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I used to really enjoy philosophy as a teenager, from Plato to Baudrillard. Then, for no special reason, I started reading a lot more popular science.
I've read ten-odd such non-fiction books so far this year, on subjects ranging from the cosmos to skeptical thinking; brain dynamics; logical fallacies; memory, etc. But they all have this in common: their authors use plain but compelling English, and support their arguments by evoking evidence. Their premises and conclusions are, or try to be, clear and logical.
I think they have ruined forever my enjoyment of philosophy.
Science is now explaining the world. What does philosophy do? You might reply: Philosophy attempts to answer questions that science cannot, but I'm starting to think that is because those questions are stupid, or at least pointless, based as they are on invincibly "undisprovable" presuppositions. (What is the meaning of life? The question presupposes there is a meaning.) Perhaps, then, philosophy survives as literature. Perhaps. But IMHO, pretty shabby literature.
You may beg to differ.
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It's philosophy's own fault. Hume's fork excludes anything metaphysical or anything that cannot be described mathematically or proved experimentally. Unfortunately this includes speculative philosophy (including ironically Hume's fork itself!).
I blame it on Hume (and Kant). But I don't accept their conclusions. I prefer Pascal. I'm one of those philosophical dinosaurs who still believes in divine revelation.
"Faith has Reasons that Reason knows nothing of." - Blaise Pascal
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I read philosophy infrequently. I never could quite understand philosophy, although I thought that I should. My first brush with 'official' philo was reading the Meno. Great stuff, but the value of philosophers isn't that what they say is true. I didn't realize that at the time (middle school). I thought "they must be right and I'm just not smart enough." Took me a wrong time to understand, "No wait! plato was ridiculous at that point! he's no less a genius, but at that point he was absurd." Some modern philosophers don't seem to know what they're talking about - witness the gibberish uttered about falsificationism. (Popper was brilliant, but his later critics are just idiots.)
I tried very hard to read philosophy and to understand it - Kant's prolegomena is one of only a handful of books I've read 3 times and yet I could not explain one iota of what it means. I understand that I am not as smart as kant, but I also know that I'm not stupid just because Kant makes no sense to me.
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"Until you understand a writer’s ignorance," said Coleridge, "presume yourself ignorant of his understanding."
That is a fair admonition in most cases. However, with sufficient effort a reasonably intelligent person should be able to understand any philosophical idea that can be expressed in words. If a piece of writing is impenetrable to someone after many readings, and the reader understands the thesis when it is expressed by others in plain English, the fault is clearly in the writing. The author has failed to express himself clearly. Why?
At the moment I am reading Camus. I understand his philosophical position and its implications. I understand the lengthy introduction by the professor of philosophy. Then I launch into The Myth of Sisyphus and almost can't make head or tail of a single sentence.
In philosophy cant is a ruse. Sometimes, it is used to mask mediocre thought. Sometimes the author wants us to take his impenetrable verbosity for profundity; to make us cow before him in intellectual humiliation. I don't think it happens consciously. But I think philosophers who want to be thought great intellectuals are tempted to fudge sentences so that their ideas seem more complex than they really are.
Intellectual vanity is really quite an absurd thing.
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Does Zen count
Some of its advocates deny it's a philosophy
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Bob Marley used it a lot in his music;
Misty mornin', don't see no sun;
I know you're out there somewhere having fun.
There is one mystery - yea-ea-eah - I just can't express:
To give your more, to receive your less.
One of my good friend said, in a reggae riddim,
"Don't jump in the water, if you can't swim."
The power of philosophy - yea-ea-eah - floats through my head
Light like a feather, heavy as lead;
Light like a feather, heavy as lead, yeah.
It's good for expressing what you can't express.
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If a piece of writing is impenetrable to someone after many readings, and the reader understands the thesis when it is expressed by others in plain English, the fault is clearly in the writing. The author has failed to express himself clearly. Since most philosophers have not written in English, plain or otherwise, that's not necessarily so. There is also the question of translation, cultural considerations, etc. The fault might not always be with the philosopher.
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But....My customer review at Amazon says everything else I wanted to say about Camus: Shabby Philosophical Cant
[One star]
I do not have any special quarrel with Camus' thesis, which is neither very complex nor very controversial. I am going to summarize it in plain English. Doing so, showing that it can be done, will bear out my criticism of Camus' writing.
Man thirsts for a holistic meaning from life that life cannot give him. It is this simple fact that constitutes the absurd, in the face of which Camus asks (with all the subtlety of a battering ram): Shall we all therefore commit suicide? His answer is, in short, no. The act of suicide symbolizes the triumph of both life and death over the individual, cutting the Gordian knot of the absurd without unravelling it. What then is man to do? According to Camus, he must do two things. Firstly, he must remain aware of the fact that life is absurd; that is, he must not be tempted to escape into oblivion. That much is clear. Camus' second imperative is both more obscure and more interesting, but what it amounts to is this: man must try to find a defiant enjoyment in, or in spite of, his absurd existence. If he can do this--if Sisyphus can admit that he is not unhappy, and smirk to himself as he descends for the millionth or billionth time after his ridiculous bolder, that ineradicable smirk is sufficient to undermine the gods that are punishing him and the universe in which that punishment is his fate. This is our only hope of defeating or at least of negotiating the absurd.
The problem with this book is not in the matter but in the mode, for Camus presents this not-particularly-complex thesis in the most obfuscatory philosophical cant that has ever been inflicted on the reading public.
I will focus by way of illustration on a single aspect of his writing style (or lack thereof), though I warn you that it is abundantly bad in almost every aspect.
Camus likes to introduce everyday words and phrases which, as his usage makes clear, are being given idiosyncratic meanings known only to Camus. He does not pause to clarify for the innocent reader what he means. Nor does he pause to substantiate the vaguest of presuppositions he uses these terms to postulate. Instead, he goes on, breathlessly, to combine them in new sentences from which additional, even more idiosyncratic ideas and presuppositions are extrapolated, and in which still more words are introduced from his maddening idiolect--and so on, in a kind of second- and third- and fourth-order multiplication of ambiguities. A single example will suffice (which, by the way, heads up a new section and is in no way foregrounded by his preceding paragraphs):
"Deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying. The regularity of an impulse or a repulsion in a soul is encountered again in habits of doing or thinking, is reproduced in consequences of which the soul itself knows nothing. Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world in which they recognize their climate."
And again, with a question mark in square brackets to indicate where, I believe, Camus sorely owes his readers an explanation:
"Deep feelings [?] always mean [?] more than they are conscious [?] of saying [?]. The regularity of an impulse or a repulsion in a soul [?] is encountered again in habits of doing or thinking, is reproduced in consequences [?] of which the soul [?] itself knows nothing [?]. Great feelings [?] take with them [?] their own universe [?], splendid [?] or abject [?]. They light up [?] with their passion [?] an exclusive [?] world [?] in which they recognize [?] their climate [?!]. ... "
This pointless and pretentious fudging of sentences is done, it must be assumed, in order to make Camus' thesis appear more complex, more esoteric than it really is. The motive for his crime against the word is literary vanity. Or perhaps the game with which Camus finds defiant enjoyment in the absurdity of existence consists of avenging himself on his readers with his atrocious writing. Whatever the answer, the result is shabby, muddy, and bordering on complete gobbledegook. (I have read difficult books of philosophy before, from Baudrillard to Derrida, "in the unoriginal" and doubt very much that the blame can be laid squarely on James Wood, Camus' translator).
To conclude: His thesis, as I say, has some merit. But for that, why not consult Wikipedia. Hell, edit the page yourself. You'd be hard pressed to do a worse job at clarifying Camus than Camus has done in this complete abortion of a text.
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Maybe someone should have asked Camus this question: 
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Maybe someone should have asked Camus this question:
"This image or video has been moved or deleted?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Even Web 2.0 can't vanquish absurdity. Good—I think.
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Even Web 2.0 can't vanquish absurdity. some would say that for web 2.0 to vanquish absurdity it would have to destroy itself.
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Maybe someone should have asked Camus this question: Paging BranShea to the Miscellany Forum!
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The joke was rather cheap, true. But we can face The Absurd in various ways:
The Faith, the Sysiphian contentment with our "ordeal", the Beauty of it All or the Comic. (suicide and oblivian as negative options)I chose the easiest way out, but.. I'll try my bit:
Existentialism is a philosophical and literary movement that puts individual liberty up front as well as individual, subjective responsability. Existentialism considers every person a unique entity, a unique being who is master of his own acts and destiny, but also -for better or worse- for the values he decides to embrace.
Camus found in the myth of Sysiphus the perfect metaphor for his existentialism. He founded his reasoning on numerous philosophical treaties (below) and writers such as Dostoďevski and Kafka.
The existentialists make a distiction between 'anxieté' and 'angoisse'. Maybe corresponding with 'anxiety and angst' ?
For Kierkegaard 'angst' is born from liberty and is the discovery of a freedom which, while it is nothing, is dressed with infinite power.
For Heidegger, 'angst' is the very essence of mankind and reveals its fond. For Sartre, angst and anxiety blend. 'Angst' is at the same time angst in front of liberty and in front of the nothingness of death.
'Angst' is not ' fear'. Fear is for exterior things: the world and the others. But angst is in the confrontation with one's self.
Philosophic definition:
"The fact of << living in a myth of Sysiphus >> means that one lives in a repetitive absurd situation of which one never sees end nor purpose.
I've read Camus when I was rather young (my snoot) and remember The Pest and The Stranger as good with no unclearness. I remember having found Sysiphus difficult. Would have to read it again .
Last edited by BranShea; 07/27/08 10:54 AM.
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yeahbut what was the picture of?
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Eh, Sysiphus' big rock replaced by an inflatable ball struck me as funny. But it may be a very subjective piece of fun. I love lame jokes, (sorry) and sardines. Here's a multitude of paraphrases: Rocks
Last edited by BranShea; 07/27/08 04:22 PM. Reason: I thought bolder was the word for a bal-formed rock but it does not exist, ha!
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Hydra! What's up? This clever cartoon keeps disappearing and appearing like the Cheshire cat!  I agree that once was quite enough of the thing.
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I enjoyed your post, BranShea, and like I say, I have no problem with Camus' philosophy. I just think he could have knocked it off in ten pages. But maybe I've been reading too much Borges.
I haven't read Camus' non-fiction yet; but if you say it's different to Sisyphus, that's quite a recommendation.
I consider myself a grateful reader. When I start a book, I really, really want to like it. I have only read a handful of books I absolutely hated, and Sisyphus is at the very top. (Followed by At-Swim-Two-Birds by O'Brien, followed by The Glass Bead Game by Hesse, followed by On the Road by Kerouac).
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here's a link to the beach ball cartoon, originally from The New Yorker, and your Big Rock is (usu.) spelled boulder. - joe (candy mountain) friday
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Thanks much. I've been looking with a magnifying glass for that
boulder.
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here's a link to the beach ball cartoon, originally from The New Yorker, and your Big Rock is (usu.) spelled boulder. - joe (candy mountain) fridaythanks, t.
formerly known as etaoin...
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I just read On the Road, and found it only one step less boring than Crime and Punishment, which I read a couple of months ago. I will only give Kerouac props because of when he wrote it: then, it was quite scandalous to write openly of sex, let alone drug use. Now: eh-h-h. A lady in our group had bought a book about authors; at my question she consulted it, and said he wrote it for the money.
As to philosophy: mostly, it bores me to tears, though I enjoy learning about societal philosophies, mores, etc. and how they vary. But oh, why do so many so-called philosophers say, in essence, that the world is a horrible place and we're all miserable so why don't we just kill ourselves now? SHEESH! Give me some happy philosophers! The world is indeed a wondrous place and, while not every single person is wonderful, the vast majority of us are, and isn't it SO interesting to note the good in each of us (though sometimes we kind of have to dig for it), and isn't it just fascinating to watch how we all interact with each other and the world we live in?? It's SO cool!
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Speak for yerself. Personally I'm evil! 
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Turn it around and you'll live. :-)
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Ah, yes, the problem of evil. No philosophy or theology student is likely to forget it entirely.
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That is a vile joke jackie! 
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She keeps it behind a veil.
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Uncertainty of what will be turned up at Wikipedia adds to its lure. Contributions in some fields I've partially searched have been stronger than I had any reason to expect; philosophy is one of those fields. In looking for statements related to epistemology and philosophy of science after this thread was started, I followed links and came to Wikipedia's List of basic philosopy topics. I'd better read about all the -isms I haven't studied, to see whether I'm some -ist without knowing it.
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There are schools of obscure philosophy, following Kant and Hegel; there are schools of pessimistic philosophy, following Schopenhauer (who had the grace to write clearly and strikingly). There are schools of wandering-through-invented-verbiage philosophy, following Camus, Derrida, and other French ouanqueurs . . .
There are also clear and enlightening philosophers, who can also give an optimistic message. I would count Dan Dennett among those.
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ouanqueurs ! I just looked at Mr. Dennett's home page. Cool, esp. the robot dog. Oh, ok; here: link
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Excuse my French, but...is this term the equivalent of the English 'wankers'.
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is this term the equivalent of the English 'wankers'
'Scuse my pedantry (while I kiss the sky) but isn't wanker branleur in French.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I should've said, is 'ouanqueur' a play on the English word 'wanker'. Or is it a bonafide word?
Last edited by olly; 10/20/08 04:24 AM. Reason: deleted a word, it's the purple haze
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is this term the equivalent of the English 'wankers'. Whakatawhainau. 
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haha, close latishya. It's pakatewhainau. One of my rugby commentator mates uses the term when he can't pronounce the name of a player. One of the tewhainau brothers he says.  onya!
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is this term the equivalent of the English 'wankers'
'Scuse my pedantry (while I kiss the sky) but isn't wanker branleur in French. In Spanish it is pajero. Which had an unfortunate consequence for Mitsubishi when they thought they were naming one of their AWD range after a Pampas Cat (Leopardus Pajeros). Don't think they sold many in South America somehow... who'd want to be driving a Mitsubishi Wanker?
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does anyone still produce Felix Wankel's rotary engine in significant numbers?
-joe (making the ron connection) friday
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does anyone still produce Felix Wankel's rotary engine in significant numbers?Mazda still uses one in the RX-8 ( link).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Are you sure that wasn't Ralph Sarich's one?
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Are you sure that wasn't Ralph Sarich's one?
Sarich invented his orbital engine in the '72. Mazda put its first (Wankel) rotary engine into production in '65. The Wankel used a fixed rotor that is kind of triangular shaped; Sarich's design uses a differently shaped rotor that "rolls around" inside the inside of the engine. (Wankel's name is German, Sarich's name is Croatian, and Mazda is a Japanese company, though its name is the Englished form of the founder's name Matsuda).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I always thought that, if I ever bought a Mazda, I'd get a vanity plate that said AHURA.
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I always thought that, if I ever bought a Mazda, I'd get a vanity plate that said AHURA. Ahriman would be better - more yin/yang.
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Sorry folks, I've been away. Yes, ouanqueurs was indeed a pretentious respelling of wankers. What were we talking about? Ah, yes, French philosophers.
Talking about unfortunate names (Pajero and so on), Camus is a bit unfortunate -- it means 'snub nosed'. But maybe that put him in good company, since they described Socrates as snub-nosed.
[trying to get back onto the subject . . . ]
Last edited by Andrew Robinson; 10/28/08 10:53 AM.
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Give me Socrates over Camus any day...
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