/lit/ - Literature

I agree on German philosophy, disagree on English philosohy. None of the two represents the best philosophy.

>>21065612
you're either an oriental fetishist, someone who hasn't moved on from the greeks yet, or a french schizophrenic pedophile

>>21065622
And you are a simplifier, sir. I deem ancient Greek philosophy, late antiquity philosophy, Muslim philosophy, Renaissance philosophy and a small part of French philosophy as the peaks of all philosophy. Modern and contemporary philosophers can be good philosophers only if they are inspired disciples of any of the foretold traditions. There is no other way, Anglos have tried, Germs have tried, Mutts have tried, and they all ended up producing dangerous abnormities, of no use for the human spirit.

>inb4 ANY kind of sarcastic mockery as a reply
You know I'm right.

>>21065592
Wait, there are actual English philosophers? Who are they?

>>21065651
your opinions don't warrant anything but sarcastic mockery

>>21065656
You can't help but suck Kant's and Hegel's dick because "woah, huge book, hard writing, woah". Sad.

>>21065659
you ascribe to philosophies that deny the existence of scientific truths and fail to account for the success of science or the scientific revolution, and which fail to connect their conclusions with any pragmatic action in the world.

nobody believes Anaxagoras's theories of Astronomy when we have Einstein's relativity, but people find no problem with believing in ancient superstition as long as it is under the veil of philosophy, even though philosophy too has advanced.

nobody denies that modern philosophy is impossible without ancient philosophy, but actually adhering to the systems of people who are a thousand years behind the modern world is absurd. people on this board are literally brainwashed by /pol/ memes of science is le bad to the point that they a priori dismiss any knowledge we might have gained because of the scientific method. this incapacitates people like you from constructing any philosophy that provides a metaphysical interpretation of science, not only to ground science but to indicate practical ways to improve science.

>>21065655
Locke and Hobbes

>>21065592
>bada boop, bada beep boop, bada bada boop, bada boop, bada bing bong, bing bong bing, bing bong, bing bong boop, bada bing, bada bing bada bong, bada, bada bing bong, bada bong, bada boop, bada beep boop beep bada bong, bada boop bong bada bing, bada boop
Why do autists write like this? Why are you adding so many excruciating pauses to your sentence? Just let it flow

>>21065655
let me expand that to anglo philosophers

Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, John Stuart Mill, William James, CS Peirce, Bentham, Whitehead,

>>21065723
why aren't they as popular as the german ones if they are better? I only recognise 3-4 names from here

>>21065731
Because academics need something they can study and the anglos write with too much clarity. Academics are obsessed with Hegel, German Phenomenology (even though Peirce came up with phenomenology first) and Nietzsche.

Anglos provide solutions and want pragmatic action. Germans want autistic obsession obscurantism and philosophy for philosophy’s sake.

>>21065751
interesting

>>21065731
Why do you think popularity is an indicator of quality?

>>21065612
>I agree on German philosophy
Why? It's been refuted.

>>21065679
I'm glad you replied seriously.

So much confusion, so much ordinariness of thinking. I don't even know where to start, but, again, I'm glad you posted that.

First of all, scientific truths do not make philosophy. There were scientific truths in antiquity, just like there are scientific truths today. Some of them are stable, some of them changed and keep changing, but none of them constitutes the essence of philosophy. Therefore, giving science a primary importance, as you did, means completely missing the point of the subject that we're dealing with.

They fail to account for the success of science, you say. But science, dear interlocutor, is a description of the physical world, which (laterally) often results in concrete practical inventions (technology). Philosophy isn't either a description of the physical world, nor it sets the goal of concrete results. So why "accounting for the success of science" should be important for philosophy? The scientific revolution does not scratch the surface of philosophy even in the slightest.

You say that philosophy too has advanced. True, and the only real advancements came from philosophers whose forma mentis was the same as that of the ancient philosophers. When Nietzsche posites the concept of Ubermensch, he's thinking in the same way as a Marcus Aurelius thought. When Heidegger rebuilds from zero a viable ontology, he's exploring reality in the same manner as Plato and Aristotle did. When Schopenhauer, Leopardi, Weininger, Michelstaedter, Cioran remind us that life is something else than that which science and materialistic progress make it seem to be, they are reasoning in the exact same way as Plotinus or the Church fathers did. And when Severino dialogues with scientists, technocrats, politicians, etc, alluding to the omnipresent underlying taboo subject of the ultimate goal and the ultimate sense of what we do, he's crypto-fencing them in the same small portion of the debatable reality that the opponents of Socrates were assigned.

Philosophy never changes. There is only good philosophy and poor philosophy, and it seems like you read too much of the latter.

>>21065836
Metaphysics is part of philosophy, metaphysics is the science of what is real. If you segregate philosophy from science, you prevent philosophy from providing a full account of reality. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, it is a species of philosophy. Science constitutes a kind of knowledge. If you segregate philosophy from science, you prevent a coherent epistemology.

Your entire ideology rests on a platonic anti-realism (denying that the sensible world shares in reality) and a cartesian dualism (denying that mind is connected to the physical world).

Anything that doesn’t include a full account of everything in reality is incoherent. You cannot just ignore entire facets of reality.

Kant’s philosophy is incoherent because he shows that mind is in a way all there is, but leaves a mindless thing in itself, which preserves cartesian dualism, yet the thing in itself is based on mind. This shows that any kind of anti-realism or anything that denies any part of reality totally blocks of our knowledge of reality and says that we can’t know anything. You have to progress beyond the failures of old philosophy to see that the reality you live in as a human animal is real and that you are connected to the entire world and don’t exist in isolation from any part of it, and to see that once you stop denying parts of reality the whole of reality is open to you and you can gain knowledge about everything.

>>21065717
I like it

>>21065883
>Your entire ideology rests on a platonic anti-realism (denying that the sensible world shares in reality) and a cartesian dualism (denying that mind is connected to the physical world).
>Anything that doesn’t include a full account of everything in reality is incoherent. You cannot just ignore entire facets of reality.
I'm not doing any of that. You like to put arbitrary words in the mouth of your interlocutors.

If I really wanted to express my philosophy on a Korean anonymous imageboard, I would make the effort to reply to you, but it's almost 3 AM in Europe and I don't want to waste my energies. You can keep believing anglo philosophy is the best there is, but my opinion stands that in order to be a great philosopher you must have the forma mentis of ancient philosophers, among which I include Muslim philosophers, Christian philosophers and Renaissance philosophers. Chasing science and aping its methods because of an inferiority complex (precisely what anglo philosophers do, feeling better than American ones, the only benchmark they have since most anglos are monolingual handicaps, and therefore feeling self-assured to be better than circus animals) is not philosophy. Einstein is important, but he doesn't even scratch the reason why philosophy exists, which is not to describe the physical world, but to give interpretations of the whole reality as seen by Man.

You can reply with the certainty to be the winner, because you will have the last word, and that's all that matters on an internet forum.

>>21065787
This.

>>21065787
>>21065973
Reading comprehension: -1/10

>>21065679
Friend, I really love Kant, with all his autistic precision and care for scientific rigour befitting of a genuine Enlightenment partisan, but what you said is just as terribly narrow as this post: >>21065651.
You have a very good point, but the other poster is also right. Your appeal to science miss the point of its operations within particular epistemological premisses, epistemological questions will forever be relevant, and there is no end to controversy, that is why we see subjects recurring again and again throughout the history of philosophy. I condemn >>21065836 saying that for example ''Nietzsche posites the concept of Ubermensch, he's thinking in the same way as a Marcus Aurelius thought'' and ''When Schopenhauer, Leopardi, Weininger, Michelstaedter, Cioran remind us that life is something else than that which science and materialistic progress make it seem to be, they are reasoning in the exact same way as Plotinus or the Church fathers did'' (perhaps it being true concerning Schopenhauer), these are such idiotic simplifications, such a crass stupidity that is totally blind to subtleties and features that are not subtle at all, ignores the historical cultural impact each of these people suffered and which we suffer.
Like Hume, of whom I suppose you are fond, says that there is as if it were two realms we live in, the realm of philosophy, of reason and the realm of nature, of life; we don't need to confine ourselves to either of these, this is what is happening today with the kind of utilitarian, technocratic morals you could be in danger of accepting, and on the other hand with simplifiers that refuse any exchange. We need a Kant, but we also need a Hamann.

>>21066161
What a load of useless mumbo jumbo retardation

>>21065679
>>21066020

>>21065622
They're not really schizophrenics; they merely suffer from a form of hypergraphia.

>>21065679
>literally goes on a I fucking love science rant
Jesus you people are parodies of yourselves

>>21065592
Peirce is ultimately a pseud but I agree with him there. The English are not that much better than the Germans but still superior enough to be worth spending a little bit of time on.

>>21065612
FPBP

>>21065883
There is no Cartesian dualism in ancient philosophy. It only seems that way to you because you are so heavily rooted in modern philosophy that you're incapable of expanding your intellectual horizons in order to understand the unity of immaterial and material. You claim to have a complete view of reality and yet you entirely exclude the immaterial therefrom. The Ancient philosophers are, to date, the only ones with a coherent account of reality which does not exclude either of the two spheres of existence. Plato is not an anti-realist, only in your own modernistic fictional world is that the case. Plato is a hierarchical realist, which is the only valid account of this world, which excludes nothing and incorporates everything in a hierarchical whole. Scientific knowledge is not unreal, it is simply nowhere near as important as many claim it to be; for a philosopher to focus on scientific knowledge would be like for a ship's captain to spend his entire career trying to craft the perfect sail for his ship.

In any case, look up the divided line, an extremely trivial part of Plato's philosophy found in Politeia, then come back and say that material science is excluded from philosophy.

>Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? ... I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
>Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

Read Hume

>>21066582
>Scientific knowledge is not unreal, it is simply nowhere near as important as many claim it to be
I disagree with this, scientific understanding beginning with geology being able to date the world to billions rather than thousands of years has profoundly shaped philosophical development. As you said the ancients were the only ones to produce a full account of reality, beginning with its inception, its structure and its place in the hierarchy of existence. This was specifically possible to them because they existed outside the constraints of scientific knowledge, and we as modern beings who are aware of the proven and factual knowledge of material reality are subservient to this knowledge when applying it to our understanding of existence to it. It is impossible to escape this escape this constraint, and it has and will continue to shape philosophy forever.

>>21066672
>I disagree with this
That's fine, it just means you're not a philosopher.
>This was specifically possible to them because they existed outside the constraints of scientific knowledge
No, they were above the constraints of scientific knowledge. See the divided line, it's time for you to do some reading before you continue to blather about topics you know little about.
>who are aware of the proven and factual knowledge of material reality
We don't have proven or factual knowledge of material reality. There are no scientists who would make claims as bold as this, only mathematicians.

>>21066672
>It is impossible to escape this escape this constraint,
By the way, this is your own attempt to limit reality, exactly what you were accusing the imaginary "Cartesian dualists" of doing before, just in the opposite direction. Scientific induction is exactly one, (1), method of obtaining conjectural knowledge, not even absolute knowledge at that (ie it is still dependent on a higher, more absolute knowledge to even have provisional validity), which means that to limit reality to this sphere is to exclude higher spheres of reality which you are purposefully closing your eyes to... Exactly what you were accusing the "dualists" of doing previously.

>>21066687
>>21066695
I'm not the same anon just so you know
>No, they were above the constraints of scientific knowledge. See the divided line, it's time for you to do some reading before you continue to blather about topics you know little about.
I have a masters degree in philosophy in which I focused on Neoplatonism. I'm using saying this to shut you down or demonstrate that I am smarter (I am not), I'm merely saying that I have read a decent amount around this topic.
>We don't have proven or factual knowledge of material reality. There are no scientists who would make claims as bold as this, only mathematicians.
So are you suggesting that gravity is simply a theory and that the world is not round and that water does not boil at 100c and so on? All three of these examples are proven scientific facts that very few disagree on.

Also you did not really provide any counter points to what I said. It is true that Plato was unconstrained by scientific knowledge and that his theories which in many cases influenced by the presocratics did provide a grander understanding of existence than those which emerged in later centuries. I believe that this interplay is an important factor when reading Plato.

>>21066732
>I'm merely saying that I have read a decent amount around this topic.
To say that the discovery of geologic timespans had a significant influence on philosophy proper (unless we are erroneously lumping scientific theories like Darwinism under "philosophy", which would be a major mistake) either betrays ignorance or a totally different understanding of what philosophy is or means. Not to mention, there were plenty even in Aristotle's time who had no trouble believing the Earth was very ancient, even Aristotle admits the likelihood of humanity being very ancient.
>So are you suggesting that gravity is simply a theory and that the world is not round and that water does not boil at 100c and so on?
All of these statements rely on abstract universals which simply do not have truth values as such. Consequently there is no manner of proving any of these statement true or false, strictly speaking. This is what the other anon likely meant when he was referring to anti-realism, with the caveat that it is not anti-realism, it is simply the separation of different degrees of reality. I can provisionally admit that the world appears roughly like a sphere without claiming that it is factual or proven that it is actually a sphere, which is a mathematical object, which, in order to perfectly represent itself, must have an infinite diameter, something which cannot exist in a world defined by limitations. The point which all of this makes is that scientific knowledge as such is a limiting condition and is not absolute, which means that it is possible, and absolutely necessary, for philosophers to ascend over it, to continue their ascent if they want to get at what is essential, and look down upon it as the captain would look at his sail, in relation to his rudder, in relation to his crew, to his supplies, and so on.
> and that his theories which in many cases influenced by the presocratics did provide a grander understanding of existence than those which emerged in later centuries. I believe that this interplay is an important factor when reading Plato.
Take a brief read of around the middle of Phaedo, it is part of the section in which Socrates critiques material sciences as part of his explanation of principles. The other anon posted a critique of Anaxagoras, one from memory very similar to the critique Plato made of him in this very same dialogue. A criticism of Anaxagoras's misattribution of causes and principles to the material domain, where they absolutely do not belong. The example he gives is explaining the human body in terms of its material composition and the action of the muscles and bones upon the movement of the body, as opposed to more substantial reasons for the movement, which are more proximate to the ultimate cause, and also more certainly knowable, as opposed to material knowledge which is not only possibly wrong or misinterpreted, but also less explanatory (possibly for the same reasons).

Does anybody have an opinion on "Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self" by Phillip Cary?

I don't have enough of a background in the Greeks to assess the strength of his interesting but not entirely persuasive argument.

>>21065592
Basically Continental vs Analytic.

>>21066878
I haven't read that particular book, but in general I have noticed that Augustine appears as one of the first philosophical "existentialists", mainly based on the way that Confessions is written and how obvious it is that the personal tribulations in his life contributed to his philosophical views and tendencies towards Manicheanism and later Christianity. I have read many Greeks but not all of them, from what I've been able to tell he does appear unique in that sense. Plotinus and Proclus both have poetic turns for instane, but neither of them focus on inwardness and 'sentimentality' (for lack of a better term) in the way that Augustine does.

>>21066582
Dualism predates the ancients in cosmology