I'm not insulting Marx by the observation that history has left him behind. It's just a fact. — frank

One only leaves a thinker behind by incorporating the valuable features of his work into a new whole, such as to think him better than he thought himself. I’m not convinced you or Hayek understand very much about the history of philosophy since Hegel, that is to say , all of the philosophies and social sciences which have benefited from his influence. A central feature of post-Hegelian thought is the appreciation that individual knowing is the product of interactive dynamics within a cultural community, that knowledge and values are in large part socially constructed through language. Post-Hegelians are thus moral relativists rather than moral realists.
Conservative post-Hegelians maintain that there are certain higher order universal valuative principles that are not themselves relative to culture, whereas postmodernists argue that all morality is culture -relative.

This interests me. Can you say more about the Hegelian influence on AI? — Jackson

Today’s neural models make use of complexity systems approaches.
If you look at the model of a complex dynamical
system it is essentially a dialectical movement. Temporary states of equilibrium in a living system are followed by a disequilibrating event , and then restabilize at a higher state of organization, like a spiral.

Hayek may have lived in the 20th century , but his political theory is derived from philosophical ideas that are considerably older than Marx. Essentially Hayek is an 18th century philosopher in the cloak of a 20th century political thinker.
— Joshs

I don't think so, but it's a moot point. His view is still the the blueprint for the world you live in. — frank

I dont live in his world. You live in his world.

What also emerged from
Hegelianism was Darwin’s theory of evolution
— Joshs

How so? — frank

Darwinism as Hegelian Dialectics Applied to Biology:

https://evolutionnews.org/2020/09/darwinism-as-hegelian-dialectics-applied-to-biology/

Hayek is 20th Century. Marx was from a world that's gone now. — frank

Hayek may have lived in the 20th century , but his political theory is derived from philosophical ideas that are considerably older than Marx. Essentially Hayek is an 18th century philosopher in the cloak of a 20th century political thinker. Given your respect for him, I wager your own notion of the cutting edge of philosophy (and by derivation political theory) consists of figures like John Stewart Mill , Kant , Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, although you may know their ideas chiefly through contemporary interpreters on the right.

I would suggest that it is not possible to understand contemporary thinking on the left and far left without making your way through Marx
— Joshs

That may be, but what relevance does the left or far left have in the world today? — frank

Today’s political left and far left were born out of the aftermath of Hegel’s project. What also emerged from
Hegelianism was Darwin’s theory of evolution, American Pragmatism, psychoanalysis, the human potential
movement and humanistic psychology, and today’s leading approaches in neuroscience, perceptual psychology, personality theory and models of psychopathology , including analysis of autism, schizophrenia, depression, grief and ptsd.

I would include the most advanced thinking in artificial intelligence , which is a key point , because more and more you will find that ‘smart’ technology based on how the mind works will dominate the corporate world and shape its politics, and eventually the larger culture. . Those who fail to keep up with these advances in ‘mind’ technologies will fall gather and farther behind economically.
I would argue that the new thinking about intelligence as a function of reciprocally causal global integrated neural networks is incompatible with the philosophical framework that Hayek operated within. If one were to poll those at the leading edge of the field of A.I., one would find very few embracing Hayak’s brand of libertarianism , but most would align themselves with one post-Hegelian philosophy or another. This is no coincidence. Each eta of technology is made possible by a specific philosophical ground, with its own implications for political theory .

On a worldwide basis humanity is splitting f into two camps , traditionalists and postmodern globalist urbanites. there is a reason why the word’s greatest concentration of high tech companies happens to be in the most leftists cities in the world, San Francisco and Seattle. Conservative high tech is an oxymoron, like military intelligence.

Since Hayek is relevant now and Marx is really completely irrelevant, I'd want to judge leftism by how it relates to Hayek. — frank

See what you think of this analysis:

Hayek’s brand of free market libertarianism is embraced by conservatives and neo-liberals on the right.
Marx is completely irrelevant to Hayek and his followers because they don’t consider him an influence on their thinking. Their political philosophy is pre-Marxist The situation is quite different on the left. To the extent Marx’s specific doctrines are less relevant to them than in the past it only because major elements of his thought have been re-interpreted and incorporated into neo and post-marxist models. I would suggest that it is not possible to understand contemporary thinking on the left and far left without making your way through Marx, which conservatives from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Breitbart have recognized.

What is the left now, and what is the far left? Who is the far left? — frank

Is this strictly a political question? Do you measure the leftness of the left solely in terms of proximity to Marx , or can ‘left’ mean progressive or radical in a different sense? What about a philosophical far left? Do you think Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida were to the left or the right of Marx politically? What about philosophically? It seems to me the ‘far left’ is a notion concocted by conservatives like Jordan Peterson, who is constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between figures like Derrida and Marx, and between postmodernism and socialism.

Here is an article that is disturbing, at least for me, an old retired prof. What do you think? — jgill

I think you need to know that the author of that article , Jason Rantz, is a right wing propagandist not known for his journalistic integrity. Is there any legitimate basis for his claims? While there may well be, please, for my sake, do your homework and find a more well researched and impartial source to post here so I dont have to be exposed to Rantz’s inane scratchings.

( like this from the Washington Post:

Is math racist? Wrong question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/15/is-math-racist-public-school-pedagogy/

You may well be right. But he is a legitimate, well published academic, based at UCL a fairly good university. — unenlightened

I’m reading his book , From Knowledge to Wisdom right now. It’s published by Pentire Press, whose only book is this one. Many of his other works are also self-published. One publisher , Paragon Press, is controlled by the Unification Church( remember that one?).

You are by no means alone. Here is club you can join.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/friends-of-wisdom/what-went-wrong#blu — unenlightened

The founder of the club, Nicholas Maxwell , manages to misread much of the philosophy of the past 100 years. He seems to advocate for a kind of bastardized Hegelianism. It’s hard to mount a clear critique of the modern-postmodern world if you can’t even interpret its founders effectively.

The only way left for me is to reject this civilization in its totality and embrace the life of a shepherd in a countryside, away from all the trouble and in peace with myself. — Eskander

Nietzsche said that all philosophy is autobiography. I think that is true of politics and religion as well.
I’m wondering if there is something in your biography that may be making you inclined to project your personal issues onto an abstraction , the so-called ‘global situation’.
What is your relationship with your neighbors in your local community? Do you relate to their outlooks or are you as alienated from them as you are from the modern world as a whole? If you are happily ensconced within your own little corner of the world , why should it matter to your peace of mind what happens in places far from you? And if you are not happy in your own community , do you mean to tell me that you cannot think of anyplace in the entire world where you could find common ground with others on the basis of your religious, political or ethical values?
If you can’t run far enough to escape a world of suffering and pain, perhaps it is becuase you’re trying to run away from yourself.

Btw, science and mathematics (esp) is a shared heritage of mankind. Every civilization has a played a decisive role in its advancement and STEM will take care of itself. I'm more concerned with the ethical- social-political-economic side of the equation. — Eskander

Science and mathematics are not ethically neutral universal achievements. They are utterly inextricable from the social-political-economic history of the West, and as contemporary science and mathematics have been embraced by non-Western countries, those countries have assimilated major elements of Western ethico-political thought into their indigenous culture.

What we are witnessing is social and moral degradation. — SpaceDweller

“I'm a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. So, hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon” (Colin Firth, Kingsman)

Prosperous modern people have often moved to the country or joined communes, or decided to live off the grid as a 'remedy' for the present era. I understand the power of this idea and acknowledge that it might provide some peace, if not boredom. I suspect that the recent and enduring cult of authenticity and hipster artisanal products is another expression of this impulse. As was Transcendentalism in the 19th century. — Tom Storm

Made me think of the Eagles song, Last Resort:

She came from Providence
One in Rhode Island
Where the old world shadows hang
Heavy in the air
She packed her hopes and dreams
Like a refugee
Just as her father came across the sea

She heard about a place
People were smilin'
They spoke about the red man's way
And how they loved the land

And they came from everywhere
To the Great Divide
Seeking a place to stand
Or a place to hide

Down in the crowded bars
Out for a good time
Can't wait to tell you all
What it's like up there

And they called it paradise
I don't know why
Somebody laid the mountains low
While the town got high

Then the chilly winds blew down
Across the desert
Through the canyons of the coast
To the Malibu

Where the pretty people play
Hungry for power
To light their neon way
Give them things to do

Some rich men came and raped the land
Nobody caught 'em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes
And Jesus people bought 'em

And they called it paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun
Sinking in the sea

You can leave it all behind
Sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did
So many years ago

They even brought a neon sign
"Jesus is coming"
Brought the white man's burden down
Brought the white man's reign

Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here

We satisfy our endless needs
And justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny
And in the name of God

And you can see them there
On Sunday morning
Stand up and sing about
What it's like up there


They call it paradise
I don't know why
You call someplace paradise
Kiss it goodbye

This seems like the expulsion from eden story retold. You praise the intellectual insights obtained via the development of Western culture and yet claim to be alienated from that culture. Your having been born in a non-Western country adds to your feeling of alienation. But is the solution a return to Eden, that is , a return to the ‘blissful’ ignorance of pre-modern society? You say you “don’t see any ancient civilization giving birth to an alternative world order in the foreseeable future”. Does that mean you would wish for such a prospect even if you don’t think it is likely to happen? If you acknowledge legitimate insights contributed by modern thought, do you think these can be ignored even if we want to return to a simpler world?

The only way left for me is to reject this civilization in its totality and embrace the life of a shepherd in a countryside, away from all the trouble and in peace with myself. — Eskander

It seems to me that you under-appreciate the extent to which you embody modern Western thinking, regardless of the fact that you are from a non-Western culture, and that you feel alienated from the contemporary world.
Your alienation is a quintessentially modern alienation, and can even be argued to be part of the very definition of modernity. So embracing the life of a shepherd in the countryside would be not so much an escape from modern thinking but rather a particular expression of it. You are a kindred spirit of Thoreau, Gauguin and Rousseau. Any solution would have to come
from within the resources of modernity itself rather than in an imagined rejection of it, which is only an opposition within the frame of modernity.

So art, tragedies, copy an action and is imitative that way. Not ideals, but actions or plots. You're not imitating something that happened, you're constructing purposes for why they happened that way. — Jackson

I’m saying the approach to art up through the 1700’s was based on mimesis, even when constructing purposes and ideals. The concept of mimesis was brought into question as philosophy and art stopped believing that perception is correspondence of the mind with an independently existing world.

In the modern world, with a lot more science at our disposal than Kant ever had in small-town Köningsberg, it's hard to remain Kantian. — Hillary

The modern scientific world was Kant’s world and the world of Einstein’s physics. The postmodern world is led by philosophy , with the sciences being slowly dragged into it kicking and screaming.

Going back to ancient world. For Aristotle, sense perception (aesthesis) cannot take place without the imagination (phantasia).(De Anima). So we can imagine things without sensing them, but cannot perceive things without the imagination. — Jackson

Art for Aristotle is a representation of ideals, but artists must accurately portray reality to be successful, so overall it is mimetic, and that attitude toward art remained up through the 1700’s.

Art has always been about how things are perceived. No one invented that. — Jackson

Once upon a time art was conceived as mimesis , imitation. There wasn’t really a concept of perception as interpretation as we accept it to be today. if you go back far enough in time, art was thought of as just the direct impressing of the world upon the mind. So yes, the modern concept of perception is an invention.

Starting from impressionism the progression was basically > post-impressionism > cubism. If you're saying there's a "new theory" behind each of these stages, what are they? — praxis

Impressionism recognized the inter penetration of the elements of a visual scene. That’s what made their depiction of color so much more vibrant than the Romantics. They discovered that each colored space
is a mix of every color of the rainbow because of the way differently colored objects in a scene bleed their colors into each other. As Cezanne showed, the same is true of the way shapes that interact change and influence each other in our perception of them. So the impressionists were beginning to take seriously the contribution of the perceiver to what is perceived. With the ensuing waves of abstraction in art, these insights extended to include bodily positioning ( Degas) emotions and in general the full subjectivity of the perceiver(Van Gogh, Munch, Pollack, Rothko).

Because the geometry of a picture plane was new. Using the abstract math of architecture was a new thing — Jackson

You sound more like an engineer than an artist. What philosophical and scientific innovation made it new? Could it have been Descartes’ , Galileo and Newton’s discoveries of a rational, clockwork universe, amenable to mathematical description?
What philosophical discoveries threatened Descartes’ and Newton’s vision of a rational machine-like universe directly apprehended by human reason?
And what movements within the art world expressed this critique of the clockwork universe?

Art is about the sensual. — Jackson

How does the sensual appear in DaVinci’s Last Supper and why is the perspective such a spectacularly powerful element of the drama?

Thanks Joshs. Not sure I recognise the significance of these two ideas. Are you able to briefly describe how this Kantian stage actually plays out in art with an example? — Tom Storm

I remember reading a description by an art critic of a work
of abstract art that consisted of a series of geometric shapes. The critic argued that these shapes captured some sort of deep essence , some transcendental
truth , underlying sensory appearances. Why would the artist assume there would be such an underlying order?
Because Kant showed that whatever contingent causal
concatenation of sensations we experience in visual perception, we cannot assume that visual experience presents us with a direct truth. The renaissance artists seem to have had absolute faith in such a truth. This is why it was so important for them to render precisely and faithfully the perspectival facts of a painting. One could get close to the mind of God by disclosing the rational
logic of the visually appearing world.
But Kant told us that the only direct truths in a visual scene are the inborn categories of perception that puts the world together for us in terms of causality, space and time. So one could imagine the abstract painter
‘abstracting’ from the contingent details of a scene these underlying categories in the guise of geometrical
forms. The real , divine truth of a scene is in its deep categorical structure.

Vision is a function of the technical. Nothing to do with "reshuffling." — Jackson

The technical has to do with the applied, and the applied is a reshuffling within an extant theoretical edifice. Steve Jobs introduced brilliant technical innovations but added nothing to the existing scientific theory underlying
it. Great art isn’t just application of extant theory, it is the creation of new theory, a new vision.

Cubist paintings took the idea of frontal, optical perception and created a geometry of the picture plane. A cube is a spatial object--a die--that when looked at does not show its back.

So, cubism is about how the picture plane is presented. — Jackson

You’ve explained what it is but not why it is. What changes in the way artists see and feel the world was it trying to convey? Significant movements in art are not about merely reshuffling old technical concepts but offering a new vision.

He had a digital idea of perception much like today. — Jackson

Are you saying that all of the philosophy that came after Hume, as a critical reaction to his thinking and the era he belonged to, was wrong about him? That his thinking still stands at the cutting edge of contemporary ideas? Or are you arguing that only certain details of his thought are still relevant in this post-modern age?

No offense, but I never read stuff just because someone posts it quoting someone. Make an argument — Jackson

Here’s an argument. It is well documented that many dealers, critics and artists found strong consonances between Kant’s ideas and modern art, particularly Cubism. Why did they think this? Let’s begin with the question , what changes in philosophical worldview were required in order for visual artists to make the transition from realist pictorial representation to the various phases and modes of abstraction that began to proliferate in the 20th century? There certainly must have been a dawning realization that something intervenes between our experience of the world and the world itself, such that it became increasing important to capture this something rather than a photographic copy of reality.

I haven’t read much on Hume in relation to modern art , but so far I’m having no luck finding any writings connecting him to cubism
or any other trend toward abstraction in art. We could analyze why that might be.

From Mark Chatham:

“ The well-documented references to Immanuel Kant in the literature surrounding the advent and ongoing critical reception of Cubism are a paradigm of issues in word-image studies. Given that Kant's texts and ideas might seem an unlikely inspiration for artists and critics of a new art movement - even in his own lifetime, the Critiques, though not all his writings, were notorious for their technical difficulty, and the Critique of Judgment purposefully provides little direct commentary on the arts - how should we understand their remarkable influence within the visual arts generally and around Cubism especially? Kant's name was dropped1 with notable regularity in France during the formative years of Cubism. Many of the most prominent critics and art dealers of the time employed his terminology and concepts, putatively to explain what was widely perceived as a new and radical artform and certainly also to garner the authority any reference to the philosopher seemed to bestow on their views of Cubism.

Less often, Kant's name was invoked by artists to the same ends. But these references to Kant were not univocal and in fact divided contemporary commentators. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler - the most important dealer and historian of Cubism in the early part of this century, a man who represented in the broadest and most influential ways the work of Braque, Gris, and Picasso until the beginning of the First World War - encapsulated the power of the Kantian interpretive frame to which he was a convert when he claimed that Cubism's ‘new language has given painting an unprecedented freedom coloured planes, through their direction and relative position, can bring together the formal scheme without uniting in closed forms .... Instead of an analytical description, the painter can. ... also create in this way a synthesis of the object, or in the words of Kant, “put together the various conceptions and comprehend their variety in our perception”’ (1949, p. 12).2 Kahnweiler read Kant and Neo-Kantian texts by Wilhelm Wundt, Heinrich Rickert, and others in Bern from 1914 to 1920, during his exile from France because of his German patrimony (Gehlen, 1966).

For him, the analytic/synthetic distinction, the notions of the thing-in-itself and disinterestedness, and the formal autonomy of the work of art provided nothing less than a way of conceptualizing and justifying Cubism. Kant's ideas and terminology were also crucial for several of the central French critics who helped to define Cubism in its early years. Léonce Rosenberg, Pierre Reverdy, and especially Maurice Raynal used Kant to present and lend weight to their vision of Cubism as a breakthrough to essential reality as well as the paradigmatic art of autonomy, of personal as well as aesthetic freedom. These and other commentators used Kant recurrently to articulate what has come to be known as a ‘conceptualist’ or ‘idealist’ reading of Cubism, one that underlines its departure from the appearance of things and movement towards the comprehension of a supposedly more profound reality (Crowther, 1987; Nash, 1980). In 1912, the critic Olivier-Hourcade expressed a variant on this view - and the complexity of its provenance3 - by citing approvingly a well-known reference to Kant made by Schopenhauer: ‘The greatest service Kant ever rendered is the distinction between the phenomena and the thing in itself, between that which appears and that which is ... ’ (Fry, 1966, p. 74). On this interpretation, the Cubists present what they conceive, not what they see.“

What is that exactly? — Jackson

Recognizing that thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. This is a realization you will not find in Descartes through Hume.

Pretty good summary of Kant. And I don't agree with Kant at all — Jackson

I dont agree with any philosophers, but I think they all have valid ideas. Put differently , I think the history of philosophy can be understood as a development (although not causally linear or cumulative) in which newer philosophies subsume the essence of earlier ones. And I think that this is true of all creative modalities. The philosophy , arts, literature , politics and sciences of an era are variations of a theme , a series of interconnected worldviews, and that theme evolves. It a not a question of a philosophy or worldview being right or wrong ( they are all ‘right’ initially to the extent that they are pragmatically useful, and then found to be ‘wrong’ when they are superseded by the next era of thinking). It was not just philosophers or art critics who embraced Kant, it was also artists , whether they read him or not.
In fact, I would argue that in for for an artist to express a more developed worldview in their art, they must pass through a ‘Kantian’ stage.

I still don’t know what his theory of art is. Can you explain it?

Regarding aesthetics, people have been having sublime aesthetic experiences and transcending the duality of good and evil for thousands of years. — praxis

One can’t understand his theory of art without first understanding his larger philosophical project, becuase the two are co-determinative.

Do you think Nietzsche’s ideas as a whole have been absorbed, at least by most atheistic thinkers?
— Joshs

I sincerely hope — praxis

You said you sincerely hope his ideas have not been absorbed by today’s atheistic thinkers, which implies that you have an understanding of his philosophy of Will to Power. Can you summarize what it consists of?

??? I never said he was unoriginal. — praxis

You said his theory of art was unoriginal, and his theory of art is derived from his main thesis, Will to Power.

I just don’t see how this is in any way a radical idea. — praxis

It's nothing new this day and age, is what I meant. — praxis

I sincerely hope not. — praxis

That explains why you think he’s unoriginal

No, I mean Kant was wrong when he wrote it. He barely mentions art works at all. Analytic aesthetics today still follows Kant. — Jackson

Are you familiar with the work of art critic Clement Greenberg, a promoter of abstract expressionism? I believe he was a Kantian. It’s interesting that certain formalist tendencies of the modernist period of art seem to be amenable to analysis in Kantian terms.Then Arthur Danto came along and replaced the Kantian approach with a Hegelian interpretation, which he applied to Warhol and pop art.

. I have been a practicing artist (painter) about 30 years and find Kant completely idiotic when he talks about art. — Jackson

Well, we are 230 years removed from the 1790’s. Our best contemporary philosophy will probably look as idiotic a couple of centuries from now.

↪Joshs

It's nothing new this day and age, is what I meant. — praxis

Do you think Nietzsche’s ideas as a whole have been absorbed, at least by most atheistic thinkers?

I cannot remember the section, I thought it was Will to Power. But he explicitly makes a distinction between the aesthetics of making art and reception of art. — Jackson

“Schopenhauer made use of the Kantian version of the aesthetic problem, – although he definitely did not view it with Kantian eyes. Kant intended to pay art a tribute when he singled out from the qualities of beauty those which constitute the glory of knowledge: impersonality and universality. Whether or not this was essentially a mistake is not what I am dealing with here; all I want to underline is that Kant, like all philosophers, just considered art and beauty from the position of ‘spectator',instead of viewing the aesthetic problem through the experiences of the artist (the creator), and thus inadvertently introduced the ‘spectator'himself into the concept ‘beautiful'.” (Genealogy of Morality, third essay)

Nietzsche famously proclaimed that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.”

I suppose this was revolutionary thinking back in the old-timey days of the nineteenth century. — praxis

Still is, at least the way Nietzsche meant it.

While many if not most philosophers who discuss intentionality see desires and beliefs as central, for Searle it seems that the mental consists in conscious states, that are directed and hence intentional — Banno

Being directed is being affected by what directs one’s attention. This interest in the matter, as a function of expectation on the one hand and what affects me on the other is what desire is. Intention and desire should thus be seen as co-determinative. But this is Husserl’s notion of intentionality, not Searle’s. Searle’s form
of realism doesnt allow him to properly integrate the affective and the cognitive.

The mind changes to match the world in perceptions, memories and beliefs, while the world is changed to match mind in actions, intentions and desires. — Banno

Mind and world should not be spilt apart this way. Perception, memory and belief are equal parts expectation and what appears, while actions and desires are just as much constrained by the world they modify as they are changes of that world. Intentionality is the structure subtending all these modes of experience.

Kant is more influential in analytic philosophy, but I think Hume is correct and refutes Kant. Kant just normalizes the conventions of science.
3m — Jackson

All major figures in Continental philosophy since 1800 are Kantian in a certain sense, and generally acknowledge that fact

What philosophers do you call revolutionary? — Jackson

Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, for starters.