Why Do I Hate Philosophy

The "I" in the title is everyone, not just me. And as far as this goes I cannot claim it universally, but about those who know enough to "hate" it. So, the everone is the minority of people that study philosophy, and a larger swatch that come upon philosophy selectivly and inevitably when they are forced to question life.

The subject in the title is Western Philosophy. It is linear, systematic and dominated by mostly priveledged white males that had the luxury of sitting in armchairs and thinking rather than "needing" to be out chasing food. This is not to say that non-white, non-European people have done better because, as far as I can tell, human thought is divided (not evenly) into "deeper" thought that is idealist (Western Philosophy) and vulgar thought that is absurd (the masses).

My point is that nobody is really thinking. To no small degree, they are not thinking because the business of teaching humans to think is dominated by Western Philosophy and absurdly similar (non-Western) nonsense that either fails for the same reasons or makes even less sense.

The message put forth by every word that I have ever written is that there is a real way to teach thinking; this real way is premised on the real world; this method has, for the most part, lost to hyper-critical thinking at every point in our evolution to our determinent as a species.

Philosophy has failed because it is aimed at subjectivity and because when it aims falsely the particular subconscious aiming (the deeper mind of the writer) strikes back and convolutes the writing. At the point when subjective theories break down and make a statement absurd, the writing becomes ridiculous. Try reading it some time. When a philosopher loses himself (and not just you) he starts trying to recover, in the writing, and it becomes unreadable.

Let me sum this up: Philosophy failed because it is aimed at subjectivity and because, as it does this, it becomes unreadable.

I sat in a seminar room with what had to be the elite of the elite in the world of philosophy (well trained, big university, graduate students and teachers) and listened to them attempt and fail to unravel Whitehead. They failed because Whitehead was saying nothing and because he was unreadable.

But that's just me.

I'll leave you with one more example. Recently I got into reading James and was surprised how interesting he was as a writer. But as a thinker, I could simmer down his main statements from a thousand sentences to one. The one sentence ended up being: there is no truth. And like all subjectivists, the claim would inevitably be that there is no certainty, I'm certain of it.

Hume all over again.

This is the essence of James from his most famous essay about truth and what he sees as dogmatism:

"But now, since we are all such absolutists by instinct, what in our quality of students of philosophy ought we to do about the fact? Shall we espouse and indorse it? Or shall we treat it as a weakness of our nature from which we must free ourselves, if we can?"

He follow this up with:

"I sincerely believe that the latter course is the only one we can follow as reflective men. Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?"

You really have to read the entire thing to get the impact of his statement that we cannot be sure of anything. He will follow this up of course with some contrived version of how he is certain about faith (which has as its definition, uncertainty and guesswork).

Please note, he is saying: "objective evidence and certitude" are merely things to "play with."

Now maybe you believe this. Maybe you believe you can get through the day as a nihilist with absolutely no certainty. Maybe, without reading Reid, you miss that every move you make and every active assumption you make is premised on certainty (that there is a reality, for example) and if so, you will probably sympathize as so many do with James.

Contrast this with Reid (active powers, chp. 1), on the notion of "power."

"The justification is that this word, so well understood by common folk, has been darkened by philosophers. This is one case among many in which philosophers have found great difficulties in something that seems perfectly clear to the rest of mankind."

This is a paradigmatic example of how Reid approaches (what amounts to) the debate between knowing and not knowing. It is not just in his clarity and wisdom, it is on what he chooses to focus. Reid leaves behind the impenetrable first-princples so that he does not get lost, and his reader does no then get lost, in order to move on to substantive topics. It is another example of how the strength of philosopher, though rooted in clarity and wisdom, is so much about focus.

To see Reid's critique in action, assume one can extend James' argument. Logic and reason reveal nothing and the world is unknowable. That is the extent of what he is writing. So if this is true ( as it was for Kant) then what is he talking about. As we look back after reading his nonsense, what point is James making if there is no point to make. Why talk?

Please note: I do not believe the world is unknowable (and neither did Reid or Aristotle) and so I believe you can talk. But if you hold the premise that it is unknowable from the start, then shut up until your theory evolves or the world ends.