Just me or is philosophy actually a complete shitshow? When I was younger I really wanted to major in philosophy because I thought it was "learning to think real good about abstract stuff", but eventually found out it was "quoting other famous people's stuff at each other"
Conversation
Replying to
i get this feeling of being like... constipated and angry at the same time when around people who've gone through any formal philosophy, you can't get through a single idea without them dropping eight different philosophers on you, and im just like YES BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK
12
13
264
but idk how to engage with it because i haven't read those philosophers because reading those philosophers is a kind of masochism i have not yet ascended to, and so I'm in an awkward position of "I have no idea what you're saying but I know I hate it"
2
1
164
by this point if i'm at a party and i'm like 'yea but what's it like to feel the sense of thinking' and then someone says 'yeah well nietzsche said-' i just am done, immediately, like my next battle plan is to figure out how to erase philosophers from their mind
9
8
140
i can't tell if they're doing some weird actually original and good mental jujitsu while using other philosopher's ideas as pawns, or if they are actually completely unoriginal and think that good thinking is just knowing what other good thinkers think. I can't tell.
18
1
159
As much as I shit on the rationalist community, this is a big part of why I love them - on a whole, they're a level of well-read and nerdy and *don't* pull the philosopher namedropping card. It's glorious.
16
2
157
Replying to
I’ve only read a bit but some name-dropping happens because other people have had the same thoughts and arguments hundreds of years ago
1
5
Replying to
but that's not the point, like the point is to talk with the *other person* about how *they personally* relate to it, doesn't matter if old people hashed it out.
5
12
Show replies
Replying to
There are two schools of philosophy. "Continental philosophy", aka Nietzsche, Hegel, etc. is about inventing convoluted BS to make yourself look smart. You'd prefer "analytic philosophy," where they try to use logic. (But do a bad job: humans are bad at logic.)
4
1
2
Replying to
I went to an analytic philosophy meeting at MIT and it was shit, but for different reasons and I can understand why people like it. It seemed like people were doing a hobby like a board game.
1
9
Show replies
Replying to
Yes. To some extent, this is probably inevitable (the space of ideas has largely been charted by past generations), but it is disheartening that few philosophers seem to be deep thinkers, and they often don't understand the ideas they attempt to recycle very well.
3
20
Show replies