Life as Insatiable Suffering: Schopenhauer

The purpose of this post will be to introduce Arthur Schopenhauer’s account, or rather denial of meaning and value in life. We will discuss what Schopenhauer’s views have in relation to Kant’s views. We will see that while Schopenhauer does agree with Kant in claiming that we can have no sure knowledge of reality as it really is, he argues that Kant is wrong in thinking that we cannot interact directly with reality as it really is. The way we interact with reality is by way of our Will, and it is this Will which leads us inevitably in this life to despair and dissatisfaction. It is for this reason that Schopenhauer is considered to be the quintessential pessimist.

Parsimony as a Guide to Truth

In his paper, “Mental Processes are Physical” J. J. C. Smart argues that dualism as a (non)explanation for mental phenomena is analogous to young-earth theories of the earth’s creation in that they both violate the principle of parsimony and simplicity of explanations (hereafter PPS). The purpose of this post will be three fold. First, we will briefly discuss what PPS is. Second, we will turn to Smart’s account of geology and theories of the mind to see how PPS can be applied in each context. Finally, we will see what PPS can and cannot tell us about the truthfulness or falsity of a theory of mind.

Progressive Reason vs. Conservative Tradition

We have seen how the success of Newtonian physics came to influence and motivate numerous epistemological theories. Locke, the first of the major British Empiricists, put forth a theory which was an attempt to blaze a trail to necessary, certain and universal knowledge, but Berkeley and Hume put a full stop to such an attempt. Kant’s Copernican Revolution of the mind, a theory clearly and explicitly motivated by the Newtonian successes, was a different approach to the same goal as Locke, but ended, at best, in our complete ignorance of the world as it is. Nevertheless, the influence of Newtonian science was by no means limited to philosophical circles. In this post we will discuss the influence which science came to have upon society at large by the turn of the 19th century.

Feeling, Action and Context in Ethics

About six weeks ago I noted posted on the consequences which Solomon’s view of emotions as engagements with the world had for a Utilitarian view of ethics. While I still stand by most of the conclusions reached in that post, it has become clear that I didn’t fully understand enough of Solomon’s view of emotions to really come to grips with what it was that he was claiming in his criticisms of emotional valence as a foundation for ethics. This can be seen in my calling Utilitarianism (at least Bentham’s version of it) “Emotional Bean-Counting” when in reality Solomon’s view of emotions denies that pain and pleasure are legitimate emotions at all. In this post we will use our more developed understanding of emotions to see what relation our emotional experience does have to our sense of morality.

The Relational and Isolable Views of the Self

While I remain extraordinarily skeptical toward Hegel’s views concerning history and spirit and I am somewhat partial toward his views concerning the state and society (mostly because it is largely in accord with my tendencies toward welfare liberalism), I am very sympathetic to Hegel’s views concerning the nature of the self. We have already discussed how Heidegger deserves most of the credit for overthrowing the overly individualistic notion of the self, we must admit that Hegel was an important precursor in some respects to Heidegger’s views. In this post we will consider one version of the individuated self and use this to contrast Hegel’s view of the relational self.

Kant’s Copernican Revolution

As we saw in a recent post, beginning with Locke and culminating with Hume British Empiricism ended in a major victory for the earth-giants, in that any kind of necessary, certain and universal knowledge seemed impossible with the exception of those definitions which we created or decided for ourselves. It was in this context that the, until that point, Newtonian physicist, Immanuel Kant read Hume’s work and realized the threat which it posed to scientific knowledge in general. The purpose of this post will be to describe how it was that Kant attempted to restore certainty to scientific knowledge.

Waxing Philosophical

In Descartes’ Second Meditation he describes what it is that we know about a piece of wax and how it is that we know it. The purpose of this paper will be to briefly describe the point of Descartes’ mentioning the example of the wax, it being to tease apart what is known by way of the imagination from that which is known by way of the intellect. The second purpose will be to describe how it is that this example fits in with Descartes’ project of setting human knowledge upon a stable Archimedean point, namely by both illustrating the nature of clear and distinct knowledge as well as emphasizing how the mind is better known by way of intellect than the body is by way of imagination.

The Refinement of our Emotional Experience

In yesterday’s post, I concluded that not only can we be intelligent in our emotional experience, but our emotions are actually intelligent in that they are ways in which we use concepts to perceive, appraise, evaluate, in short make judgments about and engage the world. It is these aspects of our emotional experience which make it impossible to characterize it purely in terms of feelings. In order to understand our emotional experience we need to look out at the world as it appears to us rather than inward. We know we are angry at a person by the way which we look out at that person rather than in toward our “insides.” Of course the way which we see another person, be it in terms of anger or love, need not be and indeed usually is not a deliberative process at all. It is partially because such emotional judgments are pre-cognitive that they are considered to be antithetical to reason.

Freedom and Rights According to Hegel

While I have recently given a very brief overview to Hegel’s account of meaning in life, the focus was primarily upon the unfolding of spirit, spirit referring both to history as God’s autobiography as well as each person within it. We saw that both history as well as each person was involved in a dialectic struggle of sorts, largely between moral and conservative tendencies against creative and progressive ones. In this post we will treat Hegel’s views of the state and society, an account which will provide context to better understand his views concerning the self.

From Empiricism to Skepticism

At the turn of the 18th century the scientific advances, especially those of Newton, were interpreted by and large as not merely “working” but actually being true. In other words, Newton had given the world something far more than a mere model of the natural world; he had given them knowledge of the natural world. Nevertheless, we saw in Newton’s later years how he was forced by Leibniz to pull away from such a position, thereby demoting himself from a place among the Platonic gods to one among the earth-giants. In this post we will see how the empiricists of the 18th century, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, traced a similar path which took them from a place among the gods to one deep within the camp of the earth-giants.