Re: Does Philosophy Lead to Nihilism???
yardsale wrote:Quote:nihilistic_destruction,
Is the ultimate destination for a philosopher, nihilism?
Philosophy calls all religious beliefs into question, eventually philosophers begin to undermine religion (even though some might cling to vestiges of it).
After that ethics are brought down to relativity which undermines ethics.
Then after a hard look at knowledge and its foundations philosopher begin undermining that as well. Nihilism does not say we can't know anything, that would be a logical fallacy. Nihilism simple undermines it. After dealing with the circular arguements of metaphysics we get fed up and forget about that as well.
Nihilism is even skeptical of science and its usefulness as well as its workings. Philosophy is already skeptical of science not much of a change there. Science is useful but it is also analyzed with scrutiny.
Everything just falls apart with the out look of a philosopher and what I'm saying is that this outcome is (usually) nihilism.
Extremely interesting!
It all depends on how you apply the knowledge. I was at a philosophy symposium a while back and talked with a professor about a teaching / mentor relationship he had with Ayn Rand. He went on to say how after a year they broke up the mentor relationship on a sour note. After I questioned this philosopher about Rand's inner peace and happiness, I could see that with all her talents of 'smarts' she was bankrupt when the subject turned to 'peace smarts' contentment and happiness. She was ego based and not practice based when it came to peace generation. Furthermore, she not only destroyed her peace, but from the information I got tom the professor, his peace was disturbed at the time and it still sounded disturbed decades later. Academic smarts are not necessarily peace smarts.
(...) writes:
"Nevertheless pleasure and pain is actually all that matters in life."
V writes:
Thank you for the reply. Please forgive me if I do not comment on replies sometimes as my time is limited and I am on 50 to 70 lists and forums at any given time. In reality it is hard to get back to all the posts, so am glad I caught your response to "why greed is never satisfied by attainment."
Pain and pleasure, yes the 2 opposites of life. The practice of philosophy helps me with these areas by developing excellence of the soul. I am no blissninny, I make mistakes, but have also improved my life greatly since studying philosophy. The guidelines of pain and pleasure is not so cut and dried if we bring in the topic of virtue and excellence of the soul for instance. Also the question comes up of why we do something if it is known to cause us pain? Addictions excuse this madness seemingly, other times it might boil down to the 'out of control passions' that put reasoning on the back burner.
The phrase, "circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself" was taken from James Allen little book entitled "As A Man Thinketh." (Now, all you women that dislike anything male, go buy a copy of As a Woman Thinketh, so you don't feel left out.) This important concept of 'self revelation' can also be told in a story that is used in philosophy class called the Ring of Gyges or Myth of Gyges. The story taken from Plato's Republic and recounts how the shepherd Gyges finds a ring on a hand extending from a crack in the earth and removes the ring from the hand and puts it on. Gyges discovers the ring gives him powers to be invisible at will and then uses these powers to kill the king, rape the queen and take over the kingdom. In readily understandable terms we can define virtue for us from this story of Gyges and ask ourselves the question, "What would we do if no one was looking or we knew we would not get caught?" Yes, circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself.
We may avoid doing something due to fear of pain, such as fear of jail or fear of going to hell or whatever. So the person abstains, but the abstention is not genuine and authentic to that of living virtuously. Whereas, someone that has true virtue instilled within them will act the same irrespective of threats or not. Take away the threats and they will 'act' the same. Make them invisible and they are no different. In the end though, such persons still base their actions on some aspect of fear. They fear losing their inner peace. This is hard concept to explain for myself. I don't really fear losing inner peace all that much. I just prefer being at peace, so I act the part. Sometimes my actions disturb my peace and I must pay the price. This experiential education is the best way to learn that all our actions have consequences and that many of these actions are producing consequences that rob us of inner peace. Enclosed are the 3D's and the 7 benefits we derive form addictions. They shed more light on these areas.
An important thing to remember with recovery is the 3-D's: Desire, Determination and Diligence.
Desire:
Desire is the foundation for all recovery quests. You cannot help someone without the desire in them to be helped. Desire is what gets us taking that first step in the right direction when all seems hopeless. Have you every tried to give advice or help someone in need and they respond: "I don't care." They lack the desire or at least this is what they say. Desire must come from within, you cannot force someone to change, they must change themselves.
To develop a desire to change, we must first recognize there is a problem or sickness in us. Recognition or awareness is the fist step leading to desire. After we recognize we are sick or an area of our lives is out of balance, we can start accepting the fact that we need to take action in this area. When we label addicts or people as "in denial," we are saying the person is not able to recognize there is a problem in their lives that needs addressing.
Now some people recognize there is a problem in their life, but still don't develop a burning desire for change, but at least they have a somewhat true picture of things and just haven't made the crossover to developing the desire to change bad enough. Whether their block is out of fear, laziness or staying in a comfortable place, they will have to figure out what is blocking them before they can take the next step. As I said, we cannot force someone to change, they must change themselves and it must be from the inside out.
Determination:
Determination serves two purposes here. When something is "determined" it is accepted as fact. We have determined that we are powerless over our addiction and our lives are unmanageable. We have determined we must abstain from certain people, places or things that we cannot comfortably have in our lives. We are in the process of determining a new set of rules on how to live. We have also determined what injuries we have caused and what needs to be repaired through taking personal inventory.
Determination serves a second purpose and that is it keeps us on the long road to recovery. We cannot keep on this long road without being determined to change our lives day in day out. Whether it is debt recovery, clutter, restructuring our complex lives or losing weight it all takes time and determination to stay on the path of recovery. Many distractions, detours and set backs along the way, but we should always be determined to keep pointed in the direction of recovery.
Diligence:
Diligence keeps us from going backwards once we finally arrive at the recovery place we are aiming for. It takes diligence once we get to where we want to be to maintain that serene spot, otherwise we fall back on our old "natural" ways of living. Once you lose the fat, once you pay off your debts, once you lose the clutter, once you get sober and abstinent from your drug of choice it takes diligence to keep you that way. James Allen calls this watchfulness...
**Sorry - I had to cut the end of this post off as it was too long to be accepted here.**
V (Male)
A Christian-Buddhist practitioner living a life of Voluntary Simplicity and grateful recovering Debtor, Drug and Substance Abuser, Compulsive Overeater, Clutterer, Rageaholic, Speculative Gambler, Compulsive Spender, Sex and Sensation Addict.
