The curious thing I find about Nietzsche is he can be interpreted as both against the ‘elite’ and against the ‘plebs’ - probably why he has such a wide reach across philosophy.

Historical context is deadly important. I cannot imagine if Aristotle was born and living today he’d talk in a manner that now looks both ‘sexist’ and ‘pro-slavery’.

Funnily enough just been reading Piaget and I can happily dismiss the term ‘primitive race’ as merely an unfortunate term of convention that today would be deemed highly inappropriate.

How about Aristotle? Would he be defining ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’, or simply dismissing both as underdeveloped mistakes? Maybe he’d be in show business?

Time is always a thorn in our side. Husserl certainly wasn’t attempting to look at the physical aspect of ‘time’, but to come to a better appreciation (‘adumbration’) of consciousness in regards to time as an aspect of experience - with little to no concern of the physicality of time.

It is certainly a jumble of jargon trying to navigate this and from what Husserl himself says about having a deep suspicion (almost to the point of disregard) about anything called a ‘conclusion’. The phenomenological investigation - as Husserl appears to mark out - isn’t something that actively searches in the belief of a final conclusion much as physics isn’t about the belief in one formula to describe the universe, yet the mathematical models certainly play out ‘as if’ there is an ‘answer’.

The biggest problem I see in understanding Husserl - for myself and in others - is the inclination to parcel him into this or that category when he effectively picked up on several points of those before him and set up an historically ‘different’ approach to anything within his generation (at least as far as I can tell). Then there is the digression from his position to where Heidegger went and, as you mention, others too like Derrida - neither of whom seem to do much more than appropriate everything he says to some strange twisted ‘philosophy of language’ that was welcomed by religious/artistic individuals in an almost clandestine manner.

That said I have certainly found some of what both Derrida and Heidegger say to be useful, be it negatively or positively, in regards to looking at Husserl’s work - which remained a growing work that he actively worked on and changed over time adding to the obtuse nature of an already atypical line of investigation (‘subjectivity’).

I don’t regard Husserl as either an ‘idealist’ or a ‘realist’. He was a ‘phenomenologist’, which is had to accept as ‘neither’ of the others yet not in ‘opposition’ to them. Even if you don’t agree this perspective works just coming to terms with it in order to say so makes you question just that little bit further prior to dismissing it out of hand.

I was quite struck recently by how the shadow of Nietzsche runs through the fringes of his ideas - but I’m likely reading something into that point as I’ve looked reasonably closely at some of Nietzsche’s stuff.

I think I mentioned above Husserl’s concern/aim. It was to establish firmer grounds for logic (or rather look to see what the grounds are) - upon which ALL scientific and human pursuits stem from.

He quite literally says the aim is to something like a ‘subjective science of consciousness’ in direct opposition to psychologism. Historically philosophy has shifted from metaphysical to the epistemic, to philosophy of language, back to the epistemic, an I guess many would argue it’s generally at play in the sphere of metaphysics again (certainly in regards to ontology, but I don’t quite think people take the teleological seriously unless we focus our intent on political/ethical matters).

Oh! And of course it is certainly a means of flexing the Ego.

Metaphilosophy

The Meaning of Philosophy
What defines philosophy and demarcates it from other fields?

The Objects of Philosophy
What is philosophy aiming for, by what criteria would we judge success or at least progress in philosophical endeavors?

The Method of Philosophy
How is philosophy to be done?

The Subjects of Philosophy
What are the faculties that enable someone to do philosophy, to be a philosopher?

The Institutes of Philosophy
Who is to do philosophy and how should they relate to each other and others, socially speaking?

The Importance of Philosophy
Why do philosophy in the first place, what does it matter? — Pfhorrest

I’ll give ‘em a quick go ...

Meaning? Dunno. I guess it is more or less about dealing with items that evade demarcation and/or measurement in any accurate sense.

Objects? Dunno. I guess it’s more or less about opening up new/old perspectives and seeing what can be done with them separately and/or in combination.

Subjects? Dunno. I guess, very generally speaking, cognition of space and time (Kantian intuitions).

Institutes? Dunno. Doesn’t matter. People will or won’t do it regardless of my ideas of should, would or could as the most obtuse individuals will call anything ‘philosophy’ just as they’d call everything ‘art’. I guess this means the geniuses, idiots and insane are usually the primary movers - for good or bad!

Importance? I guess it’s importance comes into play by exploring questions - meaning how questions are useful and what their limitations are or are not.

Note: I’m not entirely sure what ‘metaphilosophy’ means in modern parse?

There wasn’t really any ‘rhetorical drivel’. You make a claim and I asked for clarification; you refuse with venom.

No problem. Good luck

I’ll assume an ‘and’ then because I agree with what you said.

Thanks

3.21 Like Zen koans which provoke a suspension of conceptual thinking, works of art in particular (and aesthetic experiences in general) prompt suspension of ego - what Iris Murdoch referred to as unselfing - by presenting sensationally or emotionally heightened encounters with the nonself which make it more likely than not for one to forget oneself for the moment if not longer.

3.22 Altruism - judging, by action or inaction, not to do harm to another - begins with learning and practicing techniques for forgetting oneself: unselfing: suspending ego. (Ecstatic techniques (e.g. making art.)) This is the moral benefit of art, but not its function.

3.23 The function of making art (along with morality & rationality (see 2.5)) is to help expand - develop - Agency, or to inversely limit its shadow: Foolery (see 1.1) — 180 Proof

Is it possible you could go a little more in depth here please? I find your view of Art, Aesthetics and Morality a possible point of interest for myself.

Especially in regard to the bold. I’m taking the reference back to 1.1 to be something akin to concepts involving ‘exploration’ and ‘chaos’. The whole interests me in how you relate ‘morality’ with ‘art’ in general (both the practice of producing ‘art’ and/or the act of ‘viewing’ art; not to mention how we delineate ‘art’ from other fields of human interest and action.

Thanks, no rush :)

Enough of this though...

The thread has another aim. — creativesoul

Enough meaning you have nothing more to offer, you don’t know how to express it, it’s too complex to sum up and/or something else entirely? If you feel like you’ll derail the thread just start a new one in response to my questioning.

How exactly are you distinguishing between ‘belief’ and ‘thought’, and what do you mean by ‘statement’ (do you mean that in a metaphorical sense or in an explicit sense of a ‘worded statement’?).

Then there is ‘predication’ and correlation. What is ‘predicated’ and what is ‘correlated’ in an ontological sense. If you’re not delving into the ontology of this then how/why are you justifying your reason for not doing so?

Essentially what I get from your post is ‘belief and thought statements are related’. I say related because you state that ‘correlation’ and ‘predication’ are the same thing by stating that All A is All B, so A and B are one and the same.

Please explain more if you can. Thanks

Please go ahead and show us how.

Would you be willing to indulge my curiosity here? I was agreeing with your point and just trying to dig a little more through possible misundertsandings.

You don’t have much to say about it because we’re - roughly speaking - on the same page, and/or because you don’t think it’s worth going down that road (I mentioned this because I view philosophy as tools of various perspectives rather than each category of philosophy as some godlike figure we should fawn over as an ‘absolute’).

Given that this is a forum for discussions it would make sense to say why you feel that way and perhaps even offer up what you believe to be a ‘better’ framework.

I never denied he said those words.

I see you have a problem dealing with context when reading. It isn’t Janus.

And that it the point where Husserl took Kant’s work as faulty - but I think he misread - and broke out of the dichotomy of ‘subject’ and ‘object’.

I understood. It is, like everything, something that could be refined to the point where things get a little hazy though.

Try reading Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity to him next and see how that goes. Neither I, nor Einstein, would use the exact same language in explaining to a six year old as we would to someone with fully developed language that is capable of abstraction - six year olds are quite limited (they’ve only relatively recently learnt how to connect two abstract concepts).

A simpler way to think of this is by paying attention to what Transcendental Reduction means. The ‘transcendent’ is the sensible experience - what we call ‘existent’ - and investigating how come to view ‘existence’.

For many they take the term ‘transcendent’ to mean some kind of ‘beyond sensible experience’ yet in this category of philosophical jargon it’s pretty much the exact opposite bring proposed with the harder ‘realist’ perspective being the view we’re ‘reducing down’.

A six year old could understand this. ‘Mature’ minds are generally more conditioned and closed off - plus they generally don’t like being told their view isn’t the only view there is.

Another problem is the assumption that anyone with influence is only concerned about their own selfish needs.

Power corrupts, but everyone with power is corrupt.

Nietzsche would likely be residing in Switzerland and saying the same thing as before.

Rousseau, assuming he was living as before, would still be vying for attention funded by an older rich woman. He would inevitably still think the ‘elites’ were to blame for everything and encourage an uprising - as came to fruition based on his propaganda culminating in the French revolution by going against the ‘scholars’ of the day (many religious). So perhaps he would be calling for the end of religion ignoring Nietzsche’s warnings about the nihilistic void left in its wake - and maybe a new, and bloodier, revolution would ensue?

Kant would likely still be stuck in his daily routine waiting for someone to shake him to wakefulness like Hume did and perhaps Plato would be a theoretical physicist searching for some ‘absolute’. Diogenes would undoubtedly be a social media sensation yet spurring any offer of money or jobs that came his way.

If we’re going there though I imagine Rousseau would be the lapdog of female celebrity whilst leading Antifa and encouraging violent protests.

Jovial or not I think this is still posted in the “General Philosophy” section so I would expect a sensible answer.

I clearly stated that there was once an old misconception of Nietzsche being an anti-semite which is a ridiculous idea for anyone who has actually read his praise for Jews scattered throughout his works. True enough his sister tampered with his work to align with Hitler’s ideology but that wasn’t Nietzsche.

Not interested. Like I said, try someone else.

Good luck :)

I meant I liked the way the contents of the link are laid out. I doubt I could answer the questions you posed with any kind of precision because they beg more questions than answers and I’d have to offer several different answers for most of the questions because I don’t really know what exactly many/most/all of then are asking.

That should give you some idea of my regard for ‘philosophy’ ;)

He certainly brings it up, but Heidegger was definitively the one who ran down that road full steam ahead.

Husserl’s primary aim was to create a ‘subjective science’ for use in investigating ‘consciousness’ and was wholly opposed to psychologism. Keep in mind he started from a mathematical/logical grounding - he began by looking at the foundations of logic.

I actually came across Husserl’s name when reading textbooks on cognitive neuroscience - Varela’s ideas to be spceific.

I do agree that there was a paradigm shift for some created by not just Husserl - I’d argue that Nietzsche was an extremely fertile ground from which many ‘opposing’ philosophical and political views use as a prop.

That said Kant’s contribution was, and still is, monumental. I’d also say that many modern physicists are pretty much taken up the baton of ‘philosophy’ and doing more for philosophical ‘progress’ in many ways that many ‘philosophers’ are. I’m still astounded by how everyone harps on about Einstein as the last genius without bothering to mention the powerhouse that was/is Feynman.

As far as I know everyone learns about Einstein at an early age but unless you actually venture specifically into physics you don’t hear about Feyman - very sad :(

This may be a little over simplistic but I don’t see how it can be denied:

What has no meaning cannot be spoken of.

Any attempt to counter this with an example will only do so by presenting ‘meaning’ - albeit nonsensical or otherwise.

Of course some could argue that something with no discernible pattern has no meaning, yet I would counter that knowing this makes the point ‘meaningful’ rather than absent of meaning (whatever that could mean?).

I guess the general problem is in the application of language and highly abstract terms like ‘absolute’ and ‘total’.

I don’t think this is the case. That said, people have been arguing over what Kant meant for a very long time.

There is certainly a similar aim with Husserl in that they both looked for a ‘firmer’ grounding. I don’t believe either assumed the task as one that could be complete - this is made explicit by Husserl at least.

What is your point?

I missed the “?”

I am guessing some people are holding onto the longstanding misrepresentation framed by his sister. I guess if you only heard some of his select quotes in passing you could easily get the wrong idea. The ‘superman’ idea certainly was adopted by Hitler, but in a rather perverse manner.

That makes no sense.

Why?

It’s even used in English. To ‘look at ...’ rather than to ‘have brought to you image of ...’.

If you can provide any examples of a language which doesn’t show at directed ‘outward’ I’d love to see it - maybe there is one or two, but I doubt it.

My point was how we layer on accumulated knowledge and regard it as if it is our natural intuitive attitude.

That’s simply wrong. Epistemology is a broad area inclusive of what I said - if you look up any definition of epistemology you’ll see this (take wiki, Stanford or Britannia as examples) they all state that part of epistemology is the question of what ‘knowledge’ means. It is possible to ask a question that dips into differing subject areas.

That sums it up well enough :)

Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Derrida followed him in this direction to various extents, recognizing a prmordial gestalt temporal relationalty as fundamental in talk about any experieincing of a world, prior to constitutied empirical beings. — Joshs

I know you meant ‘came after him’ but ‘digressed from his aim’ would be more to the point.

Some people? I think we all wish to follow sometimes - it’s a chore to carry the weight of the universe on your shoulders.

It seems very much like asking what it is like to be dead or what it was like before you were born. The evidence is secondhand and/or purely speculative.

I’d also say it’s a little like what someone means when they talk about ‘computer consciousness’ without a body - I wouldn’t call that ‘consciousness’ because I have no real means of comparison.

If we can in some way communicate with a bat then we’ll get some insight. Without a means of communication the bat may as well be a rock (note: we can have some form of minimalistic ‘communication’ with a bat).

I wasn’t suggesting we should deny it, just that it isn’t our natural/instinctual appreciation of ‘the world’ thus more telling of our subjective faculties prior to scientific knowledge being laid on top of them.