ITT I posit and defend the thesis that the rot of society, noted and duly reviled by the fine participants of this board, began not with any particular social movement in the mid-late 20th century, but rather with an earlier, and much more insidious, undermining of (serious) *philosophy* by G.W.F. Hegel and his successors, particularly positivist and nominalist navel-gazing nihilists such as R. Rorty.
NOTE: If you believe that philosophy is not important and that it's just a load of shit that doesn't impact anything meaningful, e.g. politics, then I think you especially have been harmed by these pieces of shit who have undermined true philosophy.
It is my opinion that the Friesian school is the only truly uncompromised complete school of modern philosophical thought. http://www.friesian.com
I will start with some quotes from Kelley L. Ross describing academic and societal decline from a Friesian perspective.
Although Anglo-American philosophy tended to worship at the feet of science, the drift of academia to the left has led to characteristically totalitarian political attacks on science itself -- this despite the leftist program to use "climate science" to impose a Sovietized command economy on energy and the tactic to smear climate skeptics, i.e. "Deniers," through associaton with Creationism or Neo-Nazi Holocaust denial. None of that has stopped the "post-modern" move, which may even be called the "post-Copernican" move, where the "de-centering" of meaning and objectivity, returns the "marginalized" literary critic or theorist to the Ptolemaic center of the universe, whence modern science, now demystified and unmasked as an instrument of white, male, homophobic, Euro-centric oppression, had proudly thought to have dislodged an arrogant humanity. This has given new meaning to the words "obscurantism" and "sophistry." Where the arrogance (let alone the intolerance and "extremism") has settled now is all too plain to those familiar with American academic life, where a majority of American colleges have "speech codes" or equivalent regulations that openly violate the First Amendment.
The sterility and agnosticism of positivistic, scientistic, and merely analytic schools, characteristically, if not always originally, Anglo-American, which have frequently denied the possibility of knowledge in metaphysical or ethical matters, and sometimes the possibility of constructive philosophical knowledge at all, with, according to Karl Popper, a "concentration upon minutiae (upon 'puzzles') and especially upon the meanings of words; in brief .... scholasticism." As Allan Bloom said, "Professors of these schools [i.e. positivism and ordinary language analysis] simply would not and could not talk about anything important, and they themselves do not represent a philosophic life for the students."
***Philosophy and her neglected customer, humanity, truly stand in need of alternative philosophical ideas and approaches. In the Twentieth Century, philosophy was like a confused and clumsy person who repeatedly tries to commit suicide, but keeps failing, though with the addition of debilitating damage at each attempt.***
The Kantian sense of "Critical," it should be noted, is unrelated to recent uses of the term in "critical" literary theory, "critical legal theory," "critical race theory," or even in "multicultural" textbook treatments of "critical thinking," in all of which the word is usually a (Frankfurt School and other) dissimulating substitute for "Marxist" -- where all analysis is about "power" and class relationships, is contemptuous of "bourgeois" values and freedoms, including freedom of speech, and where the "voices" of other cultures are always coincidentally about oppression by capitalism, globalization, and/or American "imperialism" (i.e. self-defense against terrorists and fascists). Considering the millions murdered, tortured, enslaved, and impoverished by Marxists in the 20th Century, one would have to consider continued true believers among the most uncritical people, let alone the most naive or dishonest, in intellectual history -- a description that is sadly all too applicable to much academic culture in the United States, where Marxist doctrine and Leninist behavior are alive and well.
Bump, slow day at work
>>79178509
This is how the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism got a foothold. Roughly speaking: it's all built on Hegelian nonsense.
The nihilism, relativism, pseudo-science, and frequent political authoritarianism and dogmatism of the originally Continental alternatives: Existentialism, Marxism, deconstruction, and now "post-modernism." Deconstruction, Bloom said, "is the last, predictable, stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy." The truly last stage, however, is the "post-modern" combination of Anglo-American sterility with the higher irrationalism of a politicized deconstruction, the kind of thing we find in Richard Rorty's denial of philosophical, moral, or even scientific knowledge but affirmation of trendy leftist "solidarity."
In Nelson's tradition of political activity, Karl Popper stands as one of the great opponents of totalitarianism, and its philosophical roots, in the century. The Open Society and Its Enemies [1945], like the nearly contemporaneous Road to Serfdom [1944] of F.A. Hayek (who used Popper's ideas and helped him professionally), were seminal works in the history of liberty and the counterattack against the intellectual and political assaults, from both political right and left, on freedom and classical liberal principles in the Twentieth Century. As with Nelson's work, Popper's exposure of the irrationality and danger of the doctrines of philosophers like Hegel and Marx has yet to have its influence properly felt.
>>79177884
Pic related
>>79178509
I haven't read either Heigel or Critical Theory, but is there a connection to Aulinsky?
Now I'll use a few words of my own. Forgive any misstatements, please, my goal is to communicate rougher concepts by way of introduction and contextualization (i.e., show the relevance to politics).
To roughly outline what Friesian philosophy offers, it suffices to point out the fundamental category which has been denied mainstream philosophy for the last hundred years or so:
The category in which God (might) exist.
This category, known as non-intuitive immediate knowledge (or synthetic a priori, to use more classical terminology), is roughly that which is accessible immediately to the mind but is not trivial.
*****
Whether you believe in God or not, any rational person will admit that the assertion that he does not is the height of arrogance. Yet this assertion has been BUILT IN to philosophy for over a hundred years! (pic related)
>>79179584
Alinsky and other Marxist-style political agitators tend to leverage the afforded disconnection from absolute truth, and the associated move to 'solidarity'-based argumentation, to promote and rationalize one or another "end-justifies-means" methodology. I can't think of any specific reference for Alinsky to point you to, though.
You might want to read this page for related:
http://www.friesian.com/antiam.htm
>>79177674
>http://www.friesian.com
Ha. That's the shittiest website I've ever seen.
>>79180326
Good goyim, look at the "design" of the site. Don't read the words.
"The destructive work of totalitarian machinery, whether or not this word is used, is usually supported by a special kind of primitive social philosophy. It proclaims not only that the common good of 'society' has priority over the interests of individuals, but that the very existence of individuals as persons is reducible to the existence of the social 'whole'; in other words, personal existence is, in a strange sense, unreal. This is a convenient foundation for any ideology of slavery."
- Leszek Kolakowski
>>79180451
Good goyim, believe "design" and the way you present yourself is not important to have people take interest in your words and take your arguments seriously.
Next few posts will be Sir Karl Popper on the pernicious influence of Hegel on philosophy.
Few philosophers have had a more baleful influence on modern philosophy and politics than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume II, Hegel and Marx [Princeton, 1971], Karl Popper considers the depths of nonsense that issued from Hegel's pen:
>>79180253
Would you say this disconnection from reality is what Baudrillard describes in the map analogy in Simulation and Simulacrum?
>>79180916
It's not my site, obviously. The guy who built it and maintains it started in the mid-90s, and has put his life's work online for us. Do you really think that the level of discussion on the site needs to be "prettied up"? Dumbfags aren't going to get anything out of the contents, so why bother trying to attract them?
>>79180992
Hegel achieved the most miraculous things. A master logician, it was child's play for his powerful dialectical methods to draw real physical rabbits out of purely metaphysical silk-hats. Thus, starting from Plato's Timaeus and its number-mysticism, Hegel succeeded in 'proving' by purely philosophical methods (114 years after Newton's Principia) that the planets must move according to Kepler's laws. He even accomplished the deduction of the actual position of the planets, thereby proving that no planet could be situated between Mars and Jupiter (unfortunately, it had escaped his notice that such a planet had been discovered a few months earlier [Hegel was trying to refute "Bode's Law", a simple mathematical progression which implied that such a planet might exist]). Similarly, he proved that magnetizing iron means increasing its weight, that Newton's theories of inertia and of gravity contradict each other (of course, he could not foresee that Einstein would show the identity of inert and gravitating mass), and many other things of this kind. That such a surprisingly powerful philosophical method was taken seriously can be only partially explained by the backwardness of German natural science in those days. For the truth is, I think, that it was not at first taken really seriously by serious men (such as Schopenhauer, or J.F. Fries), not at any rate by those scientists who, like Democritus,' would rather find a single causal law than be the king of Persia'... [p. 27]
>>79177674
only true patricians will understand why
>>79180992
>>79181394
In order to discourage the reader beforehand from taking Hegel's bombastic and mystifying cant too seriously, I shall quote some of the amazing details which he discovered about sound, and especially about the relations between sound and heat. I have tried hard to translate this gibberish from Hegel's Philosophy of Nature as faithfully as possible; he writes: '§ 302. Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition; -- merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e. -- heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as beaten or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound.' There are some who still believe in Hegel's sincerity, or who still doubt whether his secret might not be profundity, fullness of thought, rather than emptiness. I should like them to read carefully the last sentence -- the only intelligible one -- of this quotation, because in this sentence, Hegel gives himself away. For clearly it means nothing but: 'The heating up of sounding bodies...is heat...together with sound.' [p. 28]
>>79181308
>Dumbfags aren't going to get anything out of the contents, so why bother trying to attract them?
Explain to me how, if you want to affect any change in the world, you plan on doing that without so called quote unquote, dumbfags.
>>79181067
Briefly, yes. It goes further, though: I believe that the very need for this type of semiotically-driven work results from the positivistic, nihilistic nature of modern philosophy. It just shows how bad things have gotten, that we can't even talk about absolutes at all.
>>79181887
By personal example: I read things which are at the limits of my understanding, process and distill them to the best of my ability, and work to present their (simplified) contents to friends and colleagues, or to teach them to my children.
Each of us has a place in the hierarchy. Very few can understand serious philosophy directly, but I hold that those who do have a duty to read and disseminate it as best we can.
I am a professional mathematician who fiercely believes that *proper* philosophy in fact lies above my own field in difficulty and importance. It disgusts me to see philosophy trivialized by my peers.
Similarly to the way mathematics is the framework on which science and engineering are built, philosophy is the framework on which everything, but especially (for the purposes of this discussion) politics is built.
>>79182790
cont'd
I know that there are deeply intelligent people who post on this board. I'm presenting this information for their benefit.
For example, I believe that this page contains some of the most beautiful and enlightening philosophy I've personally encountered:
http://www.friesian.com/immedi-1.htm
Pic related - it's the author, and maintainer of the site, Kelley L. Ross.
>>79182790
>I read things which are at the limits of my understanding, process and distill them to the best of my ability, and work to present their (simplified) contents to friends and colleagues, or to teach them to my children.
>Very few can understand serious philosophy directly, but I hold that those who do have a duty to read and disseminate it as best we can.
>I am a professional mathematician who fiercely believes that *proper* philosophy in fact lies above my own field in difficulty and importance. It disgusts me to see philosophy trivialized by my peers.
>>79183346
I love this place.
Anyway back to some content. I will delve a little deeper this time.
Although Whitehead has justly and famously stated that "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato,"[2] the ontology and epistemology of Plato remain in many ways unique and strange in comparison to what has come since. We have not seen the like of the full theory of transcendent Forms, knowledge through the recollection of prenatal perception, immortality, and reincarnation in any philosophers who have approached anywhere near Plato's stature. Even the Neo-Platonists discarded reincarnation and recollection in preference to Aristotelian epistemology. They were perhaps little troubled to be contradicting doctrines that both they and we might well regard as largely mythic and metaphorical. Indeed, Plato's most powerful statements concerning our prenatal direct acquaintance with the Forms come in the context of explicitly mythical stories, as with the myth of the chariot in the Phaedrus.
>>79183907
The question we should ask about all this, however, is whether, in attempting to provide a more literal doctrine of ontology and epistemology, later philosophers, including the most recent, have overlooked and erased Plato's most important and abidingly valuable insights by the substitution of only superficially more sensible ideas. From the continued relevance and fascination of Plato's works, we might suspect that, numerous epochal claims to the contrary, no philosophers have ever succeeded in actually going "beyond" Plato and in resolving once and for all the problems that he addressed. If we are to decide then about the functional adequacy of the theories that have replaced Plato's mythic system, we can only do so by addressing the same issues that Plato did and attempting to understand just how the doctrines that he proposed solved the difficulties that he identified.
**The Socratic ignorance epiphany is the most important moment of self-discovery of any human being.**
The fundamental insight or motivation for Platonism we may justly call the Discovery of Socrates. This Discovery, with a suitably Socratic irony, is the self-discovery of ignorance. On such a point we are not likely to accidentally confuse Socrates with Plato's own theories, since Plato spins out his own doctrines, and encounters troubles, only in answering Socratic ignorance with a positive theory of knowledge. Yet in Socratic ignorance itself we already have the rationale for Platonic epistemology.
From Socratic ignorance alone, it is possible to elaborate a minimal Socratic ethic. It is hard to tell what Socrates himself came to conclude. If only the gods are wise, and if human wisdom consists merely in the self-discovery of ignorance (as implied by Delphi), then the only possible human ethic is to act in a way consistent with this ignorance. The only problem with that is that action of any sort becomes impossible, for we can never know what constitutes right conduct or a good end for our purposes. The minimal Socratic ethic, then would be to do nothing. That does not make for a very edifying or practical program for philosophy.
>>79185356
How can Socrates know enough about knowledge to be sure that what he has isn't it?
To Socratic ignorance and the minimal Socratic ethic, Plato adds an insight that may or may not have originated in Socrates himself: that everyone has a misplaced self-assurance in their opinions, not out of some monumental and universal self-deception, but because, somehow beneath the chaff of opinion, we all are in touch with objective and absolute knowledge. With this the paradoxical inconsistency of Socratic ignorance can be resolved; for knowledge of ignorance thus becomes, like the Cartesian cogito, the certain foundation upon which further knowledge can be built.
[We may attribute this insight to Socrates himself on the hypothesis that in the course of his conversations he noticed something very peculiar: that in the midst of the incoherent web of ordinary opinions, everyone occasionally had recourse to the same principles, principles which, strangely enough, these very same people would often deny once they and their implications were made explicit by Socrates.]
I'm reading what you've written along with the site. I'll comment more after reading. A lot of /pol/ is influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche, if you have links to full articles specifically addressing them it would be appreciated.
>>79181394
>>79181531
Like these
Because philosophers like Rorty and the edifying thinkers that he admires see the trap of trying to prove that the objectivist is fundamentally mistaken, they employ a form of indirect communication and philosophic therapy that is intended to loosen the grip that objectivism has upon us -- a therapy that seeks to liberate us from the obsession with objectivism and foundationalism.
All that Rorty can do is adopt a sort of Zen-like program, holding that contradictions don't mean anything, that we can't disprove objectivism or prove relativism, but that nevertheless we should deliver ourselves over to the "therapy" of his theories, whose practical effects will, on a pragmatic criterion of truth, justify our unquestioning (because nothing can be proven in answer to our questions) trust. But we have every right to ask by what right Rorty has been granted this therapeutic authority and how we will know that the practical effects of all this are such as to justify a trust in his technique.
>>79185667
On Nietzsche: http://www.friesian.com/nietzsch.htm
On Hegel:
http://www.friesian.com/hegel.htm
>>79185667
Here is perhaps the passage most pertinent to /pol/'s interests as I understand them:
The great moral failure of relativism is that it trivializes human life. This should be evident enough in Wittgenstein's notion that languages are in fact "games" just because they are "played."[10] On the other hand, we are not allowed, by events, the luxury of Socratic ignorance. Life calls for many decisions that cannot simply be put off by confessions of cognitive incapacity. Events force decisions upon us, and in such cases an awareness of our Socratic ignorance can only lead to a despair about the evils that we have certainly caused by our blundering. Events force us to rely on our opinions, and we therefore conceive of a desperate desire to know what the right is. Relativism denies that we can know, that we can have any real answer to our uncertainties and ignorance. With this denial relativism misses the moral urgency of Socratic philosophy and fails to notice the profound and visceral depths of the human need for moral certainty -- a need in the face of which mere "continuance" is pathetically inadequate.
>>79180766
Probably indicates that I'm basic as fuck, but that's basically my argument against many totalitarian ideologies; in trying to serve the greater good, they serve symbols over the people instead of serving the many (made up of individuals). It's essentially an equivocation of what "society" is.
There may be collective actions and policies worth making, but it must be remembered that the collective is a composition of individuals, not a separate thing they exist to serve.
>A
>FUCKING
>LEAF
Memes aside, 10/10 thread. Nice to have some serious infodumps/discussion, although this feels more like a /his/-worthy thread.
>>79186617
Thanks. I'm posting here because this serves as an alternative (or at least, supplementary) and most importantly *prior* explanation for societal degeneration, which is one of /pol/'s chief concerns.
>>79181531
>Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition; -- merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e. -- heat.
Is this the 19th century equivalent to "has anyone really been far?" I'm not even that opposed to the basic idea of history progressing a certain way - ideologies plus material conditions imply other ideologies - but what?
>>79187333
I'm the guy who was giving you shit above about the site. For the record, I like the thread, too.
I can't help it. I have a thing for aesthetics. I believe it's one of the essential reasons quality thought and discussion doesn't reach the masses properly and that if some of our best thinkers just took two seconds to consider or hire someone to maintain how they or their ideas "looked" and were presented, the world would be a better place.
Obviously, the ideas and the words matter most but, far too often, the aesthetic is overlooked.
>>79187628
ALL OF HEGEL reads like "Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?":
The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series, seeks to promote the further development of the Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in the direction indicated by Sir Karl Popper's remark in The Open Society and Its Enemies that "serious men," such as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843), did not at first take seriously the "senseless and maddening webs of words," as Schopenhauer put it, of G.W.F. Hegel.
Hegel is a cancer on all our minds.
>>79187915
To wit: on the continuing appeal of Hegel (from http://www.friesian.com/hegel.htm)
The political Left, which all but dominates the academy, literature, journalism, the social "sciences," and education, although famous for the defense of the individual, the eccentric, and the "abnormal," in fact despises individualism, which means any desire of the individual to be free of the Power of the State, especially for an individual to control his own property, wealth, business, or children (often stated in the form of "children's rights," but which really makes children wards of the state). Even much personal liberty, as what can and cannot be said to coworkers in the workplace, or whether a private establishment can allow smoking or not, is now seen as public business and is fiercely subjected to the majesty and sanctions of the law. The Left is also tempted by extreme legal doctrines about "hate speech," by which politically "incorrect" statements become crimes. In short, the post-modern Left, armed with Marxist principles consistent with Hegel's judicial positivism, still despises Capitalism, the free market, and the freedoms of contract, association, conscience, and speech.
Thus, Hegel continues to be popular because he continues to play the same political role.
>>79188074
It is not clear, however, which is worse, the thought that the enthusiasts were deceived by the mere appearance of Hegel's profundity, that the enthusiasts feather their own nest in a self-contained hermetic bureaucracy, or that the enthusiasts actually embrace the kind of theory that Hegel ends up with out of honest conviction and agreement.
The kind of theory, indeed, is the foundation of modern statism and totalitarianism. As such, the fault with Hegel's Philosophy of Right as an apologetic for the Prussian State was not, as Professor Solomon said at one point, that he was corrupted by "tenure," but that Hegel's entire epistemological and metaphysical system was well suited for the political absolutism upon which Hegel and his sponsoring State happily agreed.
Phew. Keeping this thread up is exhausting.
Will bump with more broad material for awhile.
In an age of dishonesty, nihilism, and relativism, the promise of Nelson's great work, both philosophically and personally, is yet to be fulfilled. His premature death blighted the promise of his thought. The unique principles of Friesian epistemology that he recovered were abandoned by his own students. 20th Century philosophy swung between the false alternatives of science and irrationalism, ignoring the promise of Kantian philosophy. And Nelson's own socialism obscured the proper direction and the best use in political economy of Friesian principles. In a new century, The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series can at least maintain the hope of redeeming these disappointments.
Pic is a rough genealogy of the Friesian school of thought.
Schopenhauer's influence, although persistent, is still limited, ironically for many of the same reasons that it was in his own day. The greatest value of Hegel's method was always that it could generate almost limitless verbiage without really saying anything. This is invaluable for an academic career today, where journals and books can be filled many times over with tireless, but stupefying, rehearsals of the same popular shibboleths. That these will never really mean anything to anybody -- indeed, they are usually of the form that nothing means anything, or that only power matters -- is far less important than the status, income, and, indeed, power that they foster.
>>79190656
______________________________________
What is most distressing, however, is that the moral, practical, and intellectual equivalent of Hegelian philosophy should have come to flourish in great measure because of the ascendancy of Hegel's own patron, the Prussian State -- by which Prussia itself, long gone, continues to live in the institutions of welfare and police power that all modern states have adopted from it. Thus, compulsory public education for the purpose for state propaganda, the disarmament of citizens to prevent resistance to authority, public pensions to make everyone dependent on government ("social security"), peacetime military conscription, and universal state identification papers -- all originated by Prussia -- are now supposedly enlightened features of the so-called democracies. Indeed, Hegel himself may have coined the word "police" (Polizei), from the Greek word for "state," polis. This may be the most suitable monument of all to Hegelianism.
______________________________________
>>79190784
The United States Constitution prohibits the granting of any "Title of Nobility," but tenured academia has achieved an unaccountable status, with a secure, indeed sinecure, living at the public purse, that would be the envy of any nobility that might have to ride out and gather rents directly from the peasants. The modern IRS takes care of that. Teaching, the ostensive purpose of academic employment, becomes less and less onerous, while a vast output of esoteric research, intelligible only to the cognoscenti, is the key to further status and privilege. Academic conferences are now the subsidized and tax-deductible festivals of "the corybantic shouting with which the birth of the spiritual children of those of the same mind is reciprocally celebrated..." [p. xxv], usually at the most pleasing venues available, from Hawaii to Manhattan to Paris.
Nothing about this, therefore, would surprise Schopenhauer in the least -- let alone that Hegel is still held in high regard, while many of his spiritual descendants explicitly advocate the irrationalism and incoherence that is merely evident in Hegel's practice, not in his own claims to rationality.
True classical philosophy has been excluded from academia for some time:
"A systematic and programmatic approach to the Friesian tradition is, of course, very much at odds with the tendencies of modern academic philosophy, especially Anglo-American academic philosophy, which expresses both scepticism and positive hostility towards systematic efforts and where the typical vehicle of philosophy is brief papers on dissociated, isolated issues. Such is the heritage, as Popper has noted, of Logical Positivism, which denied the status of knowledge to anything but science and gave to philosophy only the role of describing science or clarifying meaning. The next step, whether the later Wittgenstein, deconstruction, or 'post-modernism,' was to dismiss science as well and to deny that meaning can be clarified, which brings us to a final nihilism in which philosophy mirrors all the absurdity and meaninglessness of an Existentialist world."
>>79191429
Do you feel that philosophy is useless and doesn't address anything meaningful?
THIS IS WHY. The anti-individualists stole philosophy, our most beautiful subject, from us.
Among men there are but few who behave according to principles -- which is extremely good, as it can so easily happen that one errs in these principles, and then the resulting disadvantage extends all the further, the more universal the principle and the more resolute the person who has set it before himself.
- Immanuel Kant, Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
[translated by John T. Goldthwait, University of California Press, 1960, p.74]
Hmm. Interesting thread. Reading.
The rot began with Machiavelli and the idea that leaders and elites had no obligation to be moral or virtuous
>>79192105
Lol meant to post elsewhere and samefagged my thread. baka
This is fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing. I'd never even heard of Fries. Reading through these articles now to get some background, but I can say I'm intrigued. You should post on 8-chan, they would definitely appreciate this stuff.
http://www.friesian.com/kant.htm
http://www.friesian.com/fries.htm
http://www.friesian.com/origin/
http://www.friesian.com/undecd-1.htm
http://www.friesian.com/system.htm
>>79192778
Cheers, will do.
>>79192778
Interested OP, keep it up.
You like Evola?
>>79192993
Unaware of him until now. Will read up.
>>79177674
How the fuck were positivism and nominalism "successors" of Hegel?
>>79193123
You're in for a wild ride.
I'm reading Fascism Viewed from the Right and its p. good.
Revolt Against the Modern World, Men Among Ruins, Ride the Tiger are his "top" shit.
>>79192993
>>79193123
Here's some excerpts to highlight some differences from Kant, and give a rough sketch of what he believed.
From Wikipedia:
Friedrich Nietzsche heavily affected Evola's thought. However, Evola criticized Nietzsche for lacking the "transcendent element" in his philosophy, thus ultimately leading to the latter's mental collapse in 1889. A reference point is needed according to Evola, and this point cannot be reached with senses or logic but with transcendental experiences achieved through symbolism of the heroic element in Man.
From Revolt Against The Modern World, Ch 19:
"We have already brought your attention to the fact that traditional man and modern man are different not simply in terms of their mentality nor their type of civilization. Rather, the difference concerns the very possibilities of experience, the manner in which the world of nature is experienced, therefore the categories of perception and the fundamental relationship between the I and the not-I.
Therefore, space, time, causality in traditional man had a character quite different from what is present in the experience of the men of more recent times. The error of gnoseology (or theory of knowledge) beginning with Kant is to presume that these fundamental forms of human experience have remained always the same, specifically those forms familiar to men of today. Instead, in regard to that, one can also observe a profound transformation, consistent with the general involutionary process [tr: that is, the cosmic cycle]."
>>79193157
Not his direct successors. In simplified terms, Hegel's destructive impact on philosophy allowed for such degenerate developments to take place.
Note: I am certainly not arguing against the intellectual prowess of positivists - to deny the validity of the work of Carnap, for example, would be ridiculous - but I'm presenting the perspective that *philosophy itself* is essentially neutered and cannot address most things which are of meaning to individuals.
>>79194021
Mein negger
>Friedrich Nietzsche heavily affected Evola's thought. However, Evola criticized Nietzsche for lacking the "transcendent element" in his philosophy, thus ultimately leading to the latter's mental collapse in 1889.
I'm in.
Hahaha man oh man, rooting around looking for something on the site when I find out Kelley Ross (the site maintainer) is a Trump supporter!
http://www.friesian.com/rand.htm#modern
I'll use the tripcode I generated for Trump's birthday in celebration!
>>79192150
No, the rot began when everyone forgot (or rather purposefully redefined) that Machiavelli wrote satire.
>>79192150
I didn't realize this, but there is an entire section of the website dedicated to Machiavelli:
http://www.friesian.com/machiav.htm
I'm reading as fast as I can, but it seems you may be right to a certain degree - the seed might have been planted by Machiavelli, or at least by those who read/misread him.
I'm no expert on it, that's for sure, so your best bet is to read the source material I linked.
>>79194021
>>79194644
>>79193589
By the way, it is very explicitly a transcendent element which fundamentally distinguishes Friesian philosophy:
Non-intuitive immediate knowledge.
http://www.friesian.com/immedi-1.htm
>>79196127
I'll never figure out how Machiavelli has been so misread. Hell, his most famous depiction he clearly wears a smirk.
The only conclusion is that he's been deliberately misinterpreted.
The Jewish faith was, in its original form, a collection of mere statutory laws upon which was established a political organization; for whatever moral additions were then or later appended to it in no way whatever belong to Judaism as such.
Judaism is really not a religion at all but merely a union of a number of people who, since they belonged to a particular stock, formed themselves into a commonwealth under purely political laws, and not into a church; nay, it was intended to be merely an earthly state... [English text, Religion With the Limits of Reason Alone, translated by Heodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, 1934, Harper Torchbooks, 1960, p.116]
- Immanuel Kant
>>79197176
The proof that Judaism has not allowed its organization to become religious is clear. First, all its commands are of the kind which a political organization can insist upon and lay down as coercive laws, since they relate merely to external acts; and although the Ten Commandments are, to the eye of reason, valid as ethical commands even had they not been given publicly, yet in that legislation they are not so prescribed as to induce obedience by laying requirements upon the moral disposition (Christianity later placed its main emphasis here); they are directed to absolutely nothing but outer observance... [op.cit. p.116]
>>79178765
But in dialectics the thesis and antithesis form a synthesis. To me it seems the left is simply a massive thesis and anything antithetical to it is just destroyed. How does it relate to Hegel?
>>79197176
>>79197259
Point being, here, that Judaism is perhaps not inherently corrupt, but it is inherently *corruptible*.
It is also, as stated, a *political system*, similarly to Islam; apparently inherent to old-testament religions.
>>79197294
From http://www.friesian.com/hegel.htm
Although Hegel saw himself as standing for reason and logic, his actual practice, of free association and conceptual confusion masquerading as "dialectic" (truly fine examples of what Kant had called "dialectical illusion"), which saw logical contradictions, not as evidence of falsehood, but as steps in the production of higher and more comprehensive contradictions, i.e. Truth, paved the way for the frank adoption of overt hostility to logic and rationality.
Hegelian dialectic is a flawed doctrine which allows false truths to be derived. Your statement is overly simple: the left does indeed apply dialectic: for example, how often have you seen them set up a strawman, knock him down, and call it a point?
What Hegelian-style argumentation is, is "argument-like" reasoning as opposed to the real thing. It's how people who haven't actually thought things through can short-circuit the process when their emotions scream stop. It is in fact the very core of the mental illness people often define liberalism to be.
>>79197984
I was referring to Hegelian dialectics specifically though. Knocking down a strawman does not create synthesis; it merely reinforces their original thesis while obliterating the antithesis.
Let me add leafbro, this is some really engaging reading. You tried posting this on /his/?
>>79198544
Nope, this is OC.
Thanks, I will post on /his/.
And I realize my example was a strawman of dialectic. What can I say, I love irony. A proper critique of dialectic is provided here:
http://www.friesian.com/hegel.htm
(search for "What Hegel is probably the most famous for")
The Friesian alternative to dialectic is illustrated by pic related, although it is difficult to grasp without reading related material at http://www.friesian.com/universl.htm#note-3 and elsewhere on the site. Essentially it is a formal elaboration of the Socratic method.
>>79199249
You'll find a lot higher caliber of philosophic debate on /his/ than here. That said, I'm glad you posted it here too.
http://www.friesian.com/rights.htm
This whole page really deserves reading by everyone on /pol/
Excerpt:
"While movements like Communitarianism are trying to replace responsibility to self with responsibility to the state, on the grounds that this is responsibility to others, the very idea of personal responsibility has been damaged by the idea that the causes of people's actions are exculpatory (i.e. absolve us of responsibility) before the law. It has become rather common lately both to excuse the perpetrators of crime because they couldn't help themselves (because of 'anger,' etc.) and to blame some remote conditions (poverty, capitalism, child abuse, television, drug abuse, pornography, video games, etc.) for the perpetrator's actions."
gud thred
any reading material pertaining to this you recommend OP?
regards, clueless
>>79200428
I was turned onto philosophy early by reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
Browse through www.friesian.com, particularly http://www.friesian.com/rights.htm for more directly politically-oriented material. There are tons of references on the site for related books and papers.
>>79200292
interesting.
Wanting to avoid culpability. Is blaming external factors intrinsically bad? I get an aversion from it but it takes away your guilt to a degree, which makes you more likely to be cognitively dissonant. Maybe still in the end it makes others more placated and this is good for society?
>>79201116
Hey Leaf op you got a steam acc or some shit I can add you on? skype or something.
>>79187915
>Hegel is a cancer on all our minds.
His filiation line is enough to tell you that he's cancer. Marx, Engel, Sartre, the Frankfurt school...
>>79179807
>the assertion that he does not is the height of arrogance. Yet this assertion has been BUILT IN to philosophy for over a hundred years! (pic related)
Opinion discarded. Hegel was a devout protestant and build his philosophical system with god in mind.
>>79201391
The minute you allow something to be a scapegoat for your actions is the minute you allow yourself to do pretty much anything.
>>79201880
https://www.reddit.com/user/PM_ME_YOUR_COATS/
Although I've been a lurker for a long time, I haven't really interacted with online society in any way until this year, so I have no other online presence than my reddit account. Trump running had a huge impact on me for some reason; The_Donald was the first online community I felt at home in.
Through those guys, I found /pol/ and, well, let's just say my Reddit activity has dramatically dropped since then lol.
>>79196390
But Evola is just something else. He believe that the "transcendent" element in (or rather outside) the material world is the true "immobile" substance which can give traditional society its true solidity, its true sense of order.
To him, the world of tradition is such that everything that happens in the material plane is nothing more than a sign from the transcendent world, which is analogous to the ideal world of Plato. Traditional man is constantly in contact with this other world through a series of social mechanism which serves to re-instantiate the connection between the two.
He's fucking insane.
>>79202554
but by relinquishing personal culpability you can be better molded by state interests. So which is greater for the society to foster?
>>79202460
With respect to the removal of God from philosophy, Hegel was definitely not the culprit. It was the positivists. The Friesian argument is that positivism could not have flourished, or perhaps even been developed, as a philosophical school had it not been for Hegel's work.
>>79180916
Personally there's nothing wrong with some basic web 1.0. I'd take this website over some over-designed modern template any day as long as it's easy to read and navigate.
>>79180326
And also, if that's the shittiest website you've *ever* seen, you mustn't have seen very many websites my fellow burger.
>>79203092
Take a look at African-American culture: the ghetto lifestyle, the music, the hypermasculine aggression and demand for respect over the least things. They are a prime example of a people molded by state interests. Is this greater for society at large?
>>79202751
Ah, sorry, not a redditor.
>>79202827
>He's fucking insane
You just can't catch up with the truth, modern man.
>>79202827
This opinion is far from insane. It's Platonism. It's true belief in the true and the beautiful.
Scientists and mathematicians throughout history have had this view. I certainly do.
http://www.friesian.com/penrose.htm
>>79177674
There is absolutely no way you can salvage philosophy. There's a fundamental problem. Philosophy is either based on the author's personal feelings or logic/dialectic/whatever principle you want. There is no way the former can be accepted as objective, scientific or anything else. It has the same value as self-help books. The latter just appears to be objective. It is in fact based on principles that can't be proven by definition, they appear obvious until somebody challenges them as it has been done and at that point bye bye objectivity (not that there was any to begin with, but it's when people realize it). Not only that, but it means that anybody can basically conjure up whatever, call it a "fundamental principle" or something else and justify his thought based on that (like Hegel's dialectic, but really Aristotle's logic is the same. Wittgenstein's tractatus etc. ). This is why pretty much everything and its contrary have been proved and disproved. And yet philosophy tries to present itself as objective.
This is not a modern revelation either. The sophists already saw this weakness and exploited it in fucking Ancient Greece. The others simply decided to ignore them and sweep their reasoning under the rug. Philosophy was doomed from the moment it started existing.
Also this is the same problem with "liberalist" ideas. They work until somebody comes along, notice the inherent flaws (if you're free to do anything, and there's enough people supporting you, then you're free to remove freedom, for instance) and exploits them. The "regressive left" current thought is just the ideals of liberalism brought to their natural end, their completion or (trigger warning Hegelian terminology) realization.
>>79190656
>The greatest value of Hegel's method was always that it could generate almost limitless verbiage without really saying anything. This is invaluable for an academic career today, where journals and books can be filled many times over with tireless, but stupefying, rehearsals of the same popular shibboleths.
This is gold.
>>79177674
Can anyone give me the gist of it all, i know im a plebeian by asking for tl;dr but im pretty sure thread will be slided to oblivion later and now im half delirious form working whole day... so.
>tl;dr?
>>79203975
That may be, but there are excellent lessons to be learned from philosophy. There are even a few that stand the test of time, like stoicism. About two years ago I discovered Aurelius and Epictetus and I haven't looked back once. I'm a much happier person after adopting its views.
>>79203695
I use the word "insane" in a non pejorative way. I personally think reading him and taking him seriously while doing so is analogous to entering a giant centrifuge.
He's literally using a different categorical framework from the one we're using (for instance in his theory of race) and therefore the work that is necessary in order to refute him really has to begin with a thorough investigation of first principles far deeper than those that would be required by a debate between the modern left and the modern right.
It is in this sense that is his insane. He truly is "out of this world". The fucked up thing comes in understanding is thesis of decadence, which has as a starting point the separation of regal power from the religious power, which severe the connection that existed between the political and the transcendent.
But I don't want to deal with this shit. I'm an Iron Age man lads. I'm sorry.
>>79203975
This is precisely the opinion I'm here to fight.
It is your definition of philosophy with which I take exception.
Classsical philosophy was *critical* in the same sense as science and mathematics. It progressed, like a science, toward ever better models of reality. The position I'm putting forth is that *philosophy itself* was hijacked by sophists and nihilists.
>>79177674
You know the Holocaust never happened, right OP?
>>79204512
That was a very sensible response anon.
I perfectly understand what you mean.
Age of Heroes when tho?
Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?
>>79203619
I think they're aberrations. The flipside of that coin should be someone like a liberal arts major that floundered into a job at an insurance company that they remain faithful to in order to pay back their loans. The ghettoblasters were dissident from the beginning, and grew up in a culture of crime.
>>79181450
Because of destiny, my good Croat.
The differences between reality as seen in science and reality as seen in morality and religion reveal that there are aspects to existence that are not revealed by either datum alone. The two sources are also unequal in the magnitude and ultimate significance of their content. What science can investigate and know is apparently all but endless, but it still leaves us wondering, "What is it all for?" Morality and religion have a far more limited rational content, returning to many of the same issues over and over again, but such issues happen to include, not just the questions about how to live, but the ultimate questions about the meaning of life and existence
>>79205696
But the ghettoblaster culture was quite literally molded by the state you speak so highly of.
>>79203975
I agree with this. You can refute just about any premise.
But to think of philosophy as an ideology is wrong, it should merely sharpen your thinking and be a way to help understand trends without having to feel the need to demonstrate their meaning. A tool, but not hte end in itself.
>>79181394
>draw real physical rabbits out of purely metaphysical silk-hats
I quite like this line so I went and made a quick illustration.
>>79205945
That our moral datum does not lead to direct, positive knowledge of things that we are able to conceive, like God, leads Kant to characterize his system as transcendental idealism, that we have a subjective representation of such things, without the real intuition that we have of physical objects. The reality revealed by morality is thus for Kant a matter of faith (Glaube), an inference from the Moral Law which is itself present to us with an inexplicable authority. "Transcendental idealism" is thus profoundly different from other forms of "idealism," like the "subjective idealism" of Berkeley (what Kant called "empirical idealism") or the "objective idealism" of Hegel, both of which offer speculative certainties about the ultimate nature of things, which Kant does not do. The nature of things that we can know about concretely, for Kant, is revealed by science. Hence, Kantian transcendental idealism is equally attended by empirical realism.
>>79206120
How Kant can be certain that reason connects us directly to things-in-themselves is an question that he cannot answer. All that the Transcendental Deduction aimed at was showing that particular concepts, like causality or substance, are "necessary conditions for the possibility of experience." If successful, the Deduction limits the application of the concepts to experience, which is fine for Kant's philosophy of science, but doesn't help when he turns to morality and the "Postulates of Practical Reason." There his basic, but unjustified, theory of reason emerges. This shortcoming is what was directly addressed and answered by Jakob Fries, whose epistemology thus could save the generality of Kant's theory without falling back, like Hegel, into speculative metaphysics.
These 3 posts show the starting point of Friesian inquiry, after Kant, for those who are interested in that kind of thing.
>>79201116
I read Zen too, got me into it as well. did you read Lila by Pirsig? it's the second book.
>>79205426
>Age of Heroes when tho?
I can't speak to that. I haven't really studied that concept yet.
Whatever it may be, the true goal of the traditional man ought to be, if I read him right, to re-establish the supremacy of the transcendent, of the immutable, of the conception of the world and of man as manifestations for that which lies beyond, which would, in his view, finally restore the notion of a "sense" to life.
I have some vague ideas about this but nothing more. From what I understand, a reading of Evola runs the risk of leading one into some kind of sterile and juvenile occultism, which ought to be avoided at all cost if one takes these ideas seriously. The first task of the hero ought to be to creates a connection with the world of the beyond in a credible manner.
This is an intellectual and spiritual task, the physical manifestations of which (heroic combat, heroic struggle) could only come later on.
On a side note, since we're talking about heroic struggle, this asshole really made me see the meaning of the Olympic games differently. In their modern incarnation, they're a very bastardized version of what they could be.
>>79206561
I didn't. Thanks for reminding me! I meant to read that last year and ended up reading the Gormenghast trilogy which took awhile.
I'm not saying what you post is wrong. It's true and you should begin by this.
But pic related is the next stage, understanding what all of this Hegelian (and others like Nietzsche or as far back as the false prophet Mani, and including such people as Muhammad or Pico della Mirandola) wanker is about Gnosticism.
>>79203975
Philosophy "love of wisdom" is possible but wisdom itself (or the gnose) impossible.
In particular this is what Hegel means in his Phenomenology of Spirit, saying "we must stop the mere love of knowledge [literally philosophy] and strive for actual knowledge [literally gnosis]."
The transfer from Plato, Aquinas or Descartes to Gnosticism is laid down for everyone to see, if you only take the trouble of using the Greek words instead of the convoluted German ones.
The word philosopher has acquired q double meaning, for 2500 years but especially since the partition of philosophers in the second half of the 18th century. It is at this point that the word "philosopher" acquired a whole different meaning than previously. In the very late 1800s the word "intellectual" was added to mean essentially the same thing, which is basically a gnostic heretic.
>>79207001
Are the ideas that modern society, mostly based on the French and American Revolutions, who cut off the normal social connections and barriers to different institutions that both guided and protected the people well founded?
>>79194644
>thus ultimately leading to the latter's mental collapse in 1889.
I thought this was contested. He was in poor health and had syphilis. Wasn't there a book where Nietzche realized people were adopting nihilism in a Hedonistic form of expression and he was revolted? Then published a work where he called upon the heroic nature in man? I think it was after Beyond Good and Evil, but wasn't zarathustra...
Also, does evola go onto delve into a conception of 'tradition?'
>>79207334
yes in Revolt Against the Modern World. He's get's very specific. He starts with a "Genealogy" of Tradition.
>>79196675
Discourses was when he was dying in a jail, was it not?
Who is to say that is what he meant most? At the time he wasn't wrong about the prince but sought mercy?
>>79206860
I like you leaf.
You and OP are alright.
I've read a lot of stuff on that page and it's very good.
But I'm leaning heavily towards scholasticism, Feser and Kreeft are briliant.
>>79207114
Yes!!
I agree that gnosticism IS the key sickness, manifest in Hegel for the first time in serious philosophy. The idea that one can "know", in the truly epistemic sense, the unknowable. The ultimate sin, arrogance, planted firmly in the field which was founded on its very opposite (Socratic ignorance). Which led serious thinkers to discard the transcendent altogether later, because of course it is NONSENSE.
This is a very very good point and, if it's due to Voegelin, I will read his stuff immediately.
Kant and, following him, the Friesian school, treat the unknown and unknowable with the proper respect:
http://www.friesian.com/undecd-1.htm
>>79206052
Depends how far back you want to look at the casual chain.
I would think Jim Crow ending only this past century does not make for an identity subverted by the state but instead makes one in opposition to it.
>>79208200
>>79206052
The state shoved that shit straight down their throats. Not all swallowed:
"Everybody has asked the question. . .'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!"
Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants"
>>79208125
hmmm... not sure how I feel about "ontological uncertainty," but I'll give it a go.
thanks for this.
>>79207114
>The transfer from Plato, Aquinas or Descartes to Gnosticism is laid down for everyone to see
I'm not sure I understand this sentence. What do you mean by transfer? Are you saying that Plato Aquinas and Descartes were not gnostic and they were made gnostic in Hegel's interpretation? Or that they were non-gnostic philosophers and in contrast Hegel was a gnostic one? Because they appear 100% gnostic to me. In fact, I don't know of many philosophers who weren't to some degree gnostic, going by this (Voegelin's) definition.
>He defined gnosis as "a purported direct, immediate apprehension or vision of truth without the need for critical reflection; the special gift of a spiritual and cognitive elite."
Anybody who honestly "critically reflected" on philosophy becomes a relativist because they realize everyone is just saying whatever the fuck they want. Unless you can bring me to the Hyperuranium or show me that the amygdala (or whatever else it was that Descartes said) is the connection of the mind/body, it means these philosophers are also claiming an immediate apprehension of the truth, since this shit can't simply be proven without circular logic.
Granted I haven't read Voegelin so maybe I'm misunderstanding stuff.
>>79207717
No I mean written by Nietzsche
>>79208401
nice. I should read up on him. How was a seemingly based man viewed during that time? Smart sounding guy but I get the sense he was marginalized.
>>79208715
>amygdala
Oh it was the pineal gland, my bad.
>>79208125
To say it's due to Voegelin is a bit disingenuous, but he's really the one to expose it the most clearly.
If anything, Saint Augustine was already saying something similar when dealing with the heresy of Mani and the subsequent Manichean schools, which were branches of Gnosticism. But the material will look dated. No Gnostic today invokes gnosis conjuring the Demiurge or the loss of unity in hypostases. They will instead talk of "the death of God" for the former or "alienation" for the second, even though it's essentially the same thing.
>>79208715
Again, this is the main viewpoint I'm taking on with this thread. Your definition of "philosophy" is deeply pejorative and does not apply to (almost all) pre-Hegelian thought.
By the way, this is a very strawmannish takedown of Descartes: his failures in other fields are well-known, but as a pure philosopher, he has an important role, and significant developments to pure critical philosophy are due to him: http://www.friesian.com/hist-2.htm#descartes
>>79208821
oh, no he never goes into it, the closest you'll get is Thus Spake Zarathustra and Geneology
>>79208821
also Beyond Good and Evil.
>>79209046
Based men are always reviled, any time, any place. How often do you reveal your power level IRL?
>>79209842
hardly ever. I get accosted when I do by "aristocrats"
I disappoint myself.
>>79208715
>Or that they were non-gnostic philosophers and in contrast Hegel was a gnostic one?
It's a blight of modern schools of interpretations that everything intellectual is envisioned as gnostic. When Aquinas says that everything as existing is good, when Plato talks of the order of being, you are already far from gnosticism.
Descartes mocking the "evil genius" is in some sense a joke against gnostics and the demiurge.
>>79209496
I wouldn't call a literal top 10 mathematician in history, founder of analytic geometry and of the theory of impulses to be a failure. His take on explaining the massive amount of new experiments done in his day was bound to look like a bizarre first shot not only now but even merely 30 years after his death.
>>79209496
>and does not apply to (almost all) pre-Hegelian thought.
Nearly everybody before Hegel was also gnostic to some extent. Unfortunately that extent is literally the basis of their thought. Take Descartes for instance
>but as a pure philosopher, he has an important role, and significant developments to pure critical philosophy
All things based on circular arguments in the end. His system collapses on itself once you remove God as a given. I mean he literally had to say God mercifully intervenes to justify reality because his reasoning had doubted pretty much everything (except the self). How is this not "gnosticism"? Basically he came to the same conclusion (philosophy can't do shit) "so let's use religion instead". I'm not against religion, but I'm not seeing how you can still defend philosophy if you think like this.
>>79210170
>When Aquinas says that everything as existing is good, when Plato talks of the order of being, you are already far from gnosticism.
What? You can literally claim the opposite of Aquinas (who himself was a slave to Aristotle's logic) and you can conjure different orders than Plato. The moment you claim any of these is right or better than others and the others are wrong or worse (like they both did), how is this not gnosticism, by Voegelin definition?
>>79182790
I've never bothered to read any old philosophy myself, because it seems like it would be too time consuming to try to understand it. I only listen to contemporary philosopher's explanations of old philosophy. The only pre-20th century philosophers I've bothered to look in to are Nietzsche, Aristotle and Dostoyevsky
>>79208715
Also I forgot to add that when Voegelin gives examples of Gnosticism following the pretense of vision, it doesn't sound at all like Descartes or Plato.
It sounds more, in a way, like our SJW of today. Think of people like Sartre saying that Marxism was obviously the impossible-to-overcome horizon of the eternal future.
When Marx was asked about some of the problems of his system, he did justify his system saying he just admitted strange first principles and built on. And outright said "your objection doesn't exist to the socialist man" without even trying to give an explanation. Denying anything outside the system of knowledge is a characteristic of the gnostic systems.
When Descartes responded to the entire books of objections to his meditations, he mostly btfo his critics, he sometimes accepted their views after consideration, and sometimes said that his assumptions were not like those of his adversaries. But he never said "your objection doesn't exist for the cartesian man" in the same sense as Marx.
>>79210955
They can be full of flowerly language when really all you want is it dissolved down to the tools. Though sometimes its entertaining, like Nietzsche.
>>79177674
What is the philosophical position that chafes your asshole so much and why is it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism
Well /pol/, thanks for the discussion, I'm bringing the kids on a hike in 15 min so likely won't be checking back on the thread before she's dead.
Thanks for the discussion and the reading material!
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
>>79211785
A cursory look at based Nigel proves absurdism wrong.
Go and tell to this man that "the efforts of humanity to find inherent meaning will ultimately fail".
The mere existence of us shitposters is enough to prove Camus wrong.
>>79211267
>When Marx was asked about some of the problems of his system, he did justify his system saying he just admitted strange first principles and built on
So what you're saying is that Marx was the only honest one. Because everyone else literally did the same, but never admitted it. I can't even begin to understand how you can accuse Marx of utilizing "strange principle" and in the same post defend someone who said ideas where spherical forms existing over the sky, and someone who believed,within the boundaries of logic, in God begin one and three persons.
>>79211785
Read Tolstoy's Confession
>>79177674
Diogenes was the greatest troll to ever live.
>Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"
>When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."
>He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, "I am looking for an honest man."
>>79212754
I'll take the bait and say it's me being awful at explaining rather than you being dense.
Can you not make the difference between a system that rests on opinions you can discuss and one that doesn't allow questioning, not because the writer is butthurt, but by the construction of the system itself?
