https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/philosophy-and-hope
created by ThePhilosopher1923 on 04/02/2025 at 06:47 UTC
8 upvotes, 5 top-level comments (showing 5)
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Comment by Direct_Bus3341 at 04/02/2025 at 08:04 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Tad dismissive of pessimistic philosophy no?
For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying—and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering—slowly or quickly—as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we “enjoy” as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.
Although yes some philosophy gives hope but I don’t see it as an attempt to instil hope the way theology does, chiefly by promising rewards after death for good conduct.
Comment by frogandbanjo at 04/02/2025 at 10:04 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That sounds like a ridiculously limiting definition of philosophy. Honestly, that "truer than theology" line is dripping with unintentional irony, especially in the modern era.
By number of believers, a shitload of modern theology is nakedly an opiate. "Nope, death isn't the end, *and* you've got the chance to experience the greatest joy anything can ever experience -- forever!" Kinda goes right to the top shelf, doesn't it? Indeed, it goes higher than anything else can possibly go. Unless philosophy's "truer truth" is totally redundant with that sales pitch, isn't it going to be at least a step down? Isn't it therefore going to provide *less* hope in some sense?
The author seems to be arguing that philosophy doesn't have a unique niche at all, and that science has embarrassed it so thoroughly that it should go back to horning in on religion's scam. From the safety of that fortress of non-falsifiability, it can take potshots at science for being so dour.
Comment by nothingfish at 04/02/2025 at 10:45 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The McTaggart that Douglas writes about is a strange mixture of contradictions. He was a British idealist who was an athiest striving to replace a non material faith with an equally non material hope. He sought to discover the ultimate nature of reality using pure reason as "the eyes of the mind," and this somehow led him to seeing humans as spirits tied in a mutual eternal love.
He wanted something more than what David Stove called the Victorian horror story. I can understand this. Once again, we are living in an age where God is an agent of the discourse of the master and his truth. A neoliberal horror story of control and subjugation. Philosophy today has hope but no softness. Like Mark Fisher's Post Capitalist Desire, it is brutal in its truth, and its conclusions are not at all comforting.
Comment by abrau11 at 04/02/2025 at 11:51 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This reads like one of my ethics 201 sophomores who took shrooms for the first time over the summer.