Philosophy Now Forum

In continuing my Rorty research and in thinking...

Rorty began his philosophical career as a pragmatist...
what we search for is the ''truth'' and we act on that.....

Pragmatism: philosophy... an approach that assesses
the truth of meaning in terms of their practical application...

but in thinking about this pragmatistic approach,
many people hold to certain beliefs... such as a belief in god....
or in heaven... but they don't apply those beliefs.... they believe
in god/heaven but don't actually live a religious life....they
are quite happy to force others into a religious life/beliefs, but
they don't actually practice it....and those who believe, and
force those beliefs into public policy, and yet, they do not
live their lives as Christians.... IQ45 is quite happy to force others into
living a Christian Life, but won't do it himself.... or does sexual assault
qualify as living a Christian life? committing adultery multiple times,
a particular Christain trait? of the ten commandments, IQ45 has
broken all of them... as for Murder, thou shall not commit murder.....
I will be willing to bet he has committed that one too......
the Christian right has adapted for its leader, one who has not
committed to or act like a Christian... and there is no surprise here...
for it is now quite common to hold to beliefs and yet have no intention
to act upon those beliefs... I am an Atheist... I freely admit this...
and yet, I am a far better Christian than IQ45 and MOST Christians....
My beliefs and my actions are far more in line with each other,
than Christians who hold faith and act in sin.....
and they still feel good about themselves in acting in SIN....
Personally, I feel bad if I lie or steal or cheat.. little less the bigger
crimes of SIN.... and these Christians don't seem to care or feel anything
in their SINS.... ( I use SIN as a shorthand for the crimes against the laws,
the ten commandments of the bible)

but a Christian hypocrisy is not the only hypocrisy that exists in the world
today..... we quite often see those who say morality consists of this,
and then turn around and commit those very actions they condemn.
the latest headlines are a condemnation of the politicians hypocrisy..
of saying one thing and acting another.....

and what is the practical application of saying one thing and doing another?
apparently in America today, you can get elected to public office...
but if you practice hypocrisy as most politicians and Americans do today,
the practical result is that you don't actually stand for anything....
you have no working principles or beliefs that guide your existence.....

and of course, there are those around here who hold to this hypocrisy..
of saying one thing and doing another......who here actually leads a
life, practicing/engaging in their beliefs and faith, as a practical matter?

Liars..... J'accuse you of being a liar....

and Kropotkin, who are you to condemn me? I am just a person who tries
to practice what I preach....

can you say the same?

Kropotkin

given the above statement, what becomes of philosophy?
What is the role of philosophy given a world where we
have vast differences between what we believe in and what
we act upon.....there is a vast gulf between actions and beliefs....
and philosophy today is to reduce if not to eliminate those
differences between our words/beliefs and our actions....
to bridge the gap between words and actions...

to give an example, those who are trying to end abortion based on
the idea that life is sacred, they practice hypocrisy if they don't also
work just as hard, ending capital punishment.....
if life is sacred, then life is sacred... and we must end capital punishment...
and we cannot allow police officers to kill, to murder even in the case
of self-defense... and we cannot practice torture to ''protect'' the nation..
because in torture, we might wind up killing someone.... and if life is sacred....
if life is sacred, then it must be applied to all people, in all situations or
it has no meaning..... our beliefs must be engaged in practiced.....
or it has no value...

which leads us to the next problem....

Kropotkin

what values or beliefs should we hold to?
and why those values and beliefs?

one of the problems of philosophy has been its disconnected
between ''the truth'' and actions.... what values should we hold to
and what practices should we be engaged in to practice those values/beliefs?

what is required is a commitment that the values we hold
are the values we practice or engage in....

but that requires us to end our search for the trinkets of existence,
of seeking out money, fame, titles, material possessions and power...
to become ''serious'' about what values we hold and why those values/beliefs
and then acting upon those values/beliefs..... to end the hypocrisy of our modern
age..... of holding to values and beliefs but not acting upon them, of not
practicing those values/beliefs....

we need to make a commitment... and that is such an old fashion idea...
to commit to something and then follow through on that commitment....
and not for others.. but for ourselves..... want to feel better about life...
make a commitment and follow through on that commitment....
in what values/beliefs we hold and how we practice those values/beliefs...

Kropotkin

and why do we have such difficulties uniting words and actions?

it lies in the nature of our beliefs.. most of our values and beliefs are
''ad hoc'' beliefs and values of the moment.....or as I have stated before,
that our beliefs and values are situational... as is our ethics...
we practice situationally ethics.... there is no universal or holistic
understanding of our values and beliefs... Christianity once had a
universal/holistic understanding of the universe.... but that is gone today.....
life is sacred unless it is in the defense of country or self.... that is ''ad hoc''
of the moment, belief...

with every exception we create to a rule, we dilute a value/faith....
until it has no value or meaning.... and that is Christianity today....
but it also the fate of democracy and capitalism and communism
and any other ism or ideology.... we have created so many
exceptions as to make that ism, ideology to be worthless.....
to have no value at all....
our values/beliefs/ institutions are today, all of them, ''ad hoc''
of the moment.....

Kropotkin

We can think of this in a different sort of way.....

What is foundational in philosophy?
what is the base camp of philosophy?
is it epistemology, as Descartes through Kant thought it was,
is it Analytical as some philosophers hold? or is it language,
what is the starting point of philosophy?
Nietzsche thought that philosophy was the means of understanding values...
what values are worth holding and what values are not.....
is the starting point of philosophy, as some believe, the object/subject
question.... or is it the mind/body problem?

so, many different possibilities.... but as usual, we have to give
this question some context.... for it is not an isolated question....
it has to fit into some context for us to get to an answer.....

the context here is, as some have called it, the ""Human condition."
what does it mean to be human? are human beings inherently good,
or evil or ''ad hoc'' of the moment?

Our ethics is situational ethics... which means the situation dictates the
ethics... in a very real way, we lead situational lives.... the situation dictates
our lives..... can we ourselves dictate the outcome of situations?
sometimes, sometimes not..... part of the problem is that quite
often, we fail to situate ourselves into an understanding of what it means
to be human.... so, what exactly does that mean? My own personal situation
is vastly different than yours.....I am 65, approaching retirement, my daughter
no longer lives with us, that may change shortly....I have a job I truly hate...
but given my situation of being only a year and half from retirement, I will
ride it out.... whereas, if you are younger, you may just quit and get a better job....
the situation we are in changes the possibilities we have....
we lead situational lives... how can we establish permanent rules of behavior
if our lives are situational?

perhaps, perhaps by looking at the lowest common denominator of being,
can we establish some sort of rules of being human....

what do we have in common, as human beings?
that we suffer.... we grow old, we get diseases,
we break things, and then we die.... The basic Buddhist
way of looking at things...the point of existence is to end suffering
by no longer being born....but that seems to me to be foolish...
for that idea of ending suffering by ending being born has several
different assumptions within it... and it seems to be contradicted
by other aspects of our existence....

Perhaps that is what is needed, philosophically.... to discover
the reasons why we live... for gaining of knowledge, to be ''saved''
to escape being born again.... as the Declaration
of Independence say, we human beings are this:

''That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

and the way to achieve these ''rights'' as the declaration further goes on,

''That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed''

and this is the foundation of rights, at least according to the Declaration
of Independence.... but understood correctly, that the Declaration
of Independence is a ''situational document''... in the Declaration,
we act within the situation, or to say it another way,
Patriotism is situational...as long as our country engages
with good governance, we agree and accept.... the entire
Declaration is about our grievousness with England in its
''governance'' over America....and this is where the Declaration
becomes radical.... ''We the people'' are the judges of what
is just ''governance'' not the state, not the ruler and certainly not god....
The Declaration of Independence is an ''Enlightenment'' document,
it is a philosophical statement about the relationship between the
governed and the state... if the state rules are harmful and
injurious, the governed has a right to overthrow the government,
the state.... and perhaps here we can find our philosophical
mission statement.....

if the rules, laws are injurious to us, then we have the right,
to overthrow the rules, the laws.....if capitalism is, as I have stated
many times before, grievous to us, both personally and
collectively, we have a right, a duty to overthrow capitalism and replace
it with something that is more agreeable to us....

is capitalism the human foundation that we want? or is there other
possibilities...... what is the basic human foundation?
what values or principles should we hold to be foundational
to all human beings....

I hold that capitalism is situational economics....
and I hold that what we hold dear in terms of values
and beliefs are also situational.....
that our lives and beliefs are situational, ''ad hoc'' not
permanent or forever....

Kropotkin