The best 500 words of philosophy you know of

1. Is Donne's famous line true? I would not understand what Donne writes as a statement of fact about the interconnectedness of people, since it is too vague, and clearly it is not true, that whatever someone does affects everyone else. I would understand Donne rather as expressing both a hope about how people will behave, and a value judgment about how they ought to behave, than as a statement about how they do behave. As the latter, it is clearly false.

2. Of course, whether what Donne wrote is philosophy depends on how vaguely you understand that term. Very general remarks about people and about how people do act, and how they ought to act, often come under the general heading of philosophy. So, in the way, I guess it is philosophy. But in a somewhat stricter sense of "philosophy" , say the sense in which Wittgenstein said that philosophy is an activity, not a theory. what Donne wrote does not qualify.

I agree that Donne isn't intending to philosophize. And I agree that once in a while, poets may come up with philosophical insights. I didn't say Donne was a philosopher, merely that that one poetic quote can be used as a philosophical insight as Mill used it as a possible angle against the harm principle. Just as other writers like Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Kafka can be and are used in the service for philosophy.

kennethamy wrote:

1. Is Donne's famous line true? I would not understand what Donne writes as a statement of fact about the interconnectedness of people, since it is too vague, and clearly it is not true, that whatever someone does affects everyone else. I would understand Donne rather as expressing both a hope about how people will behave, and a value judgment about how they ought to behave, than as a statement about how they do behave. As the latter, it is clearly false.

I agree that he's expressing an ideal but don't think that makes it untrue unless it's unideal. I guess I don't see it as not being true unless he was attempting to be descriptive rather than prescriptive and I don't see why what is indicts the veracity of what ought to be.

Quote:

2. Of course, whether what Donne wrote is philosophy depends on how vaguely you understand that term. Very general remarks about people and about how people do act, and how they ought to act, often come under the general heading of philosophy. So, in the way, I guess it is philosophy. But in a somewhat stricter sense of "philosophy" , say the sense in which Wittgenstein said that philosophy is an activity, not a theory. what Donne wrote does not qualify.

I think philosophy encompasses ethics and values by most definitions and I think he made a powerful statement about the valuation of the lives of those around us. He may not have been trying to philosophize himself but his statement can influence the philosophy of others in regard to ethics and values (especially regarding social contracts).

I agree that Donne is "expressing an ideal" if that means, he is saying what he believes ought to be true rather than what is true. But I think I said that. And I think also that he expressed that belief in a very persuasive and lovely way. But I think I said that too.

kennethamy wrote:

I agree that Donne is "expressing an ideal" if that means, he is saying what he believes ought to be true rather than what is true. But I think I said that. And I think also that he expressed that belief in a very persuasive and lovely way. But I think I said that too.

You did, but you also implied that it was untrue, which is only the case if you deliberately read it as being a descriptive passage, while you clearly see that it is prescriptive.

We don't have any disagreements on the prescriptive nature of the passage, just the notion that it is "untrue" just because it is not descriptively so. He can be stating a fact about an ideal.

I guess it depends on what you do with that phrase, like construct a philosophical school around it, say hedonism.

Besides, wasn't it Wittgenstein who wrote "Philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition" in Culture and Value

I think we may be on the same page then. His statement clearly isn't descriptively true but we both seem to think it isn't prescriptively false.

"eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die"
and
"the unexamined life is not worth living"
seems to me two different way of saying how one should live.

"eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die"
and
"the unexamined life is not worth living"
seems to me two different ways of saying how one should live. One of them is not philosophical?

No, what would have made you think I thought that people should not be concerned for each other? But that is something quite distant from your original contention that the passage from Donne was a great philosophical passage.

Is Socrates/Plato's motto about the unexamined life philosophy? If so, why isn't the eat drink merry motto considered philosophy.