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Monday, April 16, 2007





First of all, guns have been around for a long time without frequent public massacres. Second, the glorification of violence in video games and movies is a consequence not a primary. Why weren't horror stories popular during the Enlightenment? Culture reflects the prevailing ideas of a society. For example, the madness of Weimar German culture reflected the nihilism and collectivism of 19th century German philosophy which ultimately led to Nazism. The culture did not cause it (http://www.amazon.com/Ominous-Parallels-Leonard-Peikoff/dp/0452011175/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-5956256-6364622?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176775100&sr=8-2).




So, what is this bad philosophy?




Now let's quote God:

"Thou shalt not kill."



And everyone is wondering why people are killing each other?










Anonymous said...

I remember well when Rorty presented to philosophy students and faculty at my college in the early 90's. I remember asking myself that, if Rorty is right, why study philosophy at all? How could a typical timid teenager who replies when faced with a philosophical or ethical problem , "can't know for sure, do whatever works", come up with the same conclusion as this philosophical rockstar who after years and years devoted to philosophy, pops out of his hole and screams, "I've got it!! deconstruction and pragmatism!!"; essentially the same conclusion as the teenager but housed in pages and pages of incomprehensible text that attempt to force you there. I felt lucky that I was surrounded by philosophy professors ranging from an Aristotelean scholar to a modern. I was lucky because my philosophy department didn't represent a single philosophy but rather represented what is good as well as erroneous in philosophy and forced me to make my own conclusions. The pursuit of philosophy/truth inevitibly leads to encounters with the absurd and truth and its pursuit would lose their urgency without them. And the most absurd notions of all propose that truth is not possible and meaningless to talk about. I think Rorty and post-moderns would have to declare that they failed as philosophers because they failed to find truth. Am I an archeologist because I dig holes? Or do I have to find something of archeological significance? If I search for truth and find nothing, should I feel proud and deserving of publication and praise? I'm happy, perhaps because I never entered the elitist east coast universities, that post-modernism was never taught in any of my philosophy classes.

The Rat Cap said...

Well, consider yourself half lucky and be half proud that you were smart enough to see the dead end of postmodernism. The rest of the culture has apparently not been so fortunate.

As to your archaeology analogy they wouldn't they say "we can't really know what a hole is so why dig in one?"

I don't think you can escape postmodernism on a modern campus even if not put forward explicitly. It has touched every field in some way and I think it is really just an extreme extrapolation of skepticism. Fundamentally, Kantianism, Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and the like are all just variations on the theme of "reason is invalid" or "problematic" in the jargon. They just seem to go slightly different places with it but all start there.

Rand (and perhaps Aristotle) seem to be the only philosophers that hold reason is absolute. Of course, Aristotle would not have put it in those terms, but I think is implied.