Philosophy Now Forum

marjoramblues wrote:Most that ask questions such as yours would rather speed past upon progress to create a true object of themselves, though.

I'm not sure what you mean by that ? I interpret this ( probably wrongly) as an accusation of not producing a clearly defined question so that a personal opinion is pushed through ? How do you 'create a true object' of yourself ? And why do you think this would be anyone's aim ?

lancek4 wrote:

The Voice of Time wrote:At what degree does philosophy of the past make sense in the present?

I mean. There is a perspective by some folk that philosophical ideas are eternal, ever open for question. But if a philosophical idea has been tried out for years, decades, even centuries or millenniums: can it still prove useful? Or are we just clinging to the past?

Let's talk examples, for instance. Now I don't want any affiliation here, I want to stick to the philosophy and argue its usefulness from anybody's point of view (so doesn't matter whether you agree or not), and I want to ask: how much of the past in these people can we still use?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousseau#Philosophy

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx# ... al_thought

"The fact that man is a corporeal, actual, sentient, objective being with natural capacities means that he has actual, sensuous objects for his nature as objects of his life-expression, or that he can only express his life in actual sensuous objects."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_po ... pretations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche)

"To speak of just or unjust in itself is quite senseless; in itself, of course, no injury, assault, exploitation, destruction can be 'unjust,' since life operates essentially, that is in its basic functions, through injury, assault, exploitation, destruction and simply cannot be thought of at all without this character. One must indeed grant something even more unpalatable: that, from the highest biological standpoint, legal conditions can never be other than exceptional conditions, since they constitute a partial restriction of the will of life, which is bent upon power, and are subordinate to its total goal as a single means: namely, as a means of creating greater units of power. A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness"

The point make here is that if philosophy is the Love of Wisdom, and Wisdom is the efficiency of knowledge, that efficiency has to be relative to something. And that something would be us, our time, our world.
What is 'our'? It seems you are refering to an assumption of a common route.

All of the above, CAN, be used in our world, but its not natural ideas to think of, they do not make sense in our world for the commoner because relative to hers/his life the world does not pop questions like these ones, and the paths to the future does not lead along these tracks. So what use do these people have in our world, in our time? Speaking specifically for myself and my people at my own age (20 years old), and after me and just before me. Does thinking along these lines actually make me wiser to the world I live in? Or do they make me cling to a past that has already been and is out of date, out of context?
Is the 'past', and these authors/philosophers to which you are referring, something that exists like an object, say, like a computer?

Personally I find these things more fun than present philosophy since contemporary professional philosophy is such a dull gang of men and women. And yet, the past is so useless in my eyes because it's so void of context to our own. Contemporary philosophers don't seem to have balls enough or creativity enough to pull things into the future, whereas the past of great personalities seems to be like awesome but rusty old cars, or a legendary sportman who's beginning to reach a really old age. So, what do you think, how can the past be useful? Or should be make more effort to pull things ourselves into the future?

The past can be useful when it becomes understood for what it is: a term or condition of the present. When it is seem as having a 'causal' effect, and is thus 'held out' and viewed as separated from our present, you have relied upon progress and began in the middle, forgoing the elements of the problem you wish to address, and then we remain with only probelm. Your questions merely beg the question of what you are seeking, the world comtinues in its way, and your question dies, justified only in you faith that you were acting and thinking freely.

Who said wisdom if the efficiency of knowledge? You rush past this but use it to orient your question. How are you determining what is past? Perhaps you might consider Kierkegaards query of the 'contemporary' before you rush on so.
Indeed, there are ideas that qualify ( loosely) as philosophy, and thereby may qualify in this looseness as past ideas, but I guess it matters how vigorous a 'philosophical' inquiry you wish to undertake. Most that ask questions such as yours would rather speed past upon progress to create a true object of themselves, though.

The Voice of Time wrote:

lancek4 wrote: Who said wisdom if the efficiency of knowledge? You rush past this but use it to orient your question.

Oxford dictionary. Anyways, philosophy, like everything else, can be toyed with. But I mean it a bit more serious than just toying with ideas, and thus if we are to produce anything we should start from a mutually agreeable metaphilosophical axiom. It is depressing and confusing to never get any further than metaphilosophy, so at least try to stick with me on this one.

lancek4 wrote:

marjoramblues wrote:Most that ask questions such as yours would rather speed past upon progress to create a true object of themselves, though.

I'm not sure what you mean by that ? I interpret this ( probably wrongly) as an accusation of not producing a clearly defined question so that a personal opinion is pushed through ? How do you 'create a true object' of yourself ? And why do you think this would be anyone's aim ?

I think the obvious question here would be: what is progress?

LuvPimpinYou wrote:Old ideas can be implemented to better use, with more know-how than previously applied.

Example:
Ants are perfect communists, humans are not....therefor the better question is who is smarter, the ant, or the human.

Humans have been around for 200,000 years
Ants have been around for 80-100 MILLION years

I vote ant

Biologically,
Smarter = Live, Evolve, Survive, Thrive - In no certain order

Which species do you believe will live longer, from here on out?
Once again, I vote the ant!

Arising_uk wrote:. . . normally you can just hit the back button and find what you thought you'd lost.

marjoramblues wrote:

lancek4 wrote:

marjoramblues wrote:Most that ask questions such as yours would rather speed past upon progress to create a true object of themselves, though.

I'm not sure what you mean by that ? I interpret this ( probably wrongly) as an accusation of not producing a clearly defined question so that a personal opinion is pushed through ? How do you 'create a true object' of yourself ? And why do you think this would be anyone's aim ?

I think the obvious question here would be: what is progress?

I'd quite forgotten about this thread - hope that the Voice is travelling light on his travels.

{ and thanks Arising for your post ! }

Picking up on some past 'bits' - Voice was questioning the relevance of past philosophy and one response was: Well past to me is anything which was made for a different time and for different people than myself and my time, and therefore isn't tailored to be understood by people like myself or give wisdom to people like myself and my time.

He stated his was 'a critique of valuing past when it wasn't made for us' - and provided an example of past style of dress not having inherent value, now looking silly.

Perhaps the style of writing of past philosophers is not to everyone's taste - and the substance (material) may have moved on some - however, isn't it the case that the tailoring is superficial and is not to be understood in itself but to highlight, or give a clue, as to an underlying or deep-seated 'wisdom'.

So, go get naked; strip off the layers of past and present. What is left ? Just you. With your thoughts ? Reflection ? Insight ? Uncertainty ? Of what good/use are they without interaction with others ?

Lancek4 - I asked those questions of you because I didn't understand what you meant by your response to Voice. Your later response did not help me much; however, your choice to zoom in on one word 'progress' was interesting.

Originally, you said 'Most...would speed upon progress to create a true object of themselves...'

I now take this to mean that they speed on by - ignoring the past - on the way to create a sense of who they are in the world. Progress, here, could mean self-actualization by means of personal creativity - not relying on past philosophies seen as irrelevant.

Your thoughts ?

marjoramblues wrote:lancek4: Yes; I can agree. But also perhaps instead of 'stripping' one of past and future, one could 'include ' them. And get similar results. An analogy of this situation would be, rather than the 'peeling of an onion' , it would be like 'two sides of the same coin'. Left with 'oneself ' but the image of oneself is different.

I had to go re-read my last post - to try and work out what I meant ?!

I think what I was getting at was the stripping away of the style and substance of previous and present philosophies, so that Voice might find his. Not necessarily discardiganing but a knitting of the brows.

I'm not sure that the coin analogy works for this.

lancek4 wrote:

marjoramblues wrote:lancek4: Yes; I can agree. But also perhaps instead of 'stripping' one of past and future, one could 'include ' them. And get similar results. An analogy of this situation would be, rather than the 'peeling of an onion' , it would be like 'two sides of the same coin'. Left with 'oneself ' but the image of oneself is different.

I had to go re-read my last post - to try and work out what I meant ?!

I think what I was getting at was the stripping away of the style and substance of previous and present philosophies, so that Voice might find his. Not necessarily discardiganing but a knitting of the brows.

I'm not sure that the coin analogy works for this.

I don't think that's what you meant, but it does work.

So let's rewind a little - what do you think I meant ?
Possibly a total strip down to nothing but one's own thoughts ?
However, a totallly 'blank slate' is impossible. That is why I mentioned the need for interaction with others - including past and present. Using these resources as a foundation to create a new pattern to suit one's self/context.

It appears to me that you work in a fog, of sorts, a suspended vapor of ideas in which you try. To hold up a piece of glass and use you finger to draw images as if this then gets somewhere. I'm not sure if you realize this yourself and do are trying to fool others, or if you believe that the finger drawings are substantial.

You what ?

marjoramblues wrote:
So, philosophy is a waste of bloody time then ?

LuvPimpinYou wrote:

marjoramblues wrote:
So, philosophy is a waste of bloody time then ?

No,

No ? Yes. Perhaps. Sometimes. Maybe. Never.

Philosophy show us we should be more like the ant.

It does ?

We are too stupid/selfish to see that.

We are ?

It's not philosophy's fault humans are what they are.

That that is is.

marjoramblues wrote:

LuvPimpinYou wrote:

marjoramblues wrote:
So, philosophy is a waste of bloody time then ?

No,

No ? Yes. Perhaps. Sometimes. Maybe. Never.

Philosophy show us we should be more like the ant.

It does ?

We are too stupid/selfish to see that.

We are ?

You got it

It's not philosophy's fault humans are what they are.

That that is is.