"Philosophy, Al Qaeda and the Meaning of Life" by Brian Weatherson
I have just conducted a web search for "philosophy blog". The top-ranked site has actually not been used since October 14, 2003! It is the blog of Tom Stoneham at the University of York, and it has been comatose all this time due to his Berkeley module, which is taking most of his attention this term.
The second-ranked site, however, seems more promising, called Online Papers in Philosophy. It "[r]eports on changes to webpages hosting philosophical papers." But the only problem with this is that I have to actually write a philosophical paper first before it can link to me.
The third-ranked site looks better still. It is actually a personal blog by a philosophy enthusiast, called Brian Weatherson. He started out studying philosophy at Monash University before coming to America, where he currently works in the Department of Philosophy at Brown University. His weblog is "where I keep track of my rolling thoughts on things philosophical." It seems to me that this would be a handy person to know if you want to get into more discussion and debate with others online.
Weatherson's specialties are philosophy of language, epistemology, logic and probability theory. Yours is ethics. I don't think that there is a lot that you are going to be able to fruitfully contribute to his weblog comments anytime soon, somehow.
Well, let's spend a little time there reading first, and see what we think. On his right-hand margin, he has a section of his Favourite Entries. Most of them are not particularly consistent with my interests, as I suspected. One of them that is, however, is "Philosophy, Al Qaeda and the Meaning of Life". Anything that combines Al Qaeda and the meaning of life into a single blog entry is worth my reading.
The entry is his personal reaction to "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror", by Paul Berman. It is a New York Times magazine article. It is about Sayyid Qutb, a philosopher who was influential in the fundamentalist groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda. Weatherson didn't like the article much, and is having a bit of a rant about it here.
Wasn't it Socrates who said that "the unexamined life is not worth living"? I think a lot more needs to be said about why it is so terrible to seek deep ideas. Okay, he makes this point in his next paragraph, thus:
I have actually given this matter a lot of thought. On the one hand, it is obvious that most people simply do not have the kind of thoughts that I have, yet they are still happy. It does not follow, however, that someone who is prone to deep thoughts could be happy living in the same way. I know I could not. I do agree that the claim that the unexamined life is not worth living is unduly harsh, and perhaps even intellectually snobbish. But for those who engage in deep thought, it quickly creates its own need. I think that it is possible to relate to reality in a deeper way than what you receive from common experience, and that is why I am a philosopher. This deeper understanding, once achieved, permanently deepens the world for the person who acquires it. Forever afterwards, that person is living in a different world from someone who does not share the same thoughts. They can never return to the condition that they once had. Deeper thoughts do not make you happier--on the contrary, they can often make you feel a lot worse. But at the end of the day, I still have to agree with John Stuart Mill, that I would much rather be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
That is a different way of thinking about the meaning of life for me. Yet I must agree that even to ask what the meaning of life is does seem to presuppose that life is merely of instrumental value.
On the other hand, are there circumstances under which life is not worth living? Certainly advocates of euthanasia think so, which is why they want to relieve some people of those lives. Also, people often use the word 'live' in an evaluative sense. Consider the song "Ship in a bottle"1:
We definitely think that it is possible to go through life in a way that is not living. This ties in with the notion that we have a basic choice between living or dying. In this case, "living" is associated with a certain way of living that is, I presume, "meaningful". The implication is therefore that one's basic alternative is between living meaningfully or simply dying. It also explains why some people who feel that their lives are not meaningful simply commit suicide. Now, on the one hand, people who do commit suicide might simply be irrational, suffering from "depression". Yet to commit suicide from feeling that one's life is meaningless is indeed to take the problem of life's meaning seriously. But it does not follow that anyone who takes that problem seriously is suffering from depression. I think that that is the basic fallacy being committed here. But I'll probably have more to say about this tomorrow...
1Beck Hansen, Sea Change, DGC/Interscope, 2002.
The second-ranked site, however, seems more promising, called Online Papers in Philosophy. It "[r]eports on changes to webpages hosting philosophical papers." But the only problem with this is that I have to actually write a philosophical paper first before it can link to me.
The third-ranked site looks better still. It is actually a personal blog by a philosophy enthusiast, called Brian Weatherson. He started out studying philosophy at Monash University before coming to America, where he currently works in the Department of Philosophy at Brown University. His weblog is "where I keep track of my rolling thoughts on things philosophical." It seems to me that this would be a handy person to know if you want to get into more discussion and debate with others online.
Weatherson's specialties are philosophy of language, epistemology, logic and probability theory. Yours is ethics. I don't think that there is a lot that you are going to be able to fruitfully contribute to his weblog comments anytime soon, somehow.
Well, let's spend a little time there reading first, and see what we think. On his right-hand margin, he has a section of his Favourite Entries. Most of them are not particularly consistent with my interests, as I suspected. One of them that is, however, is "Philosophy, Al Qaeda and the Meaning of Life". Anything that combines Al Qaeda and the meaning of life into a single blog entry is worth my reading.
The entry is his personal reaction to "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror", by Paul Berman. It is a New York Times magazine article. It is about Sayyid Qutb, a philosopher who was influential in the fundamentalist groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda. Weatherson didn't like the article much, and is having a bit of a rant about it here.
To not be able to see enough value in everyday life to keep on keeping on without believing in some external source of value just is a form of depression, perhaps the worst kind there is.
Wasn't it Socrates who said that "the unexamined life is not worth living"? I think a lot more needs to be said about why it is so terrible to seek deep ideas. Okay, he makes this point in his next paragraph, thus:
Some, and I suspect Berman is among them, suggest that life is not meaningful without some deep idea to guide it.
I have actually given this matter a lot of thought. On the one hand, it is obvious that most people simply do not have the kind of thoughts that I have, yet they are still happy. It does not follow, however, that someone who is prone to deep thoughts could be happy living in the same way. I know I could not. I do agree that the claim that the unexamined life is not worth living is unduly harsh, and perhaps even intellectually snobbish. But for those who engage in deep thought, it quickly creates its own need. I think that it is possible to relate to reality in a deeper way than what you receive from common experience, and that is why I am a philosopher. This deeper understanding, once achieved, permanently deepens the world for the person who acquires it. Forever afterwards, that person is living in a different world from someone who does not share the same thoughts. They can never return to the condition that they once had. Deeper thoughts do not make you happier--on the contrary, they can often make you feel a lot worse. But at the end of the day, I still have to agree with John Stuart Mill, that I would much rather be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
If lives are to be justified in terms of their meaning, that is to say that they have instrumental value only.
That is a different way of thinking about the meaning of life for me. Yet I must agree that even to ask what the meaning of life is does seem to presuppose that life is merely of instrumental value.
On the other hand, are there circumstances under which life is not worth living? Certainly advocates of euthanasia think so, which is why they want to relieve some people of those lives. Also, people often use the word 'live' in an evaluative sense. Consider the song "Ship in a bottle"1:
But I know you're gonna try
To live without love, by and by
But that's not living that's just time
Going by
Going by
My love
We definitely think that it is possible to go through life in a way that is not living. This ties in with the notion that we have a basic choice between living or dying. In this case, "living" is associated with a certain way of living that is, I presume, "meaningful". The implication is therefore that one's basic alternative is between living meaningfully or simply dying. It also explains why some people who feel that their lives are not meaningful simply commit suicide. Now, on the one hand, people who do commit suicide might simply be irrational, suffering from "depression". Yet to commit suicide from feeling that one's life is meaningless is indeed to take the problem of life's meaning seriously. But it does not follow that anyone who takes that problem seriously is suffering from depression. I think that that is the basic fallacy being committed here. But I'll probably have more to say about this tomorrow...
1Beck Hansen, Sea Change, DGC/Interscope, 2002.
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