I Hate Philosophy

I find it entertaining that you hate philosophy yet your philosophy about philosophy is in essence philosophy in its rawest form. Think again brainiac

I don't hate philosophy but I do despise this specific 'impossible is nothing' cliche. Okay, so technically anything can happen, but I know I can't jump 100feet up in to the air, or breath fire whenever I want. So I shoot down such statements as this right away as being annoyingly optimistic views!

The whole point of philosphy is to train critical thinking, so while I can find issues with certain lines of reasoning, condemning all of philosophy itself is like hating all art because of one 'bad' painting.

A critical thinker would point out that theoretically, in any universe where anything is possible, nothing being possible would not be consistent with the initial conditions of your argument (part of the flaw in the argument is because of the limitations of language). The thought experiment itself is contingent upon a something, so to conclude a nothing would instantly contradict itself.

In much the same way, a critical thinker already pointed out the irony of someone saying they hate philosophy while using philosophical processs to explain it.


I understand your points, but the title was poorly named mate.

A narrow view of philosophy perhaps. I don't view it as an absolute, rather as folk asking questions and putting forth possible theories. It's a fascinating field.

Not all things are possible. By the same token, saying that nothing is possible does not make sense.

Similarly for science, it seems to be a given that we don't know many things and, again, some theories are, in the end, just that.

In colloquial terms 'theory' is what people usually mean by 'opinion'. In actual scientific terms though theory is a specific term with specific definitions. They are not throw aways, they are not temporary or lacking in evidence. Theories explain things by collecting observable data to explain phenomena---they don't determine how the universe works they describe how it really is. Sorry to get nitpicky but it's a common misconception.

Most people, when they say they have a theory, are just making up stuff, science does not do that.

I suggest you try reading Aristotle and Nietzsche at the very least before trying to criticize philosophy.

I completely disagree. Every Philosophical book I've ever read has not been about absolutes, but about questioning and developing critical and reasoning skills to a higher level.

Why would I talk about biographies when talking about Aristotle or Nietzsche?

I've a good, working knowledge of the thoughts of both. No. I mean philosophical essays and discussions with the reader like, say, Beyond Good and Evil. Which is really just a series of questions and alternative viewpoints posed to the reader through statements. It's fantastic.

When I said 'developing critical and reasoning skills to a higher level' I mean philosophy allows us to think about certain subjects - one at random, cheese. Don't know why, and I don't care. One philosophical viewpoint on cheese might be that it is just a food (I know, what weirdos) and yet we can have a comment that show, possibly, that cheese could also be a metaphor for vegetation and new life, and in essence a metaphor for birth. Another viewpoint could be that it is a replacement door stopper.

Nietzsche used this sort of approach in his writings, approaching a big, broad sheet of ideas from a different, and often different perspectives in Beyond Good and Evil. He has lines such as this: 'Mature manhood: that means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.' and 'If one trains one's conscience it will kiss us as it bites.' & ' A man with genius is unendurable if he does not also possess at least two things: gratitude and cleanliness.' Those are taken from the Aphorisms and approach the same idea from different perspectives and standpoints. The linking idea is maturity and Genius.

But later he can have something unrelated such as: 'One is punished most for one's virtues.'

It's about different perspectives.

I think I've come up with a solution to your problem (argument connectors shown in bold):

If all things are possible then there is a possibility that nothing is possible.

However, it is impossible for nothing to be possible. Therefore,all things are not possible.

This is fun =D

Nietzsche is a personal favorite of mine. Aristotle is another. I suggest you try out those. They are, after all, two of the main pillars in modern Philosophy.

Plato is good too and worth reading, just I always preferred Aristotle, and you also might want to check out what is known as The Socratic method. If you are going to read Aristotle though you might also want to have a passing acquaintance with The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer, and the play Oedipus Rex/Oedipus King by Euripides. He discusses these in his Poetics. His most famous work.

One of the things that is often associated with Plato but was someone else (whose name I forget) is the idea that we are all chained to a cave, watching a fire that shows us our lives, and we need to break free of the chains that bind us to the cave wall and walk out into the sunlight. How many meanings could you get from that.

Beyond Good and Evil, and pretty much Nietzsche's entire library, is avalable online for free, but I recommend getting the Penguin Classics editions. They have great notes and introductions that makes reading something as small yet surprisingly difficult as that a whole lot easier.