"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically." - Thoreau
Any attempt to give a narrative to humanity merely annihilates it. Which is to say that to act under the belief that everything happens for a reason is to reduce yourself to an object subject to a series of events.
When a great soul grows up in a little city, despises the business of the city and looks out beyond, then perhaps it will join a very small group which remain to keep company with philosophy in a way that’s worthy.
- A brutal paraphrase of Plato, see 496 a-e for more.
You win, let's play again!
Case History: To be found in its entirety at Nato's Blog.
Ross: You [stan] know that life is unfair, when you say:
“A just God would have at least ask for our consent before having us be created into this world” and “If God is truly just, then He would offer either Heaven or nothing, so that non-Christians who die won’t go to Hell but instead just end.”
Those are profound statements, because they’re certainly not something that a purely scientific world-view would teach you. Science and modern philosophy is *in general* indifferent to the suffering that goes on in this world.
era: Are you serious? Because from what I can tell, between ethics and medicine, they have done far more to help remove suffering from the world than the bible ever has.
Ross: Sorry Era, that statement was very broad and written hastily. When I said science, I was thinking of the theory of Darwinian Natural Selection (and what that implies about suffering) and when I said modern philosophy I was thinking of, I don’t know, Friedrich Nietzsche?
The Tangent
So Ross, with your revised understanding of philosophy and science *in general* as Darwin and Nietzsche, how are we supposed to understand the point you were trying to make when you said to stan "Those are profound statements, because they’re certainly not something that a purely scientific world-view would teach you."?
I find myself incapable of expressing how many things I find wrong with this idea that a scientific world view is completely sterile and is incapable of any humanity. I've come across this idea a couple of times now, and it continues to baffle me. So what I'm really hoping for is an explanation of the position which might stand up to a bit of rational critique.
Praxis means the combination of theory and practice. First you decide what it is best to do, which is good, and then you do it, which is also good. So praxis is really good all round. On the other hand, if you decide what it is best to do, but fail to do it, then this isn't really that good. And if you don't decide what it is best to do, but just do whatever, then that isn't really very good either. And to boot, like all good words "praxis" is actually Greek. Thus it is not surprising that the Greek philosopher Aristotle discusses praxis in his Nicomachean Ethics*.
If you actually think that philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle contemplated merely, without doing anything, then please consider whether founding the Academy or the Lyceum were practical enterprises. Unfortunately many of the heirs to philosophy were not so keen on this whole idea of combining theory and practice, and some (neo-platonist christians... grr) positively shunned it. Happily for us we can skip forward to Mr. Marx, who kindly points this out, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." Unfortunately most people don't really think that it worked out so well for Mr. Marx, and so philosophy has largely returned to inconsequential contemplation.
* Note: If you have not read Aristotle's Ethics, and you want to consider yourself as half educated or even a quarter informed, then you really need to. My choice of translation is the one by Terence Irwin.
Yahweh: Whatever you do, DO NOT push the red button.
Us: Why not?
Yahweh: Because, pushing it will give you the knowledge of which buttons you should and should not push.
Us: wtf?
[edit: bonus question]
Do any of these red button ideas, which make our lives worse by knowing them, actually exist?
"...Conceive this sort of thing happening either on many ships or on one: Picture a shipmaster in height and strength surpassing all others on the ship, but who is slightly deaf and of similarly impaired vision, and whose knowledge of navigation is on a par with his sight and hearing. Conceive the sailors to be wrangling with one another for control of the helm, each claiming that it is his right to steer though he has never learned the art and cannot point out his teacher or any time when he studied it. And what is more, they affirm that it cannot be taught at all, but they are ready to make mincemeat of anyone who says that it can be taught, and meanwhile they are always clustered about the shipmaster importuning him and sticking at nothing to induce him to turn over the helm to them. And sometimes, if they fail and others get his ear, they put the others to death or cast them out from the ship, and then, after binding and stupefying the worthy shipmaster with mandragora or intoxication or otherwise, they take command of the ship, consume its stores and, drinking and feasting, make such a voyage of it as is to be expected from such, and as if that were not enough, they praise and celebrate as a navigator, a pilot, a master of shipcraft, the man who is most cunning to lend a hand in persuading or constraining the shipmaster to let them rule, while the man who lacks this craft they censure as useless. They have no suspicions that the true pilot must give his attention to the time of the year, the seasons, the sky, the winds, the stars, and all that pertains to his art if he is to be a true ruler of a ship, and that he does not believe that there is any art or science of seizing the helm with or without the consent of others, or any possibility of mastering this alleged art and the practice of it at the same time with the science of navigation. With such goings-on aboard ship do you not think that the real pilot would in very deed be called a star-gazer, an idle babbler, a useless fellow, by the sailors in ships managed after this fashion?”
“Quite so,” said Adeimantus.
“You take my meaning, I presume, and do not require us to put the comparison to the proof and show that the condition we have described is the exact counterpart of the relation of the state to the true philosophers.”
“It is indeed,” he said.
“To begin with, then, teach this parable to the man who is surprised that philosophers are not honored in our cities, and try to convince him that it would be far more surprising if they were honored.”
“I will teach him,” he said.
“And say to him further: You are right in affirming that the finest spirit among the philosophers are of no service to the multitude. But bid him blame for this uselessness, not the finer spirits, but those who do not know how to make use of them. For it is not the natural course of things that the pilot should beg the sailors to be ruled by him or that wise men should go to the doors of the rich. The author of that epigram was a liar. But the true nature of things is that whether the sick man be rich or poor he must needs go to the door of the physician, and everyone who needs to be governed to the door of the man who knows how to govern, not that the ruler should implore his natural subjects to let themselves be ruled, if he is really good for anything. But you will make no mistake in likening our present political rulers to the sort of sailors we are just describing, and those whom these call useless and star-gazing ideologists to the true pilots.”
“Just so,” he said.
- Plato, Republic VI.
Every so often I become aware they I'm a deeply unhappy person. The source of this unhappiness is so deeply rooted that I cannot see how anyone else could actually be happy. Admittedly a lot of people don't seem to feel the same as me, but of course they're too preoccupied with trifles to think hard or long enough to unearth a deeper unhappiness than mere dissatisfaction of not having what they want.
A little introspection of late has lead me to understand myself as having two major emotional needs. Basically I want to be loved. We all want to be loved. Deeply loved by someone, just loved by a few important people, and unloved by everyone else. Who am I that is loved? If I were someone else would you still love me? If I become someone else will you still love me? Because the other basic emotional need is freedom and independence. I cannot stand being overtly told to do anything, and only hate being implicitly expected to do anything slightly less.
So you see the problem, my emotional needs are fundamentally incompatible. How could I be happy when either one is not satisfied? But how could one possibly be satisfied while the other is? I think I'm deeply broken person, and I think that you are too.
