Difficulties Everywhere: Can Kierkegaard tell us how to live?
harpers.org
harpers.org
I almost didn't play the game, I passed on it a few times until SkillUp (a YouTuber I respect) did a video on it entitled "The Masterpiece You (Probably) Won't Play" (https://youtu.be/-NiyfG8Ctbo).
If you aren't going to play the game, and I recommend you try it, Wisecrack did a really good philosophical analysis of the game here: https://youtu.be/UiOTSKBy6ME and here: https://youtu.be/LCcednqOLwQ
The author's got a bad misstep in the first paragraph; Socrates, if he existed, was skilled, landed, honored in military service, and his "poverty" was part of his apology when he was sentenced to death. This matters deeply because there is another important Greek philosopher who, if he existed, lived a much more impoverished and simple life, namely Diogenes [0]. This contrast between Socrates and Diogenes is worth carrying into the rest of the piece.
Kierkegaard was Christian, and living in an era where Christian foundational beliefs were considered scientifically supported. As a result, his philosophy cannot escape the Christian mindset. While the author name-drops existentialists, folks like Camus and Nietzsche, they don't seem to grok that existentialism aggressively rejected the same trappings of society to which Kierkegaard felt encircled and trapped, particularly the religious trappings to which Kierkegaard felt such obligation and wonder.
At least Kierkegaard was right to criticize Hegelian dialectic as "nonsense". Plain language philosophy [1] is so much simpler, although it wasn't ready yet in Kierkegaard's time.
The author uncritically accepts Kierkegaard's view that Christian myths much be accepted as paradoxical or absurd yet true. When countervailing evidence disproves each myth, we are not merely being fervent or zealous if we hold on to those stories, but actively denying reason and empiricism.
The author concludes by suggesting that we look inward to an intuitive religious or spiritual path, and ignore the distractions of society. Further, they insist that the philsophical truths revealed here or there by Kierkegaard or his biographers are ageless and that the "peculiar challenges of our moment" are not "the meaning of our lives". That is high-minded, but simply not true. A lot of folks will think of COVID-19, but I think of secularism and the decline of the Church's ability to control minds.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_language_philosophy
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22965049
Is it Philosophy Day on HN or something? :)
and “insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very deep thing” is incredibly trite. i don’t mean this to come across as a personal attack, but dismissing K’s project out of hand and then making a pithy reference to his biography in what i suppose is an attempt to signal knowledge (or worse yet, understanding) of the matter at hand is just incredibly weak.
in what way is it personal? In that he's attacking his conclusion for all of Kierkegaards' work? Or that he's trying to characterize your actions into a specific motivations?
Being called wrong , even in the softest ways, is now a personal attack?
I think it's fair to say that a 3-5 word sentence is a bit too shallow to characterize Kierkegaards' entire body of work. 'Sickness Unto Death' totally changed my outlook as a teenager reading it at the right time.
Here's the thing that's missing : life is as deep as we give it credit for, and many philosophies seek to enrichen and deepen the experience of life.
In my opinion, someone with the stance 'life isn't very deep' is in the perfect position to try to honestly absorb some of the pasts' philosophers and step away from the mammalian life of eat-sleep-breed.
In other words : our biological life is shallow in reason, philosophy and human thinking itself is what fills the world with reason, objective, and depth.
Anyone with the take-away that 'life isn't very deep' receives my greatest sympathy and sorrow. I remember how I felt when I came to the same conclusions, and i'm glad I have shifted away from that perspective with the help of philosophy and dialogue with others.
Re-imagining the world with the tools that philosophy gives you through practice is a fantastic experience, and I hope that the parent who believes that life isn't as deep as people give it credit for has the chance to undergo that epiphany themselves one day.
About the reply above with the personal attack, here are a selection of phrases used to attack the author of the post, and not the author's argument: "internet edgelords", "pretty disgusting", "'insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very deep thing' is incredibly trite", "i don’t mean this to come across as a personal attack, but...", "a pithy reference", "an attempt to signal knowledge (or worse yet, understanding)", "just incredibly weak."
Give me a break, that's a personal attack.
Fine, i'll afford you the same favor and ignore everything you said, too. One sided judgements isn't discourse.
Just to let you know, though, I was quite obviously replying to the first sentence you wrote in parent.
>Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above. Regardless..
Let me ask you a simple question.
If you were driving with someone, and they slowly drove through a red-light and said "You only have to slow down on the reds." would you question that persons' understanding of traffic laws?
I don't care who finds value in what philosopher, but when the only thing you can tell me about Nietzsche is that the word has an S in it[0], then I question your objective knowledge on that topic. If someone dismisses a philosophical point of view without the objective knowledge of what that philosophy entails, then I do not believe, personally, that their opinion is worth value with regards to philosophy.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa0bCzwSNA0
p.s. since you edited in a bunch of stuff about personal attacks after your initial post, let me mention : that word cloud you posted is devoid of who it was towards. Go re-read; the attacks are on 1) the idea 2) the motivation towards the idea -- not the person. That's exactly the difference between a personal attack and someone who is trying to disagree with that persons' idea.
Surely life is the most profound and magical thing you will ever experience?
'profound' - what does that even mean in this context?
'magical' - Speak for yourself. Me & my brothers had our lives destroyed by appalling parents. It's not something you recover from. You don't speak for everybody. Don't try.
Edit: that is to say, you only have one life, and comparing the whole to individual parts doesn't really make sense.
> 'surely'? - how does one justify saying that?
life is the superset of all possible experiences. If any element has a property (i.e. is deep) it will be contained within life.
I don't think anyone is trying to take anything away from your tragedy, but we are discussing semantics. Life can be "not very deep" and still be the deepest thing in existence, by definition.
I'll try to leave out my life experiences except where relevant. I suppose we have to start with that. The original comment I was replying to said life was great (I summarise). Without qualification it covered everyone's lives (mathematically it was implicitly universally quantified), and said life is great. No it's not, not universally, and it can be quite the opposite. In many cases yes it's lovely (or I hope so!) but you cannot speak for everybody. Therefore, don't.
Further, if you talk about existence ("Surely life is the most...") then you cover animal's lives. Do they have magical and profound existences? Point is not to answer that but to say be careful what you drag in with lax pronouncements. I'll not take the animal thing further.
So, 'profound' - I asked what this means and have not got a reply. This is about semantics, so what are the semantics of this word, in this context? I literally do not know. Words like this are too easily used without thought. There's nothing profound (I assume defined as having hidden depths or meanings) for me about waking up in the morning, going to work etc. It's just life. If you break it down this way I suspect most people would say the same. The phrase The Daily Grind is a bit cynical and used thoughtlessly too, but it suggests another side to the coin. So what does 'profound' mean here, and is it justified. It needn't be a complex or long answer, but if words matter, this matters.
OK, 'magical'. If you're american (I'm a brit) this kind of pretty but ultimately empty (or at least ill-defined) word gets broadcast at you from an early age by disney. It just gets parroted back. When I hear more disney turds about how Precious Family Is, ruthlessly equating family with something wonderful (which I assume it often is, I hope so!) then I tend to well up with either disgust or dry, bitter cackling laughter. I probably sound like macbeth's witches. That's not about semantics so much as using words properly, to mean something. I've read some philosophy that is just a tangle of words because the writer is not clear themselves on how to justify a thing and are really trying to fog things up like a squid with its ink (conversely I picked up a book by some philosopher and it was wonderfully clear. You might not agree but at least you could get exactly what he was saying, and with that comprehension, you could agree or not, but at least you knew why).
All I'm asking for is clear, thoughtful and justified use of words to clearly express ideas. I guess this is the basics of philosophy, so it's relevant especially here.
I agree with you that he could have been more specific, but I do not agree with > said life was great (I summarise). In my interpretation of their comment, I took it to mean life has the potential to be great.
For the other two terms I have no opinion, will leave that to OP. But damn, if this is at all representative to what studying philosophy is like, isn't it exhausting?
Worthless slop is worthless. To make it worth something you need to be precise. Yes, it can be, not exhausting, but sometimes tedious. But that attention to detail is necessary in any constructive endeavor be it software, hardware, mathematics, engineering, governing, why do you think philosophy should be any different?
The end results can be worth it. I used to argue a lot with someone, it's only when we agreed to be precise about what we were saying that we got anywhere (to be precise 'got anywhere' = 'started to understand each other's positions and assumptions').
Edit: trying to debate with someone who can only respond with emotionally based certainties and often descends into shouting and blank denials is a wearing and disheartening experience. Also not useful if you're arguing about important things like, I dunno, what to do about pandemics.
The point really is that it is a question, that you can ask yourself. Whether you immediately conclude that the answer is "certainly not" does not deny the question of being asked. "Surely" is simply there to suggest my opinion on the matter, not a demand that I am correct.
Edit - I can't resist:
My own life is not without misery. My history still troubles me to this day. I feel possibly a similar grievance to my upbringings as you do. That is not to say there is something interesting about "life". The seemingly unfathomable nature of it, is to me a wonder. It's magical in the sense I have absolutely no idea how it works, but it definitely seems to exist. Biblical Hell of course would not be excluded by this definition. I am not making any mathematical arguments, my comment is just an attempt to summarise my feelings in this regard.
Btw, if my comment angered you then I apologize.
Precision and meaning matters when debating IMO, as I've outlined elsewhere on this thread, that's all I'm getting at. Lack of it causes lots of problems, beyond random guys exploding at you on the interwebs.
Don't worry about offending me, you hit a very exposed nerve by accident, wasn't the first time. No probs.
Kierkegaard is way ahead of you. Your viewpoint is already presented as one of his personas or stages (called something like "the model citizen").
Three pounds of flax!