Philosophy and the blues.

by Blueblades 7 Replies latest jw friends

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  Blueblades

  When one is suffering from "The Blues" one is said to be sad and gloomy; depressed or depressing. Can a study of philosophy bring on the blues? Here is what I found.

  Metaphilosophy: The philosophy of philosophy. Not to be confused with the philosophy of the philosophy of philosophy. ( tongue in cheek )

  The prefix meta, which basically means "beyond and inclusive of all below," pops up all over the place in philosophical discourses, like in metalanguage, a language that can be used to describe language. Or in metaethics, which investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. So it was only a meta of time before metaphilosophy appeared on the scene.

  Metaphilosophy wrestles with that burning question, "What is philosophy?" You'd think philosophers would have known the answer to that one going in. It makes you wonder how they knew they wanted to become philosophers in the first place. Modern philosophers are continually redefining philosophy. In the twentieh century, Rudolf Carnap and the logical positivists defined away a huge hunk of philosophy when they announced that metaphysics is meaningless. They said the sole task of philosophy is to analyse scientific sentences.

  And Carnap's contemporary, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the godfather of ordinary language philosophy, went even further. He thought his first major book had brought the history of philosophy to a close, because he had demomstrated that all philosophical propositions were meaningless, including his own. He was so convinced that he closed the book on philosophy that he settled down to teach elementary school.

  A few years later he reopened the book of philosophy with a new conception of its purpose, therapy, of all things. By that, Ludwig meant that if we straighten out confusing language, we will cure ourselves of the blues brought on by nonsensical philosophical questions.

  In our own day, "modal logicians" logicians who differentiate between statements that are possibly true and those that are necessarily true, worry about which category their own statements fall under.

  My question is, do you think that Ludwig Wittgenstein's new conception that the purpose of philosophy is therapy, to cure ourselves of the blues brought on by nonsensical phlosophical questions.

  Blueblades
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  R.Crusoe

  It may depend upon your age and sex and whether you are getting any and how often - as with other desireable human aquisitions?
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  Rapunzel

  Blue Blades; The phenomenon in philosophy that you are describing is called the "[great] linguistic turn." This occured when philosophers turned their attention away from metaphysics [ontology, "reality," and "Ultimate Reality" as such] and focused their attention on language; it was then that the [previously clear] distinction between the two disciplines of linguistics and philosophy began to blur. Traditionally, philosophy was divided into four major areas - 1.) metaphysics [ontology]; 2.) epistemology [what we know and how we know it; 3.) ethics; and 4.) aesthetics. With the linguistic turn, metaphysics was subsumed by the study of language.

  Before Ludwig, there was Nietzsche. It was Nietzsche who put "the final nail in the coffin" of metaphysics. People commonly overlook the fact that Nietzsche was trained a philologist of classical languages. Nietzsche did a lot of work on the ancient Greek materialist philosopher, Democritus. Nietzsche's ideas anticipated those of Jacques Derrida by many years. As I remember, Derrida was also trained in the classical tradition, just as Nietzsche had been.
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  Open mind

  Great learning is driving you mad Blueblades!
  
  ;-)
  
  OM
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  Narkissos

  Seems like the coffin of metaphysics has many final nails...
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  Rapunzel

  Yeah, Narkissos, when I think of metaphysics, I think of the lyrics of that old song by the Eagles, Hotel California [I don't know if it was popular in France, or if you have heard of the song/group] - "They stick it with their steely knives, but they still can't kill the beast." Moreover, just like the Hotel California, you can check out of Wittgenstein's "prison-house of language" any time you'd like, but you can never leave.
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  R.Crusoe

  Philosophy seems to me to be about explaining a negative collective of paradoxical realities!

  e.g.:

  I may think philosophy is about empathising with the philosophy of unhappiness to the unhappy in the hope that it will make them happy which of course it cannot, otherwise they would never have begun philosophising about it in the first place, saying as how they would be preoccupied with being happy!

  In this respect philosophy attempts to be a catalyst from one dynamic reality to another!
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  hamilcarr

  Seems like the coffin of metaphysics has many final nails...

  They stick it with their steely knives, but they still can't kill the beast."

  I'm afraid they have forgotten to deliver the death blow ...