What are the characteristics of a Philosopher?

[Aldebaran]

Congratulations bluestreak. You presented the world with a definition of "philosopher" in the Capitalist Consumerist mindset.

salaam.

 

[Fruitloop]

Bleach, hegemonic control of the eligibility to the discourse in a nutshell.

 

[bluestreak]

Well, yes, but believe it or not, and like it or not, that's the world we live in. You'd rather live in a world where every half-baked idea was treated the same? Good ideas survive because people agree with them, or at least can't refute them successfully. Bad ideas survive because they're simple enough that they make sense to people who don't think well, but at least they can be easily refuted.

Imagine if market forces, both capitalist and intellectual, were not allowed to prevail, and that everyone who called themselves a philosopher was legally obliged to be given the same print runs, same air time, and the same teaching time, with NPOV status. A world where max_freakout, myself, the shouting bloke at the bus stop, David Icke, and every great thinker the world has ever seen, were all treated the same way?

You want to call yourself a philosopher, fair dos. You're a smart lad, so you might have written a book or something that I could read and decide for myself if you're a bit full of yourself. As far as I'm conscerned, if you call yourself a philosopher without some body of real work to back you up, a critique, a theory, an idea or two about how the world works in a way that someone else hasn't already said, then you're just being pretentious and what you really meant is "i like a nice relaxing think and to bicker on the nets". If bookless me calls myself a philosopher, you've got nothing to go on to decide if I am or not except the search posts function. And if u75 was a way of bringing useful or interesting ideas into the world, I suspect we would have been noticed by now.

 

[butchersapron]

Bad ideas often 'survive' because of their use, structural or otherwise to those in power. I think seperating philosophy off as an elite discourse that the rest of us can only ever observe and comment on to other amateurs actually helps maintain this state of affairs. It makes important things their own exclusive domain. We need to knock down these seperations, to suppress philosophy, to be able to move on. Kill the philosophers and let thought be free man.

 

[Fruitloop]

^ this.

Just because it's difficult to make a judgement, it doesn't follow that you abdicate all responsibility to obviously partisan institutions.

 

[i-am-your-idea]

Bad ideas often 'survive' because of their use, structural or otherwise to those in power. I think seperating philosophy off as an elite discourse that the rest of us can only ever observe and comment on to other amateurs actually helps maintain this state of affairs.

nicely put.

 

[gorski]

@Bluestreak

There are a number of philosophers who are appendixes to the history of philosophy, a kind of dead end, as no one "agrees" or "follows" those mindsets...

And yes, especially new ideas frequently don't get any recognition while the originator is alive...

Still, we see them better later on and do acknowledge as philosophers...

I think you're trying to defend the indefensible...

 

[i-am-your-idea]

I think you're trying to defend the indefensible...

everything is indefensible

 

[gorski]

We need to knock down these seperations, to suppress philosophy, to be able to move on. Kill the philosophers and let thought be free man.

I don't think so: I think we need to elevate everybody to the level of Philosophy.

Not suppress Philosophy but make it the World!

Then, we will be able to really move on.

 

[bluestreak]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you're not allowed to have ideas or criticise anyone else's ideas without having at least a published article, I'm just saying that calling yourself a philosopher when you've not body of work yourself is incredibly wanky.

IMO each and every human being is morally bound to exercise their critical faculties to the greatest extent possible at all times in order to be able to be as well informed as possible. Being thick makes it easier for people to lead you and guide you in ways that are contrary to the health of you, your loved ones, your community etc. etc. We should all keep thinking, critiquing, looking for exceptions or rules etc etc. But that's as human beings. Not as philosophers. If that makes sense?

 

[butchersapron]

I can se why you (gorski), as a ph idealist, would say that but it's life itself that will batter down these chinese walls and ovwerun your field.. Not thought alone. Not a program, of education. Not the educators.

 

[bluestreak]

I'm just prejudiced against philosophy students because I was one once, and when you get a room full of teenagers and ME OF ALL PEOPLE was one of the least wanky, it's zyklon b time.

 

[gorski]

I can se why you (gorski), as a ph idealist, would say that but it's life itself that will batter down these chinese walls and ovwerun your field.. Not thought alone. Not a program, of education. Not the educators.

That is idealism incarnate.

The point is that Philosophy has to become world for Philosophy to disappear as we know it today.

I agree with you that the walls need to come down but not by eliminating or suppressing critical thought. The notion you're looking at is "overcoming" or "sublation" and there is no "annihilation" of Philosophy in this absolute sense in it.

You are short-changing Philosophy as such here for a specific Philosophy or a branch of Philosophy, a "school of thought", if you wish.

And that is - as I expect from you - radical but ill thought through.

Philosophy can only "vanish" if we all become Philosophers.

 

[articul8]

Classic philosopher's move but hey ho...

Can't we reject the false choice between the suppression of philosophy (Butchers) and the idealisation of philosophy (Gorski) and accept that philosophy is impossible but necessary - the distorted expression of the truth of the workers failure to smash capitalism. Philosophy must not be supressed, it must be transcended. And until such time, philosophers can neither fufil their tasks, nor renounce them. There is always hope in thought, even if its the thought of your own seemingly unavoidable defeat .

 

[Dillinger4]

Classic philosopher's move but hey ho...

Can't we reject the false choice between the suppression of philosophy (Butchers) and the idealisation of philosophy (Gorski) and accept that philosophy is impossible but necessary - the distorted expression of the truth of the workers failure to smash capitalism. Philosophy must not be supressed, it must be transcended. And until such time, philosophers can neither fufil their tasks, nor renounce them. There is always hope in thought, even if its the thought of your own seemingly unavoidable defeat .

This is what I agree with, I think.

 

[butchersapron]

Suppression is transcending via negatvity. We were talking about the siutationists (i.e) me and you on another board recently - that's what they meant by suppressio. By 'the realisation and suppression of ***'

 

[gorski]

@ Dill

Innit!

And that is precisely what I advocated, re-phrased, Dill...

No idealism in my post... Rather, very gritty "realism".

Our fate 4 long!

 

[Knotted]

Bad ideas often 'survive' because of their use, structural or otherwise to those in power. I think seperating philosophy off as an elite discourse that the rest of us can only ever observe and comment on to other amateurs actually helps maintain this state of affairs. It makes important things their own exclusive domain. We need to knock down these seperations, to suppress philosophy, to be able to move on. Kill the philosophers and let thought be free man.

Philosophy may be exclusive and it might sound grand but its hardly important. Do any of these supposedly big questions actually matter? Has any philosopher ever said anything of any use, except in criticising other philosophies?

If there is any secret that philosophers are guarding, its the secret of how to stop philosophising in the first place. This would be the crowning achievement of philosophy.

I find the idea of undergraduates studying philosophy as a specialist subject absurd - perhaps even appalling. They come out having either learnt nothing or sounding as if they have joined some sect. I certainly don't envy them - they've just wasted 3 or 4 years of their lives. Philosophy should be restricted to post-graduates who are experienced enough not to crave generalisation and mature enough not to get sucked into a school of thought and, crucially, who have studied something else in order to have something to philosophise about.

 

[butchersapron]

Philosophy may be exclusive and it might sound grand but its hardly important. Do any of these supposedly big questions actually matter? Has any philosopher ever said anything of any use, except in criticising other philosophies?

If there is any secret that philosophers are guarding, its the secret of how to stop philosophising in the first place. This would be the crowning achievement of philosophy.

That's a very good point - even by calling their 'specialisation' important i'm ceding ground to them.

 

[gorski]

Philosophy may be exclusive and it might sound grand but its hardly important. Do any of these supposedly big questions actually matter? Has any philosopher ever said anything of any use, except in criticising other philosophies?

If there is any secret that philosophers are guarding, its the secret of how to stop philosophising in the first place. This would be the crowning achievement of philosophy.

I find the idea of undergraduates studying philosophy as a specialist subject absurd - perhaps even appalling. They come out having either learnt nothing or sounding as if they have joined some sect. I certainly don't envy them - they've just wasted 3 or 4 years of their lives. Philosophy should be restricted to post-graduates who are experienced enough not to crave generalisation and mature enough not to get sucked into a school of thought and, crucially, who have studied something else in order to have something to philosophise about.

You have no idea about anything in Philosophy, which is why you spout all this nonsense.

You should inform yourself about who stands behind various principles and societal/political structures.

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Thatcher etc. - all read Philosophers [not to go way back into history] and were influenced in their thinking and hence actions by them. Hegel, Marx, Schmitt, Hayek etc. - all influential, hence important.

Frankly, you're embarrassing yourself big time...

 

[gorski]

That's a very good point - even by calling their 'specialisation' important i'm ceding ground to them.

Get that chip off your shoulder, it's utterly unbecoming...

Imagine, you might have to learn something from somebody...

Why is it so hard to admit that one has to learn from others and that one might be enriched by it, too? Why is it so difficult for you to give credit where credit is due, namely when someone works on something you show some respect and recognise it?!?

Don't you want respect for yourself? Don't you want to be recognised?

If so: how about doing the same thing to others?

 

[Knotted]

You have no idea about anything in Philosophy, which is why you spout all this nonsense.

You should inform yourself about who stands behind various principles and societal/political structures.

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Thatcher etc. - all read Philosophers [not to go way back into history] and were influenced in their thinking and hence actions by them. Hegel, Marx, Schmitt, Hayek etc. - all influential, hence important.

Frankly, you're embarrassing yourself big time...

You talk about philosophers influencing politicians and to prove the point you mention four political thinkers of which only two were professional philosophers and I suspect that its probably more accurate to say that the Nazis influenced Schmitt rather than the other way round (but I'll happily stand corrected on that one.) So we're left with Hegel influencing Lenin, and I admit that is somewhat interesting. But then Lenin was trying to work out what had gone wrong with Russian Marxism in particular and Social Democracy in general. Hegel's critique of Kant did the trick quite nicely. Don't you find it interesting that philosophers most vital ideas are all negative? Read this and you have understood everything important there is to know about Hegel.

Philosophy can disarm certain confusions. It cannot produce anything except fresh confusions.

Philosophers standing behind politicians and social theorists. Philosophy standing behind ordinary thinking, guiding it perhaps even controling it. Do you really not recognise your own philosophical idealism?

 

[articul8]

Suppression is transcending via negatvity. We were talking about the siutationists (i.e) me and you on another board recently - that's what they meant by suppressio. By 'the realisation and suppression of ***'

Did Debord use the term "suppression"? It's not just a poor translation of aufhebung?

Anyway, I'm all for transcending via negativity, but until that can be expressed through the transformation of the social totality, such pure negativity can best be pursued through philosophy's own immanent self-critique, not by just fascistically stamping on the philosophers.

And you never did explain why my rendering of the SI was "guilty cultural Leninism" :

 

[Santino]

If you believe that philosophers have given us nothing useful then log off the internet, throw your computer away, plus all other inventions made since the 6th century BC, and start to interpret the world through some ancient myths, forsaking such useful tools as maths, geometry and natural sciences.

 

[gorski]

So, Knotted, you concede the point by default?

From Ancient Greece onwards, at least, there were many such instances. The most famous one being Aristotle and Alexander...

Go to Modern England and see Lock and co. provide such insights, too...

The French Revolution - well, try to imagine it without their influence.

Hegel was not only listened to and read by the Left Hegelians and later on Marxists, but also the Prussian state, interestingly enough... When they discovered the "critical heart of it" they put a lot of pressure on the old man to "calm down"... We know how that worked, since we have different versions of his "Philosophy of Right", for instance. Really, you should inform yourself...

A whole epoch/order [Socialism] was first thought of and then some of them jolly activists tried establishing it, unfortunately not exactly caring about the provisos etc.

And on and on and on...

Idealism my foot. Stop talking through your... vanity... To begin with...

 

[Knotted]

If you believe that philosophers have given us nothing useful then log off the internet, throw your computer away, plus all other inventions made since the 6th century BC, and start to interpret the world through some ancient myths, forsaking such useful tools as maths, geometry and natural sciences.

The internal combustion engine makes a distinctive purring/roaring. Without this noise the automobile as it is now would be impossible. Even if a different technology was used, this would still make a noise of some sort. So without the sound of a car there would be no cars. This does not make this noise particularly important. It can be useful for telling whether the car is accelerating or stalling and its worth paying attention to. But that is not to say that the the invention of the automobile is a product of this noise.

 

[Knotted]

Back in the olden days, philosophers used to be polymaths. Perhaps it was Aristotle's polymathery rather than his philosophy that influenced Alexander. Perhaps polymathery lies behind all historical episodes. The Philosophy of Right is a work of philosophy, it is also a work of political, social and legal theory. Is it too surprising that it influenced political thought? Is it perhaps just that the politics of the time shaped its contents?

This and that happen together so 'this is a product of that'. Or is it 'that is a product of this'? Meh.

 

[butchersapron]

Did Debord use the term "suppression"? It's not just a poor translation of aufhebung?

Anyway, I'm all for transcending via negativity, but until that can be expressed through the transformation of the social totality, such pure negativity can best be pursued through philosophy's own immanent self-critique, not by just fascistically stamping on the philosophers.

And you never did explain why my rendering of the SI was "guilty cultural Leninism" :

Don't know if Debord himself used the term - but the connected phrase "realization and suppression of art" (or any other specialisation) appears throughout their works- and it was pretty much always in that specific form, not just a bad translation of aufheben.

But you're still using supression not in the sense that i mean and that the siutationists meant - you're using it simply as common everyday authoritarian suppresion, depsite my post above explaining what i mean.

I'll get back to the other stuff later on the other board.

 

[Knotted]

Idealism my foot. Stop talking through your... vanity... To begin with...

The reason you regard this as vanity is because you think philosophy is of great importance. Its no more important than music. I like it fine and its not irrelevant but it does not change the world.

 

[gorski]

You do concede, then - as you keep avoiding the issues... thanx to your vanity, as ever...