What could make morality objective?

[Impenitent]

if only every human brain (or mind or decision making device) was objectively identical...

the philosophy of sanitary engineering begins with the premise: Life is shit...

Bobby was here: don't worry, be happy

-Imp

[Sculptor]

if only every human brain (or mind or decision making device) was objectively identical...
.

That would not be enough since life experience, culture and history would cause divergence.
TO press on with this claim - that only way every human brain were identical (even if could make sense), we would have a completely static unchanging society; no progress, fighting decline with limited equipment.

[Belinda]

RCSaunders wrote:

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy all others are aimed at, identifying what makes life really worth living, the ultimate source and nature of human joy and success.

Beauty, the touchstone of the good and the true. But don't mistake lust for love.

Mystical, pseudo-profound, neo-Platonic codswallop.

Can you explain a little more, RCS?

[Immanuel Can]

RCSaunders wrote:

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy all others are aimed at, identifying what makes life really worth living, the ultimate source and nature of human joy and success.

Beauty, the touchstone of the good and the true. But don't mistake lust for love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBYtYFWXdm8

Wisdom in vogue?

[Belinda]

I am sorry, Immanuel, but I did not understand the film you recommended.

[RCSaunders]

Thanks for your substantial response, RC.

Some agreement, and some departure, as you will note.

Everyone has a philosophy, but almost no one has an explicit philosophy, and all those beliefs which are their philosophy, they have not arrived at by careful reason, but picked up along the way, from their parents, their peers, what they are taught in school, or church, or synagogue, or whatever is being promoted in popular media, or by any other self-identified, "authorities," whose word they simply accept, and almost all of it is wrong, which is why most people make such messes of their lives and support those things that result in the horrors of this world, like war and oppression.

I don't disagree that that is what people do. But the problem is that your dismissal of philosophy implies that, rather than awakening to this fact, by making these received beliefs conscious, examining them, and then continuing or rejecting them based on sound reasons, they are inevitably going to continue to do this anyway.

I am mot dismissing philosophy, the discipline, I am repudiating the corpus of what is called philosophy as anti-philosophy. I think philosophy is so important that what philosophers have put in place of it is criminal.

Some philosophers certainly got some things right (most of which were repudiated by later philosophers). Even Thomas Aquinas, excluding his theology, made some progress in philosophy because of his emphasis on Aristotle's philosophy, but after Aquinas it was progressively worse. Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, and Adam Smith got some things right, but what they got right was ignored and completely lost by the influence of the totally wrong views of Descartes, Leibniz, Hobbes, after whom Berkeley, Hume, Comte, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and Schopenhauer destroyed what philosophy there was in Europe and with the help of the anti-philosophical pragmatists, William James and John Dewey, in the Americas as well. The most devastating contributions to the destruction of philosophy were contributed by Hume, Kant, and Hegel, and the rest of the German Idealists.

After the German Idealists philosophy completely devolved into chaotic nonsense of existentialism, nihilism, and subjective egoism, on the one hand (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche) and logical positivism on the other (Frege, Russell, Whitehead, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Quine, Ryle).

In other words, it looks like you're arguing against the proposition that Socrates' "examined life" is better than the "unexamined life," and maybe against the idea that the "examined life" is even possible. And I'd disagree. I'd suggest that the examined life is at least a first-stage cure for the kind of knee-jerk "philosophy' the above people have at present. There is more that needs doing than mere "examination," of course; but without the realization that a person has been bamboozled by his "authorities," or his parents, or culture, of whatever, it would never be possible for a person to get beyond his pre-programming by these external forces.

I'm not arguing anything, only pointing out that today's philosophy that denies the reality of the world we are conscious of, or that true objective knowledge of ourselves or that reality is possible, or that human reason is capable of reasoning to the truth, aborts any possibility of self-examination , before one even begins. Why examine anything if I cannot trust what I am conscious of actually being what I'm conscious of, or if no amount of examination can possibly result in certain knowledge, and no amount to knowledge can every achieve objective truth. Of course one has to examine themselves, and everything else, but they are not likely to do it if all the philosophy they are taught says, "give up," you can't ever know the truth.

In point of fact, that's a very Postmodern way of looking at things. The Postmodern Left holds that all people are mere "artifacts" of their location in race, gender, culture, upbringing, "privilege," language, and so on...and so they all have only a received philosophy, a programming they can neither examine nor ever escape. The world is broken up into warring tribes of the ignorant and programmed, in other words. And anyone who thinks he can stop being, say, a "white, privileged, Anglo male," is only kidding himself, because all his perspectives -- even his "critical" faculties -- are irresistible coded by his racial, economic, cultural and gender location.

I doubt that's what you want to say. It's certainly not what I'd say either. But if you claims about the people above are the end of the story, that's what it would mean, RC.

Where do you think post-modernism comes from? It's the end product of all previous philosophy. It was the philosophy of Hume, Kant, and Hegel that destroyed the foundations of reason and objectivity, and the Logical Positivist's that reformulated reason into the mere manipulation of symbols that made post modernism possible to put over. The cultural Marxists learned their philosophy from Kant and the German Idealists, and, Georg Lukacs, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer and others of the Frankfurt School successfully brought and instituted Antonio Gramsci's hegemony with its emphasis on deconstruction, critical reason, cultural relativism, psychology, and sociology (political correctness and multiculturalism) into American Universities.

While the sciences and technology fields have provided the kind of knowledge required by scientists and technologist to perform their work, those who require the kind of knowledge necessary to live their own lives as well as possible will not find it in any philosophy today. The primary reason is that philosophers have assumed, with almost universal agreement, that the purpose of philosophy is something other than what individual human beings require to make their own choices, but something else, like good of society, or humanity, or the future of mankind.

This isn't quite correct. The problem is this: individual human beings do not do well outside of "society." They die quickly, and in very nasty ways. That is why certain practices have been developed by them in order to negotiate the sticky business of working together. So we have things like ethics, politics, social philosophy, and even culture itself. These are arrangements designed to make life together work.

Except it hasn't worked and cannot work, because there is no philosophical foundation for any of those things which individuals can use to make the right decisions about how they will relate to others, and until there are, they will continue to make the wrong choices and social chaos will continue.

If every individual made the right choices, there would be no social problems to solve.

"Right"? The "right" choices? Which are those?

The ones that cannot possibly lead to social chaos. Socially, right choices are any chosen relationship with others that is chosen by every individual in that relationship and not choosing any relationship with others that is not chosen by every individual to their own benefit, by their own estimate. Every other kind of relationship is a form of oppression.

So long as most individuals do not know how to make right choices, or why they should, there are no social solutions.

Well, that's also partly true. The collective solutions are not defined by being "right," but by being "functional." When they work for the best net result for all, they do their job, and are functional. When they end up destroying the freedom of the individual, they're a problem.

But social arrangements always do BOTH.

No, only social arrangements forced on others by some agency that uses the idea, "the best net result for all," as it basic principle, and such agencies are always oppressive. [How do you average one individuals suffering with another individuals benefit to determine this obscene idea of a, "net result." If six people are made imminently happy and successful, if only one person has to suffer and die to accomplish it, that must make it right?] Only an arrangement in which every individual's own benefit is the result of his own choices and actions in a society where every individual seeks nothing more than they can achieve by their own effort and never anything at anyone else's expense can be a non-oppressive one. Such an arrangement cannot be established by an agency of force, only by the individual choice of the individuals in that society. All social problems are the result of individuals making wrong individual choices.

...is an agency of force the right way to achieve correct relationships between individuals. All of political philosophy is wrong because it assumes such an agency is required.

It's more subtle than that. It's not the strong "force" of government that is our biggest problem, though it can become our biggest. It's the soft "force" all agreements exert. Like, if you're not at the football game at 6, you miss it. If you don't go to work when others do, you can't work with others, and can't get the job done alone. If you don't have an agreement for pay, the individual is working for free...being exploited...a slave, essentially, with the cost of his labour being stolen from him, and no agreement to which to refer for redress. If the child down the block is allowed to drive his father's car at age 10, he kills your daughter when he hits her with his out-of-control vehicle...and so on....so the power of this "soft," informal force can be considerable.

I wrote an article a long time ago entitled, "The Right Way To Do The Wrong Thing." It was about a movement intended to improve public education. All the thing's it proposed were good things, like a return to teaching phonetic reading, mathematics beginning with counting, addition and subtraction, English grammar, geography, and basic history. The problem with the movement was it could not work so long as the basic problem was ignored--that education was controlled by government, payed for by money extorted from those whose children were forced to attend and had no say about what the schools would teach. The very same mistake is made by all those who want to solve the problems of, "illegal immigration," by legislation and the use of force, "to keep them out," while ignoring the main reason for the problem. No immigrant to this country is a problem if they are honest, self-supporting, and harm no one else and if that is what they had to be when they came here, those are the only one's who would come. It is only because those who emmigrate here will be given all kinds of government provided free goods and aid and do not have to be decent, productive, individuals that they come.

All of the kinds of problems you think government is necessary to solve have never and will never be solved by government. With or without government there will accidents, children will do stupid things, there will be unpredictable and natural disasters.

After 2600 years, can you name one improvement in the human condition that is a product of philosophy.

Absolutely. Let's start with science itself. Essentially, the scientific method was the product of Francis Bacon.

I do not agree with that, though I do not think it matters too much to this discussion. Bacon did have a positive influence on the progress of science, which was his emphasis on the necessity of having real observable evidence as opposed to reason alone for science to be successful. What is not true is that the, "inductive," method, as understood today, was ever or is today the method of true science. To explain why that is true would require a discussion of the true nature of, "cause," what concepts actually are, and the mistaken notion that statistics establishes any fact, which I don't think either of us wants to dive into here.

... and to have it recognized by others, is to achieve a...PhD.

Meaning? "Doctor of the Philosophy of______________". And that's not merely reserved for the Humanities and other much-maligned studies, but in things like Business and Engineering, as well; it's the badge of certification of knowledge in most areas of human endeavour, ...

From the author who wrote: "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches," and proved it by doing something: [slightly edited]
--"When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed a university education."
--"A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."
--"Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation."
--"When the university educated fool writes a paper regurgitating all the nonsense he has been taught he becomes a PhD."
I'm obviously not impressed by degrees.

I have worked with, worked for, and had work for me more PhDs than anyone ought have to endure in one lifetime. With the exception of two, all the others, outside their fields (and often within them) were all barely able to make a choice or think of anything someone else had not taught them. I have written, almost entirely, one PhDs Thesis paper (her own had been rejected, mine secured her PhD), and have edited others, just to make them cogent. The two PhDs I have known that were truly creative intelligent individuals never revealed their degrees, and both of them repudiated the degrees as nothing more than pieces of paper that indicated nothing about one's intellectual ability or actual accomplishments. One's true value is not determined by honors, degrees, or recognition conferred on them by others, but by what they have actually achieved and made of themselves, with or without anyone else's recognition.

If one wants to impress me, (and that they would already makes their reasons questionable), they must demonstrate what they are. I have no interest in what other's say they are.

You mean like denying that any real knowledge is possible, that everything is uncertain, or that there is no real objective truth. Philosophy today consists of competing skeptic hypotheses denying literally every thing:

You're only speaking of Postmodern or the various Neo-Marxist philosophies there. That's not the totality of philosophy. Libertarianism's a philosophy. So is Randianism. So is Classical Liberalism. So are Individualism, Egoism, and Solipsism. Yet none of these fits the description you gave.

All of them do, actually, some a little less than most, but not much. I would not classify Libertarianism or Individualism as philosophies, but as ideologies, but the semantics don't change the facts.

Good thoughts, RC...some of which I agree with, but some of which I would question or modify, if asked.

Of course I think they are good thoughts, and you have made good points in your criticisms of them. I chuckled when I read, "good thoughts," because it is so unlike other comments I get, like, "well, you're just writing what you think," which, unless I were a liar, is always true. Why would I write what I didn't think?

I think I've been a little rough in some of my comments, but I really take those things seriously, because I think all of life must be taken seriously to learn how to truly enjoy it, and know that most of the things most people worry most about are not serious, and not worth loosing sight of what is really worth living for.

Now on to Belinda.

[RCSaunders]

RCSaunders wrote:

Beauty, the touchstone of the good and the true. But don't mistake lust for love.

Mystical, pseudo-profound, neo-Platonic codswallop.

Can you explain a little more, RCS?

Certainly! I knew as soon as I saw your comment I would have to respond. As many times as I've outlined philosophy and made the point the aesthetics was the ultimate objective of all other branches, you are the first to notice the significance of that view.

It is existence and our consciousness of it that makes all experience possible, and it is our life that makes it possible for us to have that experience, and it is our ability to experience life and existence that makes all joy and meaning possible, and it is that possibility that is the sole purpose of our life. If the purpose of life is not to make it possible or us to experience life and existence and to enjoy them, there is no point to life and experience all.

Aesthetics is usually identified as the study of the nature of beauty, but beauty is never actually defined. Examples are given in attempt to say what beauty is, like things seen: natural scenes, night skies or sunsets, beautiful men, women, children, flowers or art; or things heard: the wind, rippling brooks, the roaring ocean, and music; or things read: literature and poetry. None of those things actually explain what beauty is or why we consider any of those things beautiful, however.

What makes things beautiful is our recognition of those things we are conscious of as the source of all our experience, of all that we can enjoy, and of all that those things they make possible to us to achieve, and the more we come to understand and appreciate what this glorious wondrous universe we live in makes possible to us to experience and use to achieve virtually anything we are willing to make the effort to achieve, the more beautiful that world becomes.

Mine is a very romantic view of life, which I regard as the ultimate adventure of discovery and achievement and endless possibility with one's own personal development to become all that one can be as the ultimate purpose of one's life and the source of one's ultimate enjoyment of that life. Which is why I regard aesthetics the ultimate objective of all philosophical inquiry to answer the ultimate question, how one must live in this world to fully be all one can be and to fully enjoy that life and the beauty of it.

As a romantic, I regard the highest possible human joy to be romantic love for those for whom it is possible. Please note, for a true romantic, love and lust are mutually exclusive. Love finds its joy in pleasing the one loved, lust finds it pleasure in using another.

I'm sure that is already a little more explanation than you wanted, and I'm still holding myself back.

Thank you so much for your interest!

[RCSaunders]

the philosophy of sanitary engineering begins with the premise: Life is shit...

Touché. Somebody is paying attention.

[Immanuel Can]

I am mot dismissing philosophy, the discipline, I am repudiating the corpus of what is called philosophy as anti-philosophy. I think philosophy is so important that what philosophers have put in place of it is criminal.

Well, there we agree. Entirely.

I don't blame philosophy, or even philosophers, per se. It's the Neo-Marxist set who are really to blame. I just finished Roger Scruton's book on this, "Fools, Frauds and Firebrands." It's got the whole sad story in there.

The most devastating contributions to the destruction of philosophy were contributed by Hume, Kant, and Hegel, and the rest of the German Idealists.

No, I think those guys have nothing on Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Gramsci et al. You know, the Frankfurt nonsense. That's where the real stuff hits the fan.

Where do you think post-modernism comes from? It's the end product of all previous philosophy.

No, it's not. It's the sad and desperate attempt to rescue Marx from the ashcan of history, and the horrendous body-count of dialectical materialism. And you certainly can't say that people like Smith, or Locke, or Kierkegaard contributed anything directly to that project. And they're very important philosophers.

Georg Lukacs, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer and others of the Frankfurt School successfully brought and instituted Antonio Gramsci's hegemony with its emphasis on deconstruction, critical reason, cultural relativism, psychology, and sociology (political correctness and multiculturalism) into American Universities.

Much less important philosophers. Can't argue with you there. I agree completely. So does Scruton, actually. I think you'd like his book.

This isn't quite correct. The problem is this: individual human beings do not do well outside of "society." They die quickly, and in very nasty ways. That is why certain practices have been developed by them in order to negotiate the sticky business of working together. So we have things like ethics, politics, social philosophy, and even culture itself. These are arrangements designed to make life together work.

Except it hasn't worked and cannot work, because there is no philosophical foundation for any of those things which individuals can use to make the right decisions about how they will relate to others, and until there are, they will continue to make the wrong choices and social chaos will continue.

There's no alternative. We can't separate into a bunch of scattered individuals, and face nature alone. We won't survive the encounter. So we do need each other, but we've got to figure out terms on which we can a) live and work together, but b) not destroy or submerge the individual in the process. If political philosophy were focusing on what it should focus on, that would be it.

Locke did some good work on that issue.

Socially, right choices are any chosen relationship with others that is chosen by every individual in that relationship and not choosing any relationship with others that is not chosen by every individual to their own benefit, by their own estimate. Every other kind of relationship is a form of oppression.

Well, that valourizes the individual, alright. But the problem with it is that some individuals are not particularly nice people, and won't, of their own volition, treat others with the same respect they give themselves. They''ll look for an edge, an advantage, instead. And something must be done with those folks. Moreover, sometimes living together means putting someone else's agenda before mine; and the every-man-for-himself view doesn't recognize any idea of self-offering for others, or for the common good. That's one of its weaknesses.

After 2600 years, can you name one improvement in the human condition that is a product of philosophy.

Absolutely. Let's start with science itself. Essentially, the scientific method was the product of Francis Bacon.

I do not agree with that, though I do not think it matters too much to this discussion. Bacon did have a positive influence on the progress of science, which was his emphasis on the necessity of having real observable evidence as opposed to reason alone for science to be successful. What is not true is that the, "deductive," method, as understood today, was ever or is today the method of true science.

I spoke of "the scientific method," not of deduction. Empirical scientific methodology is inductive, not deductive.

I'm obviously not impressed by degrees.

They're not a guarantee of erudition or integrity, it's true. But my point was merely the emphasis on "philosophy." To understand the philosophy of a discipline is to understand it at the highest level to which a practitioner of that discipline can aspire. That remains true.

You mean like denying that any real knowledge is possible, that everything is uncertain, or that there is no real objective truth. Philosophy today consists of competing skeptic hypotheses denying literally every thing:

You're only speaking of Postmodern or the various Neo-Marxist philosophies there. That's not the totality of philosophy. Libertarianism's a philosophy. So is Randianism. So is Classical Liberalism. So are Individualism, Egoism, and Solipsism. Yet none of these fits the description you gave.

All of them do, actually, some a little less than most, but not much. I would not classify Libertarianism or Individualism as philosophies, but as ideologies, but the semantics don't change the facts.

Well, the facts are that not all the movements in philosophy fit into the indictment you are urgent to mount against Postmodernism. Some are quite actively anti-postmodern. So let's not pitch the baby with the bathwater.

I think I've been a little rough in some of my comments,

I appreciate the sensitivity, but I am unperturbed. We agreed to speak truth to one another, didn't we?

Now on to Belinda.

A different conversation, to be sure.

[RCSaunders]

Just a quick comment here, because of my error.

Absolutely. Let's start with science itself. Essentially, the scientific method was the product of Francis Bacon.

I do not agree with that, though I do not think it matters too much to this discussion. Bacon did have a positive influence on the progress of science, which was his emphasis on the necessity of having real observable evidence as opposed to reason alone for science to be successful. What is not true is that the, "deductive," method, as understood today, was ever or is today the method of true science.

I spoke of "the scientific method," not of deduction. Empirical scientific methodology is inductive, not deductive.

You're absolutely right. I mistakenly wrote, "deduction." The sentence should have been, "Bacon did have a positive influence on the progress of science, which was his emphasis on the necessity of having real observable evidence as opposed to reason alone for science to be successful. What is not true is that the, "inductive," method, as understood today, was ever or is today the method of true science."

I'm sure that is much more controversial, but is what I meant.

I'll have brief comments on the remainder later.

[Belinda]

Mystical, pseudo-profound, neo-Platonic codswallop.

Can you explain a little more, RCS?

Certainly! I knew as soon as I saw your comment I would have to respond. As many times as I've outlined philosophy and made the point the aesthetics was the ultimate objective of all other branches, you are the first to notice the significance of that view.

It is existence and our consciousness of it that makes all experience possible, and it is our life that makes it possible for us to have that experience, and it is our ability to experience life and existence that makes all joy and meaning possible, and it is that possibility that is the sole purpose of our life. If the purpose of life is not to make it possible or us to experience life and existence and to enjoy them, there is no point to life and experience all.

Aesthetics is usually identified as the study of the nature of beauty, but beauty is never actually defined. Examples are given in attempt to say what beauty is, like things seen: natural scenes, night skies or sunsets, beautiful men, women, children, flowers or art; or things heard: the wind, rippling brooks, the roaring ocean, and music; or things read: literature and poetry. None of those things actually explain what beauty is or why we consider any of those things beautiful, however.

What makes things beautiful is our recognition of those things we are conscious of as the source of all our experience, of all that we can enjoy, and of all that those things they make possible to us to achieve, and the more we come to understand and appreciate what this glorious wondrous universe we live in makes possible to us to experience and use to achieve virtually anything we are willing to make the effort to achieve, the more beautiful that world becomes.

Mine is a very romantic view of life, which I regard as the ultimate adventure of discovery and achievement and endless possibility with one's own personal development to become all that one can be as the ultimate purpose of one's life and the source of one's ultimate enjoyment of that life. Which is why I regard aesthetics the ultimate objective of all philosophical inquiry to answer the ultimate question, how one must live in this world to fully be all one can be and to fully enjoy that life and the beauty of it.

As a romantic, I regard the highest possible human joy to be romantic love for those for whom it is possible. Please note, for a true romantic, love and lust are mutually exclusive. Love finds its joy in pleasing the one loved, lust finds it pleasure in using another.

I'm sure that is already a little more explanation than you wanted, and I'm still holding myself back.

Thanks you so much for your interest!

"None of those things actually explain what beauty is or why we consider any of those things beautiful, however." (RCS)
Maybe because beauty is the relationship between the good and the true.

"Mine is a very romantic view of life," (RCS)
"As a romantic, " (RCS)

Having noted what you wrote in those paragraphs, I question what you mean by 'romantic'. Of course 'romantic' is more often than not used to mean sexual passion towards one other, the more interesting usage refers to the Romantic movement in European culture within which sex is one interest among others. Your comparison of love with lust has in fact a much wider application than sexual passion, and the wider application is what i referred to, I fear too obliquely.

[RCSaunders]

I am mot dismissing philosophy, the discipline, I am repudiating the corpus of what is called philosophy as anti-philosophy. I think philosophy is so important that what philosophers have put in place of it is criminal.

Well, there we agree. Entirely.

I don't blame philosophy, or even philosophers, per se. It's the Neo-Marxist set who are really to blame. I just finished Roger Scruton's book on this, "Fools, Frauds and Firebrands." It's got the whole sad story in there.

I have not read Scruton, but if he's has done a good job identifying the sources and history of cultural Marxism and all the characters involved, I'm sure it would be worth reading. I first began my study of that whole movement when I first became interested in the influences on American education and culture that were obviously ruining it.

The biographies of the individuals associated with the Frankfurt School (which Gramsci actually wasn't) and all the fields they influenced is even more enlightening than their actual teachings, such as the influence of Eric Fromm of the Frankfurt School on Maslow and the whole field of Humanistic Psychology and what became Human Potential Movement as just one example of how very bad philosophical ideas mutate and propagate (or metastasize for the sake of the metaphor) throughout society like a cancer. If you don't bother with any of the other links, you really ought to check out the link to Humanistic Psychology which illustrates how many of those you think of as important philosophers were disastrous in their influence, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Ponty, Sartre, Marcel, Maritain, Buber, Scheler, Watson, Skinner, Maslow, Freud, Adler, Jung, Fromm, and Horney.

The most devastating contributions to the destruction of philosophy were contributed by Hume, Kant, and Hegel, and the rest of the German Idealists.

No, I think those guys have nothing on Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Gramsci et al. You know, the Frankfurt nonsense. That's where the real stuff hits the fan.]

I do not agree. Hume, Kant, Hegel et. al. formulated the principles that ended up as critical theory, positivism, cultural Marxism, etc. All the others disseminated the poison in broadly palatable forms by calling them socially liberating, intellectually progressive, individually empowering, humanitarian, compassionate, and critical reason. [The link is to an old article of mine to describes exactly how this one perversion of an idea has been used to propagate and disseminate Cultural Marxism throught all aspects of soceity, especially in academia.]

Where do you think post-modernism comes from? It's the end product of all previous philosophy.

No, it's not. It's the sad and desperate attempt to rescue Marx from the ashcan of history, and the horrendous body-count of dialectical materialism. And you certainly can't say that people like Smith, or Locke, or Kierkegaard contributed anything directly to that project. And they're very important philosophers.

You've mixed up what I said, a little. I was careful about the history and clearly said the main corruption of philosophy came post Locke and his contemporaries and began in earnest with Hume and all that followed. I blamed the others you named for other problems in philosophy.

The concept of dialecticalism came from Hegel. It came from his absurd ontology of "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis," formulation of dialectics, actually adopted from Fichte, and was used by Marx to explain his social/economic theory. The influence of Kant on Hegel and Marx are very clear. Without Kant and Hegel there would have been no Marx.

The rest of your comments are, I think, of a political in nature. I'll comment on them separately.

[Peter Holmes]

Just a little footnote to this name-drop-fest - lest anyone be misled on one of the names.

Roger Scruton was a small-minded, nasty conservative drone - a self-styled 'philosopher', because no one else thought he was any more than a pundit peddling reactionary cliches devoid of one ounce of originality. He was a go-to 'thinker' for British Tories and American blow-hards, because anything more subtle or challenging would have taxed their tiny brains uncomfortably.

In my humble opinion, of course.

[Immanuel Can]

...many of those you think of as important philosophers were disastrous in their influence, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Ponty, Sartre, Marcel, Maritain, Buber, Scheler, Watson, Skinner, Maslow, Freud, Adler, Jung, Fromm, and Horney.

Well, you're blending, here, RC. You're placing theorists who contributed essentially good ideas, but some concepts that were later twisted and misused by others, among those who promulgated definitely bad ideas. Those are not the same folks.

To be fair, you'd have to regard people like Kierkegaard and Buber as quite different from, say Heidegger or Sartre. How the latter two stole and reinterpreted the ideas of the former two was unconscionable; but to be precise, it was also simply a product of a difference in ontology. Kierkegaard wrote as a Christian, and Buber as a Jew -- both as Theists, on Theistic ontological suppositions, and about Theistic concepts. It's actually quite rationally impossible to extract God from their suppositions and arrive at any of the conclusions they personally advanced. But Heidegger stole and abused whatever he could for the purposes of things like his Nazism, and both he and Sartre stole and abused concepts for the sake of creating ideologies totally premised on Atheism. The result was the disaster you see; but it was the latter who were to blame, not the former.

What you get when you blend good food with warfarin is poisoned bait for killing rats. That does not mean that food is bad, or of itself, ever was, or that it necessarily led to the creating of the poisoned bait.

So it is in the realm of ideas: a good idea, when blended with a bad one, may make the resulting idea truly horrendous: and all the more, since a bad idea would be much more easily recognized and less likely to be ingested than one mixed liberally with elements of truth. But truth is truth. it is not made into a falsehood if, in violation of truth, it has sometimes been abused.

Hume, Kant, Hegel et. al. formulated the principles that ended up as critical theory, positivism, cultural Marxism, etc.

I'm not a fan of these three in particular, but something similar could be said about them. Hume, Kant and Hegel were transformed by Marx by Materialism and Historicism -- Hume might have tolerated that, and maybe even agreed; but Kant would have objected, and so would Hegel, for sure. It's not clear that the ideas of Kant and Hegel "led" to the subsequent abuses, and far less clear that the road through Dialectical Materialism was the only route possible; it's just the one that Marx and his foolish admirers took.

But I'll grant you that defending Kant and Hegel is a more subtle and less clear thing than recognizing the rupture with Kierkegaard or Buber, which is glaringly, overwhelmingly obvious to me, and I think, to any thinking Theist as well.

The concept of dialecticalism came from Hegel.

That is true. But the Materialism and Historicism in Marxism came from Marx. That the blend was poisonous is surely something we agree on.

[Immanuel Can]

Roger Scruton was a small-minded, nasty conservative drone - a self-styled 'philosopher', because no one else thought he was any more than a pundit peddling reactionary cliches devoid of one ounce of originality...

Nice, Pete.

The ad hominem thread is a couple down from here.