Philosophy Now Forum

Lebensphilosophie is a German word meaning "philosophy of life"
and it emphasized the meaning, value and purpose of life as the foremost
focus of philosophy...

Which to say, that philosophy isn't about logic or math or language games...
but about who we are, who we were and who we might become....

As Nietzsche correctly pointed out, we have traveled the long road of
being... from animal to animal/human to becoming fully human....
at one time, we were animals.. no different than cats, or dogs or cows..
as stated within evolution/Darwinism.... and what was that leap?
what allowed us to go from animal to our current path to becoming fully human?

Some believe that push came from biology, and some believe it came from
consciousness and some believe it came from our ability to carry things while
walking......

so that is the first question, how did we begin the path of becoming, human?

today, we are a mixture of animal and human... we still hold to the animal part of
us, in the instincts that we still hold.. the fight or flight instinct is not a human
instinct but it an animal instinct.. if you are driven to do something, that is
the animal instinct...for one of the things that make us human and travel the
path to becoming fully human, is the ability that humans have to make a choice...

the freedom to act is the path to becoming human...we are human when
we make a choice....if you can't choose, you are not human...

so this question of "life philosophy" is the how, why, who, what, when and where,
of existence, and the background to how we make our choices...

part of the "background" in which we make our choices is through our needs...
we make choices based on our needs... either/or our bodily, psychological,
mental or emotional needs...

but the thing we need to remember is that by moving higher in the chain
of needs, the closer we become to being human.... If I am forced to
spend my days seeking bodily goods to remain alive, I am forced to
be an animal and spend my days seeking food, water, shelter.. the basics needs
of all living creatures...that is the basic definition of being an animal..
being forced to spend my days seeking out my bodily and psychological needs...
I cannot do anything else except be busy engaging in the animal seeking of
the goods we need to survive...

the rise to becoming human begins when we no longer spend our days seeking
the physical needs of the body.. to be human, to become fully human
means we rise above mere seeking the bodily needs....

to know where our next meal is coming from, to be secure in our
basic needs of human existence.. water, shelter, education, health care,
is the first step to becoming human...

the next step, which is taken concurrently with the acquisition of the bodily
needs, is the seeking of the psychological needs, the emotional needs that
all human beings have...to eek love, safety/security, belonging, esteem...
so we find enough of our psychological needs that we can move on to the
next stage...the seeking/finding of our possibilities...

when I was young, a million years ago, I ran cross-country, I can't say I was
above average, but I practiced and ran every day to get better.. I was
my own best possibility of being a runner...My goal wasn't to be
the greatest runner in the world, that clearly wasn't possible, but
I could become my best possibility of being a runner,,, maybe I couldn't
run a 4-minute mile, but I could improve my best time from a 4:55 mile
to a 4:50 mile...I play chess, and I can't be the best chess player in the
world, but I can be the best chess player I can possibly be...
and that is what I work for.. to become my best chess possibility...

and that is the goal of existence... not to become the best at something,
because frankly, in every single area of life/possibilities, someone
will be better... but to become the best possibility we can be...

so I am not the greatest philosopher of all...
but I can be the best possibility within my own range of philosophy..

so the question of existence is to be seeking out our possibilities....

which can only happen after we have secured our basic needs of
the body and soul.... it is a journey... from animal to becoming human
and that journey is finally about seeking out our possibilities and
fulfilling them..

Kropotkin

to continue on...

the point of Lebensphilosophie or LP, is to use our own
experience as the point of reference for our philosophy...

the key factor here is the ability to see reality of experience as it is,
not as we want it to be, or hope it to be...
and a really great example is the "big lie" of the 2020 election...

The 2020 election was probably the cleanest election in American history..
and we should see it as such... but the MAGA crowd can't see that election
as being clean and fair...their previously held convictions and preconceived
notions prevent them from seeing clearly.

the point becomes that we cannot properly learn from our experiences
if our experiences are contaminated by our convictions and strongly
held beliefs.. we cannot learn from the 2020 election if we hold
to notions that election was "stolen"....our understanding of our experiences
cannot be true if we pollute those experiences with already held convictions
and beliefs...

thus we must overcome our childhood indoctrinations... which contaminate
our understanding of experiences we have today... if we hold to
such childhood indoctrinations as the belief in god,, heaven, hell,
the exceptionalism of America.. such false beliefs taint and distort
our clear understanding of experiences.. the path to the "true"
is found in our ability to see and understand our experiences without
any prior contamination of indoctrinations and beliefs..

the experiences themself can lead us to a better understanding of
our reality... if we steer clear of the false beliefs that can steer us
wrong...

Kropotkin

when I was young, during the stone age, I was given lots of advice
as to what was the "solution" to life... it ranged from hard work to
belief in values such as god, love, peace, honor.... and belief
in nation, state, culture to name a few values I was told to have faith in....

However, as I grew up, I discovered that most of that unsolicited advice
was crap...my experiences conflicted with the advice I had received...
at that point, I had two choices, one stick with the advice even though
it didn't match the evidence I saw on the ground or I could change
my beliefs to match the evidence, I saw every day in my life...

I changed my beliefs to match what I was seeing and running into
every day...my experiences were what I based my beliefs on, not
not on advice or ism's from my past... my beliefs were experienced based,
not ideological based..

I am a liberal not based on unchallenged childhood ism's and ideologies,
I am a liberal because my experiences have shown me the value of
being liberal... or said another way, liberal values seem to be
based on how life is, not how I hope it to be..

it has been said "that a conservative is a liberal who was mugged"
and to some extent, I think that is true... the idealism of youth,
that starry eye vision of changing the world for the better,
I still hold that vision... I do believe the world can be changed for
the better, if, if we actually tried.. but many hold to the viewpoint that
the world is unchangeable and fixed, rigged.. and it isn't possible under
any circumstances to change the world... I disagree with that rigid
and inflexible understanding of the world...and to those who hold fixed
ideas about the possibility of change, won't even try to change the world,
because of their rigid understanding of the world...

it isn't the theories or ism's that made me a liberal, but the
experiences of my life... and that is how we can learn from
experiences.. if, if we see them honestly and without prior
indoctrinations that block our view of reality...

to become who we are, requires that we engage in a
reevaluation of values.. a examination of values as to if those values
we were indoctrinated with as children, are actually valid and have
meaning for us today...

Kropotkin

In thinking about Lebensphilosophie, a "life philosophy" we can
take certain philosophies and turn them into life philosophies..
for example, the religious beliefs of Christianity or Buddhism
can both be turned into a "life philosophy" and indeed both
were formulated to be a "way of life"... and that is what is needed
in these modern times...a philosophy that can be turned into a "way of life"...

which in part why the scientific and rational thought of the "Enlightenment"
failed to become a way of life.. think about human beings... we are born
into emotionalism and foolishness and absurd beliefs that can only make
sense if we hold to the ridiculous notions of our indoctrinations of childhood...
we seek emotions like love and hate and anger instead of seeking a
"way of life" .....

The Greeks schools of Plato and Aristotle were not universities as we think of them,
no, they were thought of as being "ways of life".... you adapted a "way of life"
when you joined a Greek school of philosophy... thus we can think of
Stoicism and Epicurus and Cynicism, as ways of life, not as a field of study...

and religions such as Christianity and Buddhism, Confucianism were not
considered to be impartial, disinterested, detached fields of study,
but were thought of as a way of life.. if you were a Christian, you didn't
just go to church for an hour or two every week, you practiced, engaged
with being a Chistian 24/7/365... it wasn't a part time when it was convenient
practice like Christianity is today...

Now we cannot think of science or rationality of thought, as practiced
since the "Enlightenment" as a way of life.. for that excludes, denies
much of what is important in life.... there is no logical, rational
reason to see the beauty of the sunset or fall in love... or seek
the beauty of ART... these things are not rational or logical.. but
they are necessary to our mental health.. and although that doesn't make
sense in a logical way, it does make sense to us emotionally, psychologically...

so, the life question we face is this, how do we have a "lebensphilosophie"
that includes our way of life and is both rational and engages with us
on an emotional/psychological way?

Kropotkin

in thinking about a "way of life" within a philosophy or
religion... I note that Nietzsche is a "way of life"
but with a Romantic, emotional "way of life"

His famous saying, "the will to power" is an emotional,
response, not a logical, scientific response...

because the "will to power" is not a universal "feeling"
it doesn't reside in all living creatures, but in some living creatures..
and because it is so random in its effects, it cannot be
thought of as a "Universal" within every living creature and thus it
is more psychological and less physical.. but because it is emotional
in nature and less rational or scientific, it might, might become
a choice to make, instead of a biological necessity...

as a "way of life" the "will to power" is not a very efficient or
reliable choice as a "way of life"... as I have stated before,
certain "goals" in life are not very valuable as a "way of life"
for example, to seek as many do, the baubles of existence,
seeking money, power, fame, titles has no value...
in seeking money, the only thing one can get is more money,
or in seeking fame, there is nothing to gain but more fame...
in seeking money, fame, power, titles, the problem lies in
that those values lead nowhere.. in seeking money,
all one can gain is more money... there is not final goal or
destination in seeking money and the same goes for fame or
power or titles... there is no final, end game besides those values
of money, fame, power, titles... those goals lead us nowhere...
they are a means without an end...and each of them can disappear
quickly... they are not by any stretch of the imagination, lasting or
forever... as goals go, they are fleeting and brief... I have lost money
and have lost power and was famous for about 5 seconds (I was on TV once)
and I have had titles, although briefly...

but in seeking a way of life, I can be sustained my entire life
within that "way of life" If I were to hold to the religious as a
"way of life" to be Christian, not as Christian do today, in name only,
and not as a way of life, but to be Christian as a "way of life"
that would have value for my entire life.. not as a means, but
as an end goal...or to hold, as a "way of life" some philosophic
ideal.. that would be a goal to achieve... not just as some
field of study and forgotten once out of class, but lived as
a "way of life" today and tomorrow..

so instead of seeking worthless values like money or fame or power,
we should be seeking a "way of life" that will carry us to the end of our days...

Kropotkin

or another way to think of Nietzsche's "will to power"
is to hold that the "will to power" is actually another
example of Irrationalism... to believe in the "will to power"
is to engage in emotionalism and irrationality... and so,
we must steer a course that is less illogical and void of rationalism...

much of what passes in our modern age is irrational and illogical,
we just don't have the eyes to see it as such... as is has become
part of the landscape in our modern world...
Trumpism is irrational and illogical, par excellence... to listen
to the inane conspiracy theories that the cult puts out is to
hear illogical and irrational beliefs up the wazoo... there is no
truth or logic or rational thought in anything the trump cult comes
up with... and we must walk away from having such faith base theories
that have no basis in reality... so, we must walk away from the trump cult
if we are to seek truth, logic and rationality..

to find a "way of life" demands that we seek a balance between the
emotionalism and irrationality of modern day, THE ROMANTIC,
and seek as part of our "way of life" to have some engagement with
logic, being rational, seeking the truth...
so how do we find a "way of life" that both engages the
side of beauty and the rational life of the "Enlightenment?"

Kropotkin

The 'way of life', which, through evolution, is coming into fruition anyway, is just the Truly peaceful and harmonious life.

When more and more of 'you', human beings, also move out of your APE-thinking stage, and move into the next stage of life, then the more peaceful and more harmonious life Truly becomes.