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Has philosophy failed us?

  
 
iconoplast
03:12 / 09.12.02
So, I'm a philosophy student. And I'm talking to a Grad Student and I say that the reason I'm not planning on Grad School is that I think Philosophy has failed.

The idea that the world as we know it is fucked seems pretty widespread. People accept that we value insignificant things, that we have little say in our daily lives and that human life is degenerating into neurosis and depression. And we figure that's okay, because none of us can think of another way to live.

I maintain this is Philosophy's job. To reimagine our world. And I maintain that the last fifty years of thinkers have dropped the ball and gotten caught up in what has been called rococco marxism and in daisy-chain academic careerism.

So, what's to be done? How does one begin to reimagine modern life? Is it already too late?
 
 
The Falcon
03:31 / 09.12.02
I don't think it is philosophy's job to 'save' us, really, but to make us increase our understanding.

Yeah, it has become incredibly dry tail-chasing stuff, though. Mmmm. Logical positivism, that's fun.

There's still good (fiction) writers, though, who can help us reimagine modern life; their work is, I'd argue, much more accessible for the vast majority, too.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:31 / 09.12.02
As a matter of purely personal interest, on the reading of which modern philosophers are you basing these assertions? Iconoplast? Duncan?

I think there are two questions here - what is philosophy for and is it doing its job. Is Naomi Klein, for example, a political activist or a philosopher? How about Donna Haraway? Is the question of how widespread a philosophy is relevant to its value, or what actions it leads to in the real world?
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
12:38 / 09.12.02
Of course, George W. Bush has a philosophy, which he is working to now, Saddam Hussain has a philosophy, Sharon and Arafat both have philosophies as does Osama Bin Laden, as does...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:53 / 09.12.02
Very good points. And I think there are a number of levels that iconoplast's objection.

The most obvous one is addressed in passing by Duncan: where does it say that the aim of philosophy is to "reimagine the word". As opposed to, say, understand or explain or improve the world, or possbly leave the world to the idiots and go to a cave to think about philosophy (this was, after all, the Socratic position, from a man who did reimagine the world, and did so as a fascist utopia without art or democracy).

And then again, what does it mean to "reimagine modern life"? And, not to harp, but it's at times like this that a tpic abstractmight come in handy, especially as the question atthe end of iconoplat's post has no necessary connection to the rest of it. It would probably help at this point if we knew what "rococco marxism and daisy-chain academic careerism" actually mean and who has called the philosophy of the last half-century this, and to what purpose.

Does it mean, for example, that the institutions of "academic philosophy" (thatis, the stuffthat isn't George Bush's philosophy, but is studied or written about in a tutorial environment) are divorced from reality, not engaging with the modern world? Only it occurs to me that, for example, Derrida, Baudrillard and in particular Barthesare actually frequently found to talk abotu the world around us and what is going on in it; Barthes' most famous book is a collection of srticles in the popular press (so, not ivory tower) examining the everyday elements of our culture and how we might "reimagine" them or a world in which they behave differently. Derrida slept with Lionel Jospin's wife, for Gawd's sake - how much further into "the real world" doyou want to get.

Likewise, if we find ourselves talking about "philosophers" in a manner that might include Naomi Klein, or Mary Daly, or Donna Haraway, all writers passionately engaged with how the world can be changed and how it works, inside and outside people's heads.

I'm also intereste4d in te idea that philosophy has failed "in the last fifty years". How was it doing before then? What's the cut-off point? Tis is why I'm slightly confused by the introduction of logical positivism, which grew out of the Vienna school in the 20s and, I would suggest, has not been a living philosophical discipline of any note for decades. But what has changed in the last half-century, anyway? In what way was philosophy helping to reimagine the world *successfully*, that is in a way that got people up on their feet and working to establish another way to live. In what way is philosophy faling now in a way that it was succeeding earlier this century, or last century?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:19 / 09.12.02
Adorno makes a very good point, he said in one of his lectures that philosophy should never be taken literally, it isn't a practical thing, people sitting around writing books or giving lectures on these odd notions that most other human beings don't consider. Philosophers think about things that people should not necessarily take on everyday. I'll use, as my example, the notion of truth because it is more important for - erm - governments to identify the truth as a solid thing then as a concept in the way that a philosopher might do.

It's not a philosopher's job to engage with the world and often the things that they say are so unreal, over the top and obscure that it seems they couldn't possibly begin to reimagine the world. How on earth could you reimagine the world when you're using a thought process that a philosophy student has trouble coming to terms with? Philosophers jump in to giant intellectual mud baths and wrestle around with big words, their starting off point is weird, where they may end is anybody's guess. Forget re-imagining the world, the conception of it in the first place has to be called in to question!

So basically I think I agree with Haus (kind of), yeah, philosophers go to a cave and leave the idiots to get on with it and I might add that I like being an idiot.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:48 / 09.12.02
Just to clear it up, I didn't say that - it was a paraphrase of Socrates'position that the truly wise (and therefore truly just) man could not profitably lead an unjust (because unwise) society, because his energy would be wasted, and he would eventually be either corrupted or removed.
 
 
iconoplast
16:00 / 09.12.02
Yeah, sorry about the abstract, got a heads-up and promise to to better in the future.

Daisy Chain careerism - Citing, reading, and advancing the careers of those who cite, read, and advance your career. The image is one of, well, a realy long chain of wanks.

Rococco marxism - Tom Wolfe used this phrase to describe postmodernism. And, after my professor - who organizes conferences, edits journals, publishes yearly, and has as good a reputation, on paper, as you can have without being famous - accused me of making a 'modernist objection' and 'falling into the trap of definitions', I sort of understand the description. Just as professors became Marxists to be able to accuse philistines of being bourgeois, now professors accuse their detractors of being modernists.

Basically. Philosophy - and I guess I mostly mean continental philosophy - is more and more self referential. To do philosophy is to study the history of philosophy. I'm not even sure that Derrida is a philosopher the way, say, Nietzsche was. Or Schopenhauer. Or Kierkegaard. Does reading him help make sense of experience?

I'm also, by the way, not sure Philosophy has failed. I'm not sure I was supposed to expect it to answer anything, or even ask any relevant questions. I am, basically, just wondering as I inch towards graduation, what the hell I've been studying and what I've learned.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:10 / 09.12.02
Hmmm....but so much of Nietzsche was a response to Kant or Schopenhauer...or Wagner, to a lesser extent...can't you say the same thing? When has philosphy not been primarily addressed to responding to and examining the beliefs of other philosophers? Empedocles, possibly, but certainly since the eighteenth century...

Besides, it occurs to me that your complaint is not about philosophy but about philosophy *tutors*, which is kind of a different thing. And, incidentally, a perfectly good reason not to take a degree the only useful function of which wuld be to help to secure a job as a phlosophy tutor, but not a very good reason not to take an interest in philosophy, of any period.
 
 
Cat Chant
21:44 / 09.12.02
your complaint is not about philosophy but about philosophy *tutors*, which is kind of a different thing.

Or is it? Another question might be: to what extent can philosophy be defined as "the activity that takes place within philosophy departments"? There seem to be two extremes here: Janina-Adorno's that philosophy can be confined to its disciplinary location, and Iconoplast's-Duncan's that philosophy is a thing which helps us reimagine the world, presumably for the sake of changing it?

On the other hand, philosophy as discipline gets some of its 'legitimacy' from claiming to be a form of engagement with the world. I know on the University of Gauda Prime (my home institution) there are posters up at module-choosing time saying "Win Arguments In The Pub!" and "Is God Dead? The Big Questions: Philosophy@GaudaPrime".

Thanks for a nice thread. Sorry for crap responses. But I have to go to bed now.
 
 
Creepster
22:35 / 09.12.02
i think you might say philosophy as an academic disipline or as a history has failed 'us'. there are many examples. but it is naive to imply that we can do without philosophy, in the greater sense, because we are never transparent to our selves as we would have it, never neutral but always occupying a particular possition. philosophy can uncover the way in which we are, show us ourselves which is no easy task. in a sense this is the virtue of derridas project to show us the myth of the "presence" that "is". perhaps the problem is not being sufficiently philosophical. what use does this world have for contemplation or imagination or insight?
 
 
Murray Hamhandler
23:29 / 09.12.02
Has philosophy failed us? In terms of academia and its influence on students, I would say yes. I'm considerably less interested in philosophy as a result of having once been a philosophy student. I've been made to feel that my philosophical ideas are less valid unless couched in impenetrable language and focused on the most minute and trivial details, moving infinitely further away from the "big picture". And I'm not the only one I know who feels this way.

Academic philosophy is not inviting. It is a members-only club for those well-versed in the jargon. In dealing w/philosophy, I've spent the majority of my time translating overly-wordy concepts into perfectly-adequate analogues that could be understood by a four-year-old and wondering why the author didn't do just that in the first place.

Philosophy is relevant to modern life, I would argue, but that philosophy which is relevant is not to be found in the hallowed halls of academia. It's out here in the real world, w/the rest of us, in bastardized forms filtered through art and pop culture. Tell me, for instance, how teleofunctional accounts of mental representation (which I'm writing about simultaneous to this post) apply to your everyday life. Maybe it's just me...

Have I failed philosophy? Umm...there was the one time...
 
 
Cloudhands
12:41 / 10.12.02
Forget re-imagining the world, the conception of it in the first place has to be called in to question!

Philosophy in it's 'pure' form has no reference to life. It is questioning all the normal things that we take for granted, it's not meant to help us to live, it's meant to question what living is etc. Perhaps it helps our lives to have a deeper understanding of what 'existence', 'truth', 'being' is, I'm not sure, but these questions are asked for their own sake, not in order to change the world.
 
 
No star here laces
21:13 / 10.12.02
Is not the issue here to do with the difference between what can be authoritatively stated by philosophers, and ideas that can be used to change the world?

Deductive reasoning gives one a fairly limited palette to work with, particularly when you're dealing with a world as messy as ours. We can argue convincingly about the nature of truth or objectivity because these are abstract concepts, but eliminating poverty and creating universal happiness are a bit harder. People and the physical world do not operate solely by the rules of deductive logic, therefore deductive logic is insufficient to solve problems in the real world.

'Philosophy' seems to have come to mean strictly argued, carefully reasoned pieces of deductive logic. But philosophy as used by politicians et al is a completely different entity. So I guess, maybe, the problem is that if you know too much about 'proper' philosophy it gets harder to do the exciting stuff because you spot the holes...
 
 
.
22:00 / 10.12.02
Philosophy hasn't failed anyone, because as a whole it has never set out to succeed at anything...

In the abstract the question is "Has philosophy let us all down by failing to provide alternative ways of living?"

The assumption here is that philosophy's purpose is to provide alternative ways of living. Which is the explicit aim of but one aspect of one area of philosophy, specifically that concerning political thought.

There are two questions here, which are related but not the equal:

1) What purpose does the study of philosophy serve?
2) What good does the study of philosophy do for society?

Breaking it down like this, one can see that there is an assumption that these two questions are run together (that the purpose of studying philosophy is to create good in society) but there is no reason why that need be the case.

So let's look at both questions in turn.
1) The various areas of philosophy have different aims. Ethics is about assigning truth to various human actions. The purpose of politics is to discover the makings of the ideal society. Metaphysics is for creating a model of the world beyond physical descriptions. Etc etc.

But what is philosophy for as a whole? Partly it is to find out what is good. Partly it is to find out how we apply knowledge of good to the world. Partly it is about finding out what the world is, and what knowledge is. And it is also about finding out what philosophy is. So what is philosophy for as a whole?

Questioning

And questioning questions...

And what is questioning for? Well questioning as an action provides a sense of identity. A sense of identity reinforces the idea of self. In the long run, individuals may combat their fear of mortality (or destruction of the self) by creating a strong sense of the self. This in turn can create a sense of well-being. Alternatively questioning can destroy any sense of self and lead to a feeling of nihilism and/or existential dread. And yet there is still great satisfaction in questioning (at least to people with the mindset of a philosopher).

Ultimately questioning is about a sense of wonder. Wonder is itself about interacting with the joyous and magical elements of the world. It is about living in the fullest way possible. So philosophers take the risk of nihilism and existential dread because the allure of wonder is too great.

So 2)... Philosophy at it's best reminds people of the wonder of the world. At it's worst it leads to nihilism. When a section of society study philosophy, they are doing two things: they are reminding people of the wonder of the world; and they are asking the questions that may lead to nihilism, so that the rest of society don't have to worry about that sort of thing.

And a handy by-product of the philosophical process is logical thought, which helps people in a million ways that I can't be bothered to go into in this post.
 
 
aus
05:30 / 11.12.02
At it's worst it leads to nihilism.

How is Nihilism worst? How is "reminding people of the wonder of the world" best?
 
 
Fist of Fun
07:42 / 11.12.02
I'm also, by the way, not sure Philosophy has failed. I'm not sure I was supposed to expect it to answer anything, or even ask any relevant questions. I am, basically, just wondering as I inch towards graduation, what the hell I've been studying and what I've learned iconoplast

When I went for interviews for philosophy degrees most of the interviews revolved around clever little mental games / hypothetical situations where one could show off one's powers of reason or argument. It all seemed a bit fun, but not really very deep. Then suddenly I had an interview where the professor said:
"How do you define philosophy? What do you mean when you say 'I want to study philosophy'?"
And bugger me, if I wasn't seriously stuck for an answer.

Three years later and I had come to the following conclusions:
(i) Philosophy is often just a lable for anything that people want to sound intellectual but haven't actually got down to seriously analysing.
(ii) Philosophy in a more useful (academic disciplines?) sense is the study of anything where there are no generally accepted standards of right and wrong / obtaining correct answers. See - philosophy of literature / politics / science / ethics / language / mind / religion. The moment you get a set of rules for determining whether you got it right, it stops being philosophy and becomes a discipline in its own right. So it's not like studying all these areas is going to give you much of an answer because, almost by definition, there are no definite answers in philosophy.
(iii) Degrees in philosophy should be renamed. They should be called degrees in Arguing. You shouldn't get an MA or MSc, but an MArg. Except people would think you were a butter substitute.

Iconoplast, if you could put your finger on what you had learnt (other than the skill of arguing) it would probably mean that you had just learnt one particular point of view - and where is the point in that? Far more useful (important?) to learn how to analyse, discuss, debate and consider everybody's point of view. That way you can go off and do some 'philosophising' of your own, and who knows - maybe you can come up with a hedge-philosophy which makes people happy, or at least makes you happy.

Oh, and that stuff at the beginning of the thread where you were saying that it's generally accepted that life is shit and we value insignificant things and have little control over our lives and life is all a bundle of neurosis and depression? It bloody isn't outside the academic world. OK, the little control over parts of our lives is true for most of us, and little control over any of our life is true for some of us. But that doesn't mean:
(i) That life is any worse than it's been in the past - if anything, life in the parts of the world we live in (London, me, Brooklyn, you) is about as good as it's ever been for freedom of opportunity etc.
(ii) That life is bad. People have always had these problems and, you know what, they didn't all go around topping themselves then and they won't start now. Why? Because actually the 'insignificant' things are fun, life has a point even if it is a culturally defined / objectively useless one, seeing your kids grow up in a safe environment and achieving the praise of your peers is enjoyable!

Personally I would suggest you do not go to grad school, at least yet. If you think philosophy has failed then I suspect you would enjoy bouncing around in the real world, getting a job (sounds odd, but is genuinely meant) and doing something materially constructive. Once you've done that for a bit you might discover that you find studying it all again more interesting and even, heaven forfend, that you have some new points of view as to what is important that you want to analyse.

Please understand, this is not a rant against philosophy students as wastrals, or out of touch with real life - they are just as much alive and real as the rest of us with a point of view which is just as valid. I loved my degree but I felt exactly the same way at the end of it as you do. A couple of years away from it and I was able to look back and revel in the rich intellectual backdrop it gave my life. That and I can argue the hind legs off a donkey if I really put my mind to it, which helps for my job (lawyer). I just found that all the arguing didn't actually get anywhere unless you were applying it, which when you are in academia you tend (not universal) not to be doing. Just thought this might be your frustration as well.
 
 
.
09:08 / 11.12.02
What is mountaineering for?
 
 
aus
14:28 / 11.12.02
Off-topic, iivix23. Nobody here has mentioned mountaineering. I suggest you start a new thread if you would like to discuss mountaineering.
 
 
iconoplast
17:22 / 11.12.02
Hey, Fist - thank's. I think you somehow got what I was trying to ask, even if I didn't ask it. I have, by the way, been annoying my department for years by asking "What is Philosophy" and the best andwer I got was, from a Grad Student on his way to teach, "Philosophy is what is cutting off the circulation to my right arm." That is, it's just a set of authors and books. They don't really have a common thread. It's sort of the Academic Miscellany, where anything begun in a Philosophy department that starts to gets results is shunted off to a new building and given its own name. (See: Physics, Biology, Mathematics. More recently: Psychology (Though Freud seems to have been tossed back to the Philosophers), Cognition.)

But I think you're right about what it is to study philosophy. And I guess my frustration stems fromt he fact that I think I can "...come up with a hedge-philosophy which makes people happy, or at least makes [me] happy." Hell, I think I have. But all the people I read that seem to talk about life in a constructive manner are long dead. And what's popular in my department is a really strange politicized theorizing along minority lines. Feminism, Asian-American Studies, Queer Theory, &c. And none of these disciplines seem willing to make the intuitive leap to ask the question "What does it mean to be different, and where do individual identities fit into group identities?"

'cause, I mean, that's the big question, as I see it. That no-one is asking.

And I don't think life is especially hard for me, or getting worse - hell, I love being alive now, as opposed to any other time in history. I just think that life is, naturally, often unpleasant, and if Philosophy can do anything, it can help us find a way of thinking that makes it less so.

I don't know... I've been reading the Epicureans all morning, and I'm probably wondering why nobody's come up with anything more sensible since.
 
 
.
17:56 / 11.12.02
Off-topic, iivix23. Nobody here has mentioned mountaineering. I suggest you start a new thread if you would like to discuss mountaineering.

It's an analogy as I'm sure you realised. Do you really need me to spell it out for you? Philosophy is like mountaineering in as much as there is no explicit reason for doing it ("Because it was there" is the cliched response when mountaineers are asked their reasons for climbing a particular mountain). Mountaineering and philosophy are both about process rather than goals. Actually getting to the top of the mountain is a nice byproduct of mountaineering, but ultimately there is no compelling reason for being up a mountain- the climbing is an end in itself. Likewise, improving society is a nice side effect of doing philosophy, but ultimately it is an end in itself.

Has that enlightened you? Or were you just playing the fool?
 
 
iconoplast
20:34 / 11.12.02
Actually, I thought your analogy ran the other way.

"What's mountaineering for?"
"It's for climbing mountains."

"What's philosophy for?"
"It's for climbing . . . "
 
 
No star here laces
22:32 / 11.12.02
Osophies. Duh.
 
 
aus
03:17 / 12.12.02
No, I wasn't playing the fool. To me, analogy seems like a poor method for explanation, particularly in this medium. Why not just say what you mean?

However, I think your analogy is very limited and, dare I say it, flippant. The analogy of "what is mountaineering for" could be said for any subject, and it doesn't address the question raised here.

Check this out, perhaps you'll understand my problem with your analogy:

Has mountaineering failed us? Is mountaineearing relevant to modern life? Has it let us all down by failing to provide alternative ways of living, and is it fair to accuse mountaineering and mountaineers of disappearing up geographic elevations rather than addressing the real issues?
 
 
.
09:08 / 12.12.02
And when you see how absurd the question looks when you substitute mountaineering for philosophy, you can see my point- that perhaps the question is absurd. Why do we assume that philosophy isn't something like mountaineering? Why is the assumption made that it does have an end, and hence can somehow fail us?
 
 
aus
13:24 / 12.12.02
Yes, that's a good point. But why equate philosophy with mountaineering? Why assume philosophy is something like mountaineering, hmmmmmmmmm?
 
 
.
13:32 / 12.12.02
Only from my experience of having studied it for five years. Sometimes one has to fall back on intuitions, no?
 
 
aus
13:50 / 12.12.02
Another issue is that there will be an point in mountaineering when all the mountains have been climbed. Sure, you can climb them again, perhaps take a slightly different path, but in the end your final destination will be where someone else has trod before because there are a finite number of mountaintops, and they don't seem to be making any more. Is philosophy like that?

And have you been disappearing up geographic elevations rather than addressing the real issues?
 
 
Cloudhands
12:32 / 13.12.02
I don't think philosophy is like that. As Ivix said it's questioning, which leads to more questions. We never get to the summit. It's not like climbing the same moutains over and over again in slightly different ways which would get boring. As we come up with more and more questions the scope widens.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:40 / 13.12.02
"I don't think philosophy is like that. As Ivix said it's questioning, which leads to more questions. We never get to the summit. It's not like climbing the same moutains over and over again in slightly different ways which would get boring. As we come up with more and more questions the scope widens."

Really? I'm not so sure...Reverting to another analogy (however unconstructive or flawed this may be), philosophy does not actually 'build' anything you can 'live' in...it just paints the walls and moves the furniture (!). The 'architecture' remains constant, but the interior designers find ever more ways to keep the decoration relevant with the era in which they find themselves.

OK, weak analogy, but I think the point I am trying to get across is that philosophy does at least glimpse 'the summit', regularly, the only difference being the route. So the mountaneering analogy, never mind interior design, was a fair one.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:48 / 13.12.02
footnote : I would hazard that the summit occasionally glimpsed tends to be that the journey of philosophy tends to lead one back to ones starting point, cue T.S Eliot and viewing the same place with eyes afresh etc.

The quest for answers, it transpires, turns out to be a quest for, well, questions.(Signal to Noise?)

Draw water. Carry sticks. Endless rhetoric and too much think seems to be, ultimately, wank.
 
 
Cloudhands
11:52 / 18.12.02
I've thought in similar terms to that interior design analogy before. Maybe it's better to say that philosophy doesn't widen the scope but deepens the scope. But, I can't think of any western philosophy I've read that actually 'glimpses' the summit, to me things just become more and more puzzling.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
14:07 / 18.12.02
Rigorous deductive logic almost always leads to pedantry over 'semantics' (ok, other threads have flamed this term adequately enough to not revisit), or definition of terms.

So ultimately, IMHO, the Dao comes charging back in :

Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know.

Glasshopper wank? Cop out?

Suits me.
 
 
Cat Chant
21:16 / 18.12.02
Has philosophy failed iconoplast? Maybe.

Has it failed me? No. It has, on the contrary, provided me not only with a means of making my living but with one of the very few spaces I have ever found (slash writing is, of course, another) where I can make sense of my experience and do the kinds of thinking which matter to me and which make me feel that the whole of my best self is being brought to an important problem.

That's enough for me at the moment, though I continue to think about the status my academic writing has in the world and its potential for transforming things.
 
  
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