Back in the day here on PF we would bash each other's heads in argumentatively over the continental analytic divide. I am trained in continental thought and remembering in my naivety wandering into a book store coming away with a book on Aristotle. I eagerly unwrapped it only to find that it was written in the analytic style and full of intricate predicate logic I did not understand. So much so for being accessible. However nowadays I feel both camps are reading each other with more charity.

I am now reading a book on Hegel's philosophy of right which is written in quite an analytic style (at least for me) with a lot of emphasis on untangling the argumentative structure of the book. I find it is written crisp, clear and indeed exposing holes in Hegel's arguments but never disparaging and reading charitable. I think both camps profited from the interaction and considered putting an end to mud slinging.

I think philosophy, in the end, is about questioning presuppositions and, what comes down to the same thing, discovering the rational in the real, as per Hegel. It might well not be there, but we like to understand the world we live in, understanding in a full sense, not merely explaining its mechanics. The branch of enquiry that does such a thing we call philosophy. It might well be idle chatter, but then, everything might be. It depends on the distinction between idle and useful and how that distinction is made, often implicit. Making the implicit explicit is however the bread and butter of philosophy.

I'd be interested to know what those may be. But I think it takes more than imagination to create a work of art. — Ciceronianus

Which is why I wrote 'creative imagination.' Personal taste will account for much of this. For instance, I don't find Nietzsche appealing, but I think he was a literary giant. Things which don't resonate with us personally, which we may even resile from, may still be great and inspired works.

Unfortunately, yes. Almost all heavy left-leaners like A.C Grayling, Justin Weinberg, Carrie Jenkins, Helena Cruz etc... largely, the 'culture war' related philosophers in my experience.

Brian Leiter is a decent inroad, if you want to check it out. I don't recommend beyond some comments on the Leiter Reports

Almost all heavy left-leaners like A.C Grayling, Justin Weinberg, Carrie Jenkins, Helena Cruz etc... largely, the 'culture war' related philosophers in my experience. — AmadeusD

I proud myself in replying "Never heard of it" when someone asks me something internet-people-related, so I will extend that to this cybersubspace too.

Socrates, Boethius, Origen, and many others died for living out/preaching their philosophy. The latter two were subjected to prolonged torture first and in least in Origen's case we know he never recanted despite this. It isn't all idle talk; sometimes it's deadly serious. :scream:

Might be best to take ourselves as blessed to not have these concerns.

:up:

It isn't all idle talk; sometimes it's deadly serious :up: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course in a forum like this it would be surprising, if anyone would admit that he's talking rubbish himself. The lack of esteem in much of the rest of the population might have its cause in that for common sense the relation to our daily life is not easily visible and sometimes even wanting. To unprepared people it might sound like mere word tinkle.

But take for instance the controversy regarding determinism. The related question "does it really matter, how we live or does it make no difference in the end?" has a strong relation to daily life.

I think my request for examples of the great philosophical works of imagination akin to art will go unanswered, and with good reason. As for Nietzsche, he was a cultural critic, and a critic of art, but I wouldn't call him an artist. His Zarathustra is more like one of the prophetical books of the Old Testament than art.

It's interesting that artists have sometimes been called "philosophical" but philosophers haven't, to my knowledge, been called artistic. Santayana thought that Dante, Goethe and Lucretius were philosophical poets, for example.

Art is distinguishable from philosophy because it is evocative, and can be supremely so through the ability of an artist. Philosophy tries to explain, sometimes in dull detail. These are different things. When philosophers try to be artists, they fail miserably because they don't have the talent.

Take Munch's The Scream. It achieves in a single image what page after page of plodding, repetitive, self-pitying descriptions of angst and existential dread cranked out by some philosophers seek to explain and expound on. Take Picasso's Guernica, and imagine a philosopher trying to describe, let alone explain, what it evokes, about modern warfare and fascism. Take Wallace Stevens' Sunday Morning and try to imagine a philosopher addressing with such subtlety and in such a memorable way the failure of Christianity in the modern world and the preference for pagan naturalism which arises in its place.

Re: Is philosophy just idle talk?
Are you here, participating in idle talk? :smile:

(Really, what a strange thing to ask in a philosophy forum! :brow: )

What about the bridges philosophy creates in science? It’s paramount to have a philosophical mind when generating answers to question, or innovating. Philosophy is a hidden gem, imo.

Art is distinguishable from philosophy because it is evocative, and can be supremely so through the ability of an artist. Philosophy tries to explain, sometimes in dull detail. These are different things. When philosophers try to be artists, they fail miserably because they don't have the talent. — Ciceronianus

Growing up, art was a talent that came naturally to me. After graduating high school , I briefly contemplated pursing art as a career. But in high school I had stumbled upon a set of insights that at the time I thought of as belonging to psychological theory. These insights had a profound impact on my life, and I have been elaborating these ideas ever since, at first within a psychological mode of discourse and later as philosophy. I chose against a career in art because I needed to be able to believe that I could express the insights I was developing as effectively within the language of art as I could within psychology or philosophy, and the answer I came up with was no.

This doesn’t mean that I believe philosophy or psychology are in general superior forms of knowing. Many intellectuals make the e silly mistake of elevating their own preferredmode of expression to the status of objective supremacy over all other modes. Poets think theirs is the purest way to truth, musicians consider music to be the most authentic expression of meaning, others give preference to the political, the scientific, the technological, or the philosophical. All these modes are all absolutely equal in their uniqueness and their non-superiority over other modes of creativity.

I’ll leave you with this from Deleuze:

[quote

Art and philosophy crosscut the chaos and confront it, but it is not the same sectional plane; it is not populated in the same way. In the one there is the constellation of a universe or affects and percepts; and in the other, constitutions of immanence or concepts. Art thinks no less than philosophy, but it thinks through affects and percepts.This does not mean that the two entities do not often pass into each other in a becoming that sweeps them both up in an intensity which co-determines them.


The plane of composition of art and the plane of immanence of philosophy can slip into each other to the degree that parts of one may be occupied by entities of the other. In fact, in each case the plane and that which occupies it are like two relatively distinct and heterogeneous parts. A thinker may therefore decisively modify what thinking means, draw up a new image of thought, and institute a new plane of immanence. But, instead of creating new concepts that occupy it, they populate it with other instances, with other poetic, novelistic, or even pictorial ormusical entities.

The opposite is also true. Igitur is just such a case of conceptual persona transported onto a plane of composition, an aesthetic figure carried onto a plane of immanence: his proper name is a conjunction. These thinkers are "half" philosophers but also much more than philosophers. But they are not sages. There is such force in those unhinged works of Hölderlin, Kleist, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Kafka, Michaux, Pessoa, Artaud, and many English and American novelists, from Melville to Lawrence or Miller, in which the reader discovers admiringly that they have written the novel of Spinozism.
[/quote]

it would be surprising, if anyone would admit that he's talking rubbish himself — Pez

We should probably have a Truth and Reconciliation category for people to confess that they have been talking rubbish! Welcome to The Philosophy Forum, by the way.

I've not had much success studying philosophy. Back in the '60s, philosophy wasn't on the curriculum of the state college I attended. 15 years after graduating, I tried some basic courses through extension at the University and found them awful. I share the blame with Philosophy. Academic philosophy just is not my cup of tea.

I'm an old man now, and have spent the last 15 years in the big open pit mine, scraping out good ore to fill in the holes that my undergraduate education left. The history and sociology of cities has been a productive vein. So has the history of technology; trying to understand our several ecological crises has been useful. The Roman Empire and the Medieval period in Europe is always fruitful. There is so much good scholarship out there!

Revisiting books I should have read as an English major is useful too, but I've gotten better results from nonfiction. I am currently reading Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames, The Ladies Paradise, set in a mid-19th century Parisian department store. It's fiction in translation and it opens a window on the development of retail consumer culture. Its history is longer than I thought it was.

I have nothing to offer on Kant or Hegel, Plato or Aquinas.

Growing up, art was a talent that came naturally to me — Joshs

I envy you, then.

I'm quite willing to acknowledge there can be an overlap. Santayana's three philosophical poets no doubt address philosophical issues. But I think there's a difference between evocation and exposition. I shouldn't say a philosopher can't be a poet. I know that a lawyer can be one, as Wallace Stevens was a great one, though an insurance lawyer. I find that astonishing and so believe it's very rare, though some lawyers enjoy quoting poets and especially Shakespeare. Lawyers and philosophers are prosaic, ultimately. The creation of beauty is beyond them; analysis is no friend to expression.

I think my request for examples of the great philosophical works of imagination akin to art will go unanswered, and with good reason. — Ciceronianus

I think the good reason is the one I already gave.

That said, depending upon one's definition of art, i would think that some of the works of great philosophical imagination (even if you hold they are wrongheaded) count as artistic responses, something like poetry. — Tom Storm

Perhaps you have a slightly implacable, fixed notion of what counts as art. It doesn't have to be a poem, painting or sculpture. And perhaps I am too generous..

I would hold that great literature is art. IMO Camus and Sartre and Nietzsche certainly qualify there. You could add Schopenhauer, who writes exceptional prose. I would imagine there are many contenders. As I said, you don't have to like them as thinkers to see the artistic nature of the works.

I think we can probably also include acts of great creative imagination, which find new ways to describe the world. Might we not also include thinkers like Spinoza or Husserl?

Of course, this can swiftly end up in that quagmire of debates, what counts as art? And Christ knows we don't want to wade around in that one.

Literature, though, can simply mean prose, or writing, which includes more than art. Someone can write well and not be an artist. U.S. Grant wrote very well (in his memoirs), but isn't considered an artist. Christopher Hitchens wrote excellent essays, but wasn't an artist. We speak of legal literature, medical literature, etc., without meaning to refer to art or artists. Literature as art would more properly refer to novels and short stories, I think.

But you're correct that if we start debating what art is, we'll be going on a journey beyond the scope of this thread and one that may never end.

U.S. Grant wrote very well (in his memoirs), but isn't considered an artist. — Ciceronianus

But my argument isn't that any particular figures be considered primarily as artists, or that we should reclassify their oeuvre.

My point is that what they do can also be understood as art. They sometimes exemplify and perhaps even perfect an artistic mode of expression. Grant's memoirs are a literary masterpiece. Along with many other things, Grant turned out to be a significant literary artist.

Christopher Hitchens wrote excellent essays, but wasn't an artist. — Ciceronianus

I never much fancied Hitchens' essays to be honest. (I have most of them on my shelf) I prefer his talks or speeches. But again - the essay is an art form. Why can't we say that a significant journalist's talent is artistic when it is great? No doubt Hitchens wrote some exceptional essays and he made imperishable contributions to the art form. I don't think you have to be an 'artist' to produce works of significant artistic merit.

I agree with your responses to the point where my intended response would be redundant. I think @Ciceronianus is working with narrow conceptions of both art and philosophy.

To my way of thinking what counts as art is determined by the presence of creative imagination and technical skill and what counts as great art is determined by a superlative degree of both.

the presence of creative imagination and technical skill — Janus

:up:

I have nothing to offer on Kant or Hegel, Plato or Aquinas. — BC

And this is not required at all. On the contrary, adherence to a specific philosopher or type of philosophy might even be regarded as an obstacle to the necessary ingredients of all philosophy: open-mindedness, curiosity and creative impetus.

Really, what a strange thing to ask in a philosophy forum! :brow: — Alkis Piskas

Of course You are right! It was meant to be a bit provocative. I could re-formulate my question into: How can You convince someone, who thinks that philosophy is just idle talk, that at least not all of this kind is mere empty stream of words?

How can You convince someone, who thinks that philosophy is just idle talk, that at least not all of this kind is mere empty stream of words? — Pez

Demonstrate the social ninjitsu skills that come from long involvement with philosophical arguments?

How can You convince someone, who thinks that philosophy is just idle talk, that at least not all of this kind is mere empty stream of words? — Pez

This is much better!
But I would simplify and replace the second part with "that (it may be true sometimes but) this is not usually the case". Or something like that.

Consider, though, that if we contend that anything is a work of art if it's done very well (e.g. Grant's memoirs) or that anyone who writes very well is an artist, we may be broadening the definition of art to a point where most any talented person is an artist, and any well-crafted product becomes a work of art. That seems to me to be a misuse of "art" and "artist" or at least an exaggerated use of those words. I don't think it makes much difference to say that is the case only with respect to something very, very well written or a person who writes really, really well.

But I suppose to continue this discussion we should do so in another thread.

How can You convince someone, who thinks that philosophy is just idle talk, that at least not all of this kind is mere empty stream of words? — Pez

Listen to them be wrong, and explain why they are, on something very important like an ethical position or their understanding of reliability of the senses.
The one that has always worked for me, in terms of pointing out what phil. is and getting some interest going, is running over the synthetic/analytic propositions. People tend to review most of their life decisions once this hits home.

People tend to review most of their life decisions once this hits home. — AmadeusD

Decisions are easy to reconcile, little more than footprints on the beach before the daily tide rolls in. Indecision, however, is what drives men to madness and can haunt one's very soul forevermore.

Very true. But, this reconsideration is the aim I take and it tends ot be successful.

Yes. Philosophy is idle talk, (according to Wittgenstein,) in the same way that a mechanic tunes the engine in 'idle'. Mechanic is to racing driver as philosopher is to politician, or knife grinder to chef. The knife is idle in the hands of the knife grinder, in exactly the sense that he is not cutting anything. What is a little odd though, is that in the case of the philosopher, many of them seem to have little idea about what they are doing, which is tuning and sharpening the language, rather than using it to win arguments and influence people.

Yes. Philosophy is idle talk — unenlightened

Mechanic is to racing driver as philosopher is to politician — unenlightened

.
I think I agree that mechanic is to racing driver as philosopher is to politician, or at least mechanic can be to racing driver, as philosopher can be to politician.

But wouldn't you be lowering your opinion of racing and politicking, if philosophy is idle talk? I'd argue you were. If idle talk was the same as sharpening language, then a politician has no tools; and if these are compared to mechanics and racing drivers, the whole thing is brought down and idle, and wouldn't run - around the track or for the office.

But wouldn't you be lowering your opinion of racing and politicking, if philosophy is idle talk? I'd argue you were. If idle talk was the same as sharpening language, then a politician has no tools; and if these are compared to mechanics and racing drivers, the whole thing is brought down and idle, and wouldn't run - around the track or for the office. — Fire Ologist

The talk is idle, but the philosopher is productive. It's the linguistic view of philosophy, that we are not in the business of making pronouncements like physicists priests or politicians, but of making the language fit for such purposes. Hence some of Wittgenstein's somewhat cryptic notions about his book saying nothing, but showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle and pulling the ladder up behind it. I'm not sure i agree with him, mind. But he was an engineer by training, so he knew the difference between a mechanic and a driver and the value of each.

I am afraid it is true, philosophy is just idle talk, well for the most part. The resort to Hegel doesn't help either, much more idle talk there.

Philosophy has turned to a monstrosity, it is unrecognizable, even to herself, when did this happen, has it always been like this, don't think so. A historical investigation might shed light into this.

Until there is a remedy, I suggest to depose philosophy from her throne of queen of sciences, and replace her, as Nietzsche suggested, with psychology.