why is it that when it comes to philosophy people subscribe to "schools of thought" that are credited to certain individual writers and thinkers.
I think the concept is ridiculous.
Im a nihilistic misanthrope, conclusion I came to own my own throughout my life and someone would describe that as "schopenhauer" or someone else.
I get that for certain fields - criminology for example, we use schools of thoughts because of their application and methods.
In philosophy we dont use those. its literally just your thoughts and thinking. why credit it to someone?
also unlike most "inventions" thoughts are something everyone has. Schopenhauer is highly unlikely to be the first, or even an impactful misanthropic nihilist.
Many people probably came to that conclusion on their own.
I can see why it might be a little helpful if you frequently discuss the subject, since it categorizes things neatly, but you could also do that by naming the philosophy rather than crediting it.
obviously all decision making is selfish and procreating is a selfish act, why credit that revelation to a certain individual?
its a bit like crediting the invention of the wheel. many people came up with it.
 Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
 DMT Has Friends For Me Shirt $21.68 |
Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Because certain philosophers introduced important concepts and as a principle of honour we credit them. Moreover, as philosophy is a highly technical discipline which has to invent its own language, each philosopher's terminology will be subtly different. Thus it helps for the purposes of discussion to talk about, say, a Kantian view of perception, instead of explaining the whole concept from scratch.
You say your philosophy is that you're a "misanthropic nihilist". That is not a comprehensive philosophy. Philosophy deals with objective problems such as human perception, the status of consciousness, the ontology and classification of objects, the problem of universals and of the material/immaterial distinction, the status of mathematical objects as well as logical laws, the limits of knowledge and the capacities of reason, the nature of the aesthetic, the problem of a-priori transcendental forms of cognition, the existence of God, morality, ethics, politics, etc. etc..
What you've described is a general worldview which any layman can adopt, not a specialised philosophical system.
Im obviously summarizing my thoughts.
when I watch a philosophical debate theyll discuss very common views and credit them to individuals.
theres many people who are aware that any action you take is inherently selfish is one form or another. Biology and neuroscience even find this.
its just ridiculous to classify that to certain individuals.
yes, thats at least somewhat acceptable/understandable, but then many students of philosophy take it to far. although thats a problem not unique to philosophy, midwits in all fields suffer from this where they focus on categorization rather than content
arguably the misanthropic world view is objectively the best for humanity.
if more people focused on humanities flaws, it could lead to serious improvement and understanding. instead academia is flooded with naive, intentionally blinded optimists
what you call "growing up" is really just "I cant cope so Im going to delude myself again"
> arguably the misanthropic world view is objectively the best for humanity.
if more people focused on humanities flaws, it could lead to serious improvement and understanding.
If this were true, depression would be great for self-improvement. It's actually terrible for it. You have to see flaws, but remain optimistic, not necessarily about fixing the flaws, but about enjoying the process.
>>If this were true, depression would be great for self-improvement.
here you do what morons do often
which is:
>if X then ABC!!!
depression and misanthropy are 2 entirely different things.
until you understand that, our entire discussion is meaningless.
Same thing, different target. It's loathing of self (of everything really) and loathing of other. Loathing just is not useful for fixing things. Unless you have a super-boutique definition of misanthropy that is just 'noticing the flaws of humanity'.
I think its mostly just a tool for organization. If you say someone's thought is similar to Schopenhauer's, that gives them an idea of what you think.
Typically this confuses people who aren't as well versed in the philosophy world, in the way they'll google things like "Existentialism" expecting an MMORPG class description of what that is. Obviously things aren't that simple. I think that's probably what you're referring to. Its definitely annoying.
>I am nihilistic misanthrope
Stopped reading right there. You’ll grow out of it
It is very difficult to philosophize on your own, to apply curiosities properly and then express or articulate something that stands human tests for truthfulness. Epistemology is very difficult once you consider subjective experience and the mental and spiritual underpinnings of life. The philosophical works or rules have been found to work. They are meta in a way, thus useful and convincing to many people.
The case of schools in macroeconomics is illustrative — the Keynesians, monetarists, Austrians, and others. You can easily spot non-economist pseuds by their attitude to these in on-line arguments. They act as though the schools are now of any but idle historical interest. In reality, the schools have lost any relevance by the 1970s–1980s, and vanishingly few working economists care about Hayek or whomever. What changed?
We started being able to tell who is right and how right. We have better computers, better data, better theory, and we now argue on a case-by-case basis. Modern macro models are computationally demanding mathematical machinery with many moving parts — they have terms for the actors, their preferences, interactions, resource and budget constraints, state interventions, transaction costs, and so on. On top of that, we now have quasi-experimental methods and other techniques for causal inference, and we can try and suss out which macro models fit the data best and how accurate they are for which parameter combinations. The disagreements of working economists are on a case-by-case basis for each class of model and each policy, grounded in empirical data. Interesting arguments are ones such as this https://bouchaud.substack.com/p/are-dsge-models-sloppy but the field has methodologically matured to mathematical modeling.
And so, macro schools are a thing of the past. Squabbles about definitions and vague hunches gave way to crisply specified models that leave no gaps for language games and ideology to take root. That which could be destroyed by truth now can be. The "schools" of philosophy are rather roughly analogous to schools of poetry and in full correspodence with theology — there are no procedures to decide which ideas are correct and to lift up the whole debate from the morass of interminable language games. Some schools of poetry are more prestigious, some are less. It is all fashion.
• https://warosu.org/lit/thread/23010871
• https://warosu.org/lit/thread/23010871#p23011507
• https://warosu.org/lit/thread/22997151#p22999326
> Squabbles about definitions and vague hunches gave way to crisply specified models that leave no gaps for language games and ideology to take root.
What? So there's some model out there that tells you how to fix the world? Well, you kinda said yourself that it's taken on a case by case basis, i.e. no dealing with big questions.
Misanthropy isn’t a philosophical position
because it's fun, and that's what philosophy is all about
it dilutes the discussion.
what often happens is that people who especially subscribe to these schools of thought also care about the authors.
discussing the personal lives of those people is literally celebrity gossip and incredibly banal.
then again, its a good filter to know who you shouldnt conversate with.
yeah good point, in economics it has become almost entirely irrelevant. lets hope the same happens to philosophy sooner rather than later
>lets hope the same happens to philosophy sooner rather than later
lmao the phenomenon you describe has been the case since the beginning of philosophy. There were the pythagoreans, the eleatics, peripatetics, platonists, neo-platonists, stoics, cynics, and so on. The reason for this has been explained by other anons in this thread, in most cases it just serves to make philosophical discussion easier, and it’s why it will never go away. The comparison to economics is a false equivalency and therefore nonsensical.
It’s easier to say you follow Schopenhauer’s metaphysics than to say you are a nihilistic misanthrope. Why? Because people who have read Schopenhauer will instantly understand what you mean by that, whereas nihilism and misanthropy have different variants, different reasons to be and realistically no one cares about you explaining in detail your personal beliefs and world views unless you are making a contribution to philosophy. Kant did such a thing, therefore there’s a Kantian school of thought, Schopenhauer did such a thing, therefore there’s a schopenhauerian school of thought and so on for every school of thought associated with a particular author.
>The comparison to economics is a false equivalency
You should learn to read better because that anon isn't suggesting an equivalency. He's doing the exact opposite by explaining the mechanism by which schools disappeared in economics, and why schools in philosophy won't ever go away.
>The "schools" of philosophy are rather roughly analogous to schools of poetry and in full correspodence with theology — there are no procedures to decide which ideas are correct
>It is all fashion.
>It’s easier to say you follow Schopenhauer’s metaphysics than to say you are a nihilistic misanthrope. Why? Because people who have read Schopenhauer will instantly understand what you mean by that,
but thats wrong because theyre oversimplifying. my views may align with him on many points, but theyre different on others.
and these tards will then argue against schopenhauers views, even where I disagree.
if they werent so dumb, theyd consider my actual views and debate those.
but thats too complex for these people. they need cookie-cutter views so they can give their canned responses, as they cant think of anything on their own.
good to see most people here view it similarly.
Im not going to go in detail but I dont think those 2 are oxymorons. you can be a nihilist and despise humanity.
but I am the more active kind, so I guess for me it would be an oxymoron, I just take values from both of those views.
I think nothing we do matters because were all essentially shit and doomed regardless, to oversimplify it.
Humans love to categoritizie, everything.
We have done that since the start of humanity.
That's how we came with the many sciences, or the many names for animals, or the many names for languages.... etc....
So is it really that surprising that we classify the many schols of thought in the names of the writen founders?
Yes there was possibly (Key word:Possibly, we dont actually know) that came with the ideas of Schopenhauer, but Schopenhauer was the first that we know of in Historical Records or Writing that we know came with those ideas, so we attribute the idea to him.
Does it make sense now?
Its kind of obvious when you think it that way.
I literally addressed this in the opening post, did you read it?
It's for midwits to feel better and superior.
A philosophical school is not just an arbitrary set of conclusions. The "doctrines" of a school are connected by the acceptance of certain axioms and line of argumentation which leads to each conclusion. Even if you accepted every one of Aristotle's philosophical doctrines, if you didn't do it because of the arguments Aristotle used, you wouldn't really be an Aristotelian.
The best philosophers do a great job of mapping out all of the coherent conclusions which result from some set of substantive axioms and methodologies of reasoning. A lot of philosophical labor has already been done, so it would actually be reinventing the wheel to give a try to talk about some doctrine without reference to those who already mapped it out with other axioms, logical methods, and conclusions.
That being said, midwit authors like Zizek or Paglia go overboard with this and it's an excuse to be conceptually sloppy and vibes based. On the other hand if you read Hegel he'll paraphrase some other philosopher is such a torturous abstract way without naming whoever he's obviously discussing it would probably save the educated reader time if he just said "here's why Schelling is wrong about X".
This. OP did you post the other thread asking how you get your philosophy ideas out into the world? Because I answered in pretty much the same way, it sounds like you don't know any philosophy and you'll be reinventing the wheel. So you bailed from that thread and are reinventing the thread till you get an answer you like. You won't. Give it up. Study philosophy or recognise that you are a dilettante with a superficial interest. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that your true calling lies somewhere else. If that is true, go and find that.
>everyone I dont like is one person
I wish newbies would leave.
wow, what a fricking dumb take. people can think for themselves and make their own conclusions. why should we limit ourselves to a bunch of authors for your convenience? learn to judge on case by case basis instead of catogerizing everything like a midwit that cant cope with the intricacies of reality.
I dont know or care about most of their axioms, methods and reasoning in general.
I know that when I thought about selfishness I came to conclusions that aligned with those of some philosophers (although there are differences) and then some normalgay tard will just put you in a box and argue against that philosophical school of thought because thats easier for them rather than actually arguing with your arguments, probably because they cant think for themselves.
>Babby cannot into frenzy
Hedonism chagrin should be a capital offense.
I don’t know, but I hate buttholes who can’t pick and instead choose to do a vague mishmash of a whole bunch of different philosophies.
Couple things.
Firstly Schopenhauer was a pessimist, not a nihilist and even misanthrope is a stretch.
Secondly, nihilistic misanthrope is an oxymoron. Misanthrope means you think people are shit which implies an ideal you think people should embody instead. A nihilist has no ideals and doesn't care what happens.
As for schools of thought; any thinker who reaches maturity engages with these ideas as timeless applications of the mind, and it's readily acknowledged that thousands of men from all eras of history already formulated these concepts in some fashion and discussed them, as abstract concepts are timeless.
It can be useful for contextual discussion, but if you want the real reason; it's because some people are young and haven't reached maturity, which is fine, and others are pseuds for whom the art of thought is an identity marker, and names like Nietzsche, Camus, Hume, Kant etc are social mating calls.
Where is the kant gay who was criticizing the critique of pure reason based on what language can say about absolutism. The previous thread is already archived and I'd like to continue the debate but I can't start my own thread.