Do we give enough respect to modern philosophers?

[enlightenment]

As it says on the tin.

There perhaps was a time, in various sophisticated cultures, in which the words of philosophers were coveted by the people.

Perhaps they even helped shape the political landscape of the day.

However, in a modern Western nation these days, if someone introduced themselves as a philosopher, I think it would gain a negative reaction by a lot of people, . Encouraging thinking is not something we understand well in this fast paced Western madness!

And even those of us who have a liking for some of the well known philsophers of old, we might still have a 'moment', were someone today to tell you that there role was a philsopher, unless it was perhaps tutoring it at Uni.

Perhaps we underestimate what good modern brains and modern minds to could even bring to politics, rather than ill conceived and rushed policies, we perhaps have those that have been considered, with all variables looked at.

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Have you read Cornell West or Ernest Becker?

Chris

 

[enlightenment]

Have you read Cornell West or Ernest Becker?

Chris

I must admit, Chris, I have not.

 

[Sam Albion]

today we're all entitled to be philosophers... Years ago, the average Joe and Josephine weren't allowed to think, they didn't believe they had the capacity, due to the class system, and even if they did think, the likelihood anyone would listen was small, due to their unfavourable position within society. Elders and statesmen pontificate -- the rest of us are grateful for their crumbs...

Youth does philosophy; was it Marx who said anyone who believes in socialism past the age of 35 is deluded? It might not have been... But it should've been... Belief in a singular philosophy leads to idealism, to zealotry and totalitarianism. No system is perfect. Grown-ups see that. I think they also see philosophy as a navel-gazing exersise; something for people who do not work for a living to indulge in...

the rest of us are too busy ferrying the children to school, doing the laundry, painting our toenails.

I agree, though, that humans are not encouraged to think, and certainly not encouraged to think independently...

 

[enlightenment]

today we're all entitled to be philosophers... Years ago, the average Joe and Josephine weren't allowed to think, they didn't believe they had the capacity, due to the class system, and even if they did think, the likelihood anyone would listen was small, due to their unfavourable position within society. Elders and statesmen pontificate -- the rest of us are grateful for their crumbs...

Youth does philosophy; was it Marx who said anyone who believes in socialism past the age of 35 is deluded? It might not have been... But it should've been... Belief in a singular philosophy leads to idealism, to zealotry and totalitarianism. No system is perfect. Grown-ups see that. I think they also see philosophy as a navel-gazing exersise; something for people who do not work for a living to indulge in...

the rest of us are too busy ferrying the children to school, doing the laundry, painting our toenails.

I agree, though, that humans are not encouraged to think, and certainly not encouraged to think independently...

By whom, in your view?

Who is discouraging us to think, and to what end?

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

today we're all entitled to be philosophers... Years ago, the average Joe and Josephine weren't allowed to think, they didn't believe they had the capacity, due to the class system, and even if they did think, the likelihood anyone would listen was small, due to their unfavourable position within society. Elders and statesmen pontificate -- the rest of us are grateful for their crumbs...

Youth does philosophy; was it Marx who said anyone who believes in socialism past the age of 35 is deluded? It might not have been... But it should've been... Belief in a singular philosophy leads to idealism, to zealotry and totalitarianism. No system is perfect. Grown-ups see that. I think they also see philosophy as a navel-gazing exersise; something for people who do not work for a living to indulge in...

the rest of us are too busy ferrying the children to school, doing the laundry, painting our toenails.

I agree, though, that humans are not encouraged to think, and certainly not encouraged to think independently...

I like this answer because it encapsulates an essential disillusion, but my current experience is that philosophy is the escape hatch: not only from youthful idealism and angst driven artifice, but from the jading of age as it confronts the futility of such. Having recently barely survived my own mid life crisis period, I can state this as fact. Philosophy is secret knowledge for smart people. You have to read hard to read stuff, and then think about it for a long, long time. It's an exercise in intellectual elitism You can't just absorb it through the pillow at night. You don't learn it in a college course, or with Cliff Notes. You have to commit to a life's pursuit of figuring sh** out, slowly piece together the clues, and be willing to put the effort in.

Read Heidegger and Hegel. Understand that sh**, then study post-modernism and deconstruction along with semantics, semiotics, and propaganda theory. Or, if you're not at that level, read Thoreau and Emerson and work your way up from placative morality to something that actually questions classical modeling. Reading is a skill. Reading philosophy is harder than reading fiction because it requires more from you.

I don't mean to sound elitist; I'm a carpenter with a high school education; it just bugs me to hear philosophical criticism from people who have never spent the effort actually studying philosophy for themselves.

Chris

 

[bob x]

was it Marx who said anyone who believes in socialism past the age of 35 is deluded? It might not have been... But it should've been...

It was Churchill. The other half of the quote was that anyone who does NOT believe in socialism BEFORE the age of 35 is heartless...

 

[wil]

YouTube - Monty Python - Philosophers' World Cup

 

[Waymarker]

I like the story about a Philosophy professor who held up a pencil and said to his class- "I want you to write an essay full of deep meaningful insights and speculations on the nature of reality concerning this pencil, and I'll give top marks to the one I like best"
After half an hour he gathered their essays, read through them and awarded top marks to the one that contained just the two words-
"What pencil?"

 

[Waymarker]

Anyway, ANYBODY can be a philosopher, me you or anybody, we don't need no steenkin' badge to prove we are one..
Songwriters, poets, authors even the ordinary man and woman in the street are quite capable of coming up with little gems, they don't have to formally study Philosophy at uni or wherever.
For example Christina Rossetti's brief "Uphill" is a great bit of philosophy about lifes weary journey-

UPHILL
by: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

OES the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

 

[Ben Masada]

As it says on the tin.

There perhaps was a time, in various sophisticated cultures, in which the words of philosophers were coveted by the people.

Perhaps they even helped shape the political landscape of the day.

However, in a modern Western nation these days, if someone introduced themselves as a philosopher, I think it would gain a negative reaction by a lot of people, . Encouraging thinking is not something we understand well in this fast paced Western madness!

And even those of us who have a liking for some of the well known philsophers of old, we might still have a 'moment', were someone today to tell you that there role was a philsopher, unless it was perhaps tutoring it at Uni.

Perhaps we underestimate what good modern brains and modern minds to could even bring to politics, rather than ill conceived and rushed policies, we perhaps have those that have been considered, with all variables looked at.

IMHO, Philosophers are doomed to cease as did the Greek Olympian Pantheon of gods for the lack of believers in them, a disease usually caused by the redirection of man's faith rather to Astrophysics with its theories of uncertainties.
Ben