The nature of philosophy.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

If I were to teach a course on philosophy this would be what I begin with.

One of the most poetic concepts in the philosophy of Spinoza-- and it may encapsulate the meaning of philosophy itself, is amore intellectus, intellectual love. This doctrine conceives of knowledge as itself an affect, philosophy itself a pathos, truth itself a passion. One other philosopher, Schelling, shared this view, or at least expressed it directly, in his wonderful quote: “Only he who has tasted freedom can feel the desire to make over everything in its image, to spread it throughout the whole universe. Anyone who does not come by philosophy on this path merely imitates others with no feeling for why they do as they do.”

But how could this amore intellectus, in the necessarily abstract paths it must follow toward its object, have any conceivable application to life? It is not so difficult to imagine. The mystery of form is the mystery of life-- that is the pathos of philosophy. When we realize in a quote from Homer or a phrase in Chopin some epitome of our own life’s suffering, it ceases to afflict us, or in the figures of Raphael and a definition of Plato’s some image of our own joy, the anxiety of our longing is forever stilled. Form is itself a consolation, form is itself a satisfaction.

Aside from its direct application to life, philosophy serves to enrich the human being. Philosophy, imbued with Eros and transformed into a genuine intellectual love, opens up a distance between the philosopher and the object of this love, truth. It brings man to face what Amiel called “the obscure.”

"The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance – that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph. " – Amiel

This is my view of what philosophy is most essentially.

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How does anglophone analytic philosophy fit into this?

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It doesn’t.

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So your course would omit the only academically reputable study that goes under the name ‘philosophy’. Good luck with that.

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Academically reputable to me is a synonym for boring and lifeless.

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Do you want to know if what you hold in your hands is a good book or crap?

Try reading it with a straight face to a beautiful woman. If you can, it’s good, if you can’t it’s bad.

How much of what you read, my dear Remster, do you think would pass this test?

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So “the nature of philosophy” as an OP title could have been better put as “what sorts of philosophy I like”?

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I suspect Vanitas would agree with me that ‘analytical philosophy’ is not genuine philosophy at all. The OP title, then, implies “what I [Vanitas] think is the nature of genuine philosophy”.

I find the remark about beautiful women problematic, though: for I think there’s definitely something in it, yet I don’t think any women should be the measure of what is good. The latter is probably because beauty is subjective:

[size=95][N]othing, absolutely nothing, guarantees that man should be the model of beauty. Who knows what he looks like in the eyes of a higher judge of beauty? Daring perhaps? Perhaps even amusing? Perhaps a little arbitrary?.. “O Dionysus, divine one, why do you pull me by my ears?” Ariadne once asked her philosophic lover during one of those famous dialogues on Naxos. “I find a kind of humor in your ears, Ariadne: why are they not even longer?”
[Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Forays of an Untimely Man”, section 19.][/size]
A woman that a genuine philosopher, a Dionysus, deems beautiful—that would be an adequate measure of what is good. But this is of course a repetition of the question…

As for amor intellectualis dei:

[size=95]Nietzsche judges that the genuine philosophers share the fundamental Platonism, erotic attachment to the whole of which they are the rational investigators. Nietzsche too could have said with Lessing, “there is no other philosophy than that of Spinoza” ([Strauss, ]P[ersecution and the ]A[rt of ]W[riting] 182). But as a judge who stands at an unprecedented turning point in the history of philosophy, Nietzsche was forced to add about Spinoza’s form of Platonism, his amor intellectualis dei: “What is amor, what is dei, if there is not a drop of blood in them?” (G[ay ]S[cience] 372).
[Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, page 122.][/size]

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I have always had a problem with the idea that there can be a love for abstractions that would then lead to some sort of application to life. That is where philosophy completely loses its stable ground. For it is the experience of love and freedom in life that leads to the considerations of love and freedom in the abstract, which in fact move from the particular object or experience to the general and universal.

One who knows love, then, wishes it for everyone and wants to see it endued in everything, and the same for freedom. Thus, the ‘amore intellectus’ of Spinoza; the taste of freedom for Schelling; and even the ‘amor fati’ of Nietzsche evolved into a grand energy for universalization throughout all humans and the world. This is most appealing indeed. It also provides some grounding for the philosophical considerations of love and altruism we get by way of Kierkegaard and many of our finer theologians and mystics.

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It seems to me that by ‘philosophy’ you mean something like ‘ideology’. By all means have your ideology, but what would be the value of a course in it? It would just be indoctrination.

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Unless one provides a rationale for it.

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For sure, but what would count as a rationale in the context of philosophy that isn’t ‘boring and lifeless’? I’ve never seen anything other than an exposition of what the writer happens to think about stuff.

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The same as what would count as a rationale in any other context: a rational basis.

I guess then you haven’t read Lampert on Nietzsche.

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I was aware of that comment Nietzsche made about Spinoza’s “amore intellectus.” But he must have been having an off day when he wrote it. In a letter Nietzsche praises Spinoza as one of his predecessors, a philosopher which made his “lonesomeness a twosomeness.” It is because, as Nietzsche said, Spinoza was the only other thinker that “conceived of knowledge as itself affect, the strongest of the affects.” In this letter Nietzsche didn’t reference the concept of amore intellectus, but it is obviously a formulation of this conception of knowledge, knowledge as affect, which Nietzsche praised.

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Why do you say that? Do you think Spinoza’s philosophical idealism was like Plato’s, “the prudence of an overrich and dangerous health, the fear of overpowerful senses, the cleverness of a clever Socratic” (GS 372)?

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I say it for the reasons I went on to state in that post. Plato did not conceive of knowledge as itself affect, as itself pathos. Somewhat the opposite, really. For him knowledge was a recollection intended to renew the soul and absolve it from material attachment- including sensation and passion. Thus the virtue of sophrosune, stillness, serenity. But Spinoza had another virtue- amore intellectus, that was the virtue of philosophy, a knowledge that was capable of inspiring the philosopher to love, faith, to action more importantly. The only difference between Spinoza and Nietzsche is that Nietzsche’s amore intellectus was not directed towards God.

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Which is why I leave “Dei” out of the phrase. It is the concept of amore intellectus itself which I find interesting.

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And what does that mean? Give me a simple example of something’s being a rational basis for something else to give me a flavour of what you’re getting at.

That’s for sure, but I wouldn’t rule it out for the future. Can you a) quote me a passage that illustrates his giving a rational basis for something, b) identify what in the passage provides a rational basis for what, and c) describe the nature of the rational basis (deductive proof, explanatory power, usefulness, etc.)?

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Do not divert my threads into irrelevant topics just to satisfy your personal curiosities.

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I suspect so. I suspect I could find someone to agree with the proposition that Italian Premier league football isn’t genuine football at all. Yet they continue to play it, call it football, attract football supporters. Eppur si muove. Or rather, eppur si calcare.

Posting a general synopsis of a field and leaving a large section of that field untouched because it’s uninteresting merely makes the synopsis incomplete.