There was no need to throw shade at philosophy majors đ and for what?
Youâll regret that meanness. Perhaps you, too, lack the understanding of love and wisdom, Sir.
Discussion
Calling this the âessence of all philosophyâ is his way of saying that true philosophical inquiry doesnât offer escape from regretâit teaches us how to live with it. Itâs a call to embrace the absurdity of life with eyes wide open, to choose anyway, and to find meaning not in perfection, but in commitment.
Philosophers coming to philosophy's defense like...
đ if there was a cage match between a philosopher vs a theologian, who would you pay to see?
Oh ho ho hooooo what an EXCELLENT thought experiment!!!!
I think I would need to do a doubles match. Representing the theologians would be both Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas; representing the philosophers would be Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre.
I think their internal disagreements would provide an even more dynamic cage match, with shit talking both between teams and within teams!
There would need to be maybe some supernatural powers granted because I can't imagine any of them would have the muscle to properly chair shot someone. Maybe have a panel of bros and if they're sufficiently mind -blown by whatever witticism then they get called into the ring to fight by proxy pokemon style?
I choose you, TKE philosophy major super senior with the Amazon nunchucks!!!! Fight on behalf of existentialism!!!
Too true, I have had trouble being charitable recently, not sure why. Will work on it.
The shade wasn't, however, intended for philosophy majors, philosophy is the mother of the sciences, it was intended for modern philosophy.
My main beef with modern philosophy is that it does not produce any universally applicable knowledge. Old philosophy could make progress because it was grounded in theology. Maybe that was a foolish basis, maybe it wasn't, but there were at least universally accepted axioms that could lead to universally accepted conclusions.
Modern philosophy has, rightly, pointed out that the old axioms are grounded in faith and do not constitute a proof. In fact with Godel we now know that there can be no proof. This has lead subsequent philosophy to be a mess of ungrounded assertions where every interpretation is valid as long as your personal experience validates it.
But it could be so much more. Mathematics has not suffered the same fate even though it has the exact same problem. It soldiers on by accepting that the axioms it can't prove are none-the-less valid. Thus we have useful and rigourous tools that allow us great power over reality.
Philosophy could do the same thing, but it doesn't because logical deduction in philosophy makes claims about how a person aught to behave and no one wants to be told how they aught to behave.
Logical deduction is maybe a philosophy, but philosophy isnât all about logical deduction. All thumbs are fingers but not all fingers are thumbs.
I feel like itâs theology that makes more ought statements than philosophy. But I need ai to fact check that!
Microsoft:
âTheologians generally make more âoughtâ statements, because their work often begins with a divinely grounded moral order. If God commands it, then one ought to do it. Whether in Christian ethics, Islamic jurisprudence, or Buddhist precepts, there's usually a prescriptive coreârules for how to live, pray, treat others, and shape society.
Philosophers, especially those in the analytic or existential traditions, are often more hesitant. They wrestle with whether âoughtâ can even be derived from âisâ (thank you, David Hume). Moral philosophers like Kant or Mill build rational systems of duty or utilityâbut even they face ongoing critique. Many modern philosophers analyze why we make ought-claims, rather than simply what they should be.
So while theologians often start with a foundation that permits confident moral guidance, philosophers tend to earn their oughts by constructing elaborate argumentsâor questioning the very nature of obligation itself.â
This is precisely my point. Since the advent of modern philosophy it no longer has the power to inform us what we aught to do. If it cannot do that then it is useless. What is wisdom other than a knowledge of, or the ability to discern, a correct course of action in a given situation?
This is why we call those with experience, wise. They know through painful memory, what actions will lead to success and which to failure. If they had those painful experiences but continued to act in a way that brings failure we call them foolish instead. Thus wisdom is knowledge leading to right action.
I would contend that the failure to beat Religion at discovering aughts is a failure in the absolute. It is plainly not through lack of effort, it must, therefore be lack of will. Modern philosophy does not love wisdom because it does not love right action.
âThe fact that philosophy no longer issues commandments like religion doesnât mean it has failedâit means it has matured.â
Rather than offering unquestioned oughts, modern philosophy often seeks to expose the assumptions behind them. Thinkers like Michel Foucault or Judith Butler donât tell us what to doâthey ask why we believe what we do, and who benefits from those beliefs. Thatâs not moral cowardiceâitâs moral vigilance.
So while religion may offer clearer moral directives, modern philosophy offers tools for navigating pluralismâa world where competing values collide and no single authority reigns. In that sense, it doesnât abandon wisdom; it redefines it as the courage to think without guarantees.
Hannah Arendt:
âPhilosophy doesnât tell us what to doâit helps us become the kind of people who can think for themselves when there is no script.â
She believed the danger isnât the absence of moral clarity, but the seduction of ideological certainty. In that sense, the philosopher who refuses to hand out prescriptions may be doing something more ethical than the one who does.
Voltaire:
âUncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.â
This offers a simplistic view of moral certainty in order to make moral relativism seem wise.
Saying that philosophy has "matured" is an ungrounded value assertion.
I gave a very simple definition of wisdom that allows us to gauge philosophical success. Does it provide the tools a person needs to know how to act?
All of the above quotes deride unquestioning moral certainty, but that is a willful strawman. No one ever said philosophy needed to provide unquestioned aughts anymore than we expect mathematics to provide unquestioned answers. What we expect instead is the ability to ask any question and arrive at a correct answer.
In math we don't make a list of every possible answer, we develop a system where answers can be derived.
So when I say modern philosophy fails to tell us what we aught to do, I mean that it fails to give us any tools to arrive at what we aught to do, in a given situation, through a rational process.
What it does instead is give us tools to do precisely what we want and feel smug about it at the same time.
The quotes you listed all assert that they are doing something new in allowing people to think for themselves as if previous philosophy wasn't precisely a tool to do that. That is pure foolishness. What they didn't like was that real tools lead to real answers.
Did philosophy have problems? Yes it did. But the problems were problems of rigor. They needed shoring up not abandonment. We live in a post-certianty world, but if math can survive it, so can philosophy. What is required isn't ideological certainty, that is a strawman, it is moral courage.
Sounds like we agree đ there is no certainty. God is dead.
Lol, yes and absolutely not. There is no certainty absent assumptions, but there is certainty within a given framework of axioms.
All we have been able to show is that belief, in something, is necessary. It can be that our memories are our own, or that formal logic gives valid results, or that God exists. But without faith in some axioms we cannot reason.
The lack of certainty can mean that we are trying to make sense of chaos or it can mean that faith is as fundamental as God said it is.
I could accept the former premise, but it is uninteresting, my coming and going as an accident of a chaotic interpretation of random states would be meaningless. Sure I could assign it my own meaning to feel better about existence but that too would be meaningless.
Maybe that is exactly what I am doing in accepting the latter premise. Maybe following Christ is as ephemeral and arbitrary as stacking sats or making shoes for orphans. Just another way to assign meaning to a temporary ordered structure in the ether.
If that is the case it is no worse that any other interpretation. If instead it is true... Then a gamble well made.
lol I lost you probably two posts ago. But were you trying to tell me because something is uninteresting to you, therefore it must be false?
Get the fuck outa here!!!!
No. Not what I said. But if you lost me two posts ago, I might as well leave. Another time perhaps.
I think you are equating faith to only mean faith in god. And maybe even a specific god. To me, that sounds like less meaning, not more.
I specifically did not. I mentioned other types of faith. Like faith that our memories are our own. Faith in God is only one way to build a set of axioms, but whatever your set of axioms, you have to have faith in it or you cannot make use of it.
Then we have nothing to disagree on. Are you suggesting I lack faith? Or philosophers lack faith? Or lack a set of axioms?
None of the above. I assert that philosophy has failed to produced a concrete methodology for discerning truth. If axioms exist and are accepted then we should have access to rigorous tools to answer philosophical questions. We should be able to make wise choices. But near as I can tell (correct me if I am wrong) modern philosophy's only claim is that you cannot make moral claims. You might find a system that can guide your personal decisions but not one that can be used to instruct someone else.
You can't build a functional society that way.
Again I may be way off base. I lost interest in modern philosophy after Kant and Hume. I don't even disagree with them. Their critique was correct. But all we had to do to fix it was to agree on some axioms and then continue. We haven't done that near as I can tell.
Philosophyâs only claim is: think.
Modern philosophy's only claim.
Imagine telling an aspiring plumber "work" or repeating the injunction to think to an engineer.
You must be able to tell the plumber how to work and the engineer how to think.
All I see from current schools of thought is how to sound smart without accomplishing anything. The emperor has no clothes! Plumbers are better philosophers because at least they can tell you something.
What are the alternatives to proof of work and proof of thought?
Sometimes, itâs hard to simply think.