Philosophy Now Forum

Consider two historical facts:

• 1. The study of philosophy is at least 2,600 years old. Re: Thales of Miletus (born c. 625 BCE, Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha, c. 525 BCE), Confucius (born 551 BCE).
  2. For more than 2,600 years humanity has failed to solve their fundamental problems: World peace, the eradication of poverty and a well balanced coexistence between ourselves and our environment.

Thus, the study of philosophy, with all its contributions to knowledge, has not been able to solve the most fundamental problems of humanity.

Does this then indicate a fatal flaw in the study of philosophy?

Perhaps philosophy alone can't be the solution.

I think philosophy is just a tool. And for some people, it’s very useful, but for others, philosophy is way too deep for their shallow minds to grasp. Humans are into the small talk mostly, too preoccupied by the size of their ego’s. Some people prefer to swim in the familiarity of the shallows, rather than face the great mysterious unknown inky deep.

So it’s not failure so much as more like it’s just laziness or refusal to look at the actual truth of things.

There's another angle, though. Suppose the problems you mention can't be solved and are built into man's nature. If philosophy is the activity that brings about this revelation, then it is not a problem solving activity but a liberation from such irresolvable problems. When this world is properly understood, philosophy should lead one straight to the egoism and nihilism of a Stirner. Philosophy should be like a Diogenesean abandonment of all order and a refusal of all authority.

And if one doesn't find themselves here at the end of their philosophical journey, they were doing something else, not philosophy.

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 12:38 pm Perhaps philosophy alone can't be the solution.

Perhaps, but this does not negate my concluding statement.

Fairy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 1:29 pm I think philosophy is just a tool. And for some people, it’s very useful, but for others, philosophy is way too deep for their shallow minds to grasp. Humans are into the small talk mostly, too preoccupied by the size of their ego’s. Some people prefer to swim in the familiarity of the shallows, rather than face the great mysterious unknown inky deep.

So it’s not failure so much as more like it’s just laziness or refusal to look at the actual truth of things.

Quite so. If it is "not a failure so much", it leads to the question: what is "the actual truth of things"? Which, by my understanding is a question contemplated by philosophy, not so?

PieterR wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 12:16 pm Consider two historical facts:

• 1. The study of philosophy is at least 2,600 years old. Re: Thales of Miletus (born c. 625 BCE, Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha, c. 525 BCE), Confucius (born 551 BCE).
  2. For more than 2,600 years humanity has failed to solve their fundamental problems: World peace, the eradication of poverty and a well balanced coexistence between ourselves and our environment.

Thus, the study of philosophy, with all its contributions to knowledge, has not been able to solve the most fundamental problems of humanity.

Does this then indicate a fatal flaw in the study of philosophy?

Depends on what you might suppose the purpose of philosophy is. Isaiah Berlin said that philosophy is primarily a study of any and all questions where we haven't yet decided how to determine what a correct answer would look like. Once we establish a method for answering any sort of question, or at least selecting for correctness, it then belongs to some other field of study that does actually answer questions. That's how we got the natural sciences and economics among and many things besides.

Eradication of poverty in particular is probably one of those questions, the philosopher Ian Smith wrote some books about economic matters and is no longer usually thought of as a philosopher because he launched the study of political economy.

PieterR wrote: ↑Wed Nov 26, 2025 7:49 am

Fairy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 1:29 pm I think philosophy is just a tool. And for some people, it’s very useful, but for others, philosophy is way too deep for their shallow minds to grasp. Humans are into the small talk mostly, too preoccupied by the size of their ego’s. Some people prefer to swim in the familiarity of the shallows, rather than face the great mysterious unknown inky deep.

So it’s not failure so much as more like it’s just laziness or refusal to look at the actual truth of things.

Quite so. If it is "not a failure so much", it leads to the question: what is "the actual truth of things"? Which, by my understanding is a question contemplated by philosophy, not so?

My personal studies have pointed to a truth that there was nothing from the start, so there's not really anything here to know anything, and that the highest truth is (Emptiness) appearing and disappearing as form.

And yet, humanity, so it seems, mostly don't recognise the emptiness of their being, they have been conditioned to be identified as a form being real, and while these 'apparent' identities, (entities) or forms are believed to be real, they can also be believed to be misidentifications, they can also be seen to be unreal. So there's a problem and there isn't a problem with humanity / philosophy then, both fails and doesn't fail, relatively speaking.

Philosophy can be an excellent teaching tool, which can be both failproof, and not failproof. Philosophy, when seen from both form and emptiness being the same one essence, can be fully recognised to be the same one identical reality, not two different things. So the minds job is to fully integrate form and formlessness as being one indivisible thing where distinction is just an illusion.

So the actual truth of things is that there isn't any actual truth of things, because things are empty at their core essence.

We can keep on constructing real realities forever, by inventing new ways to use our words, but ultimately everything new passes away instantly to the past that no longer exists, so ultimately, death is the only real reality. Everything is death, appearing to live.

PieterR wrote: ↑Wed Nov 26, 2025 7:45 am

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 12:38 pm Perhaps philosophy alone can't be the solution.

Perhaps, but this does not negate my concluding statement.

The fact that philosophy, after 2,600 years, has still not been able to solve the fundamental problems of humanity, seems to indicate that it's not really up to the job. Maybe nothing is.

Maia wrote: ↑Wed Nov 26, 2025 8:54 am

PieterR wrote: ↑Wed Nov 26, 2025 7:45 am

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 12:38 pm Perhaps philosophy alone can't be the solution.

Perhaps, but this does not negate my concluding statement.

The fact that philosophy, after 2,600 years, has still not been able to solve the fundamental problems of humanity, seems to indicate that it's not really up to the job. Maybe nothing is.

Nothing doesn't even have a job in this either, except to do nothing, and that's exactly what nothing does, nothing does nothing.

Some of you avoid that kind of philosophy like the plague. Then you wonder why the mind is likened to a virus that won't quit.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 1:36 pm There's another angle, though. Suppose the problems you mention can't be solved and are built into man's nature. If philosophy is the activity that brings about this revelation, then it is not a problem solving activity but a liberation from such irresolvable problems. When this world is properly understood, philosophy should lead one straight to the egoism and nihilism of a Stirner. Philosophy should be like a Diogenesean abandonment of all order and a refusal of all authority.

And if one doesn't find themselves here at the end of their philosophical journey, they were doing something else, not philosophy.

That the problem cannot be solved by philosophy is proved by my two, de facto, opening statements. If the problem is "build into man's nature" - surely the nature of man is pondered by philosophy, not so?

One should consider the possibility that an answer could be found by "something else, not philosophy".

PieterR wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 12:16 pm...the study of philosophy, with all its contributions to knowledge, has not been able to solve the most fundamental problems of humanity.

Does this then indicate a fatal flaw in the study of philosophy?

Well, as I tell anyone who will listen, philosophy is basically story telling. It's about putting things into a context that we can process and make sense of. Tragically, philosophy can't stop people being absolute fuckknuckles who will fight to defend their version of events. Betrand Russell, a more measured human being than yours truly, put it thus:
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Nov 26, 2025 12:01 pm

PieterR wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 12:16 pm...the study of philosophy, with all its contributions to knowledge, has not been able to solve the most fundamental problems of humanity.

Does this then indicate a fatal flaw in the study of philosophy?

Well, as I tell anyone who will listen, philosophy is basically story telling. It's about putting things into a context that we can process and make sense of. Tragically, philosophy can't stop people being absolute fuckknuckles who will fight to defend their version of events. Betrand Russell, a more measured human being than yours truly, put it thus:
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Yet, here, you are so certain of "yourself" that the Universe, laughably, began, and is expanding.

And, are you just as certain that 'philosophy' is, basically, 'story telling'?

After all that version/definition for the 'philosophy' word does not actually fit in with the G.U.T.O.E.

Oh, and by the way, 'the world', itself, does not have any 'problem', at all, let alone some so-called 'whole problem'. you human beings are the only ones who 'have problems', and this is because you are the only ones who cause and create 'all problems'.

Also, have you not yet noticed how much you are 'trying to' defend 'your own position/s', here?

Age wrote: ↑Wed Nov 26, 2025 12:36 pm
Also, have you not yet noticed how much you are 'trying to' defend 'your own position/s', here?

Yes, and that's the cosmic joke. There is no position to defend, except delusion, and then simultaneously fights to defend itself from the very delusion it's trying to escape from. The butt of the joke is that Nothing is ever in opposition with itself.

Reality / existence is a smooth seamless driverless operator, which is the mother of all assumptions and oxymorons. I mean how does one talk about ''unity wholeness'' without splitting it into infinite parts of itself. In the same context how does one talk about a 'doughnut hole' without making it all about the doughnut.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Nov 26, 2025 8:07 am

Depends on what you might suppose the purpose of philosophy is. Isaiah Berlin said that philosophy is primarily a study of any and all questions where we haven't yet decided how to determine what a correct answer would look like. Once we establish a method for answering any sort of question, or at least selecting for correctness, it then belongs to some other field of study that does actually answer questions. That's how we got the natural sciences and economics among and many things besides.

Eradication of poverty in particular is probably one of those questions, the philosopher Ian Smith wrote some books about economic matters and is no longer usually thought of as a philosopher because he launched the study of political economy.
[/quote]

I understand and agree that philosophy is the study of questions without answers. And, the utility of philosophy is politics: communism -> modernism -> post modernism -> meta modernism -> Shangri-la -> ...

Thus, my concluding statement is still standing!