(If philosophy bores you, just scroll down for the fun stuff.)
This quarter, I'm taking History of Western Contemporary Philosophy (or maybe it's History of Contemporary Western Philosophy) with Terry MacMullan, and I love it. I love every class and I wish I'd taken a philosophy degree instead. (Too late now!)
It's not my first Philosophy class. I took Ethics at NIC with Laura Templeman, and she said in one line what had summed up my entire experience in life: "Absolutism just isn't very helpful."
I swear you could have seen the light bulb glow above my head. I had been struggling with a deep anger against evangelism, both conservative and liberal politics, and closed-mindedness in general. She had quietly voiced what was wrong with all three: absolutist thinking.
Now note she didn't say it was wrong to be an absolutist (I did, sorry). She said it wasn't helpful. Another student asked if that meant that everything was relative, and she said relativism wasn't helpful, either. She said that there are a lot of gray areas in life, and they need to be approached with a pluralistic point of view. No one system or belief can have all the answers, all the time. It doesn't hurt at all to try different systems until you see what works.
This concept was reinforced by taking Logic and Critical Thinking with Ian, also at NIC. Only now, armed with some knowledge of logical fallacies, I can say what's bothering me about someone's argument. Whenever somebody tells me, "This is is ONLY WAY this will work," or "Do this or else!" or "Jesus is the ONLY WAY," my brain immediately says, "Nope: false dichotomy." I start looking for what I'm not being told. I step back from the situation and usually, I can find a third, fourth, or even fifth option.
(The Jesus thing is even more complicated than false dichotomy for me. It also involves what appear to be false premises and a violation of Kant's Categorical Imperatives. That would take another whole post on its own. Let's leave it at, "It might work for you but it doesn't work for me at all," and just move on, okay?)
Yesterday, Dr. MacMullan started the section on Pragmatism, with Peirce and James, and he said that the beauty of that school is that it says sooner or later, you have to grow up and let go of absolutist thinking. I put both hands over my mouth to stop the squeals of joy. He said that Pragmatism focuses on what works and what doesn't. It's about what leads you to right action, always action. You don't step back and look for abstract truth--you recognize what's going to get you through life. It's a complete break from the two absolutist schools that have dominated philosophy: the Skeptics (if you can't know something absolutely, you can't know it at all) and Certainty (we can know everything absolutely).
Pragmatists see truth as a moving target. It is both indeterminate and intelligible. You can't know everything, but you can know enough to do what you need.
It's back to Laura: absolutism is just not helpful.
Anyway, as a cookie to you for letting me ramble on about things probably only I care about, here is my summation of the philosophers we have studied so far this quarter in one or two lines.
Kant: Do your duty and speak your mind. Just not at the same time.
Hegel: Everything is moving toward perfection: you're just a little piece of God's mind.
Kierkegaard: Everything sucks, even God, but he's way bigger than us so we just need to do what he says, even if it sounds crazy. (Also, Hegel is an idiot.)
Nietzsche: Stop whining, all of you! Be men! Be strong men and noble men and stop making yourselves out to be great because you're merciful. You're WEAK! Weak, whiny babies! (You like my cape? I made it.)
Feuerbach: Hegel's not exactly an idiot, Kierkegaard. He's just got it backward. Materials drive ideas, not the other way around.
Marx: What F-Man said! Only more so! Workers unite! We will take it all over and then have little committees that will control everything just until we can get absolute democracy going and then those guys will step aside....um, wait....
Bentham: Measure your happy and everyone else's happy, and do whichever one is bigger. (Can someone wheel me out of here? I think I'm melting.)
Wollstonecraft: *deep sigh* Look, all I'm saying is that if I'd had Latin, Greek, logic and rhetoric from the age of three like you men, I'd be able to reason as well as you. Duh!
Mill: Some happies are better than other happies, not just bigger. And sometimes, you have to work for them, which kinda sucks, but actually makes them even better. So, um....just do lots of stuff and figure out what makes you better happy, maybe?
Peirce: OMG, people, grow up and stop thinking you know everything already. You know enough, okay? And you can always know more, but you can't know everything. Now excuse me. My face hurts and I need another injection.
It helps me keep them straight in my head.
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