nice article- sophistry from everyone ... skeptical existentialism for the rest ...RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 10:24 pmThere is nothing wrong with the human intellect. What's wrong is how philosophers have corrupted it.simplicity wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 7:28 pm If the purpose of modern life is in achieving some semblance of happiness/contentment, philosophical inquiry is not going to get you there [although it can point in the correct direction]. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my experience, the intellectual folks are almost always over there in the corner hiding from just about everything [that matters].
The intellect is a wonderful tool for practical matters, but as a portal to something beyond getting the toast right, the intellect has little to nothing to offer.
The following is from the beginning of an article entitled: "Bad Philosophy—There Is No Good Philosophy"
You are right. That kind of philosophy, which happens to be what is taught and promoted in every academic institution in the world, is not your friend. It is the enemy of all reason, knowledge, virtue and human success.
"Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself." —H. L. Mencken
Bad Philosophers
With rare exception, the entire corpus of recorded philosophy is utterly useless. The only exceptions are Aristotle, Peter Abelard (with reservation) and John Locke (with reservation). All the rest are not only wrong but so distort truth that to be influenced by any of them is tantamount to self-induced insanity.
All philosophers are bad, but the worst are Plato, Rene Descartes, Spinoza, George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer. Auguste Comte, Søren Kierkegaard, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, Willard Quine, A.J. Ayer, John Austin, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Avram Noam Chomsky, Ronald Myles Dworkin, and Roger Penrose.
These are the worst because they have, historically, most influenced what is called philosophy today and are held as authorities in philosophical matters. The philosophy of today, which they spawned and made possible, is a total disaster.
The worst of all philosophy today is what is being promoted in every academic institution, including every logical positivist: including Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, and Friedrich Waismann; every cultural Marxist: (critical theory, Frankfurt School), including Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin. Ernst Bloch, and Jürgen Habermas; and every post modernist: including: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Douglas Kellner.
Finally there are the millions of little philosopherets—every professor, psychologist, economist, social/political ideologist, pseudo-scientist, and religious teacher who dabbles in, "philosophy."
Bad Philosophy
Philosophy was originally defined as, "love of wisdom," meaning that kind of knowledge required for living successfully as a human being. It originally included all knowledge, like the physical sciences. As the successful branches of intellectual inquiry (like the sciences) were established, philosophy was refined to mean those aspects of knowledge that were fundamental to all other knowledge. While the sciences were discovering the nature of the physical universe, philosophers were attempting to identify the nature of existence itself and what reality is (metaphysics); what the nature of material existence, the physical, living, conscious, and mental are (ontology); what the nature of knowledge itself is (epistemology); what principles determined how individuals must guide their lives to live successfully (ethics); how human beings must relate to each other (politics); and the ultimate nature of purpose, value, and happiness (aesthetics).
While the sciences have been phenomenally successful, philosophy is a complete failure. Instead of discovering and explaining the ultimate nature of existence and reality, philosophy denies the existence the sciences study is real and describes reality as an illusion. Instead of discovering and describing the nature of reality that makes it knowable, philosophy denies that reality can ever be truly known. Instead of discovering and describing the nature of knowledge, philosophy denies that any certain knowledge is possible. Instead of discovering and describing the principles by which individuals can guide their lives successfully, philosophy denies there are such principles or reduces them to some kind of mystic mandates or mere custom. Instead of discovering and describing how individual human beings must relate to one another, philosophy regards individuals as having no value or meaning except as members of some social collectives, from tribes, to states, to mankind. Instead of discovering and describing a life that is worth living and how to achieve it, philosophy denies that true success and happiness are possible and reduces human life to a constant battle against evil.
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-Imp