/lit/ - Literature

I wouldn't say it like that. Of course, most philosophy is about how to make sense of and the usually also about how to act in the world. Some of that reasoning turns collectivist and global (e.g. the political ambitions of Marx, or the imperatives of Kant) and others are more individualistic. They describe frameworks, and for someone in distress, those can be "self-help" literature. In that sense, it's a derived aspect of philosophy.

>>11261171
Not necessarily. Reading any decent pessimist can give you a solid theoretical framework to justify killing yourself.

Philosophy is about seeking the truth. In doing so it causes a lot of suffering for the person when they discover certain things. That's why a lot of philosophy is also about dealing with the negative aspects of discovering certain truths which may come across as self-helpy.

To the shallow, all things are shallow.

Continental philosophy usually is. Analytical is not, on the contrary.

>>11261171
no

>>11261171
You want to say existentialism, not philosophy. I wouldn't put Heidegger in that list, and Socrates never wrote a book. Camus, Nietzsche, you can make the case, but it's a pretty weak case. Self help just doesn't have the intellectual rigor to compete with philosophy.

>>11261188
good poast

>>11261171
No not in the least, if that’s what you got from it then you’re only looking at ethics which is one of the lesser concerns of philosphical inquiry, metaphysics, specifically causality and ontology, and epistemology are the most important questions for philosophy. They’re still extremely important and that’s why most philosopher’s of science have burrowed into information theory, mathematical logic and the neuroscience+CS complex of interdisciplinary studies as its still not clear what relationship consciousness has to the CNS or how memory-cognition-volition-attention-emotion interact or what their physical correlates mean for phenomenal experience or vice-versa

The older pre-biologicism philosophy is doing its absolute best to exhaust linguistic examinations of mind and phenomenal examinations of mind and culture, and in many places acts as prelude to or prophecies later developments in 21st century information theory, neuroscience, scientific ontology. some things like universals have been set aside and nouemena have been reduced to toys for platonic realists to fawn over. Its a really intermediary state between navel gazing and profound investigation into reality that we’ve been left with. But, they were largely necessary for framint and orienting scientific examinations of culture and mind though much of their work is now being abandoned as alchemy was and as most language oriented “fields of study” will be; as we now know that consciousness does not accurately diagram reality and humans are not a measure of the validity or scope/meaning of objects or processes in nature. You can ignore what Schopenhauer said about life or what Socrates said about well constituted people, its just speculation that’s almost certainly wrong. However much of it is still being galvanized and incorporated into more mature conceptions of living systems and mind. Kant is still referenced in interdisciplinary work as is Nietzsche and the phenomenalists, and the continentals will probably be allowed a recapitulation and will he stripped for their parts, something Land has already done. Modern phil suffers from most of the interesting questions being left to physicists and information theorists, and the best ideas being untestable and irrelevant to humans. This is why sci-fi autism is so common in analytic circles, its just a way of generating busy work and trying to prevent the whole of phenomenal existence being reduced to quantitative values and processes which can be modeled computationaly which im sure is disconcerting when you stake your identity on a dead field, which all of the social sciences will be quite soon; along with law and english.

>>11261171
i dont think so. Self help books are written to make the reader feel better about themselves by following the framework the book gives. It can and usually do contain philosophical aspects while it explains the framework, but thats all.

>>11262095
meaningless drivel t. post

>>11261171
Are most self-help books just mass appealing optimistic philosophy?

If you're a plebeian then yes

>>11263520
Yes

>>11262016
on the other hand, you could add sartre to that list and make a relatively good case for it

>>11261188
p much

>>11261171
It's not even self-help. More like overly sophisticated self-destruction mechanisms.

>>11262000
Analytic hits dead ends and then falls back on similar conclusions to continental half the time, the only real difference is that their stem larping selects for a different category of pseuds.

>>11263520
Most self-help is a coping mechanism to deal with capitalism, usually blaming individuals for everything and telling them to pull themselves up by their boot straps. "You can do anything!!!" is usually combined with "Everything is your fault". Doesn't sound optimistic to me.