3 ms·

the implication that internet edgelords of any flavor are holding a candle to or diminishing Kierkegaard in any way is pretty disgusting tbh. and “insights tur

the implication that internet edgelords of any flavor are holding a candle to or diminishing Kierkegaard in any way is pretty disgusting tbh. and “insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very deep thing” is incredibly trite. i don’t mean this to come across as a personal attack, but dismissing K’s project out of hand and then making a pithy reference to his biography in what i suppose is an attempt to signal knowledge (or worse yet, understanding) of the matter at hand is just incredibly weak.

fapjacks 7y ago
Wow, so what does it look like when you are attacking someone personally?
- DSingularity 7y ago
  That is not a personal attack. You have someone effectively dismissing a philosophers work using something that just sounds profound “life isn’t deep”. Sorry, it will take more than this to counter Kierkegaard!
  - fapjacks 7y ago
    Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above. Regardless, on what basis are you disagreeing with someone's interpretation of life as having no meaning or lacking in depth?
    - catawbasam 7y ago
      If a person with bad eyesight looks across a valley and tells a person with 20-20 vision that the view is terrible, the one with 20-20 isn't likely to agree.
      - fapjacks 7y ago
        But you don't get to decide someone's got bad eyesight if they tell you they see something perfectly clearly and you don't. If someone asserts that they see life as devoid of meaning or depth, you don't get to decide they are wrong simply because you disagree.
    - serf 7y ago
      >Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above. in what way is it personal? In that he's attacking his conclusion for all of Kierkegaards' work? Or that he's trying to characterize your actions into a specific motivations? Being called wrong , even in the softest ways, is now a personal attack? I think it's fair to say that a 3-5 word sentence is a bit too shallow to characterize Kierkegaards' entire body of work. 'Sickness Unto Death' totally changed my outlook as a teenager reading it at the right time. Here's the thing that's missing : life is as deep as we give it credit for, and many philosophies seek to enrichen and deepen the experience of life. In my opinion, someone with the stance 'life isn't very deep' is in the perfect position to try to honestly absorb some of the pasts' philosophers and step away from the mammalian life of eat-sleep-breed. In other words : our biological life is shallow in reason, philosophy and human thinking itself is what fills the world with reason, objective, and depth. Anyone with the take-away that 'life isn't very deep' receives my greatest sympathy and sorrow. I remember how I felt when I came to the same conclusions, and i'm glad I have shifted away from that perspective with the help of philosophy and dialogue with others. Re-imagining the world with the tools that philosophy gives you through practice is a fantastic experience, and I hope that the parent who believes that life isn't as deep as people give it credit for has the chance to undergo that epiphany themselves one day.
      - fapjacks 7y ago
        I am not addressing any of these points about either of our own value judgments about life, because they do not address the point I have made, which is that nothing else matters if some particular person interprets the meaning of their life in a particular way. No amount of your belief in some philosophy or religion will change their interpretation of the meaning (or lack thereof) in their own life. If this person posted for example that nothing Jesus said matters, because they think life is completely without depth, that's the end of it. They don't have to respond to any external reasoning or justify dismissing some philosopher's entire body of work, because they assign the depth of their own life. You and I can discuss what that means with respect to our own value judgments, but it has no bearing on what that person thinks of their own. If you want to proselytize to that person for finding meaning in life, that's great, have at it. But you can't say that person's dismissal of some system of reasoning is invalid because his dismissal is based on value judgments entirely up to that person alone, and no amount of external reasoning on your part will "override" their value judgment. About the reply above with the personal attack, here are a selection of phrases used to attack the author of the post, and not the author's argument: "internet edgelords", "pretty disgusting", "'insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very deep thing' is incredibly trite", "i don’t mean this to come across as a personal attack, but...", "a pithy reference", "an attempt to signal knowledge (or worse yet, understanding)", "just incredibly weak." Give me a break, that's a personal attack.
    - goto11 7y ago
      Thinking "life just isn't that deep" is somehow a counterargument to Kierkegaard is like dismissing the works of Donald Knuth by saying that "computing is just not that complicated".
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Good point, fapjacks.
deleted 7y ago
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fapjacks 7y ago

Wow, so what does it look like when you are attacking someone personally?

DSingularity 7y ago
That is not a personal attack. You have someone effectively dismissing a philosophers work using something that just sounds profound “life isn’t deep”. Sorry, it will take more than this to counter Kierkegaard!
- fapjacks 7y ago
  Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above. Regardless, on what basis are you disagreeing with someone's interpretation of life as having no meaning or lacking in depth?
  - catawbasam 7y ago
    If a person with bad eyesight looks across a valley and tells a person with 20-20 vision that the view is terrible, the one with 20-20 isn't likely to agree.
    - fapjacks 7y ago
      But you don't get to decide someone's got bad eyesight if they tell you they see something perfectly clearly and you don't. If someone asserts that they see life as devoid of meaning or depth, you don't get to decide they are wrong simply because you disagree.
  - serf 7y ago
    >Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above. in what way is it personal? In that he's attacking his conclusion for all of Kierkegaards' work? Or that he's trying to characterize your actions into a specific motivations? Being called wrong , even in the softest ways, is now a personal attack? I think it's fair to say that a 3-5 word sentence is a bit too shallow to characterize Kierkegaards' entire body of work. 'Sickness Unto Death' totally changed my outlook as a teenager reading it at the right time. Here's the thing that's missing : life is as deep as we give it credit for, and many philosophies seek to enrichen and deepen the experience of life. In my opinion, someone with the stance 'life isn't very deep' is in the perfect position to try to honestly absorb some of the pasts' philosophers and step away from the mammalian life of eat-sleep-breed. In other words : our biological life is shallow in reason, philosophy and human thinking itself is what fills the world with reason, objective, and depth. Anyone with the take-away that 'life isn't very deep' receives my greatest sympathy and sorrow. I remember how I felt when I came to the same conclusions, and i'm glad I have shifted away from that perspective with the help of philosophy and dialogue with others. Re-imagining the world with the tools that philosophy gives you through practice is a fantastic experience, and I hope that the parent who believes that life isn't as deep as people give it credit for has the chance to undergo that epiphany themselves one day.
    - fapjacks 7y ago
      I am not addressing any of these points about either of our own value judgments about life, because they do not address the point I have made, which is that nothing else matters if some particular person interprets the meaning of their life in a particular way. No amount of your belief in some philosophy or religion will change their interpretation of the meaning (or lack thereof) in their own life. If this person posted for example that nothing Jesus said matters, because they think life is completely without depth, that's the end of it. They don't have to respond to any external reasoning or justify dismissing some philosopher's entire body of work, because they assign the depth of their own life. You and I can discuss what that means with respect to our own value judgments, but it has no bearing on what that person thinks of their own. If you want to proselytize to that person for finding meaning in life, that's great, have at it. But you can't say that person's dismissal of some system of reasoning is invalid because his dismissal is based on value judgments entirely up to that person alone, and no amount of external reasoning on your part will "override" their value judgment. About the reply above with the personal attack, here are a selection of phrases used to attack the author of the post, and not the author's argument: "internet edgelords", "pretty disgusting", "'insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very deep thing' is incredibly trite", "i don’t mean this to come across as a personal attack, but...", "a pithy reference", "an attempt to signal knowledge (or worse yet, understanding)", "just incredibly weak." Give me a break, that's a personal attack.
  - goto11 7y ago
    Thinking "life just isn't that deep" is somehow a counterargument to Kierkegaard is like dismissing the works of Donald Knuth by saying that "computing is just not that complicated".
humanrebar 7y ago
Good point, fapjacks.

deleted 7y ago

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