I've always though Nietzsche's amor fati was merely derived from Stoicism. That may be why he disliked the Stoics.

What do We Mean By “The Meaning of Life”? — George Fisher

Does it mean anything at all? I don't mean life, I mean the question itself.

What's being asked? How best to live? That isn't the same question, though, is it? Is it being asked what the purpose of life is? Why we're here? What will happen to us? What God has planned for us? Why, or if, we matter?

How best to live might be determined, or at least the ancients thought so, in some cases at least without reference to "the meaning of life" as we understand the question, if we do. So, the best way to live is to obtain tranquility, or happiness. The other questions can't be with any certainty, I think. Maybe the ancients were wiser than we are.

Yes, that's the case now, in any event.

I do think that there are the old fashion conservatives, but they are simply muted out by the Trump crowd. — ssu

I hope you're right. But at least when it comes to elected officials, it seems that most are willing to follow Trump's lead regardless of their principles, if they have them.

The demonizing of Republicans/Conservatives as ethical monsters in the last 20 years has much, much more to answer for imo. — AmadeusD

I'm uncertain whether there are any Conservatives left, since Bill Buckley died. Conservatives are against the intrusion of government in our lives. Those called "Conservatives" now seem to relish government control, except perhaps when it comes to the ability to acquire and retain money.

No, it's not about morality, it's about the facts of the matter. — schopenhauer1

Yes, if it was about morality "should" would be used, not "must." But while I face the issues of being human every day, they don't involve

a certain sense of angst, existential dread, isolation, loneliness, ennui, and meaninglessness. — schopenhauer1

. Sorry.

Why are we even deliberating this kind of evaluation? — schopenhauer1

A good question. Why indeed bother? But I dislike being told what I must think or feel by virtue of the fact I'm human.

Rather, the "excess" of consciousness brings with it a set of issues that humans uniquely must face. — schopenhauer1

You see the "must" in that sentence, don't you?

How much do you expect and or fear that a strong fascist moment could be organized within the next 5 years? — BC

It's not clear to me that we don't have one already, although I can't say that it's organized. Let's say there are plenty of fascists, or crypto-fascists.

Ever read Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here? It's American dictator, Buzz Windrip (love the name), is described as disturbingly similar to You Know Who.

If I wasn't interested in this thread I wouldn't be posting in it.

Whether it's claimed we're different, special, abnormal, whatever word you prefer, because unlike other animals (that we know of) we can deliberate, reflect (again, whatever word you prefer), I don't accept that the result is we necessarily feel the way about ourselves and our lives that you, Brassier and Zigotti seem to think we do.

More significantly, I think that the claims being made by you and them (if I understand them correctly, and I think I do) are unsupported. I'm sure that there are those who feel the way it appears they do, and you do. One may say we have the capacity to feel that way due to our "specialness" and other animals lack that capacity if we like. It doesn't follow that we do, or must. But I don't think you achieve anything towards establishing the claims made by maintaining that any statement that someone doesn't accept the dreary perspective set forth in this thread does so in bad faith--as if someone like me is really miserable because condemned to live but pretending not to be.

I've never been known for my buoyancy. I'm not the most cheerful of individuals. I don't look on life as a gift. But, I think that our lives are largely what our thoughts make it (sorry about paraphrasing Marcus Aurelius).

This point of view seems based on the assumption that we humans are special. We're not. We're instead just another kind of creature in a vast universe, not special but different from others in some respects. I don't see this recognition as a defense mechanism; it's merely what is the case.

No one is saying that the "universe needs to sanction our existence". Rather the point is that we are not like the rest of existence and this leads to a unique circumstance and shifts our mode of being- one of deliberative means, and self-reflection. — schopenhauer1

I'm uncertain how to describe the view that "we are not like the rest of existence" without understanding it to be a claim that we're separate from it, or excluded or isolated from it. Would you prefer to say that we're abnormal? That would include being unnatural, I think, especially when we're comparing ourselves with the rest of nature.

Assuming you mean "abnormal" or "unnatural" in that sense, while it's true those words are sometimes used in reference to monsters and freaks, I don't see why our abnormality would in that case condemn us to the state of misery which seems to be referred to in this thread.

I doubt anyone would claim we're the same as other animals in all respects, but our differences don't make us any less natural, nor do they doom us to crave what we cannot have and do not need. We don't have to be like the other animals or the lilies of the field to avoid ruminating obsessively on the fact that our existence isn't sanctioned by the universe or justified by it in some sense. We need only accept what is the case. If we speak of poetry we need only "cast a cold eye" on life and death, and pass by as Yeats put it in his poem Under Ben Bulben and his gravestone. I suspect Zigotti is simply projecting his own disappointment in the cosmos on the rest of humanity.

Sorry, but I don't think there is a "human craving for justification on matters of life and death." I think some humans crave that, but it's foolish to do so, and I know of nothing which makes it a necessary human characteristic, i.e. a part of being human. And like it or not, humans are as much a part of nature as any other animal.

Life isn't good or bad because I can't change it, nor is the cosmos. They merely are. My part is to live. I can (and do) live without judging the cosmos. Montagne wrote something like "Not being able to master the world, I master myself." As 180 Proof has said, it's futile to disturb ourselves over what we can't do or change. Instead, do the best you can with what is in your power and take the rest as it happens, to paraphrase Epictetus.

We're alive. No amount of bewailing will change that; in fact, it will likely make us miserable (more miserable, if you prefer). Horror can be self-imposed, particularly that horror claimed to be cosmic. This is the ultimate example of disturbing yourself over matters beyond your control.

My opinion is that no words are inherently bad or harmful,only bad actors. — GTTRPNK

Bad actors who use the words, you mean?

God's teeth. Why even consider such questions?

Everybody is enslaved to either the self or to the Truth itself. — Piers

Who's this "self" anyway? As for the Truth, I thought it was supposed to set me free.

There is no such thing as freedom because everybody is enslaved to either ego or conscience. — Piers

Which is merely to say that everybody is enslaved to themselves. It seems hardly worth while to consider, let alone refute, such a claim.

I've never understood anti-semitism. But that it still exists shouldn't be all that surprising. There are those of us who need someone to hate/blame, if only to enliven their own miserable lives, and the Jews have traditionally served as the tonic for that need in European/American history.

That said, I think sympathy for Israel is declining around the world, and fear that its self-association with Jewish people and religion will result in an increase in anti-semitism.

If you have time, could you tell us if a contract, marriage or mortgage ceases to exist if the documents on which it is written are destroyed?

Since in many cases a contract does not even need to be written down in order to be valid, it would be odd. Wills are an obvious exception.

Sorry to bother you with such trivialities. — Banno

It depends.

Here in God's Favorite Country, or at least my part of it, most records concerning marriage and mortgages are duly recorded or registered with offices of the state, certified copies of which will normally serve to establish their existence and may serve as evidence in disputes landing in courts if the originals aren't available. Should events result in the destruction of those offices and other electronic records as well as the originals, then there may be problems of proof, but in that event of such a catastrophe there likely will be problems of all sorts, like finding food to eat, for example.

Certain contracts may be verbal; some must be in writing (generally in the case of the amusing named "statutes of frauds", specifically by a requirement imposed in the case of particular contracts). When they must be in writing under the law and are not, they'll usually be unenforceable. But in some cases even though there is no writing, there may be a claim in quasi-contract. For example, when one is owed money for conduct which resulted in a benefit to another, but there is no written agreement, there may be a claim for "unjust enrichment" which could require payment for the value of the services rendered.

I confess I was being a bit silly myself.

Well, of-bloody-course!! Their gods are bullies who approve of subjugation and submission. That's what makes empires great. — Vera Mont

And rum, sodomy and the lash as Churchill would say. Those English.

I know. Geez! — Vera Mont

Well, I'm just a man, you know. Perhaps "plod on" is more to your taste. Or "endeavor to persevere." I won't explain that reference, for fear you'll write "Geez!" yet again.

es, indeed! And I endorse them wholeheartedly - except for that unfortunate bit about soldiery. — Vera Mont

"Soldier on" means "to continue to do something or to try to achieve something even though it is difficult" according to Merriam-Webster Online. I'm not sure why, but that's how it was intended.

Humans (predominantly, I think, human males) seem in every age preoccupied with their own significance and dashed when they are compelled to admit how very small it is in the scheme of things. — Vera Mont

Well, we seem especially inclined to whine (sorry, write) about such questions, and in spectacular detail, it's true. But there are men of great wisdom, like Horace of course (and me I would say, but am shy) who accept this and soldier on.

What is life? Why is life? Where did it come from. Are we special?
Is there a God? What is God? Why is God? — George Fisher

Take the advice of Quintus Horatius Flaccus: tu ne quaesieris. There are no answers to these questions as they're intended. Just get on with life as best you can.

Do you also want to make this hard and fast distinction between technological and scientific know-how? We build computers but we don’t build concepts like neuron and quark? Or do you want to argue that neuron and quark are constructions, but perceptual achievements like object permanence, depth perception and recognition of chords are not? Let me ask you, how is it that we are able to recognize any aspect of the visual environment as familiar when no aspect of the seen world duplicates its features from moment to moment? Is there not, as Piaget would say, an accommodation of our memory- driven expectation to the novel aspects of what we encounter? Do we not do in perceiving what we do in understanding language, adapt and adjust our rule -based criteria to accommodate the new context of interaction? — Joshs

If you don't think there is a difference between constructing a building or a road and seeing a tree, we aren't going to get much farther than we have in this discussion. That's all that I've been addressing, in any case. I don't understand how this relates to a distinction between scientific and technological know-how, nor does it seem to me that seeing is equivalent to what was done in arriving at concepts like neuron and quark, or what we do in understanding language. Clearly, we disagree on what it is to see something. When I say "I see a tree" I think most would understand what I mean by that, but it seems you don't, or that you would contend I don't see a tree.

We build the models, apparatus of measure and observation, and the world responds just so to how we prod and alter it. It only gives up its secrets in the language of the questions we ask of it, and for the purposes we use it for. — Joshs

We do those things when we actually do them, not when we see something. It's a mere truism to say that we build buildings, roads, etc., and alter the world of which we're a part when we do so. We do nothing of the sort when we see a tree. We don't build it or images of it in our minds when we see it. We merely see it.

It really is such a pointless, boring and interminable debate that lacks any significance for human life. — Janus

So it is. Perhaps this is perversion rather than affectation--turning away from or aside from what's generally done or accepted.

I wonder though if much of this can be attributed to the selective application and subsequent disregard of metaphors. The claim is made that we "create" or "construct" objects or phenomena in the factory or workshop of our minds as if we carry tiny craftsmen or masons in us, building what we experience.

Actually, children do such things, according to Piaget's theory of cognitive development. :)
It covers also issues of perspective, object size, object permanence. — baker

I didn't know we were speaking of children, sorry

Western philosophy has affectation built in as a feature, in the assumption that an argument can somehow "stand on its own", regardless of who is making it; "a fallacious ad hominem" is considered a pleonasm, as if every argument against the person is automatically fallacious. — baker

I don't know what you mean by this.

[

You're thinking like a lawyer, not a philosopher. Except that we're at a philosophy forum. — baker

Even philosophers manage to live as part of the world, whether they want or not. Some even hire lawyers when they encounter problems of a certain kind in that world. Never philosophers, I think. Why not?

But must these judgments amount to a certainty that justifies burning people at the stakes? — baker

Judgments made with the understanding that they cannot be made with absolute certainty aren't made with certainty. Your thinking of religion, not the law.

People who are not lawyers and otherwise not in the business of professionally judging others, can get by just fine without pronouncing definitive judgments upon others, and can instead live with tentative. — baker

Lawyers don't judge, unless they're judges as well and their function is to judge, except in matters within the authority of a jury. Good judges know the law, like everything else, is uncertain. Even legal precedent isn't binding, as our Supreme Court Justices like to say when it suits them.

That was actually the prevailing belief back then: that children are just like adults, only smaller. The belief was that children were only quantitatively different from adults, but not qualitatively. — baker

Ah, well. They were painting them quantitatively then.

The quotes are because the term ‘create’ has connotations beyond what is intended in this context. There is no simple way to convey the gist. The basic tenet I’m criticising is the instinctive notion of the mind independence of phenomenal objects. — Wayfarer

Well, if it's instinctive, it must be wrong.

Minds 'create' the objects of perception, not in the sense that they're otherwise or previously non-existent, but insofar as they're object of cognition (and reason, for us.) — Wayfarer

Which is to say they don't create them, eh? Thus the quotation marks. It's a metaphor only. The problem arises when we (or others) don't recognize that's the case, or disregard it. Perhaps analytic philosophy is aware of this in a way phenomenology and enactivism is not.

A better answer is the obvious point that there are different ways of using an expression such as "I see the flower". — Banno

And one of those is an affected way.

There is no flower with four petals , or any other visually identifiable object, until we first establish these relational interactions between ourselves and the world.
— Joshs
I don't agree. The flower has four petals regardless of what you suppose. That we see, feel, count or believe that it has four petals is incidental, post hoc. — Banno

I think what's at work here might be called a "hypertechnical" approach to questions, and meaning. What do we mean when we say "I see X"? To answer (if indeed we can answer) requires detailed and specific knowledge of how we see X, which requires consideration of anatomical, neurological, physiological processes within our bodies, the quality of and nature of the object X, its ecology and that of the person who sees it, the experiences of that person and the culture in which the person lives...indeed, the consideration of all aspects of the world itself. Many of these factors will vary from person to person, of course. The result is we don't see X. We see whatever it is that's the result of their interaction.

Ah, if only we were in a court of law. I would object to your "response" as being unresponsive, and I think any Judge in the external world would sustain the objection.

In the rarefied realm of philosophy, so removed from the world of the sensible (a little pun on my part), there's no need for you to respond to direct questions, of course.

Have you ever thought that those children in pre-Renaissance painting actually were little adults? Or just that the artists who painted them thought they were?

A history of art book offers a chronology of changes of socially shaped ways of perceiving. In many respects, this has involved leaning to ‘unsee’ previous socially formed notions of how things present themselves to us. Greek sculptors unsaw the rigid, depersonalized statues of the Egyptians, Assyrians and Mesopotamians when they discovered the inner dynamism of human beings. Renaissance artists had to unsee the inherited idea of a perspective-free landscape, no unifying light source and children depicted as tiny adults. Impressionist painters learned to unsee objects reflecting only a narrow band of colors onto the eye in favor of trees, skies and seas composed of every color in the rainbow. Expressionists taught themselves to unsee scenes in which subjective mood played no part in how things appear., giving us Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Munch’s Scream. — Joshs

Are you claiming that the ancient Egyptians and others perceived each other as rigid and depersonalized, expressionless? That the Greeks discovered the inner dynamism of human beings (whatever that may mean)--those before them were unaware that humans could do more than stand and sit (referring to statutes) or could laugh or cry? People before the Renaissance thought children looked like tiny adults--that's why they drew them that way? That before the Impressionists, people didn't perceive all the colors of the rainbow?

If so, why not say so? I suspect you don't. You refer instead to how particular artists depicted people, something which may vary for many reasons, some technological, some cultural. On what basis do you conflate what we see with what we paint or sculpt? If you do that, I suppose it's easy enough to conflate what we see with what we dream or hallucinate.

I have a phenomenological state that seems to me to be elicited by an external stimuli, but I know that it can be elicited without it because people dream and some people have hallucinations elicited by brain injury, direct brain stimulation, drug use, or perhaps some sort of mental illness. — Hanover

Why engage in this kind of categorization? We're referring to processes, not isolated events or things. When a person is walking, the image of a person walking doesn't take form in their minds, which then induce their legs to move appropriately. They simply walk. People who dream are dreaming. They're having a dream (not encountering images coming into being in their minds). People who have hallucinations are hallucinating, for whatever reason. They have hallucinations (there are no images or sounds or things that they encounter). People who see a flower see a flower (not a sense datum or combination of them). People who look at a radar screen are looking at a radar screen (not an airplane, not a "blip").

Legal professional full time; back in school (conjoint LLB (law) and BA in Philosophy undergrad). — AmadeusD

You poor fellow. Exactly my background.