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Current time: March 29, 2024, 6:36 am

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Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
#31
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
I'm fine with philosophy as long as no one mixes philosophy with religion.
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#32
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
Philosophy is haram cause it leads the impressionable to materialism
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#33
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
(September 14, 2014 at 6:25 pm)DramaQueen Wrote: Philosophy is haram cause it leads the impressionable to materialism

Or to any one of the many other philosophical outlooks there are.
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#34
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
I don't know, I'm not much of a philosopher but I would have to go with not really. From what I do know (mostly from my younger brother, who writes a very popular philosophy based webcomic http://existentialcomics.com/ and is well versed in it) philosophical branches that come into conflict with science are normally abandoned or not taken seriously. Also Science itself was originally a branch of philosophy in ancient Greece and things such as Atoms were originally philosophized before they were proven by science.
[Image: dcep7c.jpg]
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#35
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
(September 14, 2014 at 6:15 pm)MusicLovingAtheist Wrote: I'm fine with philosophy as long as no one mixes philosophy with religion.

When you do that, you get theology.
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#36
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
When philosophy, as it so often has, departs from it's central role of determining how we should live and becomes an academic party game than yes, it has over stepped it's boundaries. A problem also exists if we all have different definitions of what actually constitutes 'philosophy'.
The Human Race is insane.
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#37
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
(September 15, 2014 at 9:01 am)Dissily Mordentroge Wrote: When philosophy, as it so often has, departs from it's central role of determining how we should live and becomes an academic party game than yes, it has over stepped it's boundaries. A problem also exists if we all have different definitions of what actually constitutes 'philosophy'.

Why do you assume that the central role of philosophy is to "determine how we should live"?
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#38
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
Philosophy teaches us what we already know. There’s an irony; the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange. Thats how those examples worked, the hypotheticals with which we began, with their mix of playfulness and sobriety. Its also how these philosophical books work. Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing, but, and here’s the risk: once the familiar turns strange, its never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be unthought, or unknown. What makes this enterprise difficult, but also riveting, is that moral and political philosophy is a story, and you don’t know where the story will lead, but what you do know is that the story is about you.

Those are the presonal risks. Now what of the political risks? One way of introducing a course like this would be to promise you that by reading these books and debating these issues you will become a better more responsible citizen. You will examine the presuppositions of public poilicy, you will hone your political judgement, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs. But this would be a partial and misleading promise. Political philosophy for the most part hasn’t worked that way. You have to allow for the possibility, that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one, or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one. And thats because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating activity, and you see this going back to Socratesm theres a dialogue, the Gorgias in which one of Socrates’ friends Calicles tries to talk him out of philosophising. Calicles tells Socrates “philosophy is a pretty toy, if one indulges in it with moderation at the right time of life, but if one pursues it further than one should it is absolute ruin. Take my advice,” Calicles says “abandon argument. Learn the accomplishments of active life. Take for your models not those people who spend their time on these petty quibbles, but those who have a good livelihood and reputation and many other blessings.” So Calicles is really saying to Socrates, “Quit philosophising. Get real. Go to business school.”And Calicles did have a point. He had a point because philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and from settled beliefs.

Those are the risks; personal and political. And in the face of these risks there is a characteristic evasion. The name of the evasion is scepticism, its the idea… well it goes something like this: we didn’t resolve once and for all, either the cases of the principles we were arguing when we began, and if Aristotle and Locke and Kant and Mill haven’t solved these questions after all of these years, who are we to think that we here in Sanders Theatre over the course of a semester can resolve them. And so maybe its just a matter of each person having his or her own principles and theres nothing more to be said about it, no way of reasoning. Thats the evasion, the evasion of scepticism. To which I would offer the following reply: Its true, these questions have been debated for a very long time, but the very fact that they have recurred and persisted, may suggest that though they’re impossible in one sense, they’re unavoidable in another. And the reason they’re unavoidable, the reason they’re inescapable is that we live some answer to these questions everyday.

So scepticism, just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflection is no solution. Immanuel Kant described very well the problem with scepticism when he wrote “scepticism is a resting place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings. But it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement. Simply to acquiesce in scepticism,” Kant wrote, “can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.” I’ve tried to suggest through these stories and these arguments, some sense of the risks and temptations, of the perils and the possibilites. I would simply conclude by saying that the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, and to see where is might lead. Thank you very much.”

- Michael Sandel
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#39
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
Lao Shizi, please put quote tags around your quotes.
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#40
RE: Has Philosophy over stepped it's boundaries?
(September 15, 2014 at 10:18 am)genkaus Wrote:
(September 15, 2014 at 9:01 am)Dissily Mordentroge Wrote: When philosophy, as it so often has, departs from it's central role of determining how we should live and becomes an academic party game than yes, it has over stepped it's boundaries. A problem also exists if we all have different definitions of what actually constitutes 'philosophy'.

Why do you assume that the central role of philosophy is to "determine how we should live"?
Because how we think is absolutely critical to our survival. However if anyone wants to make it no more than an intellectual party game with no relevance to our lives, who am I to stop them?
The Human Race is insane.
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