What philosopher do you think has been most successful in embracing atheism and avoiding nihilism? If you have some book you can recommend, I would be happy to read it. — Ron Cram

Well, I'm probably not the best person to ask this question, because I'm certainly no Nietzsche expert, and your characterization of him is simply not how I read him. Still, I can't help but give a hopelessly obnoxious answer and suggest Kierkegaard to you. I suppose it depends on how widely or narrowly we are willing to take the term atheism.

My philosophical interests are in epistemology, logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of life with a minor interest in political philosophy. — Ron Cram

I do have a (more serious) recommendation for you! If you have some time, try reading some Pittsburgh School philosophy (Sellars, Brandom, McDowell). If you have an analytic background, Brandom's book on Hegel might be a good place to start in approaching Continental thinkers.

What is the crisis of philosophy in his view? — Ron Cram

The title refers to a Walter Kauffman lecture on Nietzsche, and I believe that Kauffman is referring to his own views and time period when he uses the word "crisis", not to the views of Nietzsche.

I understood that it was the question of how to embrace atheism while avoiding nihilism. I haven't done any reading in this area, but I was told that the history of philosophy since Nietzsche has been a search for a way to reject God while avoiding nihilism. — Ron Cram

Well, if you enjoy philosophy I would recommend that you do some reading in this area. :) Continental philosophy is fascinating. I am sure many people here can recommend books.

I have been told that no philosopher has yet been successful in this search. — Ron Cram

There have been many brilliant philosophers since Nietzsche, a lot of whom have been heavily influenced by him. They have certainly had success, in the sense that they have raised questions anew and have developed significant conceptual resources for understanding and addressing the types of questions which Nietzsche, among others, raised. None has been successful in the way that, say, a mathematician would be, since philosophical questions don't really admit of that sort of answering.

I think there's some sentimental attachment as this was the first work of Nietzsche's that I read, and it's the one I return to most. Beyond that superficial reason... — Erik

:up: I don't think that's a superficial reason at all! Actually, I think you raise at least one interesting question not addressed in this thread, which is the importance of when and how we read certain books in our development cycle. I wonder sometimes if anyone can ever fully understand a philosophical work after 25.

I think it presents a nice broad overview of the major themes of his philosophy. It also contains a few of my favorite aphorisms (e.g. #1 in 'Reason' in Philosophy, #8 in The Four Great Errors and #5 in What the Germans Lack). So yeah, I know it's not typically interpreted by the experts as being one of his better or more important works, but it's the one that's stuck with me most. — Erik

Perhaps with someone like Nietzsche the best works are those which give an overview of his major themes in a representative tone. I mean, we can track the genesis and development of his themes across works, but I think that in some sense none of his works are essential for just that reason: you can engage with his themes by picking up any book. I think that's why the academe managed to flip Genealogy of Morals from an obscure 'minor' work to one of the 10 most assigned books in university syllabi.

Well, I can't comment on Hegel's Logic because I haven't read it, and large parts of the Phenomenology remain incomprehensible to me. But just when I was about to give up on him, I heard someone mention Philosophy of Right as being surprisingly accessible and full of valuable insights. Have you read it? If so, what's your take? There are some parts where I was a bit surprised by how traditionally conservative Hegel comes across as, but there are also areas where's he's pretty radical in outlook. — Erik

I haven't read it in a long time, so I will re-read it on your recommendation. :)

I guess I have mostly given up on Hegel myself. When I read Taylor, Pinkard, Pippin, McDowell, Brandom, Zizek, etc. Hegel seems like one of the most exciting people to have ever lived. But then I read him and get very little of that excitement. He's probably the only canonical figure who leaves me with this feeling. It makes me think that I am better off reading the secondary literature on him.

I remember reading somewhere that they were Kauffman's recommended places to start with Nietzsche as well, though I can't for the life of me remember where. — StreetlightX

I am pretty sure he does so in his lecture "Nietzsche and the Crisis of Philosophy".

Dreyfus has a chart for how "ontic" and "ontology" are used in various circumstances. I'm not getting it, though. I think I'm going to cruise on and come back to it later. — frank

Wouldn't that be in reference to Heidegger's technical use of ontic/ontology? Or is the chart original to Dreyfus's work on skillful coping?

If you are referencing Heidegger, then I think the really interesting question that he fails to address -- which is open for you to make a compelling and original contribution -- is how we get from the pre-ontological to the ontological understanding.

You're right. "Ontology" is being used in weird way. I need a flowchart. — frank

Do it! :lol:

Hegel - Philosophy of Right
Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols — Erik

This post got me pretty curious. Why Twilight of the Idols over other works from that period? I'd love to hear the rationale, because I think it tends to get interpreted unfairly as a 'minor' work.

Also interested in the rationale for Philosophy of Right since all the Hegel people seem to obsess over the Phenomenology and Logic.

We witness in ourselves a pre-ontological understanding (↪Ilyosha
I think this is right?) of the world. That understanding arrives at vegan-bacon and teeth in an unthinking way. So the objects are there before us with their respective horizons (our expectations about them) without any analysis. — frank

I don't mean to be a pain, but I guess my problem is that I just don't understand what kind of work a philosophical concept -- namely, "ontology" -- is supposed to be doing in a general statement about what "we witness in ourselves". If the 'we' you refer to is philosophers, then I think, sure, there are forms of understanding which cannot be captured by ontology, that seems trivial enough. But I assume you mean 'we' in general; human beings as such. And most human beings don't do traditional-style-western-philosophy, so ontology has to be code for something like "conceptually carving up the world into objects". But in that case I think that the problems are a lot more complicated than they are being made out in this thread. For example, what role does the acquisition of concepts play in our non-conceptual "pre-ontological understanding" of objects? How do concepts integrate into our bodily practices?

Dreyfus: "Thanks to our preontological understanding of being, what shows up for us shows up as something.

A pre-ontological understanding of being is in play as we interact with the tree. — frank

I read this post through four or five times, hoping to give you a good response, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding what a "preontological understanding of being" is supposed to mean in either of these two contexts.

Yes, it's very useful to distinguish those cognitive abilities we have that we share with animals (that are therefore pre-verbal) from those that require the use of words and concepts. Schopenhauer distinguished between Reason (which uses words and concepts) and the Understanding, which we share with animals.

Obviously, animals can distinguish 3-d objects and their position in space, they can distinguish colours and textures, smells, etc. They can distinguish things as defined by such criteria.

There's a whole bunch of stuff like that. You can actually get along at a rudimentary level in life without much use of concepts and words at all - it can even be quite pleasurable (not for the chattering classes, for whom it could only possibly ever be a break, but for most normal people, who are generally fairly taciturn).

Although it has to be said that human children can probably sense the "shape" of social roles before they have the words to plug into their own thoughts. We're exquisitely designed to follow social cues, etc., to "fit in." So a good deal of acculturation in the early years can indeed be pre-verbal too.

But yes, once words, symbols, concepts enter the picture, the cognitive landscape is vastly extended, as is the possibility of various social roles, and acculturation to them. — gurugeorge

Schopenhauer is definitely a great reference. Dreyfus stole an analogy from World as Will Vol. 1 which he seems to use quite a lot, about perception being a 'ground floor' and conception being the 'upper stories': “Those concepts which…are not immediately related to the world of perception, but only through the medium of one, or it may be several other concepts, have been called by preference abstract, and those which have their ground immediately in the world of perception have been called concrete. […] If it were not a somewhat too pictorial and therefore absurd simile, we might very appropriately call the latter the ground floor, and the former the upper stories of the building of reflection.”

While I think that your post takes Frank's questions in an interesting direction, there's still a glaring philosophical puzzle skulking in the corner: does the acquisition of concepts/language/practices sit atop this basic animal nature (e.g. perceptual capabilities) or transform this nature; in other words, are you arguing for a layer cake conception of human mindedness or a transformational conception?

Honestly, I've never quite been clear what Dreyfus's position on this puzzle is.

There is a social practices aspect to the ontology of the tree. Further there is something Kantian about the ontology of the tree that I don't think varies from culture to culture. — frank

Do you think you could expand on this?

What is Dasein in your view? — frank

Hard to answer, because I don't think that there is any such thing as Dasein outside of Heidegger's philosophy. Unlike Heidegger, I do not see any philosophical reason for dispensing with everyday words such as "person", "human being", "life", or even "subject", so long as we are working within a framework that makes those concepts responsible to the phenomena which we find in everyday being-a-person, which Heidegger attempts to describe, albeit in his unnecessarily mystical and abstract language.

Why talk about trees? I realize H was doing a different kind of ontology having to do with ways of being. I got caught up in trees because of what Dreyfus said about what Dasein is: it's not subjectivity. OTOH it doesn't leave subjectivity out. — frank

I thought you were talking about trees because it's a standard thing to talk about in these sorts of discussions. That's why God reminds us: "I don't merely have the visual impression of a tree: I know that it is a tree". (OC, 267).

I think H's point is that Dasein is a fusion or relationship between subjectivity and the world of trees and cups which are basically what humanity makes of greys and browns. — frank

This jumps out at me, and I definitely think that I disagree with this, although I am not exactly sure what you mean. We as human beings can encounter the meaningful world in its disclosure to us. And I take it that this is entirely different from the notion that we have contingently human forms of interpreting the world.

L.W. puts it best: "When we say, mean, that such-and-such is the case, then, with what we mean, we do not stop anywhere short of the fact, but mean: such-and-such is thus-and-so." (PI, 95)

In other words, I don't see a bunch of splotches of grey and brown that I interpret to be a tree. I see a tree. Any other description misses the phenomenon.

I think there are fundamentally human practices that give meaning to what we sense. For instance, when we see a mass of grey and brown, it isn't influence from any particular culture that produces a declaration of "tree." It's something more fundamental that has to do with objects in space and time. — frank

So, to expand a bit, I don't think we need to "give meaning to what we sense" because we directly sense meaning. That's why, for example, I see someone cruelly whipping a donkey, I don't interpret the colors on my retina as a man whipping a donkey which I interpret morally as a cruel act. That would be ontologically clunky.

As for what is "more fundamental" than practices, let me interrogate a bit. Do you think this might not be our shared bodily forms of experience?

I'm not offended at all. Honestly, after I made this post I realized how much ignorance was in this post. What I really should of asked was where can I learn more about Kierkegaard. So thank you for the link, I am really curios as to where it will lead, not only in Kierkegaard but in existentialism as well. Thank you. — Derek

Great! If you have any new thoughts please come here and share them. :)

Am I wrong? — Derek

Sort of. I think that you could benefit from more time with Kierkegaard in order to clarify your thoughts and especially clean up your reading of him, which I take to be problematic enough that I hope you won't be offended if I refer you to some material rather than responding to you point by point. Kierkegaard is one of the few thinkers who, in my opinion, is worth a lifetime of study, so I definitely want to encourage you on that front.

With that said, I think the best undergraduate-level material out there on Kierkegaard is Burt Dreyfus's course on existentialism at Berkeley. I would highly recommend you listen to at least the first few lectures. I think he will provide a better response to your reading of Kierkegaard than any of us will: https://archive.org/details/Phil_7_Existentialism_in_Literature_and_Film

Best of luck!

How so? Genuinely interested. — Posty McPostface

One fails to recognize the full gamut of motives, intentions, needs, desires, etc. that feed the practice of philosophy.

What alternative do you propose? The Nietzschean will to power? — Posty McPostface

How about we start with: philosophizing has many different purposes, helps fulfill many different types of motives for many different types of people in many different types of ways.

I'll just note here that I find it very strange that you keep trying to reduce all claims to some alternative super-claim.

But, what does that prove? — Posty McPostface

That the very highest expressions of human philosophical ability have been produced in part for the purpose of satisfying a wide variety motives, intentions, needs, desires, etc., such as competitiveness, careerism, monetary gain, and bitter jealousy. However, that is not to say that this is the "real" purpose or motivation behind these texts, over/against other intellectual and affective motives, intentions, goals, etc. etc. The purpose of philosophizing can be, in one and the same act, settling old scores and basking in wonder at the majesty of the universe.[

Sure, there are differing motives for doing philosophy. My primary question that I just stumbled upon in making this thread through my response to you is, "What affective need does philosophy fulfill?" — Posty McPostface

All kinds of needs in all kinds of ways.

Spinoza could not help but to examine what was before him. We all do by degree.

We're getting hung up on the trappings — Monitor

I'm with Nietzsche on this, in that I doubt philosophical motives are ever that straight-forward and noble.

I would like to clarify any ambiguity about my attitude towards philosophy. I am not proposing that philosophy serve as a utilitarian purpose here, since what utility does the Mona Lisa serve? It's quite clear from what I've read about the dropout rates of grad school philosophy, that the people who make it through it are motivated by reasons apart from material gain or financial wellbeing. So, hence I return back to my original premise, that philosophy serves an affectual need to be fulfilled in some intellectual sense.. — Posty McPostface

Sure, I understand. But this is also a typical philosophical move that ties us up in knots. Our opening salvo is to distinguish the material, the base, the bodily, the pleasurable, from the intellectual, the noble, the spiritual, and sublime. And I would like to suggest that this is not the best way to approach anything human. Heidegger rushed Being & Time in order to gain tenure, Hegel was motivated by bitterness towards his Tübingen classmates, Dostoevsky wrote to pay off his gambling debts, etc. etc. Could they have written these only from 'pure' motives? It's a question worth asking.

We can certainly accept that there are "reasons apart from material gain" for philosophy and still be skeptical about how philosophy plays into the full gamut of human goals, desires, inclinations, wills to power; a crude reductionism to "material gain" is not our only alternative.

Well then, let me be as trivial as possible. If you’re good enough at philosophy then you can likely convince a university to pay for your clothes, your food, and the occasional conference trip to some beautiful part of the globe with nice beaches and warm weather. Personally, when I was, say, twenty-two, I used to deeply resent the fact that most of the academic world seems to take up philosophy for this purpose. But now it seems to me perhaps as good a reason as any. I suppose this is one way in which philosophy can be a “means to find peace” for some. I’m not sure how much philosophical value there is grinding lenses till your lungs kill you at forty four.

Of course there will always be elements of an athlete's skill that cannot be made conceptually explicit, and even if they could be explicated they could only be emulated by those who possess the necessary physical potentialities. — Janus

Then what role do concepts play in skill?

But I also think, as I have explained to Frank that, to continue with this example, MJ's capacity to play basketball has within it the potential to be explicated, so that all the distinctions that become explicit in any such explication are incipient within his capacity to play basketball. This does not mean that those distinctions are actually being drawn in the course of MJ's playing basketball.

So, there is a kind of "isomorphism" there, I would want to argue, even though the playing and the explication are very different conceptually and experientially. (When iI say that the playing and the explication of it are conceptually different, what I mean is that the explication of the playing and the explication of the explication of the playing are different). — Janus

So, on your view, how is it explicable? His knowledge can be made conceptually explicit? So, for example, do you think Michael Jordan can bring all of his sophisticated basketball-knowledge into conceptual shape in order to teach it to another person? And when MJ tries to teach others how to play basketball -- he owns a team, after all -- do they play worse than him because they are worse at engaging in the practical application of the conceptual knowledge he has imparted to them through discourse?

Yes. What's there in a reflective moment is the realization that we can't explain how we're able to ride the bike or speak. Maybe some portion of philosophy is exactly that: trying to explain how it works. The question is whether, after we put aside the question of how, we can still see outlines of some structure to our background practices. — frank

Given the fellow-traveler nature of this thread please allow me to nit-pick a little.

I think Heidegger's big idea is that the order of intelligibility is the inverse of the order of explanation. The present at hand is intelligible on the basis of the ready to hand, but the ready to hand exists (in a natural/scientific/causal sense) on the basis of the present at hand. The problem, for early Heidegger, comes when we aim to give an explanation of the nature of intelligibility in terms of the present at hand.

The problem is that I don't think Heidegger has a particularly good grasp on the insight he has stumbled across here. I think that Wittgenstein has a much more nuanced and clear set of arguments about the basis and implication of this sort of position. But I digress.

My point is, I don't think that "some porton of philosophy can...explain how it works" because explanation involves a present-at-hand mode of knowledge, which lacks the necessary relationship to our forms of intelligibility needed to 'explain' these forms.

You mentioned the I emerging from We. What's of interest to me is that this We is not necessarily people. There's a We made of me and the non-human world. That is as much background as social practices. — frank

Well, yes. The world is nothing other than the world, what Merleau-Ponty calls the 'entwining' of nature, the artifice we have carved out of it, the practices which take from and give to that nature/artifice, the reflection and lives that derive therefrom, and the change those reflections ultimately bring back to bear on the world of which they are a part.

Again, Dreyfus brags in his commentary that Heidegger attempts to describe this world ontologically whereas Wittgenstein simply calls it the 'hurly-burly' of our common world. But again, I think Wittgenstein wins the day in terms of clarity of thought; Heidegger's ontological pretensions obscure the underlying phenomenon a tad.

I know that Dawkins has become a bit of a parody of himself, but don't let that dissuade you from reading early Dawkins if you have not already. The Selfish Gene is the obvious answer among the books you chose not to mention, and I think that's with good reason. It's great! Also, have you read any Daniel Dennett?

That sounds interesting. I hadn't been aware of any debate between McDowell and Dreyfus. Will you start such a thread? — Janus

I will start that thread if no one actually competent volunteers! Best would probably be to have a formal debate between people who can do a good job of defending each side.

Ontological antirealist. It's the same thing we've been talking about. Our knowledge of our pre-reflective behavior generates conflicting ontologies. In the past I imagined the conflict could be resolved in some way. It can't be. — frank

I've always been pretty bad with philosophy shorthand, so this just leads me to further questions, such as: Why does this imply conflicting ontologies and why do multiple ontologies need to be *resolved* in order for us to be realists? It seems to me an easy way to square the problem we've been discussing with realism is to suggest that our human forms of knowledge and freedom are expressions of distinct modalities.

Edit: Of course, then you would need to give some sort of philosophical account of the "genealogy of truth" within these modalities, as Merleau-Ponty put it.

I would be disappointed because I've been turning into an anti-realist existentialist. — frank

I'd be really curious for you to explain what you mean by this. For what it's worth, Dreyfus, Taylor, etc. are all staunch realists.

Would it not be possible to hold both views? If a conceptual understanding makes explicit our pre-reflective experience it seems natural enough to think that this making-explicit would also transform our experience. Still, I don't see any kind of gulf between the two 'modes' of experience, so no kind of troublesome "dualism" would seem to be involved. — Janus

Sorry, I don't think I wrote very well. I'm going to take another (short) crack at it, and if I'm still being ambiguous, I'll go back and take a thorough look at Dreyfus.

I think the idea is this. When Michael Jordan is playing basketball at his best, he is solicited by meaningful differences within the context of the game and acts accordingly (pass here, spin-move there). This presents his learned capacity to cope meaningfully within a certain sort of situation (say, an NBA championship game) through the exercise of non-conceptual capacities (e.g. perceptual capacities). I think that Dreyfus' point is that (a) Michael Jordan would not be able to do this (viz. play skillfully) if he were exercising his conceptual capacities while playing; (b) When Michael Jordan tries to conceptualize the experience of what it is like to play basketball at his best, this transforms the content of the experience. That is, there is not an isomorphic relationship between the activity and the conceptualization of the activity; any attempt to put that experience into conceptual shape necessary changes the content of the experience.

Sorry, that may be a bit of hand-wavey gobbledy gook.

In other words if there were no pre-reflective understanding of self and other could we ever arrive at the explicit position of self and other? Is the new explicit understanding not then,in that sense, precisely an understanding of the "fundamental" pre-reflective state? — Janus

I think what's key here, from Dreyfus' vantage point, is how you mean to interpret the transition from "pre-reflective" to "explicit". If you mean to say that a conceptual understanding of self-other merely makes explicit our pre-objective/pre-reflective experience, then I think you're disagreeing significantly with Dreyfus. If you mean to say that this transition is transformative of our experience, then I don't think Dreyfus would disagree with you at all. This is why Dreyfus is sometimes accused of a sort of dualism.

BTW, I suspect a thread on the Dreyfus-McDowell debate would probably be a huge help in sussing out the issues you two are running up against. They're fascinating issues, and I have no fixed views, though I wish I did.

Assertion or psychophysics 101? It's just standard psychological science. — apokrisis

Assertion; or perhaps: Huge philosophical leap smuggled in the guise of "that's just the way things are, it's elementary..."?

But even the experiencing eye is imposing an intelligible structure on the world. [...] So the scientific method is just about making the epistemology of being "a reasoning mind" something that is explicit and thus perfectable. [...] And from that prosaic truth, you can always continue on to the exciting ontic implications. — apokrisis

That's quite the assertion to start your line of thought with -- If we grant you that, haven't we already given you all the rest? That is, thrown away the whole ball game?

Why is experience a matter of imposing intelligible structure on the world? Why isn't it, say, a matter of disclosing the world?

Trump's philosophers?

I doubt he's familar with many or any of them but I'd suggest:

Julius Evola
Alexander Geljewitsch Dugin
Ayn Rand
Giovanni Gentile
Arthur de Gobineau
Lothrop Stoddard — Mayor of Simpleton

I'd say that Frege, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt covers just about all the bases.

Looks like no-one answered your question. Maybe:

Output: e.g. Aristotle ~100
Cool Factor: e.g. Camus ~100
Influence: e.g. Plato ~100
Controversy: e.g. Nietzsche ~100 — Baden

It's downright scary that it took you less than twenty words to describe, like, 90% of the process for BA/MSc/PhD thesis/dissertation selection in academic philosophy.

The only topic I'd think about adding (maybe including in "output"?) is breadth of topics covered. I think one reason why there have been so many Aristotelians / Kantians / Hegelians, etc. (as opposed to, say, Schopenhauerians) is that they cover all the big topics--metaphysics, logic, ontology, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of science, etc.--so people can have a philosophical hero who is their trump card in *all* philosophy conversations, no matter the area.

Edit: This was meant as a sarcastic quip in line with the nature of the thread (flaunting all of my pet peeves in the form of my pet peeves...), but I guess it came across as unhinged. Sorry about that.