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Is writing philosophy worth it?

Sean McHugh
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Posted 08/10/08 - 10:34 PM: Subject: Is writing philosophy worth it?	#1
Hi. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on the rewards and difficulties of writing essays and projects. I finished a bachelors in philosophy 11 years ago and did a masters in music among other courses, but my overriding interest is in Indian philosophy and the connections with a range of other subjects, including sexuality and music. These connections I feel are of much importance and well worth outlining, but they're quite dense and the writing up process of my notes is daunting, tiring and very time consuming. I have nearly a quarter of a million words of notes I've put together in the last few years, sorted under the chapters below and I've only completed about six out of 64, though partially proofed sections are strewn throughout. I'm 39 and just kind-of not sure what to do with my time: there are many areas of knowledge and literature I'd like to expand my awareness of, but my work here is rewarding too, just that it would take years to complete and indeed few people will understand it... Dionysiac Introduction o Done Exposition The Veda Self o Unity oo The Gunas oo Dionysiac and Apollonian oo Einstein and Buddhism oo Psychology and society The Chinese room oo More and less oo Ethics and aesthetics oo Normative networks oo Learning oo Conducive culture oo Democracy and postmodernism oo Order x1 x2 x3 Done Digitization and the media oo Order x1 x2 x3 Done Loss of art oo Order x1 x2 x3 Done Race The West oo Sexual repression oo Thailand oo Done Black Africa oo Life The Veda and sex Unaffected relation oo Self referentiality oo Subject and object oo Seduction oo Proceeding along a line oo Feminine denial oo Have and had oo Complementarity oo Psychology ooo Physiology ooo Done Sex and death Relative becoming absolute ooo Pyramus and psychosis ooo Pyramus and others ooo Torture ooo The Wheel ooo Spirituality Hinduism ooo The Sun ooo Christianity ooo Art The Wicker man Foolishness ooo Aesthetic line ooo Music The Nature of art ooo Art music and other musics ooo Repetition ooo Done Minimalism ooo Done Minimalism and academia ooo Music and academia ooo Tonality Dionysian sound ooo The Pythagorean tradition ooo Done Consonance ooo Modality and form ooo Adorno and dialectic ooo Adorno and autonomy ooo Wagner Critical distance Peak of instability ooo Closed thought ooo Nietzsche and balance ooo The Eroica ooo Done Form by web ooo Formal passion ooo Holism and linearity ooo Irrationality Juxtaposition ooo Bach, Beethoven and Strauss ooo The Rite of spring ooo The Case of Wagner ooo Adorno and deception ooo Tristan und Isolde Artâ€™s centrepiece ooo Wagner and sex ooo

Tobias
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Posted 08/10/08 - 11:44 PM:	#2
The key is to compartmentalise. How long do you think a chapter is going to be, 20 pages minimum? That would put you to 1200+ pages. So what I'd suggest is either write short books, "The Veda and sex" for instance or write articles for philosophy magazines, anthropology, sociology etc and see how your ideas are received. Writing is difficult so I'd suggest first getting into the practice, claim some ideas as your in articles and then, when you have it more figured out comprise these books into a big work. For instance "The Dyonisian in music, erotica and philosophy". You can trace the outlines of the idea of the Dyonisisan in history and across cultures. As for it being worth it.... well that depends on who you want to be. If you want to be aphilosopher, then I guess it is worth it. If you want to make a career as a car mechanic I would tell you to go fix cars instead. Good luck., Tobi
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

Sean McHugh
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Posted 08/11/08 - 12:24 AM:	#3
Many thanks Tobi- just to read someone's thoughts is great. Today for instance I've had to myself and I've done other things, learnt a few things, but not sure if I shouldn't be more focussed on what I have an aptitude for and make my own contribution. (The chapters are an average of 4500+ words long, though tend to get longer when I work on them.)

Tobias
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Posted 08/11/08 - 12:27 AM:	#4
It seems to me you need a structure. What is your question with the book, what do you want to tell us?
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

Sean McHugh
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Posted 08/11/08 - 03:42 AM:	#5
Tobias, well one of the issues with Vedic tradition thought is its combination of linear with strongly holistic form, meaning that though the order of material and its logical justification is important, the final premises are transcendental, or intuitively justified (rather than being culturally and relativistically located as in the epistemologically post-foundationist West). Thus the content and its justification are in a sense less perspicuous- though to the informed reader, more perspicuous for avoiding architectonics and finding truth at every point. Et cetera. So I'm trying to illuminate various links between various Indian principles (though they're not principles, or concepts), chapter by chapter but I guess there's no overall thesis. Some of what I have is more straightforward though and includes some essays prepared for the academia. I can post stuff for you, but the lack of affinity people find with this stuff, in the lost West, is a common response...

Sean McHugh
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Posted 08/11/08 - 03:50 AM:	#6
And actually there's a bit more structure in the order of chapters but I've lost that in the copy and paste process here...

Tobias
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Posted 08/11/08 - 02:46 PM:	#7
Well you can write about vedic philosophy. But you are still a westerner. It is the tradition you grew up with and you know its rules. I would say stay in a western format for now and try to master it. You can't break out of the perspective until you have experienced where its limits lie. Than venture out to others. But by all means post to me what you wrote, maybe I can take a look at it?
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

Sean McHugh
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Posted 08/11/08 - 05:04 PM:	#8
Well I posted some stuff on musical minimalism a while back- http://forums.philosophyforums.com...n-and-sexuality-30280.html Do you know what the current overall state of thinking is in the Western tradition now, following the demise of rational/ empirical epistemology? When I was a student academics still didn't want to be relativists: the vague idea was that truth is located in a culture or way of life, or presuppositions about life, and not intellectually transparent propositions, but then cultures it seems are always arbitrary... I always thought philosophy was confused and always amazed at academic's lack of familiarity with the Indian tradition.

Tobias
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Posted 08/12/08 - 12:36 PM:	#9
Ahh, well I can give you some feedback, but not much since I didn't read through the entire post yet. That isn't easy too, because you lose your readers in the beginning.You post is very interesting and I am exploring such themes myself. Well not music and sex, but philosophy and sex. So I am interested, but what do you give us as a first line: "Stillness and self-reference are the nature of the absolute, consciousness and the field of the gunas and its logic that interfaces with the relative: the unitary absolute relates only to itself, contrasting with the relative, or the relative’s relative value, which relates to other elements of the relative. Repetitious processes in music provide key expression of and access to the absolute by isolating the aesthetic or the gunas’ logic, in giving the representation back to the attention before it has chance to try and necessarily fail to reconcile or make sense of it rationally: instead of relating one element to another the mind is flooded with reality, purity and sense of ecstatic drowning as the intellect gives way to spiritual devotion. Postmodernism’s concern for surfaces and homogeneity in place of traditional depth structure, teleology and narrative provide an important base for repetitious music, particularly minimalism: the incredulity towards overarching principles or authority from without parallels the contemptibly, laughably misplaced activity of the intellect working with relative relations without absolute reference, and its resulting structures. The intellect needs only alignment with the intuitive aesthetic- depth is in fact to be found in surface, not on it but within it." The mistake you make here from a philosophical pont of view is that you jump face first into the matter, without exploring your terms. The absolute on the first line .... but not any referewnce to what this absolute refers to. I know that is a damn difficult concept, but all the more reason to treat it with very much care. It is nigh unintellibible and that is partly because you use your terms rather contradictory. Firstly you say that the absolute relates only to itself, ok, with my background in continental phil. I get that, but than you say "contrasting with the relative"... but contrasting is also a relation and so the absolute relates to the relative.... which happens to relate to "other elements of the relative".... Now I am utterly lost. I am lost because you didn't define any term. Also here: "instead of relating one element to another the mind is flooded with reality, purity and sense of ecstatic drowning as the intellect gives way to spiritual devotion. " Being flooded with reality? You seem than to presuppose that the mind is not now flooded with reality. So there is some dychotomy between absolute and real and relative and unreal, at least how I understand what you want to say. But you hold them as fact, as if this is undebatable, but you will find many that will say, "what are you on about?". If you introduce dychotomies of that order, you should make them explicit, set forth what your presuppositions are. Otherwise people will not be able to follow your reasoning. Not this sounds harsh, but it is not intended like that. I see very intriguing thoughts in your post and I think you are on to something when you relate Pmo's preference for surface with minimalistic music. That alone is an interesting thought. But you go on and raise a whole book of issues. Than you create a swamp. So also here the key is to compartmentalise. First establish for instance your link between pomo surface and repetitive music. Than connect it to sex, then introduce something like an absolute. Now you throw your readers immediately in the deep end, but then they will drown. Western style is not intuitive and I think rightly so. I don't know if we talk of the same absolute, so first we must know what we are talking about. Perhaps a whole new way of looking at things is possible and maybe you can elucidate this new way of looking at it. This won't work by utilising it yourslef though before you have made your reader partial to it. So you will have to work in a western style, trying to force your way in a new more intuitive or aesthetic style. Not because you say wrong things, but because you will not be understood otherwise. That is problematic if you want to rtell something and you do otherwise you wouldn't have written it down. So to me it seems a question of technique. Master a crisp analytic style before you can become speculative. I will read the rest of your post with much interest,. because I do really like it. kind regards Tobi
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

Sean McHugh
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Posted 08/12/08 - 07:41 PM:	#10
Hi there Tobi, thanks for that. Well I know the opening, without any proper introduction, is daunting though there are earlier chapters which will make some of the ideas a little clearer. Firstly you say that the absolute relates only to itself, ok, with my background in continental phil. I get that, but than you say "contrasting with the relative"... but contrasting is also a relation and so the absolute relates to the relative.... which happens to relate to "other elements of the relative".... Now I am utterly lost. I am lost because you didn't define any term. Yes. One major issue to explain of course is how the absolute or Self can exist and not be meaninglessly abstracted or isolated from the rest of reality, which is I think the Buddhist response, leading them to relativism. The great achievement of Hindu thought is that the absolute underlies the relative so that it's what everything ultimately is, and there are no important gaps to bridge- a colossal monism consumes everything, this Brahman also then undermining the absolute-relative categories which provide a contrast or duality as you suggest. Regarding the notion of the relative being unreal and the absolute the real, this relates to central ideas about states of consciousness, the first important one of which is the 5th, where the absolute or universal Self is experienced in the mind and is seen to underly all relative thought: relativity makes ultimate reference to the absolute despite being perceived as different to it in 3rd (ordinary waking state). The speed of light in Einstein's theory is a similar absolute backcloth that is established before the realm of relativity can be discussed, and contrasted with. I understand and expect your objections about clarity, and I do well know how to write in the way you're expecting, but it doesn't trouble me. The Bhagavad Gita or summary of Vedic thought (which isn't conceptual thought) is almost impenetrably holistic, similar also to Wagner's music or art generally, or sexuality, and other phenomenon I'm interested in. In fact I'd very much argue that it's ultimately the attempt to delineate basically integrated experience that is at the root of the appallingly confused state of Western philosophy if not life there generally. Drowing of course is exactly the right concept, a concept to destroy lost discursive thought and find the light... Obviously it's got to have a progressive sense but we should already know that linear thought based on ungrounded and ungroundable principles isn't the way to proceed: holism leads to real understanding that lies beyond the sum of its parts, the source of understanding or the Self. Anyway I do have some thoughts on sexuality as well-

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