Is continental philosophy anything more than a giant circlejerk?

I've got my bachelor in philosophy two months ago. Uhray. But I've decided to stop there. So did the vast majority of my comrades.
Honestly, we're downright appailed. So, that's Hegel? That downright retarded pile of sophisms that the phenomenology of spirit is one of the greatest books of my domain? What the hell. I've came here to understand this book. I've understood it now. But why did I waste three years for that kind of authors when I could read Spinoza just right, whom is way more interesting and closer to the real world.
Why does academic philosophy still exist? Who is allowing it to be there, still? My professors were philistines, they never could answer any criticism, as once one get to the roots of the problems, one can only be embarassed. The problem isn't the reasoning. The problem lies in the predicates. Ex falso sequitur quodlibet. That's how I'd summarize it. Why don't we use the scientific methods more? I'm by no means a positivist, but I think contemporary research is way more accurate as a base of discussion than Aristotle's "De Anima". But telling that to a professor only got me teeth grinding from him.
Did the honest minds simply left philosophy and let it at its fate? Will it die to be reborn from its ashes? Is it alive in another place? Or are we only left with deep, thick, unescapable nihilism?

Sounds like your professors suck, because mine did literally all those things you mentioned that yours didn't.

They made Hegel, and many other philosophers interesting and compelling, without taking stances.

>the real world
lol. Read more

Well it's not a conscious circlejerk, I believe these people are actually convinced they are doing serious work. I don't know which is worse though. Read analytic philosophy and when you're looking for nice prose then read some fiction literature.

My professors are a problem, indeed. But so is Hegel, that's my point. I don't care how you make Hegel look good. I've read his book directly. And it's jjust pure dogmatism. Create large concepts, play with them, make a book. Could apply that to a lot of continental philosophers, such as Deleuze, his books on cinema are masterpieces on that aspect.
Sure, buddy. You got my point.
Agreed. Alas, if I knew, I woudn't have picked that as my university program. I'm saddened to see so many people getting trapped there and never hearing about pragmatic or analytic philosophy for more than 2 to 4 hours a year, which is far from sufficient compared to all the bullshit we ingest.

Realistically it was probably because you either went to school with a shitty Philosophy department or the professor didn't want to deal with a whiny undergrad.

Most likely a combination of both.

>Create large concepts, play with them, make a book.

That's what like 90% of Philosophy is. Rarely do philosophers ever go into detailed thought experiments. Many are more concerned with the big picture, like free will, humanity, etc. I don't understand why that's bad.

But it was not. I'm a good student, and was very well liked until the last few months of my degree. I'm not the only one having issues with how things currently works, too. To be honest, I think your argument is kind of pointless.
That's bad when you're making philosophical systems. They make systems that works, only because they're reducing reality to some large dimensions (for Deleuze, to be concrete, it's movement, affection and action), and then press it down on what they're currently analising, only to completely miss the core of it. Their system works, yes, but if it really reflect the reality of their object once every 50 attempts, it's just intellectual masturbation. Philosophers such as Schopenhauer observed first, and even when making systems, they did not make it a priority, giving a philosophy that's still worth reading for itself, and not its influence on others thinkers.

You're implying that analytic philosophy is much better and not a giant circlejerk. Yeah, nice dreams there.

I had a better experience studying philosophy. We spent much more time with the analytic and pragmatic philosophers. The continental hacks were no more than a small footnote.

I'm not, but I don't know them as well, and what they say make a lot more sense to me compared to the authors I studied. If that's the case, well, I only have my eyes to cry.

If you were in an analytic department you'd have the same attitude towards continental philosophy. I went to an explicittly analytic uni and I'd fucking love to study Hegel instead.

>That's bad when you're making philosophical systems.
Is it really though? If I understand you right, you're saying that you have to work from the bottom up. For example, if you were to define Justice, you would have to define Justice first for yourself, then for your peers, then your community, state, etc. And maybe eventually you would have defined Justice for humanity.
Which if that is what you're saying, then can you give an example of something Hegel said that suffers from not doing this? Because most of his stuff is concerned with the fact that these things can be applied in every situation, or in reality, and still hold up. Which is why he's such a famous and studied philosopher.

If you're talking about something else then please clarify

Well fuck philosophy then. A shame that some authors like Spinoza or Schopehauer got me so motivated that I dedicated 8 years of my life studying them. Time to mourn.

Also pls respond, I'm pretty interested in what I think you're saying, but I may be too much of a brainlet to understand at first

The point is, reality just doesn't have big concepts that structure it. I'd concider Hegel a form of reductionism. You can apply it, and make it works, but that's not because it's how it works. It's just because what you said (by ex. with Hegel, thesis-antithesis-synthesis) is really vague and is a mold broad enough to fit reality. It's like you have a cub Mold, and you apply it on a sphere. It will work, the mold will fit. But that's because it's large, not because it correspond to the reality (the sphere). I think that "People learn from their previous mistakes" would be a way better basis to analyse history, by example.

You didn't address either of my points about being at a shitty school or being with a professor who didn't want to deal with you. If your professors, who should have PhDs specifically in continental philosophy if they are teaching it, aren't able to properly teach you the core of their professional disciple, it's either because of lack of expertise (re: shitty school) or lack of effort (re: annoyed by you).

In any case, you could easily Google the prevailing arguments for continentalism. A branch of philosophy that has remained strong for centuries hasn't been "solved" by a no-name undergrad from a no-name school. Further, your bitching and moaning about how "honest minds" have left the field or how "scientific methods" would solve anything prove your fundamental misunderstanding both of philosophy and science as a whole.

I hope you found a nice job because clearly your education wasn't worth much.

>The point is, reality just doesn't have big concepts that structure it.

What makes you say that? Sure there might be some village in the middle of nowhere that doesn't adhere to anything the rest of the world does, but; Religion, ethics/morality, justice, how to create and maintain a good society, the concept of free will/humanity, etc are all huge things that govern and shape everyone. That's the whole point of philosophy, to discuss and maybe come to conclusions on what those things really are/should be

Just read Wittgenstein, user.

You're being a sophist here. It's not like some autorithies haven't said exactly what I'm saying before me. Nietzsche and Cioran are perfect exemples of that. Some pragmatists are saying the same too. I see professors making mistakes and being dogmatic at my uni, which is not considered bad here (Parisian university, won't tell more), I don't see why it'd be much different elsewhere. The problem maybe really is that philosophy is in a circlejerk state, where people place the complexity of idea in a more important place than looking for some truth.

They don't structure the world. They are common to a lot of humans. It's way different. My point is, reality comes first. Hegel says the exact reverse: concepts are first, reality doesn't resist to the passage of time and change of place. But what we lose here is life itself. Existence itself. We lose the point of doing philosophy. We just flee from our condition instead of dealing with it as best as we can.

I'll add: "The worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise."

You're doing exactly what you accused Hegel of doing. You're making this huge broad claim that doesn't seem to actually apply to anything, or have any real thought or evidence behind it. Or you're not making yourself clear enough.
You're saying that these things are just concepts, rather than reality. What makes them not reality? All of these concepts are derived from reality, otherwise they wouldn't apply.

>They don't structure the world.
I hate to inform you but they do. People make decisions based off religion, or based off their morals, or based off them trying to better the world, and more often than not based off what they think is best for themselves.

>We just flee from our condition instead of dealing with it as best as we can.
Isn't 'doing philosophy' itself attempting to deal with the human condition? Trying to figure out what it is to be?

How do you study philosophy for years and come away with absolute meme arguments about muh reality and empiricism? Like literally what the fuck were you doing the whole time?

No, you did not get what I said.

>I hate to inform you but they do.
Not the concept themselves. Those concepts are not absolute rules. They refer to something that exists, in this case. However, that's not Hegel's point of view (did you study him?). He's saying that what comes first is the concept of something rather than what it refers to. But we're just avoiding the complexity of the problem here (by the way, it's a pretty standard critique, it comes from Kierkegaard and Feuerbach).
And no, when you purposely avoid the human condition by distracting yourself with playtoy-concepts, you're not attempting to deal with the human condition.
Well, I don't know much about philosophy meme, but if what I'm saying is strongly correlated to memes about philosophy, maybe those memes are simply true. Reality sure can be disappointing.

Read Leo Strauss's 'What is political Philosophy' and 'Natural right and History'.

I feel you but honestly I think you're just going through the post-graduation "I'm so sick of studying this shit I don't want to see it anymore for a while."

Take a break and come back to it fresh, with a unique stance removed from the way academic pedagogy but aware of its strengths and limitations.

>No, you did not get what I said.
But you won't even fucking explain what you're trying to say. You haven't once, you just keep making these gigantic, generalized statements. They don't have points, or counterpoints.

>Not the concept themselves.
Yes they do lol. You're trying to make this ridiculous distinction between 'reality' and 'concepts,' when concepts are direct interpretations of our reality. People didn't start believing in god(s) just because they felt like it, they started believing because they decided that there had to be some higher power, so they created religion which influenced the world.

>He's saying that what comes first is the concept of something rather than what it refers to
No, he is not. Did YOU study him? I'm pretty sure earlier you mentioned his process of thinking, which starts with 'of itself,' or in itself i cant remember. Which is literally looking at the thing and then deriving the concept from the most basic form, of that thing.

>And no, when you purposely avoid the human condition by distracting yourself with playtoy-concepts, you're not attempting to deal with the human condition
Again, this means nothing. Philosophers have been debating the human condition for centuries, on top of that they've been debating whether such a thing as the human condition even exists. Just because you are too blind to see that these debates are DIRECTLY correlated to it, does not mean that they are not real debates, or as you put it 'playtoy-concepts.'
Honestly from what I can tell, you either did not understand Hegel, which is fine because hes confusing as hell, or what is more likely, is that you're an someone who thinks he is going to be a great thinker, when in reality you cannot even form basic arguments, and do not understand what you're talking about in the slightest. I think you're severely detached from reality. I thought maybe you had something important to say but no, you fooled me utterly.

Its just like listening to that one moron in class who tries to argue fucking everything because he can't grasp the basic concepts. Happens in every single class

I use philosophy mainly to guide my life philosophy. Ethics, morality, how to live a good life; the human condition.

These days the philosophical questions pertaining to the nature of reality are best left to science.

Okay, I have to give you a 9/10, I was legitimately fooled by this thread. Nice job.

im not op you silly bitch

wittgenstein and this post made me swtich sides

wtf i hate continental philosophy now.

Well, philosophy in general is, but continental philosophy has inspired artists, writers and even militaries, whereas analytic philosophy is solely navel gazing between professors. I think the latter is more masturbatory.

How does science offer answers to question about the nature of reality tho? Science is mechanistic. The only answer science has to the questions about the nature of reality is: it is mechanistic.

True, but I think all of the pure thinking that can be done regarding the nature of reality has been done already. The mechanistic structure of science can help us understand it further, at least in our subjective terms. And until we know more about the physical structure of our reality, we won't be able to philosophize any further regarding the nature of our reality.

>True, but I think all of the pure thinking that can be done regarding the nature of reality has been done already.
I have to disagree, I think we've barely scratched the surface, and that the furthest science has gone actually shows this. The philosophy of science exists because the findings of science don't really fit into understanding reality, there's too much data, too many fields, too much findings for one person, even the most genius, to make a theory uniting them.