The Case of Heidegger

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I have been quiet for a bit, and the reason is that I have
been thinking about the ‘‘human condition’’…
What does it mean to be human? and in my contemplation,
I’ve been thinking about Heidegger… As is known, or it should
be known, that Heidegger, as research has discovered, was a
card carrying Nazi… and thought of himself as the philosophical
‘‘torchbearer’’ of Germany/Nazism… Now as philosophers, we
have to make sense of this, but why do we have to make sense of
this? Because as Heidegger was clearly a proponent of the values
of Nazism, what does that mean for his philosophy and ours?

Those who advocates for Nazi ideals, and several are here at ILP,
those values are clearly anti-human, anti-life… and how should
we respond to this anti-life values of Nazism?

As Heidegger is believed to be ‘‘THE’’ Philosopher of the
20th century, how do we reconcile his Nazi values and his philosophy?
There are several facts we know about Heidegger… one was that
he was born and raised in Southern Germany… in Germany, anti-Jewish
believers were strongest in Southern Germany… that for the Nazi’s,
their base of power was Southern Germany, specifically Munich…
Heidegger was born in Messkirch, roughly 130 miles from Munich..
antisemitism was very strong in all of Bavaria… and that is kinda the
point…He was raised in an Antisemitic atmosphere, and never
overcame that prejudice, that bigotry…and for me, that is why
Heidegger was a failure as a philosopher…
He was never able to overcome his childhood indoctrinations…
he never followed Nietzsche and overcame his convictions…
as Nietzsche himself said,

‘‘It is not enough to have the courage of one’s convictions,
but to have the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions’’

and Heidegger never did this…because the value of
overcoming lies in its true philosophical value in holding onto
values and beliefs that are actually one’s values and beliefs,
not values/beliefs that were indoctrinated into one as a child,
but values that one holds as part of an autonomous human being…
What is the point of philosophy, that is basically the question here…
Is philosophy simply a rational attempt to discover values and
beliefs that are worth living or, or is philosophy something different?

The question, one of the basic human questions is, how am to
to live? As Kant said, ''What am I to do?" ''What am I to believe in?"
''What can I know?"… What values should drive my own actions
and behavior? If I am locked into values that I was indoctrinated into,
as Heidegger seemed to be, am I being a free, autonomous human being,
if I hold onto values that were indoctrinated into me?
I don’t see how…and here we run into the clash between
the state/society and the individual… the state/society wants
a uniformity in value and beliefs… and those values/beliefs are
universal values, ‘‘one size fits all’’… cue the ten commandments…
and we have seen, plenty of times, where the state/society has
punished those who don’t hold to these universal values,
from Socrates to Jesus to Ezra Pound and William Riech…
and here we meet one of the tensions that has plagued the
human race since we walked out of the tree’s…
which values have priority, individual values or societal values?
and if Heidegger argued for Nazi values, we see that he has
rejected, denied individual values in upholding the state/society
values… the state before all…and the current drive in America to
become a dictatorship, is another example of the state before all…
America first, that is not about the individuals within that state, but
the state itself…and no different than Heidegger’s belief in
Nazi Germany…in fact, I would argue that any argument
that denies democracies, is an argument for the state
controlling all…for if not individuals being in charge, controlling
their own lives, then it must be the state that is in charge… in control…
for political questions revolve around two questions, who is in charge
and who pays for it…are we to have a political system that
relies on the one or the few, that is a dictatorship… or an oligarchy, but
when we have many or all of the citizens voting, deciding their
own fate, that is democracy… Heidegger made his choice and
went with the state, and Kierkegaard for example, went with
the one, the individual…as did Nietzsche…but
we cannot go with the individual, the one, if the one holds
to bigotry and prejudice against others… because
that forces people into rigid and fixed beliefs and values
before an examination of values that are worth holding…
in other words, by hold onto fixed and rigid values that
are reflected in bigotry and prejudice, that prevents us
from seeing a truth…in other words, Garbage in, Garbage
out… if the indoctrinated values we hold are wrong, then
all decisions we make thereafter are wrong…if one acts
on faulty information, then the decisions will often be wrong…
that is why information is so important, we cannot make
correct decisions if we hold onto indoctrinated values…
if our facts are wrong, then our decisions will be wrong…
it is as simple as that…if I hold the bias that Los Angles is
north of me, and I try to travel there, I will not end up anywhere
near LA… the only way I can correctly travel to LA, is to
know where LA is, to have the correct information as to the
location of LA…And this is true of any information…
if we have false knowledge about something, we cannot
make a decision about that something…

So, if Heidegger was wrong about the Jews, then he cannot
make a correct decision about what it means to be human…
Garbage in, Garbage out…and we as human beings cannot
make or understand any sort of facts or beliefs if we hold onto
prejudice or bigotry about people, things, places and events…
and if I hold to the mathematical truth that 1 + 1 = 3,
as an indoctrination, a prejudice from childhood,
my ability to do math, will be severely impaired…
and why should you trust or believe in anything I have to say,
if I hold to the garbage that 1 + 1 = 3… my judgment is
obviously impaired if I hold to that childhood indoctrination…
the only way to overcome this is by an examination of what
I hold to be true…If I were to study math and I discover that
I was wrong, that 1 + 1 = 2… I am closer to the truth…
and my math will be closer to the truth if I hold onto the
truth about 1 + 1… but I can only reach this truth by
an examination of what I hold to be true… by overcoming
my childhood indoctrinations…

But this also leads us to the question of goals… what does
it mean to be human? What is the point of existence?
if we were to hold to our childhood indoctrinations, we might
be holding onto values that, like our 1+ 1 = 3, which is wrong
and will lead us into error… we need to hold onto
values that lead us to the answer to the question of
‘‘what is the point of existence?’’ so, in a Garbage in,
Garbage out theory, we should be holding onto values
that actually lead us to some sort of understanding of
what is the point of existence… and not in holding onto
Garbage, or childhood indoctrinations that can’t lead
us to answering the question of, what is the point of existence…

So, how are you going to find out the truth of what it
means to be human if, IF you hold onto childhood
indoctrinations that lead us to believe that 1 + 1 = 3…

Garbage in, Garbage out… but that leads us to the question
of knowledge, how do we know what we know is ‘‘true’’ or not?
and the Kantian questions are really circular, that one question
leads us to the next question which leads us to the next question
and that leads ever more in circles of the Kantian questions…
and that is not a bad thing if, if it allows us to answer the
question about what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

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Did you know his girlfriend was Jewish?

"Dear Hannah!
Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves. Then we want to thank the beloved, but find nothing that suffices.

We can only thank with our selves. Love transforms gratitude into loyalty to our selves and unconditional faith in the other. That is how love steadily intensifies its innermost secret.

Here, being close is a matter of being at the greatest distance from the other — distance that lets nothing blur — but instead puts the “thou” into the mere presence — transparent but incomprehensible — of a revelation. The other’s presence suddenly breaks into our life — no soul can come to terms with that. A human fate gives itself over to another human fate, and the duty of pure love is to keep this giving as alive as it was on the first day."

Soulless guy, huh?
Im sure you are a better, more profound lover, being of clean conscience, unaffiliated with anything questionable.

Lucky for you there will never be a “the case of the guy behind the stolen name of Peter Kropotkin.”

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I can present to you the opposite with Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher: observed that the proletarian revolution predicted by Karl Marx did not happen in the West because the working class was deeply attached to “mediating institutions” like the church, the family, and national identity. He developed the theory of Cultural Hegemony, arguing that the ruling class maintains power not just through force, but by shaping the “common sense” of society through culture.

We are full with nutters left, right, center, religious, atheist and otherwise who want to shape humanity into their idea of “whats right”.

Since you are spiraling towards something similar with Heidegger, thinking about how we should carry on his work… i will ask of you something blatantly simple. Maybe you can explain it to me:
Why?

Why is it so hard on humanity to simply internalize the world AS IS?
Why do we have Gramsci-s and Heidegger-s who leave behind subjective masses of memetic nonsense that then other people pick up and crucify not only themselves on, but entire nations and continents?

I will go back to the first question. What does it mean to be a human?
I will add some more similar questions to this: Whats the point and meaning of life?
Is life something to be understood, or simply experienced?
Is there a purpose to suffering?
What makes a life well-lived?

You know what is consistent across all these and similar questions?
They all always carry only a subjective answer that can be factually correct.
Every each of these questions can be answered with “what does it mean to you”?

See i dont understand this part of humanity.
This… denial of objective reality as is, in order to create larger ideological frameworks out of… fear? force? incentive? need?

The answer was always that you cannot have an answer.
There are always only three truths: Yours. Mine. And the truth itself.
And you will never know the truth itself, because thats an impossibility. You cannot perceive all of reality and you cannot be omniscient.

All you will ever have is your own truth and the truths surrounding you.
So why do you have to pick up others torches?
Why do globalists and neo-marxists have to try and force the doctrines of Gramsci onto the rest of humanity only to create nothing more than suffering, violence and death?

I do not understand.
The reality of your human situation is right in front of you.
The meaning of your life is anything. Anything you’d have enough faith or love in to sacrifice even your own life for without a hint of a second thought. It can be anything.
If you have to ask what the meaning of life is, that just means you dont have one.
Thats all there is to it. And thats all there is to being human.

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what the actual

fuck is going

on here

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Thats what Heidegger asks. It’s not because of metaphysics that mankind has struggled to encounter being directly, but metaphysics is a result of that difficulty, an attempt to resolve it.

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As I have no answers, just questions, I shall go on…

Heidegger quite clearly had his childhood indoctrinations,
of antisemitism, of being prejudice against a people,
these indoctrinations are really bigotry dressed up nicely…
and how does philosophy, and Heidegger claimed to be
a philosopher, how can those prejudices and bigotries,
how do they lead us to the supposed point of Philosophy?

Philosophy: love of wisdom
Philosopher, Lover of wisdom…
we might even grant philosophy some other viewpoint,
that of searching for knowledge, or of removing such prejudices,
or how do we interact with our fellow human beings… which
is called ethics/morality…so, how exactly does this bigotry/
prejudice of antisemitism, lead us to wisdom, knowledge,
or even removing prejudices or lead us to what is ethics/morality?

In other words, this preexisting bigotry/prejudice is anti-philosophical…
it doesn’t lead to any sort of knowledge or wisdom… it won’t tell
us how we are supposed to interact with others, which is morality/
ethics…in fact, I would say holding to a prejudice/bigotry, is not
philosophy at all… and those who hold to those practices, of
bigotry and prejudice, are not engaged in philosophy at all…
Thus, many here who daily practice bigotry and prejudice,
they are not, NOT engaged with philosophy…

I won’t name names for they know who they are,
for we already know who is engaged in prejudice and
bigotry around here…

and therein lies the tale of Heidegger… as long as he practiced
bigotry and prejudice, he wasn’t practicing philosophy…
But Kropotkin, he wasn’t a bigot or prejudice in his classic,
‘‘Being and Time’’ and yet, how can we take him seriously
as a philosopher, when he hasn’t overcome his own bigotry or
prejudice? For Philosophy, as taught by Socrates, is about
knowing our own soul…and as philosophy is an engagement
with what is true, and we cannot find the truth under the guise
of bigotry and prejudice… by its very nature, bigotry and prejudice
is the opposite of the truth… for they engage with beliefs and values
that are simply not true… we are not engaged in bigotry
and prejudice by saying one man is a bigot, for we usually have
some sort of evidence to back us up… "I heard him slam Jewish
people for trying to take over the world’’ that is one person bigotry/
prejudice… and we can call them out for that statement…

but let us take this one step further… Heidegger is German,
and he is a bigot, prejudice, and that is fine, but if we were to
say, because Heidegger is a German, and thus ALL Germans
are bigots/prejudice is wrong… we can, based on existing evidence,
proclaim one person as being bigoted and prejudice… He said ‘‘he
hates all Jews’’… but to indict an entire people based
on false or misleading ideas, that is prejudice and bigotry…

The key becomes what evidence or facts are you presenting to
prove your point…for example, what facts or evidence can you
provide that indicts an entire people? How do we show or prove
that your bigotry and prejudice is in fact, true, or real?

I hold that prejudice of our childhood indoctrinations,
believing in god for example, because it has no basis in
fact… there is certainly no evidence showing us that there
is a god, then holding to their being a god, that is in fact,
bigotry and prejudice… there are many examples of
bigotry and prejudice around here… there is a god,
would be one, there is a Jewish conspiracy, is another,
that liberals believe in violence… again, where is the evidence for
this assumption? or as the commercial says, ''Where is the beef?"

But there is another aspect of this, and that is found in solutions…
don’t say, the Jews are/have taking over the world, tell me
what we can do about this? if you don’t have a solution,
why are you posting? What should I do about this ‘‘problem’’,
that the Jews are trying to take over the world…Let us accept
this problem as legitimate, and find solutions to it… and if you
don’t have any solutions, why should I listen to you?

Kropotkin

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  1. Philosophy is just truth seeking, or as you put it “searching for knowledge”.
    Trying to assign moral frameworks to it is antithetical to it’s very nature.

    Once you are set on moral frameworks and biases, you are no longer searching for truth or knowledge, only for confirmations of your biases.

  2. Words like bigotry mean absolutely nothing to begin with.
    The definition is “a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.“

    You’d have to first prove that said opinions are “unreasonable”, “prejudiced” and/or “antagonistic”. And if you do, you do not need to use nonsensical trigger words with zero meaning like “bigot”, which are literally meant for nothing more than ad hominem fallacies.

Just because you hold one false idea, does not mean that all of your ideas are false.
Especially when its not even an idea we are talking about but a generalized practice like “searching for knowledge”.

Then you hold no basis in science either because according to its founding tenet of naturalism, there can be no entity of any kind which could interfere with the material world, or in short: Everything in the material world can be explained through the material world’s properties and causes.
A claim of faith or assumption if you will, which also has absolutely no basis in fact.

Its very easy to criticize low hanging fruits like religions.
Its much harder to understand that humanity can never know more than the fact of it’s ignorance.

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That doesn’t have to be binary. We can hate his in-practice political philosophy and perhaps some of it in theory also, perhaps all of it, and then also respect his work in phenomenology, existentialism, critique of technology, you know, these things. So what did he do that’s worthwhile? Or what ideas were important? Well, Dasein, being in the world, you know, his whole critique of the objective rational observer, you know, the Cartesian cogito, his whole idea of being thrown into the world, of actual concrete activities, and that’s how we understand ourselves. Yeah, his critique of technology as something that, that by its very nature shifts us into a view of nature and people as resources, and what do you do with resources? Well, you can exploit them. His ideas about authenticity, and that gets us into existentialism, anxiety, mortality, and so on. Hermeneutics, you know, he changed the way we interpret. texts and history through texts, and that this is more subjective than was realized, and well, it gets, you know, there’s no way to do a shorthand that does, that’s fair to explaining, but this has influenced a lot of people, a lot of philosophy after. And that’s one way you can look at it, too, is that a lot of people worked with his philosophy afterwards, and so they’re building on ideas that he had. Like Sartre, even Hannah Arendt, yes, the banality of evil, and his former student, who was incredibly critical of his not apologizing or repudiating his following of the Nazis. Merleau-Ponty is another person who is very influenced by him. Pretty much a lot of postmodernism comes from this person. The point isn’t I’m a postmodernist, so he is important, it’s that he had an incredible influence on other philosophers, which then trickles down or out into society. Does this make him the most important philosopher? I think that’s kind of silly, you know? Like, you know, you can sort of do that with the neat statistics of a baseball player, but I don’t think we need to say that. But I’m just saying you can find people are mixed bags. There are people who can do amazing things, but have terrible beliefs alongside. So we can binarily throw them out, sure, and say, well, it’s all trash. He’s nothing. or go the other way: He’s the most important. Well, we can treat him as a human being and a human being who supported something incredibly terrible. He probably didn’t realize how terrible, but he certainly had enough clues to know that it was terrible. Yet, at the same time recognize what he did well. Or what had strong effects in the world.

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Firstly,the SELF takes control at the psychological level Nausamedu so to say that the SELF doesn’t take control is a lie.We know that the SELF takes control of the consciousness experience and can change this experience from an in the moment state to an out of the moment state and vice versa,at leisure.The SELF needs to be separated from consciousness because its vibratory.Whether you accept it or not if you are not separated from consciousness you will “toggle” automatically back and forth between the in and out of the moment consciousness states.You need to balance out consciousness by the formula in/out=in/out and be separated from it.

Secondly,we know that all information from the EXTERNAL physical is communicated by vibration.Vibration of matter creates binary data contained within varying frequency electromagnetic energy waves.These energy waves are picked up by the physical body antenna senses and then the physical body converts these analogue energy waves into binary digital electrical signals which in turn are converted into sounds,visions and sensations which the metaphysical SELF interprets.You wouldn’t be able to see,hear or feel anything from the external physical if it wasn’t for vibration and binary data.

This is known science, it’s just that you are ignorant of it.

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Are you sure you are in the right thread?
I dont see how this connects to anything that has been said here. Or?

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You ignorantly claim that there is no entity of any kind that can interfere with the material, in other words you claim that there is no SELF that can control consciousness which is untrue Nausamedu.

The SELF controls the consciousness experience.

I am in the right thread picking up on your nonsense claims.

The SELF introduces CONTROL!!! of the material……(control of the physical body biological machine).

You claim that the SELF doesn’t exist to be able to introduce that control…..and yet we know that the SELF needs to exist to claim that they don’t exist.

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The criticisim are towards the person, not the philosophy that person did. Heidegger as a person doesn’t matter

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pseudoai:
The criticisim are towards the person, not the philosophy that person did. Heidegger as a person doesn’t matter

K: and NO, a thousand times NO… my entire point lies in the fact that
a ‘‘philosopher’’ and his philosophy are not two separate and distinct things…
they are one and the same… we are our philosophy… philosophy for me,
isn’t about learning it in some classroom and then when we walk out of the
classroom, we simply ignore the philosophy we just learned, no, the entire
point of philosophy is to live, to be our philosophy… This is the thing
that we learned, or was supposed to learn from Socrates…that our actions
are over here and our person is over there, being two separate, distinct things…
the entire point of philosophy is to discover what rules and beliefs and
values do we hold and how do we practice those rules/values/beliefs in
real life…that is why I dislike ‘‘abstract’’ philosophy, analytical philosophy…
because I can’t see how I am to live my life by a set of principles within
analytical philosophy… but continental philosophy, it emphasizes
the life experience, or our life view…
the point of philosophy is to create/build a set of rules by which
we live by…for many years, I was an pacifist… and I stayed
away from violence, all violence…that was a principle I lived by…
and that is being a philosopher… holding to principles that one
lives by…I am not separate from my philosophical beliefs, I am
my philosophical beliefs…and my actions must reflect those
philosophical beliefs/values…morals and ethics are not something
other people do, it is what I do, and by what principles do I live
morally/ethically…

It is my belief that people live way too much within ‘‘ad hoc’’
ethics or morals… ethics that are really of the moment…
which is another way of saying, situational ethics…
the situation dictates the ethics…but we also have to have
rules that guide us in our actions with other people…
Rules that are not situational ethics, but rules that apply
to us in most normal situations… rules like do not lie,
do not steal, do not murder… by treating people with
‘‘WOKE’’ ethics… which is another way of saying treating
people with dignity, respect, with decency…that is the value
of ‘‘WOKE’’ values in that it gives us some basic rules and guide
by which we can treat other people…and by treating people
within ‘‘WOKE’’ ethics, I am not treating them within ‘‘ad hoc’’
moments… not as the situation requires, but as human beings
with a humanness that I too have…I treat them with value
because human beings, all human beings have value…
and the principle of ‘‘WOKE’’ reminds us of this…
I am treating people ‘‘ad hoc’’ when I treat them by the rules
of being ‘‘WOKE’’, I am treating people with decency and respect
and that is by a philosophical principle… I am acting toward people
as my principles dictate… that is not ‘‘ad hoc’’ of the moment,
and I am not separate, apart from my values/principles, I am
my values/principles…

To practice Christianity, as most Christians in America practices
Christianity, which is to say, when they suit me, is not being
a Christian… if I am a self-proclaimed Christian, then I must
practice, engage with Christian values, as derived from the bible…
I cannot as Christians in America do today, which is to take that
which is convenient for me at the moment… the bible says,

thou shall not kill

that is not an optional choice, to be a Cristian, is to practice
the values and rules of the bible, regardless of how it
makes me look… and the current war on immigrants is directly
opposed to by the bible… in the parable of the good Samaritan,
it directly answers this question of who is our neighbor…
and those who applaud the violent attacks on immigrants, they
are not, as defined by the bible, good Christians…for they
violate the very principles they claim to obey… if they are
truly Christians, then they must practice/obey the bible and love
thy neighbors… regardless of who they are, gay or trans or
an illegal immigrant…if our actions do not match our words,
then we are hypocrites… and of Heidegger, his words do not
match his actions… a philosopher must hold to their actions
matching their words… or they are not a philosopher…

to be a philosopher, one’s words and actions must match…
we are our philosophy… that is what being a philosopher is,
our words match our actions…and our principles lead us into
our actions…

Kropotkin

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I completely agree: your point relies there. I take that wholly into account when I clarify here that the person doesn’t matter. The philosophy does. The point still stands.

For example, if the philosophy is ‘made’ by a philosopher, doesn’t matter anyway. It could be AI for all its worth. The philosopher and the output are different, as a bread is different from its baker.

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Philosophy isn’t something we learn or we contemplate,
Philosophy is something we do… it is our actions which follow
our values/beliefs… the matching of our words with our actions…

Socrates once called philosophers… doctors of the soul…
how do we overcome being ''soul sick?" This was the Socratic
question… how do we overcome being ''soul sick?"
and part of the modern ‘‘soul sickness’’ is our treating/thinking
of people as es, and not du… es in the thinking of Buber,
is the thinking of people as other, instead of du, which is thinking
of people as you…to hold to people being du, is to treat them
as human beings, as people, to hold people as es, is to treat them
as others, as not being human…Much of today’s malaise,
soul sickness lies in this very point of how we treat people, as es
or as du…

As a liberal, part of the values that I hold to is justice…
that is one of the central values that drives me…
and what is justice? it is equality, not only legal or political
equality, but the equality that stems from the basic belief that
as the declaration declares:

‘‘That all men are created equal’’

and where religion has gone wrong today, is in its belief
that there is a hierarchy in existence, the closer to god, the
‘‘higher’’ one is in life… but if ‘‘all men are created equal’’
then we have equality in existence, there is no ‘‘higher or lower’’
person…we are equal… legally, socially, politically, economically
and philosophical…for me that is the goal, the purpose of
existence… to have a state/society that is equal, in all respects,
that we treat people within the state/society as equals…
again, socially, politically, economically, legally and philosophically…
it is something I am to do, not to hold as theory, but to act upon…
and that I personally, must act with that principle in mind, to treat
people as equals… philosophy, true philosophy would be me
acting on this principle of equality, with everyone I met…
and I consider those who cannot treat others with equality,
I consider them to be ‘‘soul sick’’…again, my overarching
principle is that ‘‘all men are created equal’’’ and everything I
say or do, is some reflection of that principle…

Which is to say in another way, by acting on my words,
I am being authentic…if my words and actions match,
I am being true, authentic to myself… which is another way
of not being ‘‘soul sick’’… for part of being ‘‘soul sick’’ is being
inauthentic, where my words do not match my actions…
I believe that the world would be a far, FAR better place if
we were to work on being authentic over the pursuit of
the trinkets of existence, money, fame, power, titles
and material possessions… if I were to spend as much
time matching my words with my actions as I do in the
fruitless pursuit of wealth, the world would be a better place
and I would be a better person… I wouldn’t be ‘‘soul sick’’
and neither would you…

This engagement with practicing philosophy as a ‘‘way of life’’
would make both the world and myself, a better way of life…
for philosophy to have any effect, it must be engaged with
our actions… that we hold to certain principles and act upon
those principles with everyone we meet… I hold to justice
and with every person I interact with, I practice the action of justice…
of treating everyone equal… my words must match my actions…
or I am not a philosopher…

to be blunt, Philosophy is the creation of values on which we act upon…
how are to act if we have no values on which to guide our actions?
Now people are lazy, I get it, but they don’t create principles on which
to act upon, they simply use the values and principles already
created, in the bible for example…that type of laziness, is
part of the ‘‘soul sickness’’ that infects our modern world…
many of those ‘‘principles’’ such as the bible, exist only because
we are unable to overcome our childhood indoctrinations…
we hold to principles, as a way to act, principles taught to us
as children and which we never gave any thought as to their value
or worth as principles of belief…most of us act upon values/principles
that were taught to us as children… and how do we know those
values/principles are actually values or principles we should be
acting upon as adults?

You may want a state or a society that is a healthy, productive
state/society… the answer lies within the notion that it is only
by our engagement with having our words match our actions,
can we have a healthy, productive society/state…if enough
people in a state or society, are authentic, then the state/society
will be strong, healthy and productive…
and we can improve our state/society if, IF we were to practice
matching our words with our actions… in being authentic,
we improve the state and society enough to overcome this
current ‘‘soul sickness’’ which is derived from too many people
not engaged with being authentic… the cure for our modern
‘‘soul sickness’’ lies within each of us, practicing the core value
of being human and that says:

‘‘That all men are created equal’’…

I derive my values from that one statement…
what statement is your core value and the one you engage
your actions with… the matching of words with your actions…
what words/principles, you have, that drive your existence?
and are they words/principles that you can hold your entire
life?

Kropotkin

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Philosophy isn’t something we learn or we contemplate,
Philosophy is something we do… it is our actions which follow
our values/beliefs… the matching of our words with our actions…

It’s fine for you to have your values and what you want to focus on and your position. But here you are telling everyone what philosophy is, as if you could dictate by fiat. Do you really believe all people are equal? If you do, then perhaps you could consider that you don’t get to define philosophy, that is what we all do.

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have you considered my point, that to be human in 2026,
is to be ‘‘soul sick’’… and what are the solutions are available to us
being ‘‘soul sick?’’ that is my question… that you don’t
see my point because you are "soul sick’'…
have you ever considered that? Nah, that would require reflection
that is very rare in our modern age…but such self-reflection is
exactly what both Socrates and Nietzsche asked of us…
and exactly what philosophy requires of us…
who are you? and what does it mean to be human?

Kropotkin

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I wrote a post making points in response to the OP which you ignored. Here you label me and insult me, but decided not to engage with what I wrote in my second post. You make assumptions about me which are incorrect.

And then you bring up Socrates and Nietzsche. The former disagreeing completely with the idea that all people are equal and assuming that the superior should rule over the others. Socrates was a mixed bag when it comes to his views of women, but these were often quite sexist. And at times wrote in favor of slavery (of non-Greeks, that was ok). He was anti-democratic and did not see most people as capable citizens or that they should have a say in government. He thought human rights were less important than finding the truth.

Nietzsche argued that a “healthy” society requires a hierarchy where a majority are “reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments” so that a small elite can focus on higher cultural achievements. It wasn’t necessarily chattel slavery, but he was absolutely against the idea that we are all equal or should have the same rights and priviledges. Anti-democratic and considered the idea of human rights the morality of the weak.

Yeah, let’s throw out their philosophies too. Or can we have a more complex relation to philosophers and still be in philosophy, even if it not how you define philosophy, but then can’t seem to follow your own values around. It’s ok with ‘your’ philosophers to look at what is useful.

If you’re not interested in responding to what I write - you know engage in philosophical dialogue - that’s actually fine. But if you don’t like what I say, why not keep your insults and mindreading claims to yourself. I can tell you this: it will make you less like a hypocrite.

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Peter Kropotkin: but such self-reflection is
exactly what both Socrates and Nietzsche asked of us…

K: in my statement, I wasn’t asking nor was I pointing out
their philosophy… I was pointing out exactly what they
asked us for, which is self-reflection… the point of philosophy
is make us think about what is possible… we have choice, but
what choices should we make? What values should we hold?
as per Kant, what should we believe in? and how do we act upon
those choices, those values… and I referred to you as being ‘‘soul sick’’
and if you take that as an insult, that is on you… if you hold to
the modern-day nihilism, that too is being ‘‘soul sick’’…
as Nietzsche might say, you lack ears to hear what I am saying…
in this instance, it doesn’t matter what either Socrates or Nietzsche
philosophy was, it is about the self-reflection that is required
for us to move down the path from animal to becoming human…
and you, me, everyone is on that path… the difference is,
I know that I am on the path of becoming, from going from
animal to becoming human… by overcoming our modern
nihilism, we can further our journey into that becoming…
to say someone is ‘‘soul sick’’… in this modern age, it
is practically a guarantee that we are ‘‘soul sick’’… I just
know I am ‘‘soul sick’’ but I am searching for a way out,
of being ‘‘soul sick’’.. are you also seeking a path down
that road or as Nietzsche called it, a ‘‘tightrope’’…

Kropotkin

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Perhaps I need to be clearer what my point was. Those two philosophers that you obviously found value in go directly against the values you suggest we should have. They were anti-rights, anti-democratic, hierarchical, even pro-slavery. Yet you consider them philosophers because other parts of their works or their reported works in the case of Socrates have value. That was my point. You don’t use the same reasoning about them that you do about H.

You don’t see the above as insulting? I didn’t say it was the part about being soul sick. It was the part about reflection. If you can’t see that what you said there was an insult you don’t really know what you are doing. Reflect on that.

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