Modern philosophers- jukeboxes...

Nobody & Cyracuz

As I said before, I deeply disagree with you.
Reading a philosophy book written 2.000 years ago doesn't mean you must follow the author's ideas.
In philosophy, the knowledge of philosophers from the past is important, not to accept what they say but to understand what the problems are.

The philosophical questioning is a never ended process. Even for those who declare to despise philosophy.

If you think about the problem of knowledge, it's limits and nature, you must read Hume, Kant, or read about the ancient Greek skeptics.
Not to agree with them. To know how to put the question, how to give a rational perspective to the problem.

The same with the problem of definitions, general and abstract ideas. You must read Plato, Wittgenstein.
Or the problem of morals: you must know the perspectives of Aristotle, Epicurus, Bentham and Stuart Mill, Kant, Nietzsche, W. James.
Or the problem of the nature of the state: Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx.

Even the problem of the uselessness of traditional philosophy is a philosophical problem. Read Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marcuse.

Like I said before, reading a philosophy book is like a dialogue. You learn when and why you disagree with the author, you develop your own ideas and learn to give them more consistency.
Nobody creates new ideas from zero. We all start by learning how to make the right questions. Only then we are able to create our own answers.

Val wrote:


I agree with that. A relevant question is perhaps wether the question that was right for Heidegger is right for you. The relevance of the philosophers you mention is more a historic value in my eyes.

I very much enjoyed reading Cicero's Talks on Tusculum, not because of the conclusions of the author, but because it provides you with an image of how the world was then. I also enjoy Nietzche, the old greeks and many other philosophers, but it is as you say. The interest is historical, not philosophical. In this sense reading the diary off Anne Frank or Dante's divine comedy is equally interesting as Kant's critiques.

In my understanding books have historic value. Philosophy is a contemporary thing. It is the accumulation of wisdom that is important, not the conveying of knowledge. We have probably all had countless discussions on the difference between knowledge and wisdom. No matter how wise a philosopher is, he can never convey anything but knowledge in his books. That is why wisdom cannot be found in books. We all know this. The knowledge to give you the wisdom might be in the book, but it will not be wisdom until you have the experience to make it your knowledge. And since philosophy is basically a love of wisdom I think that plays a crucial part in all this.

Val, I don't understand. You say you deeply disagree with us, and then you expound views that we both agree with.

Hmm,

What you guys seem to be discussing is the syntagmatic versus the paradigmatic axes of philosophical problems. "Professional" philosophers tend to go for the paradigmatic because their tenure depends on publications based in part on prior literature. "Esoteric" philosophers tend to go for the syntagmatic view perhaps because of the focus on "being in the moment". There are of course notable exceptions to this distinction. Wittgenstein was "accused" of not reading the classics.

An attempt at resolution might involve an examination of "the self in the moment" using "language as socially evolved". In a sense the "self" constitutes the crossing of the two axes.

Fresco, if I may, L. Wittgenstein did not read the "classics."

When Russell made a note on his work during his examination (Der Satz, or Tractatus (G.E. Moore)) and that it resembled some aspects of the philosophy of John Locke, Wittgenstein replied:

John who?

And I concur on your distinction between "esoteric" and "professional" philosophers. You make good points...

Pegasus

But he knew some classics, like St. Augustin, Kant and Schopenhauer.

JLNobody

I don't think you agree. Read Cyracuz reply. He says that perhaps Heidegger's questions are not important to us now. And he also says that philosophic works must be seen in an historical perspective.

I disagree with both ideas.
I think that the questions, in philosophy, are basically always the same. But the perspective - not the answers - the way they are formulated changes.
The moral, epistemological, political questions are the same.
But you can express them in several ways: from Plato's definition of Good, from the relativism of the sophists, from Epicurus concept of pleasure, from Kant's moral law.
If you are interested in the problem of moral, I think you must know what those men -and others - said about it, and then learn to criticize their conclusions, the logic of their reasoning, or admire this or that point of their theories. From there you can reach your own perspective.
An example: my moral conceptions are based in some aspects of Epicurus and Protagoras theories. But even certain moral theories that I disapprove - Kant, Bentham, Stuart Mill or Nietzsche - had some influence on my way of thinking the problem.
Philosophy is not like physics. Theories cannot be proved wrong - unless they are illogical.

Val wrote, among other things:


No it is not. But the philosophers are trying to make it so. They're forming categories graphs and other curious "maps" to explain our moral fibre. To force the free thought onto a trail designated by them. Is this "filo sofia"?

You trick yourself Val, when you say that your moral conceptions are based in some aspects of this or that theory. It is the other way around. Every being in the universe knows right from wrong, not just the ones that write books about it.



All these people were like Colombus in a way, discovering what some people knew all along. Morals have existed long before the people you mention wrote about it.



I disagree with that. Philosophy is the love for wisdom. A philosophic work should be a tribute to wisdom, not a defragmentation of it into pieces of knowledge that has no relevance in the real world.

I read a story once about a young monk who joined the ascets in the forest in his search for nirvana. He sat in mud holes, he starved himself and said the prayers, all this with perfect devotion. The goal of this excercise was to exterminate the ego in order to see the world truthfully. After some years he discovered that he had not exterminated his ego, but that it had grown silently in the pride he felt at being good at suffering.

Similarly a philosopher is always in danger of drowning in his own base of knowledge before ever gaining the experience to call it wisdom.

So I maintain my stand that true philosophe is not to study and learn the thoughts of previous men and women. It is to transform what knowledge you have into wisdom. This is done by experience. In my definition of the word Buddha was a true philosopher.

He did not "know" them; rather, he was familiar with their general outlines in the field of philosophy. This, you may agree, does not approach "knowing" a work, but only knowing its general framework.

pegasus

With the exception of St Augustin, I agree with you.

cyracuz



No. Every human being has the notion of right and wrong. Not the why. Not what is right and what is wrong.
Slavery was morally right in ancient Rom. It is not today.
The fact that I have the notion of the right and wrong is not enough. I have the notion that things fall, but why? When I cut my finger a red liquid appears: what is it?




I can't reply to that. I think it's JLNobody "department".

The transcendence of the illusion of ego, of a "self" separate from the rest of reality is not attainable by ascetic self-sacrifice. As Cryacuz' tale indicates, the effort only strengthens the sense of self. The process is very subtle and full of paradoxes. Were that not so, we could put the ego in its ontological place by means of logical arguments.

It brings to mind Anne Rice's anti hero, the vampire lestat, who, after being robbed of life and given immortality and the curse to drink blood, resolves that if it is his fate to be evil then he's going to be good at it. There's no easy answer.

There is one easy answer.

The ascetics only put out how stringent their lifestyle is in order to keep the average run-of-the mill person from wishing to join.This results in a life of luxury behind the forbidding walls and the woman problem is left to the average run-of-the-mill bloke/chav/bozo/diddico to sort out as best he can which isn't going so good as things stand.I will forbear a description of the two modes of being for obvious reasons.It's against the law to start a stampede and I'm pretty law-abiding taking everything into account.

Milk often masquerades as cream and
Jackdaws strut in eagle's feathers.
Something like that in Gilbert and Sullivan.

Heh.. You sound like you wanted to join but they wouldn't let you

JLNobody:
Thank you for your kind PM which I
rec'd. to-day through 'able2know' e-mail. Since I
couldn't reply using the same medium I am taking this opportunityto tell you that your comments
were certainly most gracious and uplifting.
Since we are now 'back in the fray' again, thanks to you, I cannot understand why you
state that the ego seeks, ( or contain within itself
the desire, or need, or compulsion to separate from
the reality). and, that logical arguments cannot be used to put the ego in its ontological place.
What problems do you see being presented to the argument by the ego, the pure
result of the existence of the self?

Alikimr, your question shows why I tried to get you activated again (via PM). All your questions and challenges indicate sincerity, not just competition for its own sake.
You ask why the ego seeks (or innately desires) to be separate from the rest of) reality. That's a misunderstanding which I am happy to address. The ego, since it is an illusion and a construct, has no desires. By its very nature it represents a separation (or a sense of one's separation) from Reality--it announces the existence of "me" and then "reality". Also, it is virtually impossible to lead a person by means of logic to transcend this illusory separation. Logic, by its very nature, requires the assumption of "things" or "classes of things" and their law-like relationships as well as the subject-object distinction. This is built into our language, or its grammar. This linguistic predisposition leads to the feeling of the separation of self and all else. It is very hard to make this point clearly, since it is a private perspective, not a public empirical fact that can be pointed to or demonstrated logically, although some writers, like Alan Watts, come close to doing so.
Great to have you back.

On the other hand, as twisted as the ego gets, and as much as it tries to escape and be separate, of course it must be part of reality also.

All the twisted egos out there (mine included) are part of reality.

The ego may see itself as separate from reality.

But even this crazy thing that goes around thinking it is separate--this twisted thing is a part of reality.

Its a bit of a paradox.

Even something that tries to divorce itself from reality, is part of reality. It can try as hard as it wants to get away from reality, or not try at all, either way, reality encompasses it quite easily and effortlessly.

Yes, EM. There is only Reality (as some religions say: There is only God, not God and then us). But, I repeat, ego does not "try" to separate itself from anything; nor does it "see" itself as separate from reality; there is no "agency" about ego; ego does nothing because it is an illusion. It IS the illusion we have of being separate from all else. In the artificial, grammatical, distinction between subject and object, we have ego. This is why in non-dualistic perception there is no room for ego. You see that you are one with everything; you ARE everything. This principle is counter-intuitive from our ego-centered dualistic perspective (notice in my grammatical statements I imply the existence of a separate self: i.e., YOU see that you are..." Ego is built into our language). But the principle is very intuitive from our Cosmic-centered non-dualistic perspective. It all depends on one's point of reference: self or everything.