Socrates, Plato, Sartre, oh my... - by Mr.Duck
Mr.Duck on 24/10/2009 at 21:26
Quote Posted by Wormrat
Just to be clear, are you interested in the
history of philosophy or philosophy itself?
A bit of both, more on the philosophy itself, but yeah, a bit of both :)
Again, thanks everyone for the imput. :)
june gloom on 24/10/2009 at 21:31
Can't say anything about Wittgenstein but Kant's philosophy gives rise to what I call the Good German problem.
Background: Kant explicitly says it is a sin to lie under any circumstances, even for a greater cause. His whole point is that one should treat human beings as ends, not means, and by lying to someone you are treating them as a means to a different end. Kant insists that this is a hard and fast rule.
Say you're living in Nazi Germany and you are hiding a Jewish family. Some soldiers come up to your home, looking for Jews, and they explicitly ask you if you are hosting a Jewish family in your home. Under Kant's philosophy you would tell them yes, and give up the family (and possibly get yourself graped in the process just for having them there.)
With no room to move as far as Kant is concerned, his claim is rendered reprehensible.
ercles on 24/10/2009 at 22:40
Herman Hesse, baby. Although Narziss and Goldmund had a profound impact on me personally, I've been blown away by every book of his I've read (Steppenwolf, Glass Bead Game, Sidhartha). Truly makes me wish I could speak German well enough to read the originals, because his prose is incredible.
frozenman on 24/10/2009 at 22:51
Has anyone else caught the show From Socrates to Sartre on PBS at awful hours of the night? Basically this crabby old woman T.Z. Lavine sits in a chair for a full hour and just lectures about every philosopher- it's amazing stuff, and my friends and I ended up watching her show several times cause we'd be up very late and very drunk, and it was always a wonder to watch her recite line after line about ontological imperatives, and so on and so forth (i've never been keen on philosophy). Occasionally she would stand up, and walk to a slightly different position in the room and then return to her subject. The only other interruption was an occasional 'graphic' that was simply a bullet-list of things she just or is currently saying.
demagogue on 25/10/2009 at 00:03
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Background: Kant explicitly says it is a sin to lie under any circumstances, even for a greater cause. His whole point is that one should treat human beings as ends, not means, and by lying to someone you are treating them as a means to a different end. Kant insists that this is a hard and fast rule.
Yes, but note the rules themselves aren't set in stone. Like you say, they all depend on whether you are treating another person as an end, not a means. Lying isn't any different; it's only bad if it treats the Nazi guys like a means and not respecting them as humans in rational control of their actions. The keystone for Kant is always preserving individuals' autonomy, which he defines as the rational control over your willpower. How might lying be treating these guys more like humans and telling the truth treating them more like objects or animals, a means to an end? There's a good answer to that:
The thing about these Nazi thugs is that they bully their own rational reflection over their actions aside, through conditioning or genocidal hate or whatever, so when the ask where Jews are, they are not exercising rational autonomy. While they might have a first-order preference/impulse to want to kill innocent people, under rational reflection they'd have a higher-order preference not to (and it's the higher order preference we're called on to respect in Kant's system). They'd rather be good citizens and have a good family and job, but the irrational conditioning fucks with their minds so they can't get in touch with rational reflection (unless they are just mentally ill and have no capacity for rational reflection; then I think Kant would allow us to just lock them up in a mental ward because they aren't rational beings but basically acting as animals that look like humans; and certainly "lying" wouldn't be an issue). So by definition they aren't in touch with their autonomy.
Since autonomy is always the keystone for Kant ("end" is as "autonomy" does), I think it's within his system to say (though Kant didn't distinguish 1st order & 2nd order preferences like later people did; but it's still in the spirit of his system), if you really want to treat this guy like a human, as an end and not a means, thus preserving his autonomy and rational control over himself, you'd certainly be allowed to deprive him of the drug that feeds his irrationality and animal-like behavior (and more to the point, it'd be wrong to let him have it) -- get him as far away from Jews as possible (even through lying), work to end the Nazi regime and WWII, possibly lock him up to force him to reflect on his actions, and when it's all over get him a job in the suburbs so he has a hope to salvage whatever humanity he has left (or, again, if he's beyond rational control over himself even in peacetime and is mentally ill, lock him up like the dangerous animal he has become). On the other hand, handing the drug over to him when he slovenly asks for it like a conditioned dog is, frankly, treating him like conditioned dog ... You know he's fucked up in the head and you're stoking his perversity like you'd make a dog jump in the air with a biscuit. This is how lying to these guys is actually treating them more like (potential) rational humans than giving them what they want.
Fragony on 25/10/2009 at 07:14
I second Sophy's World, it's an excellent overview, and it's just a fun read. In the category easy to read tons of depth I recommend Sartre's 'Nausea', it's more of a novel, it's really really good. If you can read French get the French version some is lost in translation.
Mr.Duck on 25/10/2009 at 09:19
Frag - Always been interested in Sartre, but he strikes me as one to thread over him carefully, specially if one's still green in their Philosophy 101.
Still, I hope to eventually catch up to him and dig into his funk, lazy eye and all.
Alas, I doth not know French, just a few words and such, nothing close to being able to read and fully comprehend a book.
In any case, thanks for piling up the suggestions, happy to get so many good responses :)
Fragony on 25/10/2009 at 09:28
It's easily read as mere novel, and it's should be, but it's one of the best commentary's on society out there, it sometimes gets to him. Really cynical Frencies get like that, but again really really good.
Mr.Duck on 25/10/2009 at 09:45
Hey, if a man can look at the bleak face of humanity and still go "Eh, what the Hell..." and live life, dude's got to be worth his beans, eh?
:)
I do remember a phrase of Sartre...and I (mis)quote: "Hell is other people".
Goddamn...
Fragony on 25/10/2009 at 10:01
Ever, always
Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds, -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved,- still warm,- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
