What is the endgame? Understanding self and the world? Has it helped you in your life in any way?How do you decide who to read after the obvious candidates, like maybe the Greeks? Is there a point where you can definitely say, before this philosophy was about real knowledge, after this it's been all logic chopping and academic fart sniffing and 'umm akshuallys' by 'philosophers' who just want papers in their name? I want to into philosophy but the sheer volume of philosophy there makes me question whether I can really pick and choose and absorb the good parts of it and whether it is all worth it in the end.
>>25164183> Why do you philosophy?Ich kann nicht anders
>>25164231bet you dont even speak jerman
>>25164183>What is the endgame?--> to unravel the truth about reality>Understanding self and the world?--> pretty much yes>Has it helped you in your life in any way?--> I studied it and now have good master degree>How do you decide who. to read after the. obvious candidates, like. maybe the greeks?--> well you pick the most intelligent ones... after the greeks you go straight to the empiricists and rationalists and then end it all with kant>Is there a point where you can definitely say, before this philosophy was about real knowledge, after this it's been all logic chopping and academic fart sniffing and 'umm akshuallys' by 'philosophers' who just want papers in their name?--> Yes... Immanuel Kant
>>25164183To give men unlimited vaginal access so birthrates go up.
>>25164482Wittgenstein as a bonus.
assume everyone's a chatbot here.
>>25164183>What is the endgame?Exploring the limits of reasoning.>Has it helped you in your life in any way?Massively. Nihilism ejected depression from my life when I was 25 or so.>How do you decide who to readI told the librarian at my local library how I felt about the world, and she pointed me to literature that was relevant.>Is there a point where you can definitely say... fart sniffing and 'umm akshuallys'No. Those semantics and detail debates are necessary to get to the next level of understanding. I don't get into it myself, but I hold no illusions that such "fart sniffing" must have been a huge part of the past too.>I want to into philosophyNo, what you want is the "right answer" by picking the right literature, and that is not something you can do. There is no consensus on what is and what is not. You're better off trying to answer specific questions.
>>25164183What the hell else am I gonna do
>>25164599Shit
>>25164183>What is the endgameto do the will of the Father
>>25164629It is right
>>25164629We should be theologians rather than philosophers then: to study God's Logic (The Logos).
to become less discombobulated.
>>25164183I figure, I'm here, in reality, a living human being.Wow, that's crazy.So it's interesting exploring what's it and things about it are all about y'know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gT68xeDMM
>>25165412/thread
>>25164231Kleiner Deutsch goy
>>25167894Da fuck
>>25167894Just because you do it on purpose not-anon, doesn't mean it still isn't absolute garbage
>>25164183I read philosophy because, no bullshit, it helps me appreciate sci fi more
>>25168618laughed hard
>>25164183>Why do you philosophy?Don't worry about that.
>>25168644>driving in car during day>people can see you through the windshield>they know you aren't what you seem
>>25168626Bro, Plato's Cave? With the idea of reality being hidden behind layers of truth that some nefarious 'others' control? One of the oldest sci fi allegories ever made.
>>25168662No, I'm totally with you. I laughed because of how well it fitI've always thought philosophers were just treating life like they were sperging out to Star Trek. Especially during that 1600-1700s zone where all they could do was talk like they had their wires crossed -- "And thinking I thought means that throughout the thinking process I was sure that the thought itself was no longer a thought, but instead the thinking thing."I've always cried hard at it
>>25168667my nigga
>>25168677
I just like understanding things.
>>25164482>Just skip from Aristotle to Descartes.This has been a disaster for philosophy, and has also led to consistent misreadings of Plato and Aristotle themselves.
>>25168618> I drink wine because it helps me appreciate water more
>>25168778see>>25168667>>25168662
>>25164183Everything you can possibly think or do is somehow related to philosophy
>>25168778
>>25168702This. But Descartes is a problem and so too Ockham.Its over
>>25168794>>25168702Trad retards, they all run off the same script. To the OP it’s simply fun, good philosophy has you thinking in ways you could not have imagined before.
>>25168996>Reading any philosophy outside two Greeks and then begining with the Enlightenment is being a "Trad Tard.">No, you don't need to understand how the antique Greeks and Latins read Plato and Aristotle, or that they are important precisely because of their schools and millennia long commentary tradition; nope, just read them through modern categories and get readings like "Plato's main point in the Republic is to be ironic, promote skepticism, and fight totalitarian ideology, a problem that wouldn't dominate politics for millennia..."One doesn't need to be a trad to think the modern abandonment of almost all forms of pedagogical praxis is, if not bad, then at least consequential. Hadot is not a trad, but he makes an excellent point that ancient (and medieval, and most Eastern thought) is a way of life embedded in communities of praxis and ascetical exercises (in part flowing from the dominance of virtue epistemology, which in part flows from the denial of the hegemonic modern assumption that human reason is wholly discursive). That is, it is ordered to the transformation of a person, and this is as true for Neo-Confucian self-cultivation as it is for Sufi and Byzantine askesis, or Stoic spiritual exercises. That's a big, meaningful difference, and it is worth understanding if only because it will show you what virtually all moderns (even most "reads") share in common vis-á-vis de facto assumptions about pedagogy. This is why the West's robust praxis tradition has been essentially entirely abandoned (outside the monestaries and religious contexts), which is also why people gravitate towards Eastern philosophy so much. It's extremely relevant to what sort of philosophy gets done, and the daily lives and settings philosophers live in is an underappreciated gigantic shift that occurs in the Late Middle Ages, accelerating in the Enlightenment as they essentially all start to live in highly beurocratic, technological urban landscapes instead of, as in the past, largely as monks and hermits (the hermit being very common the East too).>>25164183On this point, read Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life. It's on Google.
>>25169066> Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of LifeLooks interesting, thanks
>>25164183i dont do shit because it helps me but because i want to do it
>>25164183To prepare for death, as per Socrates. Any other answer is pedantic.
>>25164183philosophy lets you engage with the way billions of western men were educated for thousands of years and allows you to lay claim to their intellectual heritage
>>25169231It is, although it leaves something to be desired because it gives a rather deflated view of how praxis was grounded in terms of metaphysics, anthropology, and epistemology. He tends to focus on the "thinner" traditions, particularly the Epicureans and more strictly therapeutic Stoics. It would be nice if he had focused a bit more on the Platonists and Christians, who have a more developed tradition of praxis and justification of it. Actually, he seems to err by speaking to Christian praxis as just a replication of Platonist and Stoic praxis. This is wildly inaccurate, and only plausible because they borrow the same terminology. The difference in degree in their askesis is enough to be a difference in kind (from private morning walks to literally decades living in caves as hermits for many key figures).Which isn't to say they aren't similar in some ways. The Sayings even credit to the philosophers (all Platonists by this point) the same practices, except for the ability to achieve nepsis (watchfulness over thoughts, similar to mindfulness in Zen) and hesychasm, total stillness of thought.
I find it fun & I enjoy it
>>25169066> One doesn't need to be a trad to think the modern abandonment of almost all forms of pedagogical praxis is, if not bad, then at least consequentialThis is simply false. Most “modern” philosophers are actually quite concerned with how you should live. You guys think modern (anything in the last 500 years) philosophy is just Hume because you don’t read any of it. Also, Aquinas writes explicitly about how the study of virtue is not the same as living virtuously, and that philosophy is a science, like math. Of course he did, he was an Aristotelian. The view you think is wrong, that philosophy is a science, is pure Aristotle. He talks about this in NE (do you know what Sophia means in Aristotle? Apparently not), also in Meta 1. This is what’s so sad, you make philosophy a new front in the American culture wars rather than studying. You make sweeping statements about dozens of noteworthy thinkers you simply have not read so you can hang onto this retarded morality story. The true divide in western philosophy isn’t premodern vs modern, it’s Plato vs Aristotle and it’s still working itself out to this day. I’ll respond more in a bit.
>>25170167(Continuing)The issue isn’t “should philosophers live well or not?” Everyone should live well. It’s this - is philosophy a science or is it something else, like spirituality? The “monks” you vaguely reference were perfectly aware that metaphysics and all the rest of philosophy were sciences, intellectual disciplines, this is really a commonplace. You can understand the science of ethics well and still be a bad person (Aquinas says this too, as I recall). On the other hand, someone with no knowledge of philosophy can be highly virtuous. The danger in conflating philosophy and “praxis” in the way you people do is that you really subsume philosophy under the American trad revival and say ignorant things as a consequence. “Kierkegaard? Ehhh wasn’t he a Lutheran and heavily influenced by the idealists? No no I’d better stick with ‘the monks’ where it’s safe.” Philosophy is a great big beautiful dialectic spanning thousands of years and you guys want to hold it as a dogmatism. This is why you try to paper over differences (“Aquinas is the main guy, Scotus and Occam were le bad; also, Plato and Aristotle are actually in harmony” etc). Seriously, modern philosophy is not inherently hostile to ancient or medieval philosophy, many modern philosophers engage intensely and sympathetically with the same guys you like to read. But I realize you’ve bought this line whole - Gerson, Perl, Hadot, Milbank, the same five or six secondaries you people cite over and over again. Modern philosophy as a whole does not reject ancient philosophy, it asks different questions, and finds itself circling ancient philosophy anyway, while also spiraling out from it. You have this fantasy in your head of based, bearded monks fasting rigorously while writing commentaries on the Organon. It is a fantasy, most monks were not all that virtuous, this is something the “good” monks fret about all the time, even as far back as Augustine. Porphyry says in his vita Plotini that many philosophy teachers would diddle their students (not Plotinus ofc, he really was something like a saint). I can think of many examples of thinkers who were not particularly virtuous but still did good work, including in the Middle Ages. Avicenna was a womanizer and drinker, Michael Scot dabbled in sorcery, Abelard, etc. I don’t just feel strongly but know that philosophy is about knowing and people who deny this are even greater enemies to philosophy than the men who ripped the pi-theta cloak to shreds in Boethius. For all the pharisaical piety it is a descent into the irrational because it shuts down thinking. Western philosophy is about rational inquiry, not your homosexual daydreams. Deal with it.
>>25170233Also, I can already predict the tactics you will take in response to this post, I’ve had this same argument at least a dozen times here. “(X) says virtue is good! He says it’s the most important thing!” Right, so do many modern philosophers. But reading philosophy will not make you virtuous, it’s a scientific investigation of what virtue is, and even this is usually subordinate to metaphysics. “But the ancient philosophers were mystics!” Some were, likely including Aristotle. But Christianity destroyed this pagan idea of mysticism as the province of an intellectual elite. Thinking about ontology won’t bring you to mystical union, mysticism and philosophy are two different things. The third tactic is to simply rip quotes out of context like a flailing retard but I can’t help that. Sophia is the episteme of ousia, simple as. If you want to learn about episteme read picrel.
>>25169066>2026>starting sentence with One doesn't>being this autistic>expecting to influence anyone at all
>>25164183my brain needs something to do, otherwise it will eat itself or give me cancerhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Af-k9sTAYEQ
>>25170345>>25170233>>25170167Great posts, but you're engaging with someone who is fundamentally a religion-oriented retard, who's aesthetic criteria for inclusion on his side are anti-modernity and deep christfag faith.
>>25164183I started with greeks in high school as a subject matter, then moved to formal logic as a subset of philosophy for math mainly. Then found buddhist philosophy, but only as passing interest from a westerner pov. Years later, got interested in descarte/kant/hume as a matter of debate about causality/free will with friends. Then somehow found my way towards Buddhist philosophy when I took to look at the foundation of causality, then into self hood and identity, then into consciousness then back into hegel, then back into buddhist philosophy and then into husserl, then into buddhist philosophy, then back into western side with chamers and qualia then back into buddhist philosophy I truly think the end game is Buddhist philosophy, it seems to cover all the important aspects of philosophy that is deeply intertwined. I didnt see that right away as I was coming from a western philosophy side of things and I came into the scene in bits/pieces. Chewing and tacking one problem in philosophy at a time and then letting it lead me to the next chained problem.
>>25168702My philosophy teacher did this. His excuse? Augustine was more theology than philosophy.
