A philosopher interested in the real world: something that became quite a rarity in later times...
Henry David Thoreau
Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and independence?
It is commonly held that Thoreau faked it.
I think that is debatable and not concensus. But I actually do not know much about him besides the quote I shared. But I do know, that he tried to live his philosophy in real life and not just make nice sounding words, to make people think he is interesting.
"Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and independence?"
One can try. I know some people who succeded, but lots who failed.
That's pretty cynical and just a way to discard his (and others') beliefs. No human is independent categorically, but he did become much more independent in his beliefs and actions than most people. He might have done his laundry at his mom's house (or whatever facts people trot out to diminish him), but he did hike and paddle through the wilderness, and take deeply unpopular stands against war and other things. He is an admirable person who is worthy of paying attention to, and even emulating to achieve independent thought.
Yes
> and just a way to discard his
No
> He might have done his laundry at his mom's house
Removing his independence and adding making someone else responsible for complexity.
It is a beautiful story. Lots of people have told beautiful stories. Some of those beautiful stories have been used in movements that have done a great deal of harm. Thus the cynicism.
If a beautiful story resonates with you, by all means enjoy it.
Any beautiful stories about dependence?
Visit any place where family farming thrives and you'll see this is certainly possible.
Subsistence farming can be simple. Dying in childbirth is also pretty simple.
Excommunication, being "cursed" (cancelled). He boldly rejected all traditional religious identities which he felt "no longer had any real meaning, anyway". He turned down an offer to "become a professor at the University of Heidelberg, on the ground that holding an official position would expose him to even more attacks"
In a sense, if truth is your guide, the more you lose, the more you gain, and Spinoza lived that right to the edge of poverty and non-existence that would have actually killed (starved) him.
Which takes it back to that line near the start of the TFA:
"Offending the wrong people, even for a moment, can blow up the
career of anyone from a Y.A. novelist to an Ivy League president"
Paradoxically perhaps, those happy with the simplicity and independence of saying "fuck careers" have the greatest platform to speak truth from. Extant wealth, power, and notoriety are the gag of silence.
But I see a world filled with more and more young people who have not, and have no hope of ever having a "career". That fills me with vast hope that truth is on the march again.
Why would a career be out of your control? You control what skills you learn, what companies/projects you apply to. Sure, you're not in control of which companies/project accept you, but that doesn't mean that your career is out of your control.
> But I see a world filled with more and more young people who have not, and have no hope of ever having a "career". That fills me with vast hope that truth is on the march again.
That sounds like you've confused fatalism with truth. But it's more truthful to say that we are in a partnership with the world around us. The world gets a choice and we get a choice. Neither necessary gets their first choice, but both are active actors.
Because that's what it means literally, as in "The car careered off the road". It's a play in words, maybe a bit obscure for US Americans where capitalist work values have almost totally displaced the earlier meaning. But I'm not the first to point out the fact that "career" means this is somewhat ironic.
> That sounds like you've confused fatalism with truth.
Not sure what you mean. Those are distinct concepts. I'd like to explore that further if you'd like to clarify/expand. Thanks.
Regarding fatalism/truth, my thinking was that if you're "filled with vast hope that truth is on the march" because youth have no hope of a career, then it seems that what you're seeing as true is "one cannot control one's work trajectory". Being out of control of your life's trajectory is fatalism. But in my opinion the reality is that we have control over our trajectory. Perhaps not as much as we'd like, but it's a lot more than nothing. (It's not like we are only ever going to be a farmer or a blacksmith or a merchant because that's what our parents are, for instance.)
Oh, could be. Maybe not so common in US, very much so here.
> Regarding fatalism/truth, my thinking was that if you're "filled with vast hope that truth is on the [s] march" because youth have no hope of a career, then it seems that what you're seeing as true is "one cannot control one's work trajectory". Being out of control of your life's trajectory is fatalism. But in my opinion the reality is that we have control over our trajectory. Perhaps not as much as we'd like, but it's a lot more than nothing. (It's not like we are only ever going to be a farmer or a blacksmith or a merchant because that's what our parents are, for instance.)
I see yeah. While I agree with that as fatalism, it wasn't quite what I was hinting at.
It was more about the way a "career" is taken to be something you have, rather than something you live. In that way it can be held over people as a threat - something that can be taken away if you speak your mind. As in;
"You'll never work as a fisherman in this town again,
Mr. Hemmingway!"
Don't they go hand-in-hand? Dependence necessarily involves social intrigue, considering others' needs alongside your own (if only so as not to bite the hand that feeds); an intricate web of considerations arises. This also opens the door to leverage relationships and the circumstances that are created by their dynamism; the complexity of society is in the interdependence of agents within it. Someone who is socially-independent is limited to simplicity.
Even in nature, independence is simple: removed from the supportive natural infrastructure that your physiology depends on (e.g., in space), you quickly die. A very simple life indeed.
His goal was to critically evaluate how you spend your time and energy, and focus it on what really deeply matters to you, and nothing else: to live deliberately and cut out the BS.
He got tons of regular help and support for his unusual lifestyle experiment from his community and friends, and his cabin was not way out in the wilderness. And he is totally honest and up front about all of that- he was trying to live simply, not trying to win an episode of Naked and Afraid as New Englands most badass survivalist as people somehow seem to assume.
What it means to live deliberately is different for each person, what would it even mean to “fake it?”
I blame kids that were forced to read Walden in school, but lacked the life experience to comprehend it, for this common, but absurd misconception.
> Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live.
Living is still admirable. Professing without living is just so many words.
Absolutely ridiculous. There are tons of contemporary, living, philosophers who are interested in literally every single one of the physical sciences. There are entire departments which specialize in philosophy of physics. There are philosophers that study biology, brains, computers, etc etc etc.
I've literally been in rooms where you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a philosopher deeply interested in physical reality.
Like I seriously want to know: how many philosophers have you personally met? How many conferences have you attended? How many papers did you read this year? Because only a person barely aware of what philosophers get up to could possibly believe that they aren't interested in reality.
There's a set of things that include lab work, simulation, data analysis, etc that I consider doing biology, and another set of things that I consider philosophy of biology. The latter set includes pontification but also more analytical and serious work.
But it is still wrong to compare Spinoza's interest in optics to a contemporary philosopher of biology's interest in biology unless that person also does biology.
I don't hold philosophers to the impossible standard of classical polymaths, but I still don't feel a mere philosopher of X is as deeply interested in X as a practitioner of X.
The idea that "philosophers" don't think about reality is just absurd. There are thousands of philosophers thinking directly about reality.
I'm sympathetic to this even if this lethargic attitude goes back to the religious period as you say. We can at least find the roots of it in the Enlightenment with Newton's "hypotheses non fingo".
Why It's Ok To Eat Meat
By a philosophy professor at the University of New Orleans.
It's not like I'm asking the philosopher's to cut a toe off to prove their mettle. This is such a simple lifestyle choice that millions of people take for ethical moral reasons anyway.
Arguing that they're in a different branch of philosophy also sounds disengenous. I can try and give analogies for that we well but something tells there'll be mor nitpicking.
I do not think that pointing out the limited applicability of your point is remotely disingenuous. There is no guarantee that arguments you would give about other fields of philosophy would be convincing. That is not due to undesirable nitpicking but a general feature of argument.
what would it even mean to be a scientist who does not prize knowledge?