I recall at some point, maybe in Daybreak...

I recall at some point, maybe in Daybreak, Nietzsche saying that he for a long time entertained the thought that the philosopher is a symptom of decadence. That philosophy itself, which originates in ancient Greece, was a sign that we were falling into decadence, and despite how great the Greeks were, they are something that should be overcome.

It's interesting, isn't it? For those who have actually read enough philosophical texts to know exactly how much power they have, isn't it a little breathtaking to think that it is all really born of a disease of idleness and having too much complacency, a spiritual decline into inactivity (i.e. thought)?

Thought is very useful. We wouldn't have made as much, if any, progress in the past ~4000 years without it. And yet it seems like an unhealthy obsession. It's useless when power isn't associated with it.

This also got me thinking: people who think a lot, and all of us on here, the more we all think — don't we usually become softer for it? Because thinking is inactive, the more we do it, the less we are engaged with others' "warrior" energy (to borrow a term from pop psychotherapy) and thus we utilize our own energy less. Then why do so many thinkers turn very harsh, leaning eventually towards the right, establishing hierarchy with their principles and becoming very intellectually demanding of themselves and others? Is it just that energy which we can't get rid of? But doesn't that mean that there IS a healthiness about it?

Clearly I am confused, but I thought it would make for an interesting thread.

You don't sound like you've spend very long on this whole 'thinking' lark.

Elaborate. Note I'm partially playing devil's advocate just to strike a conversation.

I feel some people spend so much energy thinking as a symptom of feeling weak and not wanting to take action. Thinking isnt as much of a cause of not taking action, instead it is consecuence of fear. But thats just my opinion

Carry on kind sir, everybody loves a good thread about the neetch

will be monitoring

And yet, the most intellectual cultures are clearly the most aggressive and imperialist. Not only that, but out of philosophy came the sciences, which allowed Europe to (briefly) conquer the world.

Also, this is just a false dichotomy. Socrates was a soldier, a veteran of the wars against Sparta, he fought at Ampipholis and Delium.

Marcus Aurelius was an emperor who spent a lot of time waging war against the Germans.

There are modern examples - Wittgenstein fought in the Italian front.

Thinking might not be physically active, but this does not mean that one cannot do both.

>Arabia

Descartes as well. Supposedly he started writing Meditations while wintering on campaign.

>b-but this particular example of a philosopher having done something!
No. Nietzsche discusses a general, civilizational habit of abstract thought.

Philosophy can only be done by those in comfortable places of body.

A poor black slave in the early 1800s wasn't going to be doing much philosophizing, let alone publishing. You're going to be focused on surviving and doing the work required to survive.

yea, and the more philosophical our civilization became, the more active it became, the industrial revolution, imperialism, going to fucking space would not have happened without philosophy, science, maths etc which arises out of 'inactive' thinking. Of course thats a silly way of looking at it, thinking is not 'inactivity' , its mental activity, and it actually has physical effect - the brain uses calories

So what yall think of Marx quote, something like, philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it

(which is a very general, and faulty statement, given its not true... but seems like what yall are getting at)

if art is a distraction from suffering, and from the suffering that comes from sedentary, then philosophy is the act of inspecting it.
so yes?
philosophy is born when there are no longer any problems to fix, so we must discuss the problem of problems,
aka meaning is gone so let's find out what that means

most philosophers prior to Marx made up their ideas and then tried to make it fit into the world

Marx looked around and saw what was happening, developed his philosophy off that, thus making it instantly applicable to some extent

but they didn't write philosophy while they were in the midst of battle

>instantly applicable
>marx's philosophy
How exactly does one arrive at this conclusion. Which part of Marx's philosophy applied to reality in a way that was successful

>Metaphysics are just ideology, inapplicable to reality
>We can look at who has had what over history and find trends
>People are alienated from themselves and their work when they get reduced to being a single cog in a machine

these are all pretty applicable immediately

>to some extent

>we are engaged with others' "warrior" energy (to borrow a term from pop psychotherapy)
fuck you, Rober More is not popsych

You're fucking retarded. Have you ever even read Nietzsche or do you just feel compelled to share your mediocre and commonplace opinion on science thinking?

on science and*

>Metaphysics are just ideology, inapplicable to reality

Said every retard ever.

>We can look at who has had what over history and find trends

Whilst ignoring the ones we don't like.

>People are alienated from themselves and their work when they get reduced to being a single cog in a machine

Is someone who works in a dildo factory any worse off from being "alienated from their work"?

What is more, we can generally say that if people see what the machine is capable of, or if they can perceive the part they play on a grand scale, that they are quite happy - or at least content - to be a cog.

The point is, for all the great things the classical world did that were lost in Western Europe for a long time, the classical world did fall. Well, not really so much in Greece. Not until the renaissance was in full swing anyway. Uh...

>unironically believing in progress
shiggydiggy man

Philosophy is impractical, except perhaps for convincing yourself you are morally spotless and happier than believed.
- Bertrand Russell

This was essentially Rousseau's argument in his First Discourse. It's a common trope in Romantic literature.

Yea, I've read N. so what.

I am not championing science and Western intellectual culture. I know that Nietzsche's views are also quite complex and varied. I am simply showing how the view expounded in the OP is more problematic than it seems prima facie

It doesn't matter if it was successful, the main point is that Marx attempted to build a philosophy that would be applicable to creating a better civilization. Of course, like all Utopias, it would never be able to actually take place.

This activity [philosophy] contains the essential element of a negation, because to produce is also to destroy; Philosophy in producing itself, has the natural as its starting point in order to abrogate it again. Philosophy thus makes its appearance at a time when the Mind of a people has worked its way out of the indifference and stolidity of the first life of nature, as it has also done from the standpoint of the emotional, so that the individual aim has blotted itself out. But as Mind passes on from its natural form, it also proceeds from its exact code of morals and the robustness of life to reflection and conception. The result of this is that it lays hold of and troubles this real, substantial kind of existence, this morality and faith, and thus the period of destruction commences. Further progress is then made through the gathering up of thought within itself. It may be said that Philosophy first commences when a race for the most part has left its concrete life, when separation and change of class have begun, and the people approach toward their fall; when a gulf has arisen between inward strivings and external reality, and the old forms of Religion, &c., are no longer satisfying; when Mind manifests indifference to its living existence or rests unsatisfied therein, and moral life becomes dissolved. Then it is that Mind takes refuge in the clear space of thought to create for itself a kingdom of thought in opposition to the world of actuality, and Philosophy is the reconciliation following upon the destruction of that real world which thought has begun. When Philosophy with its abstractions paints grey in grey, the freshness and life of youth has gone, the reconciliation is not a reconciliation in the actual, but in the ideal world. Thus the Greek philosophers held themselves far removed from the business of the State and were called by the people idlers, because they withdrew themselves within the world of thought.

you're thinking of the Discourse, and you are thinking that because he says it in the bloody book

>This also got me thinking: people who think a lot, and all of us on here, the more we all think — don't we usually become softer for it? Because thinking is inactive, the more we do it, the less we are engaged with others' "warrior" energy (to borrow a term from pop psychotherapy) and thus we utilize our own energy less. Then why do so many thinkers turn very harsh, leaning eventually towards the right, establishing hierarchy with their principles and becoming very intellectually demanding of themselves and others? Is it just that energy which we can't get rid of? But doesn't that mean that there IS a healthiness about it?

you're on the right path here buddy, ignore all the practically dead shitposters here and the dead rhetoricians.
it's ALL about energy.
"warrior energy" just about sums up the bullshit that we're forced to subscribe to and why psychology is a fucking fraud.
the reason why the right is so attractive right now is because they're energized. the left lacks energy, everybody's a fucking moderate, they look at the far right and see them energized and think that being energized is a bad thing. it isn't, it's just that it's in their fucking retarded hands.
politics aside. energy is the foundation on which everything functions and it also thoroughly affects how you view things. and it's all yours don't let them tell you otherwise.
freddy should be ignored along with any rhetorician who speaks in masturbatory schizophrenic phraseology. arguing,debating and reading might be enjoyable but taking it more seriously than the world itself will leave you with a dead static reality full of descriptions and no meaning.

Lmao

Psychological and physical well-being, as it's the result of millions of years of natural evolution, cannot really exist outside the forms of hunter-gatherer communities we spent most of our historical time in. Nietzsche never took the logic leap to actual advocate the revival of the forms of crude communism that existed in the ancient times before "individuals" existed... to reestablishment that form of gemeinwesen would require rejecting domestication [i.e. civilisation] and technological development altogether.
But obviously to many forces have been set in motion at this point to stop homogenisation and civilisation so all we can do, if you want to be a part of the vanguard, is play your part in crafting how the reality of post-humanism will be dealt with as a technological and aesthetic concern.

Modernity just keeps moving forward everyday leaving more damaged, controlled, spiritless, and aggressive human material in its wake. Any "political energy" you see today will just generate mass murder, ecological devastation, unfreedoms, conformity and new forms of domination yet to be imagined.

>Any "political energy" you see today will just generate mass murder, ecological devastation, unfreedoms, conformity and new forms of domination yet to be imagined.
yes if it goes unchallenged.
the right has the political energy right now because even most prominent lefties are moderates. the "radical left" is not the radical left they are fucking moderate leftists and they will eventually get eaten up by the far right whether they like it or not.

Philosophy is not productive.