The people in pic related have given me quite some trouble, they raise very significant yet contradicting points and arguments about the nature of life and as a consequence how we should live if we wish to be happy.
When I see discussion going on by people who appear to be knowledgeable whether her, on philsophyforum or in articles there is never any agreement by the parties who generally argue that the other party simply doesnt understand their position (and who often have vested interests in maintaining their own story). This becomes a big issue as given the complexity and breadth of the issues it means I am unable to access the validity of any conclusion and that it might take a decade to properly understand a single school of thought.
How do you respond or act in such a situation I have found it leaving me with a rather crippling skepticism and a lack of motivation to investigate philosophy fullstop.
For me it seems like a lot of people whether they are philosophers or theologians devote a huge amount of time to learning one school of thought and as a consequence develop a heavy emotional attachment to it and become bigots who no longer see any point in giving any other school of thought even close to a similar amount of attention.
>>812920
>tfw never read and fully comprehend all of European philosophy
why even bother
>>812929
Yeah only gets worse when you consider the Eastern Schools in China and India
You aren't supposed to agree with philosophers.
>>813160
Its not the philosophers but the points they raise and the extensive work it can take to properly understand them.
It seems rather foolish to try an reinvent the wheel and discard 2000+ years of inquriry
>>812920
>no Schopenhauer
dropped
>>813167
That's not what these people are doing. Study the history of philosophy and you'll get it.
>>813167
Please do remember that the "historical" approach is just one of the many approaches to studying philosophy. One of the early guy who did it was Hegel.
>>813180
>>813182
>That's not what these people are doing. Study the history of philosophy and you'll get it.
Thats the entire problem my thread is based on. Once you are outside of university/school just studying the entire history of philsophy or even becoming knowledgeable on one school is not something that can be feasibly done and whats more it seems that unless one is the kind of person who derives pleasure from this pursuit itself it would be rather unsatisfying.
>>813200
>How do you respond or act in such a situation I have found it leaving me with a rather crippling skepticism and a lack of motivation to investigate philosophy fullstop.
You need a Master figure.
>>813216
>You need a Master figure.
What do you mean by this?
>>813216
Probably this. I'm no Continental but it seems to be true.
>>813243
How is OP like Schopenhauer?
>>813243
Exactly, he would find validation for his views and accept them as true rather than spend a lifetime looking for answers he already has but discounts them as invalid because they are not comfortable.
>>813243
You're right, he must study Schopenhauer then.
>>813250
Well he rewrote his first book like 40 years later just to say how all philosophers he knows are retards.
>>812920
The goal is not to agree with them it's simply to understand them. Most of the iconic figures of philosophy where the most extreme figures and most philosophers find a balance between all of them. The ones that they agree with more than the other they still try to understand their opposition in order to gain a sense of respect. All you can do is keep learning and build an opinion, but always try to keep it an open opinion.
>>813270
>The goal is not to agree with them it's simply to understand them.
See >>813167 understanding their points is my Issue. For instance I dont have the time and ability to devote to reading and understanding all of Aristotle and Aquinas work
for instance.
>All you can do is keep learning and build an opinion, but always try to keep it an open opinion.
Is my current life of skepticism as good as it gets then?
>>813282
Philosophy isn't for everyone not for intellectual but for material reasons.
t. K. Marx
Its funny I left Schopenhauer outside of my pic because I thought his inclusion would just result in the thread being deralied with anons going on about the over emphasis on German Idealism.
>>813295
Could you post a picture of yourself please?
>>813282
Study philosophy can be a huge commitment but audible does a pretty good job of making audio classes from college-level professors in their Great Courses covering every topic of philosophy. As far as your skepticism goes the more you study philosophy the more you will start to form opinions about what you agree with and disagree with but you should always know your opposition's point of view and learn to appreciate it as well by always taking new information into consideration. This is what I mean by an open opinion.
>>813282>>812920
>as a consequence how we should live if we wish to be happy.
the question is what do you want from ''understanding them'' ? what pushes to want this. why do you have faith in their speculations ?
Rationalist fantasize about their work as something else than serving hedonism, in connecting the people supporting their view as something ''explaining'' the world, to get control over it. They seek truth, objectivity, universality, like many say, throughout agitations, speculations, through imagination, because deep in their heart, they despise empiricism, they despise their sensations as being mere sensations, more so once they choose to cling to the idea of contingent events, where generally the contingency applies to displeasing events.
The whole question is ''what to do with your intellect, with your reflexivity ?''
Do you want that your inferences and abstractions serve your hedonism ?
here is the bombshell: reflexivity permits us to see that the belief in rationality, induction/generalization/categorization, imagination, intellect, reason does not lead us to the good life.
animals are rational beings since they take the inductive reasoning seriously, just like most of the humanity (which also take the deductive reasoning seriously to give relevant results to reach whatever goals they fantasize), but they lack reflexivity since they fail to see that the faith in abstraction to reach knowledge/truth/objectivity/reality/universality is sterile since it brings only conventions which are, by definition, always fluctuating through, at least, time and space... rationality brings is a deception and a disappointment.
>>813345
the point of reflexivity is to notice the failure of rationalism (to reach any certainty), to embrace PURE empiricism, that is to say, to stop fantasizing about a collective reality, but rather to stick to personal phenomena in analyzing them.
the point of reflexivity is to make us wonder what do we want.
Do you want to create norms, conventions in order to claim that you create norms and that these norms are truths that you try to impose on others, until some people will come to you and claim that their conventions are the truths and yours are lies ?
if you like to be disappointed when your pleasures fade, after you put much work to get the pleasures beforehand, if you do not enjoy boredom once you are acclimated to these few pleasures and comfort which fade more slowly than most of other pleasures, if you despise pain to the point of being afraid by it, if you fear death, then, sure, continue to be hedonistic.
but if you understand that you bring your own unhappiness, day after, day in searching outside you to fill you and that what you find to fill you is exactly what brings you down, you understand that being stopping envy is the way to go. the good thing is that stopping envy avoids you to identify with the pain (otherwise the pain becomes suffering) and the price to pay is that you do not identify yourself with pleasures too (with the few pleasures that you manage to get).
the good news is that once you stop identifying so much with your sensations, then you reach a higher bliss, that in buddhism is called second jhanas (this is where the Christians go when they pray, and normies picture it as an orgasm like the famous statue of the nun shows).
this is the level of spiritual hedonism, where you experience pleasure of the consciousness.
religious people stop here, because, as buddhists say, they take what they feel as a contact with their deities.
>>813346
Once yo understand that hedonism is bound to fail, due to the lack of control of events and what you think is your self, disappear the faith in the avidity towards pleasures and the aversion towards pains, the faith in your speculations to get control over what you think is your life.
this state is not reversible and makes you despise hedonism. you have seen the ugliness and the eternal disappointment with hedonism.
There remains to put into practice your new knowledge. you switch back to attempting to establish the equanimity, joy, contentment, benevolence in meditating to be still. Once you eliminate your faith in hedonism, you are happy.
in the dhamma, you even understand that, before nirvana, there is just as much degeneracy and mediocrity in those jhanas, than there is in material hedonism (= of the body, which is the hedonism of most of the humanity), precisely because you still crave the fruits of the jhanas, which are bliss, then tranquility and equanimity.
[in the jhanas, you are disconnected from the 5 senses and from your mind, there remains only what is causally referred to as the consciousness and, when you are not hedonistic, the jhanas are the study of the consciousness by the consciousness itself. since even hedonists manage to get the jahans, those people tend to dwell in them for the pleasures and other curiosities of ''knowing the true reality (of the sensations) and other fantasies.]
Sooner or later, you will understand that your emotions are not meant to be taken seriously (in order to be happy), ditto with your mind[=your imagination, your intellect] and its products [=your ideas, your inferences], ditto with your consciousness, ditto with the objects of your consciousness (the things that people call reality, or even worse, objective reality).
once you understand that even the jhanas are mediocre and you stripe your self of the envy of the jhanas (after you master them), you reach nirvana.
>>813348
this is the dhamma. the dhamma is a user manual to establish irreversibly [<= this is the key word] equanimity+benevolence+joy towards, in using the vocabulary of ''self'', what you think is casually to your self, what you think is other people (and animals), at any place and at any time.
the sole practice of the dhamma is really this quest for stillness [equanimity+benevolence +joy] towards whatever you feel (inside of you or coming form outside of you]. people tend to split the path into ''formal meditation'' [=the jhanas] and activities called ''informal meditation''[=practice of the morality], but sooner or later, you understand that this dichotomy is a choice and has no substance.
>>813494
Internet philosophers hate the idea of living the life for temporary pleasures.
>>813507
Retarded buddhist keyboard warrior =/= "philosopher"
>>812920
>For me it seems like a lot of people whether they are philosophers or theologians devote a huge amount of time to learning one school of thought and as a consequence develop a heavy emotional attachment to it and become bigots who no longer see any point in giving any other school of thought even close to a similar amount of attention.
>>813167
>It seems rather foolish to try an reinvent the wheel and discard 2000+ years of inquriry
There are philosophers who stick to an existing Tradition and build upon that work.
For example, Alchemy has existed since the times of Egypt in under guise of many different traditions, but the basic principles have stayed the same. One of the biggest aims of Alchemy is of course to produce stone of the philosophers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone
The difference between with Alchemists and Philosophers is that the former tends to keep his research in utmost secrecy and silence, while the "Philosopher" may proclaim his ideology to the masses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone
bump thank you for your responses Im just bumping this thread so that ill be able to reply to them when I get to work.
>>813302
>Could you post a picture of yourself please?
If I did that the thread would focus more on myself than these issues which can be of general application
>the question is what do you want from ''understanding them'' ? what pushes to want this. why do you have faith in their speculations ?
Thats the big issue I lack faith or belief in any speculations, arguments or dhamma, and feel a general feeling of unease and apathy. Im even skeptical of the truth of skepticism which prevents me from gaining the calm that some have gotten from it.
When I read nice posts like yours I see as being no different from the Scholastics (although yours is far less dense and obtuse) discussing teleology and virtue ethics.
>This is what I mean by an open opinion.
Knowing your opponents views is something that cannot be done just through free audio classes. Think of the great task it would be to actually understand someone like Hegel through that method.
>>813346
Also do you have any good links or videos on that notion of spiritual hedonism?
>>812920
