/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22244981]

Why do you men study philosophy?

I have read quite a few works of philosophy, and every time I become acquainted with a philosophical system I feel a sinking feeling in my chest. It is the knowledge that within my entire life, I will never be able to gain any insight into the nature of the universe. I will never even get the slightest bit of truth about the concepts which underlie existence. The closest I can come is parroting the ideas of some genius (who is also wrong) and pretending as though I have accomplished something.

How do you cope with this?

[Anonymous No.22244994]

>>22244981
Philosophical writings are to provide mantras for meditation or prayer.

[Anonymous No.22244996]

>>22244981
Radical acceptance. You'll never have any insight into the nature of the universe and that's okay. Just live your life and do something you enjoy. I read philosophy because it's fun to think about when high.

[Anonymous No.22245006]

>>22244981
Read Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.22245010]

>>22244981
To be a better writer

[Anonymous No.22245021]

>>22244981
To be a better man to my family, to be a better lover to my partner, and to be a better person to and for the universe. So what if I don't know it all? If I believe myself to be doing good, both for myself and for others, then that's all. The rest is silence.

[Anonymous No.22245050]

>>22244981
I study because it makes my creativity and insight greater. And your problem is that you didn't start with the greeks, dummy.

[Anonymous No.22245052]

>>22244981
I read philosophy because I find it interesting. Some people collect stamps, others have catalogues of beetles, I read philosophy. I just think it's neat.

[Anonymous No.22245058]

>>22244981
I read every piece of philosophy or theology with a sense of smug superiority. For some reason since I was pretty young I felt like I understood this stuff in some way, but don't know the words, so when I read anything I'm just like "hmm thats close but not quite". I don't doubt myself. I feel in my core that everything will be fine.

[Anonymous No.22245059]

Read Faust

[Anonymous No.22245125]

>>22244981
I majored in math a long-ass time ago and it's been so long since I've done actual math that I've mostly forgotten how, so I study analytic philosophy to remember what it was like to think like a mathematician.

[Anonymous No.22245234]

For starters, stop looking at it as a game to be smarter than the other person, like just an intellectual jerk off competition. Knowledge is a communal endeavor. All great men stand on the shoulders of great men. How can you rightfully say that you will never gain insight into the universe if you have never fully tried? Why are the value of the ideas tainted by the fact that you did not originally think them? And finally, even if you never reach knowledge of the universe or Being or whatever that’s not the point. The point is to grow and sharpen your intellect. There is wisdom even in failure. Ideally, you would want to teach others or even write a little of it yourself if you have anything of worth to say so that your studies can light the way of future work. But even if you don’t do any of that is it really wasted time? Would you rather have spent the time that made you into a well-rounded human jerking off into a sock? Knowledge is it’s own pleasure.

[Anonymous No.22245547]

the wisdom of men is foolishness to God

[Anonymous No.22245564]

>>22244981
I don’t study philosophy, I just read works that stick out to me and that I think could offer some insight into my own existence. Deep down, I think it is impossible to express reality with words and concepts, so I see it almost as a kind of poetry and tend to read lyrical philosophers.

[Anonymous No.22245570]

>>22244981
You're looking for meaning, instead of defining it.

[Anonymous No.22245572]

>>22244981
It's easy to lose sight of the base premise of philosophy especially in contemporary times when moral character seems not to be the main focus of it. The base premise is how to be the best possible man and how to conduct yourself properly in the world. Just start answering those questions, take note when you're lying to yourself and be brave enough to answer why you lie to yourself.

[Anonymous No.22245693]

>>22244981
>He is still stuck in plato's cave and havent experienced the radiant bliss of awareness
Like get with the times gramps

[Anonymous No.22245697]

Instead of worrying about all that shit, why don't you get some bitches and secure (some of) your genetic material's future after you're gone?

[Anonymous No.22245701]

>>22244981
The point of philosophy is to be sought in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects arouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, however, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty which is the true answer to the doubts that it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities, which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.

[Anonymous No.22246054]

>>22244981
I personally dont care. I find the existence of relatively better systems and the interplay of them with the "world" we interact with more interesting than anything absolute

[Anonymous No.22246184]

>>22244981
>Wanting to know the "truth"
Newfag, read 500 more books and then come back.

[Anonymous No.22247170]

>>22245701
huh?

[Anonymous No.22247185]

>>22244981
>why study what the best minds of their time had to say about the world and life
Why bother with that, right? Sounds really stupid.

[Anonymous No.22247348]

>>22244981
Have you not got to Kierkegaard?

[Anonymous No.22247375]

>>22245701
Best reply ITT

[Anonymous No.22247393]

>>22244981
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV9GJbuyWOY

[Anonymousn No.22247396]

I've been thinking about something like this recently.

My basic premise is that, if you have strong impressions of and feelings about the world, you have to engage with them; you can't just let them slip by, passively, like a landscape blurring past a car window. Or rather: you can do that, but you feel depressed and unsatisfied, as if you're ignoring something fundamental. It's like a 'call' from the outside.

I think making art is one way to engage with these things. Philosophy -- thinking about them and their implications and how they fit together in as rigorous a way as you can -- is another.

What's important in both is that there are ways things can go wrong if you're not careful and clever enough: in art, something can just feel flat and empty and aimless, it can 'not work'; in philosophy, your ideas can stop making sense, become unintelligible, lose their ability to create interesting connections with other ideas.

In both cases, there's some external kind of resistant element, some kind of impersonal logic going on that you have to grapple with, and that logic ultimately comes from the World. And getting actively plugged into the World's energies is what it's all about.

[Anonymous No.22247563]

>>22244981
>How do you cope with this?
by not giving up

[Anonymous No.22247930]

>>22244981
Philosophy is at least 300 years ahead of whatever the current zeitgeist happens to be. Just go back 300 years into the philosophical tradition and you will find a philosopher that has fully mapped out where humanity as a whole is headed.

[Anonymous No.22247937]

>>22247930
>feminism
>300 years ago
It isn't even 100, more like 50 years back in time or something.

[Anonymous No.22248113]

>>22247937
The average woman has barely benefited from feminism. In the real world, women leech off men. Men either have a woman leeching off them or are living independent of women. The career woman feminist is so small a minority as to be nothing. Don't let politics fool you.

[Anonymous No.22248130]

>>22248113
Dunno, they used to depend on men and now they work. The weird thing about is that most families are made of single mother and children, I don't know if that is a good thing, but still, they used to depend on men who would be drunkards, spank them and so on.

[Anonymous No.22248151]

>>22248130
They don't work real jobs. Usually privileged positions in air conditioned convenience stores whereas all the real work is done by men supporting families (whether divorced or not).

[Anonymous No.22248176]

>>22248151
They are cleaning ladies, cashiers, and so on.

[Anonymous No.22248192]

>>22244981
>It is the knowledge that within my entire life, I will never be able to gain any insight into the nature of the universe. I will never even get the slightest bit of truth about the concepts which underlie existence.
Yes you will, if you study NDEs and realize that there actually is an afterlife and that we are eternal and will go to heaven unconditionally when we die. And while the Bible and the Qu'ran convinces few people who do not already believe, the book in pic related is known to convince even hardened skeptics that there is an afterlife. And NDErs talk about God running the afterlife, and that the meaning of life is to learn to love and be kind and thrive here despite how hard it is in this world. So how is it going anon? <3

And NDEs are more real than this world, in every way. For example, they are more consistent experiences, illustrated well by this quote:

>"For me, life is sort of like the haunted house. When you come in, you know it's just an experience. It's small, it's just one night, right? So it's just this one life. You're eternal, you have billions of lives, so knowing that you're going to come in just for one to have an experience, though it may be judged as tough, or difficult, or scary, you actually chose it because you knew it was just going to be an experience, you know it's no big deal. You understand on the other side that this part, life, is actually the dream, and you just wake up after. It's no different than one dream you had last night, out of a lifetime of dreams. This life that you're having right now is just one, it's just a blip."

So just like life is more consistent than our dreams (dreams last a few moments, life has been the same for decades), so too is the NDE reality more consistent than life (life has been the same for decades, the NDE reality has been the same for forever, for way more than trillions of years). Here this point is elaborated more on:

https://youtu.be/U00ibBGZp7o

And it is instantly evident to NDErs that heaven is real too, even atheists:

>"It's real to us when we're in it, but once I was there in heaven I realized that's more real, that felt more real, and it made much more sense to me than anything here. This is kind of nonsensical at times. In heaven, it's so clear, so real, so rational, so logical, but yet emotional and loving at the same time. Immediately I knew that was real and this was not. Immediately."

From https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist

So heaven is undeniably real, and we can know about it by listening to NDErs.

[Anonymous No.22248207]

>>22248176
Get back to me when a woman is elected president of the United States.

[Anonymous No.22248225]

>>22244981
philosophy is cope, i just live knowing that i like fantasy and that nothing will compare to fantasy and that chasing it will provide only momentary satisfaction.
but even then if all my fantasy wishes were granted there wouldn't be any value in them since it would be chasing the next stupid high "value" thing.

humans are no different then any other animal, we just fuck and make babies and try to get some control on our life, religion is only essential for setting laws and morals in a civilization to allow one human or group of humans to rule over the others while benefiting from the labour

i hate philosophizers for their gay "le nobody knows what the universe mean" or some other bullshit that means nothing and is just intellectual distraction, we very much know what our existence is for deep down instinctively due to hardwired patterns that promote our own survival and multiplication, but now we just abuse those pathways and wonder why life is so shit. Human body wasn't meant to live long.

[Anonymous No.22248230]

>>22244981
I don't experience this at all. I experience the opposite. Everytime I learn something new, I find it fascinating and interesting. I'm mostly driven by pure curiosity here, I want to know as much as possible, but I also know that I'll never know everything.

Basically there's nothing to cope with, because I'm just happy to learn something new.

[Anonymous No.22248256]

>>22248192
>if you study NDEs
of course your going to fucking hallucinate if serotonin suddenly floods your brain as you go into shock from nearly dying, theres no more to it, your adrenaline spikes, your neurotransmitter levels spike, and you pretend that le fake and gay "NDE" meant something. THERE is no god, we are at our own fucking devices here and there is no other definition.

>"copium quote about le consciousness transfer"
shut the everloving fuck up, YOU do not transfer to anywhere else, your life and personality is solely determined by the environment and parents who raise you. Go look at the case of the person who from birth was immediately separated and had no contact with the outside world or other people save for getting food. They grew up about as instinctual as a human could be, they didn't understand language, didn't understand culture, and they didn't grow a personality of their own out of thin air. Humans are a empty cell influenced by others around them almost 100% of the time.
YOU are not special, I am not special, we just know that our circumstances are good and our needs met, this is why we can circlejerk and whine about philosophy on the mongolian weaving forum.

> "heaven is le real and so close"
this is called shock dumbass, when your body goes into a NDE you experience delirium and have difficulty processing your surroundings, of course your going to say deluded garbage like that if you suddenly had a adrenaline spike and subsequent freak out/stress. There is no heaven, its simple as that. When YOU die, there is no further depth to it, your cells cease functioning and the billions of moulded neurons that made your remote sense of individuality are gone. You can torture someone and strip them down mentally until they become a brainwashed slave, there is no such thing as spirit in a man except deluded beliefs.

[Anonymous No.22248288]

>>22248256
materialist cope

[Anonymous No.22248293]

>>22248207
No, I don't care. Not my problem. Are you a woman?

[Anonymous No.22248296]

>>22248288
is this all you got, are you scared of reality bitch boy?
And so what if i'm a materialist, least i know more then your fake ass will.

[Anonymous No.22248370]

>>22248296
materialist seethe