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The purpose of Philosophy
Pointlessness

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The purpose of Philosophy

Abiathar
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Posted 04/29/08 - 01:03 PM:	#21
"The purpose of philosophy is to sate our desires for knowledge and mental dominiation of the great mystery, and it is often arrogance incarnate as we justify within our own arguments our own opinions and viewpoints, and seek little truth." ~Me

nightingale
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Posted 05/07/08 - 03:33 AM:	#22
jdrw wrote: It has long been recognized that the primary function and benefit to society of Philosophy is to keep certain personality types busy endlessly arguing with one another who otherwise would be out annoying the general public instead. Haha, well said.
The circus broke loose.

nullity
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Posted 05/21/08 - 05:41 AM:	#23
The_Wanderer wrote: I hope I am not retreading old ground with this question/debate/opinionated post, I am a new member. I have been dabbling in philosophy for a few years in my spare time, I am not a student of philosophy (I now partly wish I was). Recently I have been studying Sartre's nausea, existentialism and humanism and Nietzsche's Genealogy of morals and I was just about to tackle Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and I wondered to myself why am I doing this? I went back to the last chapter of Bertrand Russell's the problems of philosophy to remind myself of his answers, that there is no definitive purpose but to remove ourselves from ignorance and to escape the prison of common sense. I just wondered whether any one here studies philosophy for a more focused reason? Now and again I get bouts of pointlessness, does anyone else? How do you deal this? Four simple words. TO THINK LIKE GOD

TheManWhoWasThursday
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Posted 05/21/08 - 11:11 PM:	#24
Why do I study philosophy? I haven't found the answers yet, why else? It's a part of my nature, I've never been able to start a puzzle or a book without finishing it because I'm too curious to see what the picture looks like when all the pieces are in place. That's how I feel about philosophy. It is a big puzzle, with pieces that look like Aristotle, Kant, Hume, and Plato, and I want to see how the pieces fit together once the picture is complete. Part of me knows that I will not be able to enjoy it when, and if, the puzzle is ever completed, since I will likely have been dead for some time, but my one great hope is to fit at least one piece of that puzzle into place before I'm forced to shuffle off my mortal coil. This post feels a bit rambling but that is how I get when I discuss this question, just ask my friends. It's a hard question to answer in words because it is more a compulsion than a rational choice but the closest I can come to an answer is that I philosophize because I want to see the completed picture.
"I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher." G. K. Chesterton

2Ponder
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Posted 06/30/08 - 09:08 PM:	#25
I just figured that I'd resurrect this thread because I've had the same issues myself. Philosophy isn't my calling - I'm much more into literature and writing and all that fun stuff - but I have a real appreciation for it; I see how, when the concepts developed in the realms of philosophy are applied to the real world, they change it drastically. I have a real appreciation for that, and a biting interest to see what people have said and why the world is such a (messed up) place as it is now. That, and the fact that reading the works of the philosophers helps to inspire me into my own ideas, which I then incorporate into my own writing, makes me want to read the works of the philosophers and understand what they're trying to say. But at the same time, there have been many times when I'm sitting down, trying to read some philosophical work or other, and I suddenly wake up. "Why am I torturing myself like this?" I wonder to myself as a pounding headache sets in. Then I think about how philosophy is really like nothing more than a bunch of scientific claims without any actual support, and how there's no way to prove anything said in the world of philosophy until we start developing our methods in the social sciences, so we really don't know anything in the world of philosophy, so all of this is really a waste of time... Which, along with the terrible experiences that I had in 4 of the 5 philosophy courses that I ever took in college, make me want to run away, screaming, from anything having to do with reasoning, logic, ethics or philosophy in general. I guess all of this random rambling all boils down to a few questions: 1) What is the point of studying philosophy? 2) Are these headaches normal? 3) How do you stay sane?
"Not all who wander are lost."

unenlightened
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Posted 06/30/08 - 09:32 PM:	#26
Boiling down one's random rambling to a few questions is philosophy. Wondering what it is and why one does it, and whether one is sane is the essense of philosophy. I don't know about you, but I just can't help it. Even as I run away screaming, I find myself wondering... The trouble with courses is that they tend for some reason not to make contact with the internal, vital philosopher. Other peoples attempted answers to questions that one hasn't yet asked of oneself tend to be boring and incomprehensible. But when one starts to wonder how one should best live and why, or whatever, things come alive - then you see the point. Headaches are logically prior to philosophy! To stay sane - change your mind as often as your bedsheets to keep it fresh.
The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

night_watcher
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Posted 07/02/08 - 09:00 AM:	#27
Well, I think philosophy is philosophizing. Defining it will merely limit its scope and relevance to our lives. That's my two cents' worth of opinion, anyway. I've studied philosophy for four years, and in the end of it all I think I learned is to know what philosophy is not rather than what it is. ^_^ Edited by Postmodern Beatnik on 07/02/08 - 11:50 AM. Reason: capitalization.
However radical evil may be, it is not as profound as goodness PRicoeur

Phil8659
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Posted 07/06/08 - 10:36 AM:	#28
<I just wondered whether any one here studies philosophy for a more focused reason? Now and again I get bouts of pointlessness, does anyone else? How do you deal this?> Often, people think that the study of philosophy is the study of philosophers and quite naturally, what those who are called philosophers had to say. Personally, I don't know if a person is a philosopher or not unless I know what philosophy is. Kind of stupid to think that I would know what a carpenter is if I did not know what carpentry is. And, I certaily would not care what a carpenter was talking about, if I came to learn carpentry and they were talking about zits on their ass. We use language in order to effect human behavior such that that behavior sustains and promotes the life of the body. It stands to reason then, that the fundamentals of grammar reside over all the sciences, every one of them. I am not talking about how grammar is imagined to be, for one will find a dozen theories of how to construct and deconstruct a sentence on the internet written by the most highly educated people in the field of grammar. i.e., they are still groping to understand a simple sentence. Now it stands to reason, that learning these principles takes some education. One must know names, words, and how they can, and cannot go together. This is what the Platonic dialogs, the true ones are about. Normally, each uses a simple idea of logic as its outline. The material of the piece gives material by which abstraction is to be made, it is noticed by the comments on the dialogs through history that the commom genius is unable to make the abstraction. When one approaches philosophy, not as a craft to learn, just like arithmetic, or Algebra, one does not know what philosophy is--it simply becomes another word used in any way that a person chooses to use it in the continuance of their confusion. To think that Philosophy had a point is a rudimentary anthropomorphism. Philosophy is a craft, you either have a point or not, and if you find you do not, it is because you don't know what you are. And in not knowing what you are, you cannot possibly know what it is your suppose to do. Is is people like Euclid, who wrote a great work in philosophy, Plato, whatever compiled the scripture. Things that empower your mastery over the environment such that you can sustain and promote life, that is the results of philosophy. Historically, most of those who are called philosophers, have never been, and will never be any such thing and one can only realize this when they know what philosophy is, a love of wisdom and truth, so those who improve your ability to think, to reason, and to judge rightly, they, and they alone have been and are the only true philosophers. I would not spend a dime on what is typically called a philosopher, a name given by those who are ignorant.

Thomistic
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Posted 07/06/08 - 02:42 PM:	#29
To authentically love wisdom...which is impossible for some philosophers because they deny it exists...therefore meaning that there is no such thing as an absolute skeptic-philosopher...more like a doubter of wisdom...and how can you love that which you believe not to exist?
"Truth Being and Beauty are all the same, but differ in the mind," - Aquinas "You cannot put a price on awesomeness" - Kung Fu Panda

nosos
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Posted 07/07/08 - 04:27 PM:	#30
I'd largely agree with Richard Rorty about analytic philosophy being, for the most part, pointless. As William James said: philosophy is like a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that doesn't exist. You can have the finest minds in the world producing top class work and it will still be of little value if its offering answers to questions that are, ultimately, meaningless. Edited by nosos on 07/07/08 - 04:31 PM
"The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss? - Max Stirner "The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - JS Mill "I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy Goth kid." - Butters

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