Is philosophy a load of old bollocks?

[DDR Yoga]

Philosophy is just one bloke's gut feeling and then him explaining why he thinks that in the most obtuse and inaccessible way possible. The process, I imagine goes something like this:

1. I think most people are too conformist.

2. I'll invent a concept called 'man of being' and spread the idea out over 3 chapters.

3. "...When we speak of 'being', we do so not in the common understanding of man in the here and now - that is to say the abstract permeation as neither confined by esoteric nor outwardly projected by the exoteric - but rather the experience of being and the awareness of concious experience therein..."

I heard a theory that back in the day buyers wanted their money's worth so publishers would encourage the writers to make everything longer. I don't know how true it is but it could explain things a bit. For the most part though, it seems like more of an exercise is self-entertainment than anything else.

Admittedly, I'm not well-versed in philosophy so there could be more concise stuff out there. And there are plenty of other high IQ writers in related fields who write incredibly concisely.

 

[Stoneheart]

I heard a theory that back in the day buyers wanted their money's worth so publishers would encourage the writers to make everything longer. I don't know how true it is but it could explain things a bit. For the most part though, it seems like more of an exercise is self-entertainment than anything else.

Thats only true for lesser schools...
the 2 main schools are ancient greek and modern german, the greeks were mostly shizos that wrote down what they talked about with their friends in their head while the germans were shizos on all kinds of drugs. 2 of the germans stand out alot. Kant was not only a shizo on drugs, he was also autistic and his idea read alot like math problems while Nietzsche was real unhinged at times, writting real crazy stories He also has a number of theater reviews that went from a crush on Wagner to hating his work with a passion.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

It isn't necessarily bollocks, it just doesn't actually have much objective benefit.

Strangely it's a brand of thinking/slight of hand that seems to be most effective on the lower middle of the intellectual bell curve.

People on the left of the curve are too dense to be susceptible, and people to the right of the curve know enough to be able to know that there's a counter argument to any definitive statement a person tries to make about the nature of existence, because in a universe devoid of an objective value framework anything can mean anything you want it to on a purely conceptual level.

So it's a lot like art: it's fine if it isn't taken too seriously. It's only when people start treating it with unreasonable levels of esteem that things turn retarded.

 

[Gog & Magog]

“Who would have believed that this ordinary form of childhood punishment, meted out to a boy of eight years by a young woman of thirty, should have decided my tastes, my desires, my passions, my whole self, for the rest of my life, and in a direction that was precisely the opposite of what might naturally be expected?”
- Jean-Jacques Roussea

This guy wrote The Social Contract; yes, that one. He also took delight in exposing his ass to random women. Philosophers are either boring guys with common-sense advice or insane men with bright minds and horrid behavior.

 

[Bubbleseven]

I don't have to participate in an academic circle jerk, so for me, philosophy is just anything that deepens your understanding of the world. In that light, it can be extremely subjective depending on how deep anyone's knowledge is already whether something is philosophical or not. Naturally, philosophy is amorphous with science, and sometimes knowledge that seemed solid gets proven false and can embarrass you. Some of the more committed philosophers (the ones with a title) have an interest in entrenching their output with verbal fortifications to protect their status and livelihood, and that's where philosophy can get a bad name from. But concentrating on and painting all of philosophy with that is limiting. Also, there are truths of life that give you no game in society, like "life is pointless", which is true but a dumb banner to advertise yourself by, and people who do that are where philosophy can get a bad name from as well.

 

[BlaireWhitesBottom2]

Philosophy just like psychology is a racket for the jews

 

[Overcast]

Well, we have a series of books that spanned over thousands of years that already hold all the answers to life but for various reasons most people choose to ignore because most of us think we know better than God.

So yeah "philosophy" is a load of old bollocks. It's a man made invention based primarily on worldly values and a way for people to glorify themselves and in some cases express their mommy or daddy issues.

This guy wrote The Social Contract; yes, that one. He also took delight in exposing his ass to random women. Philosophers are either boring guys with common-sense advice or insane men with bright minds and horrid behavior.

Case in point.

 

[Hazel Motes]

This guy wrote The Social Contract; yes, that one. He also took delight in exposing his ass to random women. Philosophers are either boring guys with common-sense advice or insane men with bright minds and horrid behavior.

Philosopher on Child Education yet raised not one of his children. He makes for great reading though.


Philosophy can also be for fun read but keep your distance, as you should when you read a novel, or an article, or a thread post...

My favourite philosopher and writer in general is Nietzsche. He is one of the few writers I have read his entire works of and one of the few I am willing to re-read regularly. The benefit of the latter is that I disagree with him the further I go. Most of my other interests stem from Nietzsche. My MA dissertation was on Nathanel West but focused on Nietzsche's conclusions about the world. My paper on Roy Campbell was on his conversion to Catholicism through Nietzsche's philosophy. You can become lost in his short works and spend years considering aspects.

I am not a follower of Nietzsche, however, as I am not a follower of Rousseau or Marx, but these writers are great to put yourself in conversation with. Don't become a blind follower or label yourself, but treat them as another person with another worldview.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

Absolutely not. Philosophy can be valuable for teaching how to think and different perspectives about things. I would agree though, most philosophy can be skipped. The good philosophy is few and far between with a lot of charlatans spouting complete bullshit, doing some creative wordplay, or rehashing old stuff. The Greeks and Enlightenment philosophers are usually pretty good, the German idealists, eastern, and religious philosophy can get iffy, and if you've read one existentialist and one postmodern, you've read them all (but don't totally skip either)

 

[skykiii]

I think sometimes philosophy can have benefit--I know a few times in my life philosophy has made me aware of blind spots in my thinking.

But its useful in a "maybe rent it from the library" sense, or even just a "let some Youtuber tell you what guy said" sense. A lot of times there is no real reason to pay money for a philosophy text. And as OP said, a lot of them pad things out to try and sound more intelligent than they really are (or because the publisher told them to, whichever). Most of my really useful trains of thought were picked up either from life experience, works of fiction, or simply by having discussions with people.

And on the opposite end of the Autism Spectrum, one thing that sours philosophy for me is the people who think that just reading someone's book automatically makes them galaxy-brained. They're like this cartoon, except if instead of waving a diploma in your face they waved a copy of Insert Philosopher Here.

 

[HarblMcDavid]

I find it extremely useful as a ways to look at the world differently as gay as that sounds. Most of this relates to ethics but it can be useful to take situations and run them through paradigms created by philosophers, at least some of them.

For example, Kant remains useful despite his inability to create a moral system anyone but an autist could live with since that unwavering set of rules can be useful to remind yourself about the issues with moral relativism that can creep in without you noticing.

Strong agree that not all are useful though, it's worth remembering that it seems a lot of postmodern philosophy focuses on how what you know is wrong, deconstruction, which can be fun to tug with as an experiment but I don't think should be taken too seriously since it's lack of creation I think introduces brainworms you don't even realize you're getting if you stare into that abyss too long.

Basically it's a great thing to take in college instead of fucking sociology if you can get away with it, especially ethics, and hopefully you end up with an intellectually honest professor. I did, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I wouldn't major in it though, every single philosophy major I know or know of isn't in philosophy and had to find something else completely unrelated to do for a living.

 

[skykiii]

Strong agree that not all are useful though, it's worth remembering that it seems a lot of postmodern philosophy focuses on how what you know is wrong, deconstruction, which can be fun to tug with as an experiment but I don't think should be taken too seriously since it's lack of creation I think introduces brainworms you don't even realize you're getting if you stare into that abyss too long.

If I may add a thing here,

Another issue with deconstructionist thinking is, well... it presupposes that you're familiar with the thing being deconstructed. And in many cases that's based on the idea that the thing is still a common belief/idea.

And then those philosophies can themselves become twisted because people lost the original context.

Basically, I think if you're gonna teach the deconstructions at all, you need to also teach the thing that they're deconstructing.

 

[starborn427614]

I've always found the idea of philosophy to be a coping mechanism, something that lets us make sense of the world but ultimately not particularly important in the modern day.

 

[Smug]

A little bit of philosophy can be a dangerous thing for many people. If you start challenging your own worldview in that manner without first properly understanding it, then you could fall prey to becoming an ideologue of the first reasonable or intelligent sounding philosopher/philosophy you have a serious attempt at reading the works of - which will likely make a fool out of you in the long run.
If you're going to go down that path anyway, then don't stop at least until you've made it full circle.

 

[ñññ]

Yes.