philosophic within him will rise up to the challenge of self-definition, self-overcoming. Philosophy is precisely what it must be, what it can be, considering the confines within which man finds himself throughout the ages. We can trust that it will be there at the point when man truly has the most dire need of direction, focus, growth and self-realisation.
Science has a habit of answering the philosophical questions of it’s previous generations. Whether this is a new habit or not isn’t really arguable. The human race has been doing it now for a few millenia. Certainly, it must be said, that the frequency of questions being answered has increased as time has gone by, but that is just congruent with the rate of technological advancment over the period of human history.
What is fascinating, and perhaps uplifting for you(how the hell am I supposed to know how you get your jollies) is the pattern of technological advancement not only answering philosophical questions, but also raising more in their stead.
The only reason you aren’t seeing the discussion on these new questions has got to do with the nature of the word and concept known as ‘‘new’’. You see, it’s all a bit too avant garde for us, we just have to listen nietzsche rhetoric from more than a century ago. The new stuff has yet to trickle down to us plebs.
We are saddled with many solutions as we go through the trials and hardships of life and find ourselves at many a crossroad when looking for the right way to go.
A super philosophy will probably tell you to stand on your own in some way with your wits intact — maybe even to strive towards a state where everything man has taught, felt, and experienced is thrown out, and nothing is put in its place. Such a person would become his own living authority by virtue of his freedom from psychological influences from the past or within culture. A kind of ultimate intellectual valor.
For others, of the more humble variety, they may look towards a divine power to trust in, to guide them and be a refuge for there difficulties. These type of people, with their experiences of persecution from the materialists philosophical view may display a fortified and ‘superior’ intellect by virtue of erudition in spiritual matters, or a distinctive conviction in scripture and the God it introduces.
The mind is a weapon. Its evolution over millions of years has enabled men to triumph over the world and each other. Most philosophy is the result of the mind becoming divorced from that struggle. Lost in the vagaries of its own wanderings it becomes dull, feminine and impotent.
Only when it re-engages with its evolutionary raison d’etre does its output take on renewed energy and meaning. Another vector must be established, but one which is no more than a continuation of an older one which splintered and fragmented under the weight of postmodernism. The threads are still there, only buried and sublimated.
No longer will man aim for the stars, for he will realise that they are nothing more than ancient fires, which will one day be extinguished and replaced with something else.
Then it is, in turn, the responsibility of the philosopher to convince the mass of his usefulness. That’s what philosophers do after all.
I would say the philosopher becomes “evil” because he has the capacity for it. Unlike ordinary men who will simply conform to the standards of their own culture - which is by far always going to be a moral one - the philosopher has the capacity to see, with a critical eye, the faults that underlie the reasoning behind those moral standards. This does not render him irrevocably into an evil character, but it does lend him some degree of independence from the social brainwashing that other men helplessly succumb to. Thus, you get amoralists like the Nietzscheans, you get nihilists, you get libertarians who advocate radical independence from any moral obligation to help others, you get atheists who reject divine morality, and so on. Not, of course, that any of these philosophers can be objectively labeled “evil” but that many from the common rungs of society won’t hesitate to apply the label.
well said Gib … so are we all ready to go out and be liquidated by the society yet? I’ll keep checkin in on that for the go signal.
Better men have come before us and better men (and women) will come after us. The majority of us probably do just regurgitate and repeat what we have been taught to accept. But if these repetitions serve our differing interests, then why not just repeat something someone has said before you?
“Thinking for yourself” is quite a broad type of reference. I’m not worried about philosophy as socially it has only ever been a rotting corpse locked in a dungeon. Come join me at the hospital where we wait for news on the condition of “Common Sense”, apparently it’s critical.
If the nature of the quest lies in uncovering a truth which has a capacity to be subjective then Philosophy may not need any specific aim, much less a defined direction of ‘where the hell it would go’. Could those who ‘whore’ their spiritual conquest to the masses simply egotists who have the necessity for disseminated approval?
Why does the story have to begin with the future Philosopher-king descending into the darkness of the cave?
Part of the problem is that society must be patient before it sees the effects of a successful philosophy, which unlike the work of (say) an engineer or an artist or a stateman, may take centuries before it comes to fruition, and by then most people who are in fact swept up by the movement it gave rise to have no clue that it originated from the ideas of an individual philosopher.
Alot of people get into philosophy because they think it’s something that anyone can be good at. The truth is, the current state of the cutting edge of philosophy in the world, (at least real philosophy in academic circles) is such that most people can’t really follow the arguments.
Philosophy is doing just fine. It just might not seem that way to the casual observer who cares only to scratch the surface.