Philosophy Now Forum

Hello everyone. I come from Poland and I study philosophy on the 3th year at the moment. Currently I partake in an exchange to Netherlands and I study here hermeneutics mainly. Considering prospects of my activity here, I'm going to make some simple points. It doesn't obviously mean that I see philosophers as the people who always try to complicate things, which are orginally obvious. Actually I tend to defend them, claiming that most of serious problems are just complex issues, so there is a need to dig really deeply. There is a phrase that if something appears to you as the obvious at the first glance, you probably didn't get it. I know people who told me that existence of the soul is undoubtful, so there is an example. However I defend the philosophers, I often see them as pretenders - on the other hand. They can't avoid an influence of the most invasive idol, namely ego. It is clear that if we raise the degree of a philosophical discussion on the sufficiently high degree, in the terms of its abstraction, fruitful critque of our views is almost impossible, because of the inability to mutual understanding. I think that the philosophers often come across such a temptation, at least within my classes and at least so far. Anyway, in my remarks I'm gonna express my thoughts as simple as possible and refer to my everyday concerns and observations. I see philosophy as an art of interpretation (here is the hermeneutical influence), but the interpretation of everything. On the other hand, this is the reason why I appreciate it so much and why I find common social approach ungrateful. It's like Zizek said in one of his short speeches - don't act, just think. We have encountered many new issues in our modern world, which are incomprehensible so far, and we need someone to fruitfully consider it, instead of acting in one way or another. It's a challenge for the philosophers and society should keep in mind how important it is. I was always laughing when people have been accusing the philosophers of a lack of real impact on the world. It's hard to invent something more distant from truth. Anyway, nice to meet you.

Sounds like you will fit right in, welcome to the madhouse.

I am not a philosopher, more science leaning, but I do know how vital philosophy is, as long as it does not get too tied up in word play, it is and always has been useful.

Thank you for the welcome. It's good to know that I can encounter on some scientists here, they aren't usually interested in philosophy, I guess. And when they are, their approach is kinda disordered, from my point of view, and their private philosophical investigations are rather poor, unfortunately. Let's take R. Dawkins or P. Atkins for instance. It's hardly to come across some less reliable insights into philosophical issues. Their attempts to do philosophy are like the combinations of prophecy, repeating well-known themes in the form of extraordinary discoveries (it is apparent that they were very excited during inventing) and pretending that everything is still within science framework, that is those prophecies are just scientific implications, which we can undoubtedly meet very soon. I usually like when philosophy cooperate with science, nonetheless it's quite distinctive, I assume, that philosophers who tend to derive from science are much more successful than scientists, who derive from philosophy. It's just a loose remark.

Philosophize away, jaksa!