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> Every time I've looked at philosophy in my life, I kept searching for this promise - where intellectual giants grapple the truth and discover their secrets.

> Every time I've looked at philosophy in my life, I kept searching for this promise - where intellectual giants grapple the truth and discover their secrets. This expresses an approach to philosophy that I think is, at its roots, ineffective. It treats "philosophy" as "Philosophy", as some thing, some well-defined corpus that deals with truth and can be explored top-down systematically, something that you can "look at" or "come to" or whatever. But that's not really what "philosophy" is or, rather, there is no "philosophy" in that sense. There's just people in the world trying to understand it and to communicate their understanding. There's just questions and people all the way down, nothing else. We use the name "philosophy" because it's convenient but I'd say it's maybe the least useful name for anything we've ever come up with. Philosophy is ultimately personal, it's the most personal, and most of the most famous philosophers can only be appreciated if you go out of your way to read them from a deeply psychological and empathetic perspective. At least this is my experience. It's not easy and takes a lot of work to get into the headspace of whoever you're reading, but once you get there you'll feel the lightbulb go off. This is especially important when you read older philosophers or philosophers who have a fundamentally different metaphysics from yourself. Of course, sometimes you just can't get there with certain thinkers. For example, I have a really really really hard time taking Hegel seriously.

iraphael 5y ago
+1 to this point. I also find it easier to read certain philosophers than others because they themselves seem to be empathetic in the way they write their thinking. Almost as if they know that they could be wrong about the conclusions they're coming to, and that the truths they uncover aren't necessarily absolutes but instead, at least to a certain degree, subjective and personal. Reading phenomenology for instance doesn't get me feeling like the author is self-indulgent. I find it easier to empathize with the philosopher because the philosopher is trying to empathize with me.
jolux 5y ago
Have you read Kant? I've had a lot of trouble with Hegel as well, and everyone tells me it's because he's responding to or building on arguments that Kant makes that seem to be pulled from whole cloth without that context (Kantext?). We're certainly not the only ones though, a lot of famous philosophers think Hegel is bullshit. I don't know how much respect the Hegelian lineage has outside of continental philosophy circles these days. I suppose Fukuyama is pretty Hegelian.
- idolaspecus 5y ago
  Maybe that's true but tbh I'm kinda over Hegel, I don't imagine there will ever be a time in my life where attempting to seriously understand Hegel will be worth the time.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Marxism is derived from Hegel's work.
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
> I have a really really really hard time taking Hegel seriously I really enjoyed Schopenhauer 80+ pages rant in "Parerga & Paralipomena" on Hegel and why he considered him a fraud. Nothing in philosophy is as consistent as Schopenhauer's "Hegel bashing" or using the term "Hegelian" only in a dismissive way. Maybe I ought to read Hegel since he is a central figure in Western philosophy. My excuse so far has been that he is only needed if I want to understand and keep up with what influenced thinkers like Marx, the "Frankfurt School", etc. So far I haven't felt not reading Hegel is a problem. It might have even shielded me from a lot of pretentious texts but idk. Agreeing and emphasizing with Schopenhauer was perhaps my reason for why Hegel now feels like a waste of time. Putting the effort needed into fully understanding him will be pure uphill struggle. This limits my understanding on Hegel to how Schopenhauer understood and interpreted him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parerga_and_Paralipomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parerga_and_Paralipomena
- yesenadam 5y ago
  I used to enjoy Schopenhauer, and am still fond of him, but his student Nietzsche has taken his place for me, a cheerier, funnier companion. Well, like me, Nietzsche was inspired by Emerson throughout his life. Emerson was never funny, but always inspiring. Santayana's Egotism in German Philosophy is one of my favourite books in philosophy, a history of German/"continental" thought from Leibniz to the Nazis—published 1916. Chapter II, The Protestant Heritage[0] begins: "The German people, according to Fichte and Hegel, are called by the plan of Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe. A little consideration of this belief will perhaps lead us more surely to the heart of German philosophy than would the usual laborious approach to it through what is called the theory of knowledge." Gold! I love Santayana's gentlemanly, restrained sense of humour, so superior to, say, Russell or Nietzsche's savage mocking. The best short thing I've read on Hegel is William James' essay On Some Hegelisms[1], and the long Note at its end, where he recognized Hegel-style thinking in his own crazed thinking while on nitrous oxide. Very funny, insightful stuff. After all, psychological experiment was James' own field: "It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of opposition, as 'nothing — but,' 'no more — than,' 'only — if', etc., produced a perfect delirium of theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter." [0] https://archive.org/details/egotismingermanp00santuoft/page/20/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/egotismingermanp00santuoft/page/... [1] https://archive.org/details/willtobelieveoth1910jame/page/262/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/willtobelieveoth1910jame/page/26...

iraphael 5y ago

+1 to this point. I also find it easier to read certain philosophers than others because they themselves seem to be empathetic in the way they write their thinking. Almost as if they know that they could be wrong about the conclusions they're coming to, and that the truths they uncover aren't necessarily absolutes but instead, at least to a certain degree, subjective and personal. Reading phenomenology for instance doesn't get me feeling like the author is self-indulgent. I find it easier to empathize with the philosopher because the philosopher is trying to empathize with me.

jolux 5y ago

Have you read Kant? I've had a lot of trouble with Hegel as well, and everyone tells me it's because he's responding to or building on arguments that Kant makes that seem to be pulled from whole cloth without that context (Kantext?). We're certainly not the only ones though, a lot of famous philosophers think Hegel is bullshit. I don't know how much respect the Hegelian lineage has outside of continental philosophy circles these days. I suppose Fukuyama is pretty Hegelian.

idolaspecus 5y ago
Maybe that's true but tbh I'm kinda over Hegel, I don't imagine there will ever be a time in my life where attempting to seriously understand Hegel will be worth the time.
denton-scratch 5y ago
Marxism is derived from Hegel's work.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

> I have a really really really hard time taking Hegel seriously I really enjoyed Schopenhauer 80+ pages rant in "Parerga & Paralipomena" on Hegel and why he considered him a fraud. Nothing in philosophy is as consistent as Schopenhauer's "Hegel bashing" or using the term "Hegelian" only in a dismissive way. Maybe I ought to read Hegel since he is a central figure in Western philosophy. My excuse so far has been that he is only needed if I want to understand and keep up with what influenced thinkers like Marx, the "Frankfurt School", etc. So far I haven't felt not reading Hegel is a problem. It might have even shielded me from a lot of pretentious texts but idk. Agreeing and emphasizing with Schopenhauer was perhaps my reason for why Hegel now feels like a waste of time. Putting the effort needed into fully understanding him will be pure uphill struggle. This limits my understanding on Hegel to how Schopenhauer understood and interpreted him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parerga_and_Paralipomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parerga_and_Paralipomena

yesenadam 5y ago
I used to enjoy Schopenhauer, and am still fond of him, but his student Nietzsche has taken his place for me, a cheerier, funnier companion. Well, like me, Nietzsche was inspired by Emerson throughout his life. Emerson was never funny, but always inspiring. Santayana's Egotism in German Philosophy is one of my favourite books in philosophy, a history of German/"continental" thought from Leibniz to the Nazis—published 1916. Chapter II, The Protestant Heritage[0] begins: "The German people, according to Fichte and Hegel, are called by the plan of Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe. A little consideration of this belief will perhaps lead us more surely to the heart of German philosophy than would the usual laborious approach to it through what is called the theory of knowledge." Gold! I love Santayana's gentlemanly, restrained sense of humour, so superior to, say, Russell or Nietzsche's savage mocking. The best short thing I've read on Hegel is William James' essay On Some Hegelisms[1], and the long Note at its end, where he recognized Hegel-style thinking in his own crazed thinking while on nitrous oxide. Very funny, insightful stuff. After all, psychological experiment was James' own field: "It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of opposition, as 'nothing — but,' 'no more — than,' 'only — if', etc., produced a perfect delirium of theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter." [0] https://archive.org/details/egotismingermanp00santuoft/page/20/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/egotismingermanp00santuoft/page/... [1] https://archive.org/details/willtobelieveoth1910jame/page/262/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/willtobelieveoth1910jame/page/26...