I have not read this fully yet but a quick skim brings up some trouble I have found recently when reading philosophy from a broad spectra of authors.
I have had something of a strange experience reading Byung-Chul Han year past year or so and it resonates with a lot of what is being said here.
Although I found a lot of his views intriguing there were also that seemed to be nothing more than baseless assumptions. The somewhat poetical style I am not too fussed about as long as they are then firmly translated into a formal description. As an example, Kant did use an analogy or two but very sparingly. I have seen quite a number of of philosophical pieces written over the past few decades that tend to lean far too heavily on metaphor and analogy. — I like sushi
Opinion and belief are the catalyst to philosophical enquiry, but without clear justification based on logical reason and solid evidence, philosophy will degenerate into multiple factions forever at odds with each other. — Moliere
Adrian Piper in his article ... — Moliere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_PiperAdrian Margaret Smith Piper[1] (born September 20, 1948) is an American conceptual artist and Kantian philosopher. Her work addresses how and why those involved in more than one discipline may experience professional ostracism, otherness, racial passing, and racism by using various traditional and non-traditional media to provoke self-analysis. She uses reflection on her own career as an example.[2]
Piper has been awarded various fellowships and medals and has been described as having "profoundly influenced the language and form of Conceptual art".[3] In 2002, she founded the Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA) in Berlin, Germany,[4] the focus of a foundation that was established in 2009.
That's a good paragraph, that one! Without freedom from the traditional form, there would be no new philosophers or philosophies at all. I'm pretty sure Nietzsche wasn't hampered by formal rules. Aristotle and Hobbes were not too bothered by the absence of firm factual grounding. And the religious ones just went with their dogma as a basis for truth.Imagination and creativity are central. Not the parroting of old texts by rote for the purpose of passing exams. Not thumping people over the head in another kind of narrow 'religion'. It is climbing out of the box of rigidity to flex your mental muscle. To shake off the dust, put on your red shoes and dance the blues. — Amity
The essay does argue for the importance of essays within philosophy. However, it does have a narrow scope as to what that may mean, based on guidance for academic philosophy essays. This leaves little scope for the most creative possibilities and such guidelines are likely to be a factor in the decline of philosophy essays in the first place. — Jack Cummins
I would have to disagree with this though for a very particular reason:
Opinion and belief are the catalyst to philosophical enquiry, but without clear justification based on logical reason and solid evidence, philosophy will degenerate into multiple factions forever at odds with each other.
I think there is certainly danger in getting sidetracked, but I am of the opinion that many of the greatest achievements of humanity are accidental. By going off-piste we can stumble upon fertile ground in which to plant new ideas. Sometimes nothing grows, and sometimes something does. — I like sushi
Everyone has a human right to both opinion and beliefs, and all opinions and beliefs are equal. Yet this is not a solid foundation for a society and would lead to anarchy. It is in the philosophical essay that opinions and beliefs need to be justified. — RusselA
Do you prefer more analytic writing yourself or do you find something like what Nietzsche does equally worthy of attention (regardless of content, talking purely stylistically here!)? — I like sushi
A philosophy paper consists of the reasoned defence of some claim. Your paper must offer an argument. It can't consist in the mere report of your opinions, nor in a mere report of the opinions of the philosophers we discuss. You have to defend the claims you make. You have to offer reasons to believe them.
Even on this writing challenge, that specifically wanted a philosophical essay — RussellA
Taking the Forum as an example, it seems to me that much of the writing is neither one thing nor another. Neither creative, in the sense of Nietzsche, nor analytic, in the sense of the philosophical essay, where claims are made and then defended. I am including myself. — RussellA
My hope was to elicit both kinds of writing, at least, if with more effort than we usually put into OP's and responses. — Moliere
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