Life is messy....
Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2023 4:17 pm
I am readying Gilson book,
''The unity of Philosophical experience"
and within that book, he talks about how the attempt
of philosophy and philosophers are to create a unity in
the human experience... A philosophical version of
the attempt in science to create a "Theory of Everything"
that Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life trying to
create.... the ''TOE" has been philosophy's holy grail since
Descartes...and some, Kant and Hegel thought that
they had done just that, the ''TOE"...
Today we know better, I hope, that a ''TOE" in philosophy
really isn't possible...and part of that reason is inherent
in my thread's title... Life is messy...
I have read many, many philosophical books, and my problem
with each one of them, is that the description they
put up of reality is vastly different than the reality I see..
in reading say, Kant, I don't even recognize his universe...
and it certainly isn't the universe I live in...
I don't see his famous, "thing in itself" and I don't see
his ''moral duty''.. and I don't really see anything that Kant
describes... what I do see is the messiness of life...I see the
so called "suffering in life" the growing old and illness
and disease that inflicts all of us... and I see something
that is rarely talked about in the human experience,
the random nature of existence... my life at times,
has been dominated by chance and random events
that I had no control over...and the question becomes,
how do I put those random events, those moments of
chance into a ''TOE?"
That is the problem I have with philosophy.. it talks a good game
about life, but it doesn't actually encounter the life I see..
and the only philosophies that seem to at least acknowledge
this random, probabilistic universe is within the existentialism
movement... and even in reading someone like Kierkegaard,
who I have read extensively or Nietzsche, they don't explore
the truly random, problematic nature of existence...
in life, we get sick, we puke until our sides hurt...
and that is part of existence... how would I toss that very
human experience of getting sick into a ''TOE?"
In life, we accidentally break a bone or as I did
last year, tear a tendon in my ankle.. I had surgery
and was off of work for 5 months... and my foot in
a cast for 3 months.. it wasn't permanent, but it is
permanent.. my ankle hurts every day its cold...
and it takes several minutes of walking before
it works right.. that will last until the day I die..
and how do I put that into a ''TOE?"
or what about falling in love or being married, as I have been,
27 years.... where in Kant is that? or where in the philosophy
of Spinoza, is falling in love or being happily, mostly, married...
in whose philosophy is that very important aspect of existence?
Socrates talked about Eros, but that isn't what I am talking about...
I am talking about the day-to-day existence of being married
and together taking out the garbage or walking downtown to get
lottery tickets.... I haven't read that in a philosophy book,
but that is a very important aspect of life, of existence....
the relationships we have in this life, of husband and wife,
of father and daughter, of son and mother...of brother
and sister... In fact, I would make the argument that
the single most important aspect of our existence
are these day to day relationships...that these relationships
is what give our life its meaning and value...
and which philosopher has ever wrote about this?
I grew up in a large family and one sibling or another would
be fighting about something, usually it was a long fought
battle from the past, revisited into today...
one of my younger sisters and I fought for years...
and then we made up... and I can easily imagine us
fighting again, (she is very far right in her beliefs,
and she believes that IQ45 can walk on water, me, not exactly)
and that is part of life's messiness.... and a very large part,
now is that a good thing or a bad thing, I can't say, but I
can say, it is a very large part of our lives....
and whose philosophy has covered this messiness of life?
the randomness, the element of chance that impacts
our life, practically every single day...
and who covers the part of life that impacts us every single day..
my mom, who is 88, is just spending her days waiting until
she dies, I am spending my days, waiting to retire, my daughter
is spending her days waiting for a significant other...
and whose philosophy covers that?
the interesting thing about philosophy is not what it covers,
but how much it doesn't talk about... about how much
of life that philosophy fails to connect with or even see....
the random nature of existence, the connections/relationships
that we all have, the impact of entropy has on our lives,
of growing old and getting sick and disease and breaking
bones and finally of dying....
no one talks about that and you know what, we should..
but how would one create a ''TOE" about those vital
questions in existence?
in reading Kant or Hegel or even Kierkegaard, we fail
to read about what seems to really matter in our lives....
we get some sanitized version of reality that doesn't
seem to actually match what we see or go through,
and that is a shame.... and something that we should,
should work on... but once again, how do we put that
into a philosophy of life? a ''TOE?"
Kropotkin
''The unity of Philosophical experience"
and within that book, he talks about how the attempt
of philosophy and philosophers are to create a unity in
the human experience... A philosophical version of
the attempt in science to create a "Theory of Everything"
that Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life trying to
create.... the ''TOE" has been philosophy's holy grail since
Descartes...and some, Kant and Hegel thought that
they had done just that, the ''TOE"...
Today we know better, I hope, that a ''TOE" in philosophy
really isn't possible...and part of that reason is inherent
in my thread's title... Life is messy...
I have read many, many philosophical books, and my problem
with each one of them, is that the description they
put up of reality is vastly different than the reality I see..
in reading say, Kant, I don't even recognize his universe...
and it certainly isn't the universe I live in...
I don't see his famous, "thing in itself" and I don't see
his ''moral duty''.. and I don't really see anything that Kant
describes... what I do see is the messiness of life...I see the
so called "suffering in life" the growing old and illness
and disease that inflicts all of us... and I see something
that is rarely talked about in the human experience,
the random nature of existence... my life at times,
has been dominated by chance and random events
that I had no control over...and the question becomes,
how do I put those random events, those moments of
chance into a ''TOE?"
That is the problem I have with philosophy.. it talks a good game
about life, but it doesn't actually encounter the life I see..
and the only philosophies that seem to at least acknowledge
this random, probabilistic universe is within the existentialism
movement... and even in reading someone like Kierkegaard,
who I have read extensively or Nietzsche, they don't explore
the truly random, problematic nature of existence...
in life, we get sick, we puke until our sides hurt...
and that is part of existence... how would I toss that very
human experience of getting sick into a ''TOE?"
In life, we accidentally break a bone or as I did
last year, tear a tendon in my ankle.. I had surgery
and was off of work for 5 months... and my foot in
a cast for 3 months.. it wasn't permanent, but it is
permanent.. my ankle hurts every day its cold...
and it takes several minutes of walking before
it works right.. that will last until the day I die..
and how do I put that into a ''TOE?"
or what about falling in love or being married, as I have been,
27 years.... where in Kant is that? or where in the philosophy
of Spinoza, is falling in love or being happily, mostly, married...
in whose philosophy is that very important aspect of existence?
Socrates talked about Eros, but that isn't what I am talking about...
I am talking about the day-to-day existence of being married
and together taking out the garbage or walking downtown to get
lottery tickets.... I haven't read that in a philosophy book,
but that is a very important aspect of life, of existence....
the relationships we have in this life, of husband and wife,
of father and daughter, of son and mother...of brother
and sister... In fact, I would make the argument that
the single most important aspect of our existence
are these day to day relationships...that these relationships
is what give our life its meaning and value...
and which philosopher has ever wrote about this?
I grew up in a large family and one sibling or another would
be fighting about something, usually it was a long fought
battle from the past, revisited into today...
one of my younger sisters and I fought for years...
and then we made up... and I can easily imagine us
fighting again, (she is very far right in her beliefs,
and she believes that IQ45 can walk on water, me, not exactly)
and that is part of life's messiness.... and a very large part,
now is that a good thing or a bad thing, I can't say, but I
can say, it is a very large part of our lives....
and whose philosophy has covered this messiness of life?
the randomness, the element of chance that impacts
our life, practically every single day...
and who covers the part of life that impacts us every single day..
my mom, who is 88, is just spending her days waiting until
she dies, I am spending my days, waiting to retire, my daughter
is spending her days waiting for a significant other...
and whose philosophy covers that?
the interesting thing about philosophy is not what it covers,
but how much it doesn't talk about... about how much
of life that philosophy fails to connect with or even see....
the random nature of existence, the connections/relationships
that we all have, the impact of entropy has on our lives,
of growing old and getting sick and disease and breaking
bones and finally of dying....
no one talks about that and you know what, we should..
but how would one create a ''TOE" about those vital
questions in existence?
in reading Kant or Hegel or even Kierkegaard, we fail
to read about what seems to really matter in our lives....
we get some sanitized version of reality that doesn't
seem to actually match what we see or go through,
and that is a shame.... and something that we should,
should work on... but once again, how do we put that
into a philosophy of life? a ''TOE?"
Kropotkin