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It's hard to talk about philosophy. I liked my philosophy classes in college (one overview, mostly with a Hume/Kant/Wittgenstein/modern analytic bent, and a phi

It's hard to talk about philosophy. I liked my philosophy classes in college (one overview, mostly with a Hume/Kant/Wittgenstein/modern analytic bent, and a philosophy of quantum mechanics class), and I like reading Peter Singer, but the older stuff just gets very woolly-headed seeming. It feels like they always try to hide some equivocation under fancy text, starting with "we define X as Y", then jumping through a natural-language use of X to get Z, then assert "Z is Y". For example, I may just be a heathen, but Nietzsche's whole style seemed to be boldly asserting things, making fun of anyone who thinks otherwise, yet rarely bothering to make an actual argument. I like the idea that everyone should take a semester's worth philosophy course somewhere along the way, but I don't know if it would do most people any good. An actual rhetoric course, with a focus on logical argument, may do better.

keiferski 13y ago
The thing about Nietzsche is, he thought himself less a logician and more an artist. In other words, read him like literature and not like argumentation. He's trying to inspire people, not build foolproof arguments. This is probably also why Nietzsche is (at least to me) infinitely easier to read than most philosophers.
nilaykumar 13y ago
"It feels like they always try to hide some equivocation under fancy text, starting with "we define X as Y", then jumping through a natural-language use of X to get Z, then assert "Z is Y"." This is precisely what I often found irritating. One of my friends once asked me, "You seem to like philosophy -- why don't you do any?" My response was essentially that certain parts of philosophy are simply TOO HARD for me in the sense that it is often all to easy lose objectivity, logically reason about ethics, etc. "I'll just stick to math, thanks, where I at least know how to systematically approach and think about problems under the framework of accepted mathematical logic."

keiferski 13y ago

The thing about Nietzsche is, he thought himself less a logician and more an artist. In other words, read him like literature and not like argumentation. He's trying to inspire people, not build foolproof arguments. This is probably also why Nietzsche is (at least to me) infinitely easier to read than most philosophers.

nilaykumar 13y ago

"It feels like they always try to hide some equivocation under fancy text, starting with "we define X as Y", then jumping through a natural-language use of X to get Z, then assert "Z is Y"." This is precisely what I often found irritating. One of my friends once asked me, "You seem to like philosophy -- why don't you do any?" My response was essentially that certain parts of philosophy are simply TOO HARD for me in the sense that it is often all to easy lose objectivity, logically reason about ethics, etc. "I'll just stick to math, thanks, where I at least know how to systematically approach and think about problems under the framework of accepted mathematical logic."