I don't get philosophy

>Not appreciating knowledge and understanding itself
You were never meant to read anything user

I'm big on different ways of interpreting the world. Different opinions and thoughts to apply to your own life is interesting.

Your complaints about lacking of solid thought of action is a broad statement not applicable to all forms of philosophy. Take Confucius for example, wisdom grounded in real experiences.

Your criticisms could apply to Kant or Nietzsche, A lot of their work isn't tangible in modern day living, but it's definitely something worth thinking about.

This might seem like a provocative post, but the truth is that women on average don't get philosophy as much. And it's not because they aren't as intelligent, but simply because they evolved differently and have different "survival strategies".
I knew a very smart girl who understood the philosophical problems, but they just didn't affect her on a personal/emotional level like they affected the boys.

For colored people it might be similar, but--at least for some of them--it's also a matter of low intelligence.

(Obviously this is all generalizing on loose stats, the average man doesn't get philosophy either.)

I was just saying this to my friend the other day. The lack of any imagery when I read philosophy hurts my fucking brain.

I understand that philosophy has great utility once you learn how to implement it into your life, but I was just exhausted from the fact that I hadn't thought of anything that was real for over 2 hours, just ideas.

Sounds so stupid when you type that out though, I know I sound like a retard.

>ideas aren't real

the state of Veeky Forums

You know what I meant. What's the difference between ideas and everything else in the world?

Come on Veeky Forums, gimme the word.

They are immaterial?

>I understand that philosophy has great utility once you learn how to implement it into your life
sophists get ut

They told me to buy "What Happened" and that Trump actually loves illegal aliens of foreign nationalities

yea kinda, but math is immaterial and I can still grab on to that easily.

And this is the post that convinced me Veeky Forums is too full of try-hard pseuds, and I better get out.

There are two problems with philosophy for laymen.
First, they don't know where to start, secondly, they don't know how to read philosophical texts.

For example, a lot of the guys I know, which dabbled with philosophy started with Nitzsche. Big mistake. Nitzsche is so full of references you won't understand him at all, if you don't know said references. It's like trying to understand what Hilbert Spaces are without knowing anything about simple calculus.
If texts like these were written in a certain formalism instead of everyday language you'd instantly know you don't understand them - but one of the nasty things about philosophy is that a lot of people think they understood a text without getting anything.

And you can't read philosophical texts like you read a novel: you read them like you were talking with the philosopher: you constantly ask him why something is true and how it fits in his system - you don't simply accept anything. It's less reading a text than wrestling with a text.

Upload a video of you grabbing onto a differential equation please

Challenge accepted.

>LMAO METAPHYSICS
Why was Nietzsche such a brainlet?

mind-independent mind-dependent

objects become sense data in your mind its in your mind your sense perceptions exist in your mind differing from the supposed object as a sense perception of the object blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblha

I'm curious about how do you get emotionally affected by philosophical problems.

It'll click one day user. It might take years, but don't assume philosophy is worthless because it seems fake. Take a break if you need it. It does have consequences in the "real world", it just takes time to learn the language it speaks. Insights can be "boring" too. What you wrote is an insight you would not have had without investigation.

"Grace" is real. Either you understand and 'see' what philosophers are attempting to capture or you don't. You're fine either way. why are you studying philosophy in the first place? Maybe try something else and come back periodically to see if it captures you.

What's wrong with that? If your thought does not contain an action of any kind, it probably has not much of value at all. The main problem with most political language today, is that it uses vague ideals instead of actual action terms. So people just say "we need socialism" instead of "We need to tax almost everyone much higher in order to give people healthcare". Or they'll use vague sayings like "Trump is destroying the foundations of our democracy", which really means nothing at all.

In general, the more abstract the language, the worse it is. This is why Orwell had such a problem with the political writing of his time. The language was so removed from action that it really meant nothing whatsoever.

Start with the Greeks.

>It is so abstract that it never seems to have any consequence in the real world at all.
Nietzsche influenced the development of the Nazi regime and the modern globalist machine, Marx influenced the development of the USSR, Alexander the Great was influenced by Aristotle, Napoleon read much Rousseau and Voltaire. Many key political figures were influenced by writers. Philosophy may appear abstract but it involves real life observations and artistically weaving new values for the world to mold itself by; basically, all moral systems are the fruits of philosophers.

I really don't know why someone "should" read philosophy, is just that my brain is always doing the same wankery that you find in philosophy books , I realized this in HS
I've been reading Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche and Heidegger by my own and I'm thinking about going to college for a philosophy major because I don't see why not
I've noticed I enjoy literature a lot more the more philosophy I read
I don't see how philosophy is more or less useless that everything else in life, I don't understand why something being "useless" is a bad thing
I guess that If I naturally tended to autistically observe nature I would be reading about science and maybe majoring in something like that. In fact, when I was a child I used to enjoy looking at educational books with pictures of animals or the space and I knew the names of lots of dinosaurs and the body organs, I don't know when did I start focusing this other things. Probably when I started getting a lot into music and learned to play guitar in my early teens.

Thinking and consciousness is pretty much what differences us from other animals, I say just keep doing it, a sharp and trained mind is as "necessary", or even more, than a sharp and trained body. I guess thats as close as a "justification" for philosophy can be

Well religion is philosophy, and look how much it shaped the world

>glory to sciense am I rite guise xD
Leave

Do you happen to be a girl?

The issue with philosophy is that it simply does not, in most cases apply anything to reality.

There are lots of internal justifications for democracy in philosophy for example, but currently there's not one respectable democray in the world for example, yet filosophers hold this as something amazing way of government.

the discord between concept and reality will always undermine the credibility of philosophers.

>you can't read philosophical texts like you read a novel
>not reading novels critically

>What annoys me about philosophy is the lack of solid thought
Might as well start writing some criticisms of them, champ. Who knows, you might just become the hottest commodity in academic market.

>The issue with philosophy is that it simply does not, in most cases apply anything to reality.
This is a really low level analysis of philosophy. In reality, it's the elite few who are guiding the entirety of civilization down a certain path, and everyone else is simply following that torrent, whether they are aware of it or not. And the elite few are always partaking in high intellectual discourse in some fashion or another; high intellectual discourse COMES FROM the elite few.

tl;dr philosophy IS the reality and the only one out there.

in reality they're (as in philosophers) disconnected from reality and the discord between concept and reality still after 2000 years of thinking cannot be fixed.

power-elites run the world based on greed and lust of power curently and that doesn't take understanding of philosophy. i doubt hillary could critique kant's fourth antimony like heidegger.

you could argue philosophy is a guiding star for people but that's a failure too when you consider the example of democracy.

>he thinks Hillary is the elite
Lmao
Everyone who is from the elite had a real education, intellectual stuff is normal to them, not something they have to "force" themselves into.
Someone can be greedy and still highly intelligent, and also interested in philosophy. Dumb frogposter

Are you actually this retarded?

ah that's an interesting way of putting it.

they can only exist with you

There's so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to start.
>The issue with philosophy is that it simply does not, in most cases apply anything to reality.
>the discord between concept and reality will always undermine the credibility of philosophers.
There's no science which is more down to earth than philosophy if you pursue it seriously. I'm pretty sure, you misunderstand the concept of philosophy entirely. You don't occupy yourself with philosophy to change the world, you occupy yourself with philosophy to change yourself and to become a better man. Plus, you gain an incredible amount of analytical skills you can apply to pretty much every real-life problem. A mathematician goes home after work and becomes a normal man, math doesn't heavily impact how he acts, how he sees the world and so on - a philosopher goes home after work and stays a philosopher; he can't put it down because everything he does is concerned by philosophy: how he acts, how he sees the world, all the problems he faces, how he interacts with his environment and so on.

>There are lots of internal justifications for democracy in philosophy for example, but currently there's not one respectable democray in the world for example, yet filosophers hold this as something amazing way of government.
Take that as an example: you can call a wolf a sheep, but it's still a wolf. If someone explains to you what a sheep is and why it's a useful animal, do you really tell him: oh, but that wolf there, someone called a sheep, doesn't look like a sheep, therefore, your explanation of sheeps is useless? You simply confuse a label with the real thing. (Btw. I don't know which philosophers you read or talk to, but not a lot of them hold democracy in high regards, they more likely think of it as an necessary evil - you know: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others".)

I only read philosophy during one of my existential periods. It saved my life basically. But now that I'm a productive member of society, I feel no need for it. I mostly just read science papers now.

Read through this twice and all I see are silly non arguments and generalizations. At least i had some caveats in mine.

Hillary isn't of the elite few nor is she guiding the entirety of civilization. Those people aren't in the public eye; they're too wise to get caught in that web.

Oh yeah, the raptors and the nazis in the moon are the guiding elite.

Please.

>muh illuminati
If you don't think the Clintons are part of the elite class, you're a moron.

Not even 2 minutes and we have raptors, moon Nazis and Illuminati, lol.

Philosophers are among that elite few. Almost none of them have ever been in the public eye.

>Rule the United States for 36 years with Bushes.
>not the de facto elite.

lol does it hurt too much admitting your concept doesnt match reality?

>Philosophers are among that elite few.
How do you know?

Reality is a lot deeper than you imagine. The ones who create the language you parse the world with are in control in a greater sense than any politician has ever been, and the most famous politicians in history have always been directly influenced by those people.

Now this is what I call grasping at straws, lmao. I'm sure Derrida was in control when Hillary tore Libya apart just because she wanted.

Ethical philosophy can help you develop an idea of how things "should" be done. It covers everything from behavior to resource management. Conventional wisdom states that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but what if the few could make better use of those resources? Look up deontological ethics and branch off from there. It's really interesting stuff.

There are a few philosophical problems that seem like dead-ends, like free will, where two or more opposing schools of thought play an endless game of tug-o-war.

Also, like others have said, it's knowledge for knowledge's sake. Even if you don't see how it applies to the real world it can still color your thought and help you see things differently. It can be indirectly applied in other fields.

Daily reminder that noumena don't even exist and there are only phenomena :^)

>language has more control than concrete actions
miss me with that pomo shit

Well, in a metaphorical way he's right.
Muslims for example preserved Aristotle but ultimately rejected philosophy. (Averroes and Avicenna for example influenced the Christian world deeply but didn't have much impact in Muslim countries). The influence of Aristotle led to a rennaissance of the Christian world and to modernity while the Muslim world stayed and still stays pretty much medieval.
The legislation of multiple countries is based on Kant's Ethics - therefore, you might argue, Kant has had more impact on legislation than most (if not all) politicians. And his metaphysics influenced the Copenhagen interpretation deeply.
Therefore, yes, philosophers influenced the world a lot - and in a metaphorical way, they
>are guiding the entirety of civilization
like he said.

>math doesn't heavily impact how he acts, how he sees the world and so on
uh

Oh I'm sure Clinton had Kant's ethics in mind when she was hammering down cellphones with Huma and Awan.

language is the lens, conceptualisation and stylisation that you see the world through

I was actually thinking the same after I wrote it down - not a good example, I guess.

>this is the best the non-philosophical mind has to offer

really makes you think

>when Hillary tore Libya apart just because she wanted
>when she was hammering down cellphones with Huma and Awan
These are surface level events. You aren't acknowledging the historical subsystems in place which gave rise to them, the conceptual designs of legislation between countries, the individual values holding them together, the economic systems, the scientific, technological and cultural developments, etc. From tens of thousands of years ago, all of these things became areas of conceptualization, development, and study in order to move civilization forward, and they have been orchestrated by and increasingly fleshed out by village elders and shamans and scribes and sages and philosophers over time. There is a reason why the image of the King and his Merlin is ancient and still so popular, because it is how things work.

typical philosophical babble

try to show me where it has ACTUALLY done anything

Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, Hitler modeled aspects of the Third Reich after ideas from Nietzsche.

If you want a simple answer the founders of the United States read plenty of philosophers such as Locke and Montesquieu for example and is how the constitution came to be.

That's a moronic thing to say. No one is saying the ghost of Kant is pulling the strings behind everything of note. Cause and effect isn't always as simple as that. We're saying that Kant has transformed our societies view of what ought to be and if you can't fathom why that's significant then you're a turbo pleb.

and Great was the one that went on to achieve things in reality while Aristotle was cucked.

and FFs were the ones that formed the united states, not Locke or Montesquieu

>the teacher has nothing to do with what the student ends up accomplishing
Well that's pretty ignorant.

No shit.

Any teacher will admit his influence was minimal at best.
And thats whats wrong with philosophy in general. Outside of Aurelius they've all been second string fiddlers.

What a useless thread. Just like philosophy.

>Any teacher will admit his influence was minimal at best.
Whatever the teacher may admit has little to do with what really happens. The teacher shapes the student. And if we take this to a more abstract level, "philosophy" is like the teacher while "society" is the student, and it has always been this way and always will be.

I doubt you have really read that much philosophy anyway. Aside from Plato and anyone heavily invested in his tradition, most philosophy is directly related to life, because it is really just a sophisticated form of wisdom, and wisdom is accumulated experience (of life) transformed into a value judgment (to live by).

>reading NEETzsche

There's your problem.

Abstract you fucking pleb

There are important things in philosophy even beyond the wankery. If you think philosophy doesn't apply to life, think about the analytical skills it gives you. Philosophy should be studied in high school because it develops critical thinking. To put it in David Memers Wallace's terms, with philosophy you can, at any time, understand that what you have in front of you is water. You don't just take informations from the outside world without context or meaning. You understand exactly what information you are recieving and what is its message. You can think in a different way about things happening around you

The guy's pic spoke plently, let's not talk to him anymore

I think the clue was in the filename mate.

What philosophy do the Illuminati read?
Not a meme question what should I read to get into that
>inb4 conspiracy theorists

>What annoys me about philosophy is the lack of solid thought, or "action words". It is so abstract that it never seems to have any consequence in the real world at all.

This is, ironically enough, a philosophical statement, and you're just being very particular about your philosophy (being an utilitarian). Without any pretension of claiming where this started, we are mostly raised today as utilitarians, meaning we learn since children that we should seek "utility" in everything we do (work in x to get money, do y correctly because it is useful to achieve the optimal z, do your best always! etc etc.). Nevertheless, this is a heavily rigged way of thinking, since utility is much harder to define and conciliate with the world, than our upbringing assumes. But it's still "valid" in the sense that you can think about it at all.

And in the last sentence is where your questions come in. Philosophy seems strange to you because you seek insight from it, and you seek some kind of utility. But how could you find that in here, if philosophy is the very thing you should do to even think about utility from outside of utility? You're right, it's all abstract, because in philosophy you "think about thinking". It's basically what you do when you lay down in bed at night and can't sleep with random thoughts about life, except with much more capacity of developing such [apparently] random thoughts.

So, although it might be a disappointing answer, I don't think there is any particular something for you to learn by reading philosophy, because at the moment you conflate every kind of wisdom with "utility". Does that mean nothing will happen if you keep bashing your head against philosophy books? Quite on the contrary, you could simply read enough to spark some thought that actually disturbs you, and that would be enough for you to drop the pretext of being useful. Or you can read about your own outlook on life (by looking for utilitarianism books, simply), and see if that's actually what you think about the world. Or you can keep on living without reading any more philosophy, and you would hardly miss anything, because you would never know what was there to be missed.

Whatever philosophy has become, it's foundations shouldn't be forgotten, like Socrates questioning those who profess to know but they actually don't.

how brainlet do you have to be to be unable to form imagery about literally existence itself. anything you could possibly conjure in your mind is on some level representative of existence

>fiction is philosophy

So read something else with more "action words" lol.

Philosophy is the white man's search for truth and meaning, rooted in his unique Faustian spirit and desire to understand the world. It's not for women and non-whites, and when jews are allowed to participate they pervert it and try to destroy it, and we end up with nihilistic, backwards ideologies like postmodernism.

>search for truth and meaning
You mean an outlet for pent up aggressive strength that desires to shape the world in its own image.

No, I meant truth and meaning, you low-t mulatto faggot.

t. Enlightenment pleb. Nietzsche poops on you, kid.

You know nothing of Nietzsche and don't belong in threads discussing white man philosophy.

>There's no science which is more down to earth than philosophy if you pursue it seriously.

Hey Veeky Forums is there a word for when someone constructs an argument so that they can always deceive or shift goal posts so that they will always appear right?
For example:
>Communism is the best form of government IF done correctly
Which implies that when communism has been tried and has failed it wasn't real communism
Or like in the post i'm replying to:
>if you pursue it seriously.
Meaning that philosphy isn't more down to earth then it has never been studied seriously implying it's never truly been studied.

It's more than just an if statement. I just don't know what it's called.

I think you are thinking about a form of fallacy called "no true scotsman", which you would know if you had read some philosophy.


Retard

>he didn't read the preface or first chapter of BGE
Will to power, not will to truth, bud.

I agree. Philosophy is for tryhards.

This thread is about philosophy general. Try to pay attention if you plan to land any zingers.

David Hume.

Woah there honey. A guy can play chess without learning about the en passant, they can play woodwind instruments and never hear of an oboe.
Also i asked for the word. And i find it hard to believe that English doesn't have a single word to describe "no true scotsman". Try reading comprehension before you start flinging out insults.

Retard.

/r/questing pic related for purple pill

Go to bed, Russell.