Philosophy Now Forum

for philosophy to be done right, or as good as it can possible be,
it must have a few different aspects.....
and this thread is about one of those aspects....
comparing and contrasting.......

In a very real sense, the act of philosophizing is the act of
comparing and contrasting......you compare or you contrast
two or more things to arrive at some sort of conclusion.....

two examples are ''Critical Theory'' the Frankfort school,
and CRT, Critical Race Theory..... the comparing and contrasting
in the Frankfort school was Marxism/communism.....
the act of comparing and/or contrasting itself or other aspects
of the society/state/economics to Marxism/communism....
and given that the ''Institute of Social Research'' which was the
official title of the Frankfort School, was founded in 1923...
which was a sign of the times...... Communism was in the air.....

But the act of study was done with communism/Marxism in mind..
you looked at the society in terms of comparing or contrasting
whatever you studied in terms of Marxism/Communism....
that was the point..... to contrast your subject matter with
the comparison or contrasting of communism/Marxism....

And the same goes true for CRT.... Critical Race theory,
in which one studied the state/society in terms of
race..... one compared or contrasted the society/state
in terms of its relationship with race......

''CRT is an interdisciplinary academic field that focused on
the relationships between society conceptions of race and
ethnicity, social and political law and media''

CRT done right is done by comparing and/or contrasting
the state/society in terms of race.....

These are but two areas of comparing and contrasting
that we must engage with if we are to engage with
philosophy....

the act of philosophy is the act of comparing/contrasting
something to something...So, in our philosophical research,
we might compare/contrast existentialists like Nietzsche
and Kierkegaard, to gain further knowledge about their
respected ideas..... and to compare/contrast their ideas
with other existentialists..... say Sartre, for example.....
we might say, Nietzsche believed in this and Sartre believed in this....
what can we learn from one or the other or both?

So, in the latest thread to gain traction is the ''Eating meat is
barbaric'' thread..... but we have to understand it in terms
of comparison or contrasting.... ''Eating meat is barbaric''
compare to what exactly? What are we comparing or contrasting
eating meat to? one possibility is an historical context...
Historically, let us look at the eating of meat and is it
in actually barbaric? In looking at history, we see one name
come up that has come up, which was Pythagoras....
but his is a mixed message as to whether he allowed or
banned the eating of meat.......

But the legacy of diet goes all the way back into history to
the Jews... whose dietary laws exists to this day.....and we
can compare and contrast Jewish, and Muslim dietary laws
to the idea that eating meat is barbaric......

so, we think about philosophy in terms of comparison and contrasting....
and I think much of the failure in philosophy done here is a failure
to contrast or compare within the post or thread....

so, for me, anyway, I think part of the failure of the thread,
"Eating meat is Barbaric'' comes from the lack of comparison
and contrasting it to something else.... Eating meat is barbaric,
compared to what, exactly? The word barbaric must be contrasted
with something to make any sense.... the word ''barbaric''
is a moral/ethical judgement... and thus the argument is
an ethical, moral argument.... so, why, ethical, morally,
is eating meat barbaric? One could, as easily brought up the point,
that eating meat is a way to improve our world in terms of resources
or environmental concerns, or in terms of domesticate
animals, it takes resources to raise meat... the feeding of cows
and chickens takes a massive amount of resources... is that
where we want to use up our limited resources?
do the amount of resources spent on the feeding of cows/chickens,
is that number justified by the amount of food we get in return from
the meat in question? Are we spending more resources on feeding domesticated
animals then we get in return? and that becomes a legitimate argument for
the ending of eating meat.... we are spending more resources to feed
animals then we get in return.... by comparing and contrasting
this, we can, maybe come up with an answer to the question,
"Eating meat is Barbaric"

Eating meat compared to or contrasted with?

and all philosophy can be understood best by this idea of comparing and/or
contrasting.... Marxism is the greatest economic system ever!...
compared or contrasted to, what exactly? What criteria are we using
to make this statement that ''Marxism is the greatest economic system ever"...
What systems or ideas are we using to make this statement? comparing
what to what?

Kropotkin