"Philosophy is Dead" ?

Stephen Hawking recently pronounced: "Philosophy is dead". He claimed that whilst science had made incredible progress in the last 50 years, philosophy had not, and as a result was no longer even relevant.

These "X is dead" pronouncements are dangerous territory. The first, loudest and most famous such pronouncement of this kind came from none other than Nietzsche: "God is dead".

...to which some canny graffiti artist came up with:

NIETZSCHE: "GOD ID DEAD"
GOD: "NIETZSCHE IS DEAD"

A more recent philosopher - Francis Fukuyama - boldly pronounced "History is dead".
That slogan too will go down in the history books, but I fear that although Francis is still living, its going to be another case of:

FRANCIS: "HISTORY IS DEAD"
HISTORY: "_ _ _ _ _ _"

And now for Hawking. Don't get me wrong - Hawking's classic, "A Brief History of Time", must rate as one of the most enlightening books I've ever read. (The new Illustrated version is high on my wishlist). One quote from that book resonated so strongly with me that I actually included it in a book that I wrote:

"Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is, to ask the question WHY... if we find the answer to that... we would know the mind of God."

Although Hawking penned those words many decades ago, even then he took a swing at how stagnant philosophy had become, but at least acknowledged that the philosophers were:  "the people whose business it is to ask WHY..."

So what happened?  How did Hawking jump from there to "Philosophy is dead". Have scientists themselves discovered the answer to WHY? No.

Has the WHY question become unimportant ("Why is dead"?). No. It might have for millions of mindless, secular consumers, but not for someone with such a gifted enquiring mind as Hawking.

That leaves only one option, which is probably what Hawking would argue: "Philosophers are no longer asking WHY".

Perhaps.
Or perhaps post-modern philosophy has, in its own right, become so complex that most people (including scientists) can no longer keep up with it -  in the same kind of way that the people and philosophers aren't keeping up with science. So, they wouldn't actually know if WHY is being asked or not.

Or maybe philosophers, having being confronted with the single most difficult question for so long, have developed a much more tenacious patience than the scientists. Has Hawking finally lost his patience?

Perhaps some philosophers have even realised that the WHY question is unanswerable (ultimately they might argue for the good of mankind). But  they also realise that even if this were true, the critical thing is that somebody keeps asking it. Because if we don't, we'll land up where Nietzsche predicted - Nihilism.

"What is nihilism? - When "why" finds no answer" - Nietzsche

This can only ever happen when we stop asking. And if people as brilliant as Stephen Hawking are losing patience with the WHY question, and throwing the towel in with its asking - the task of the philosopher is now more important than ever.

Genuis Prophecy

What follows is a piece written by 2 postmodern french philosophers that I studied as part of my (unfinished) Masters degree in Philosophy. The passage is a VERY accurate description of the structure of the internet and specifically web 2.0. However (and here is the important part), it was written in 1983 - wayyy before the Net. People are quick to dismiss philsophers (especially postmodern ones) as totally out of touch with the world. Well this piece is pure genuis in its prediction of what is happening today in the world.

R H I Z O M E

One becomes two: whenever we encounter this formula…what we have before us is the most classical and well reflected, oldest, and weariest kind of thought. Nature doesn't work that way: in nature, roots are taproots with a more multiple, lateral, and circular system of ramification, rather than a dichotomous one.

A system of this kind could be called a rhizome. A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicals…any point on a rhizome can be connected to anything other and must be. This is very different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order.

A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.

All of tree logic is a logic of tracing and reproduction. The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. The map is open and connectable on all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification…Perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple entryways…

The tree and root inspire a sad image of thought that is forever imitating the multiple on the basis of a centered or segmented higher unity…To these centred systems, the authors contrast acentered systems…in which communication runs from any neighbour to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and all individuals are interchangeable…without a central agency.

Let us summarize the principle characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point…It has neither beginning nor end. In contrast to centered systems with hierarchical modes of communication and reestablished paths, the rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General…

The tree imposes the verb "to be," but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, "and…and…and…" This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb "to be". Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions - all imply a false conception of voyage and movement….[We should] have another way of traveling and moving:…coming and going rather than starting and finishing.

from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Deleuze and Guattari

PS - One of the Frenchmen finished himself off by jumping of a building - BP perhaps?

Living without answers

"Rather Questions that cannot be Answered, than Answers that cannot be Questioned"

Pretty damn spot-on in my bipolar opinion. AKA Fundamentalism Sucks.

But what does it mean to live with "Questions that cannot be Answered". How can we make peace with this problem? And it IS a problem, maybe one of the most pressing problems faced by the Postmodern world. Ever since all of the steadfast, "church-spire" certainties from yesteryear were challenged and found wanting , we are left in a kinda void. No solid land left to cling onto. So to Survive you gotta "LEARN HOW TO SWIM".

And once you can swim, you'll see that it's actually kewl fun. It liberates you from the shackles of the earth; gives you a freedom to glide wherever your will takes you. A liquid flow. And then you can say to yerself "See, I didn't drown. That goddam rail I been clinging to my whole life was just holding me back, propping up my fear of the water."

It all comes back to PERHAPS (something I spoke about in this post). If a question remains at large (i.e. unanswered) , then the flame of Possiblity, is still left alive. As in:

Which Way??

Perhaps THIS way...

Perhaps THAT way

Yeah, the door is still open. Final answers lock doors. They forever shut people in, and they forever shut people out. Not even a Messiah could arrive.

Some people call the Perhaps Approach "wishy-washy". But that's mainly because they can't swim.

Notes on Nietzsche

Yes, Nietzsche was the quintissential Mad Genuis. After turning the whole world of western philosophy upside down he flipped into a psychotic state and never really came out of it for the next 10 (?) years until his death. His sister looked after him. Many people put down his "madness" to a strong dose of syphillus contracted from a brothel visit in his younger days. Evidently the madman was frisky (or more likely so friggin obnoxious that he couldn't get laid the normal way)

And, yes, his public flip into "insanity" was occassioned when he ran up to a horse in a street and hugged it all the while wailing its fate. Several years later he is on record as announcing "I am the Buddha".

Many books have been written on the parallels between Nietzsche's thought and Buddhist thought. The greatest similarity, in my bipolar opinion, arrises because Nietzsche exploded the (largely Church inspired) myth of fixed, static, central Absolutes. He has thus been called the father of "Relativism", but in order to highlight the Buddhist similarities, I would rather call it "Interdependence" than Relativism. I.E. Nothing stands alone - all things are connected, defined by, and dependent on all other things. And this "interdependence" runs at the core of Buddhism too (which is why Compassion for all sentient beings is the overriding virtue). Nietzsche attacked the "cookie cutter" approach to reality, where the analytical human mind tends to cut the "Big Picture" of life/reality into all of these seperate little entities, labelling them, categorising them and severing all their ties with the rest of the interwoven web of reality.

The title of Nietzsche's book I quoted from yesterday - "Beyond Good and Evil" - is very Buddhist. How different is this title from the following Buddhist quote:

Abide not with dualism
Carefully avoid pursuing it;
As soon as you have right and wrong
Confusion ensues and the way is lost.
- Seng-t ' San

Nietzsche also believed in reincarnation, although he had his own whacky version of it called "Eternal Recurrance". How this worked is that the minute you died you started your life all over again, but the IDENTICAL life. Ever single second, incident, people etc. repeated verbatim. And again and again for all of eternity.

And one of the most interesting questions he posed was this:

Assume that common belief prevailed and every human died and Nothing (except fertilising the flowers) awaited us after death. Then one fine day a magic genii appears to you and says I will give you a choice:

Either

When you die you will go to Nothingness like everyone else

OR

I will give you eternal life. But on the condition that as soon as you died you would be born again into your exact same life (as in the "Eternal Recurrance" mechanism above) to be repeated infinitely. Every pain you went through, every anguish, every triumph - it will be EXACTLY the same.

What would you choose????

(According to Nietzsche, if you weren't prepared to repeat your life for infinity you were living an unauthentic life...)

The value of truth

A whole lotta things are geling in my mind right now, all slotting together and making sense. I spoke the other day about the myth of the "True Self" and how, indirectly, we had Plato to blame, he being the proclaimer that out there somewhere always lies the Perfect, fixed and absolute truth.

Nietzsche was the first philosopher that comprehensively attacked Plato. In his book "Beyond Good & Evil" (a set piece in BPG's studies) he started the book thus:

"What in us really wants 'truth'?

Indeed we came to a long halt at the question about the cause of this will until we came to a complete stop before a more basic question: We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth, and uncertainty? even ignorance."

Nietzsche's questionining sounds preposterous on first appearance, but let me try illustrate what he is saying by a practical example that recently arrose:

Mrs M asked me a few days ago, " If you could ask God one Question, what would it be?"

Yeah, at first you think "Wow, if I got that opportunity I would have hit the Jackpot!"

But think a little further. What WOULD you ask? And if s/he answered, would it really make any difference? Would it add value to your life? Methinks not.

In fact, I'm not even sure I would want to know. Certainty almost imprisons one. As Nietzsche said "Why not rather uncertainty". With uncertainty the door is always left open. Possibility survives. When the door is closed there is an impossibility of possibility.

Interestingly, all of Nietzsche's writings have been analyzed and one of the most common words he ever used (besides the, a, it etc.) was the word "perhaps." And what is "perhaps"? Perhaps is uncertainty. It is the promise of possibility.

" The future is called 'perhaps' " - Tennessee Williams

***

Phew, getting quite philosophical in here. But you know what? I'm lovin it!

WBF - please define what you mean by "being true to yourself"

Why I stopped philosophy studies

We were speaking about "mental masturbation" the other day, so here's a little story that really captures the rub of the thing...

In 2003 I completed the first year of a Masters degree in philosophy. I was doing really well and was convinced I was gonna finish the degree. But after a while I started getting a kind of underlying dissatisfactoriness about philosophy. And one day this came to a head. I was a subscriber to the British "Philsopher's Magazine" and they had just revamped the cover of the monthly edition. The new slogan: "Thought Provoking Thoughts".

Somehow this slogan struck a nerve with me. It captured the futility of the whole philosophic endeavour, eventually prompting me to send a letter to the editor:

Dear Sir,

Thought provoking thoughts lead one into an infinite regression of philosophical rhetoric permanently sealing the philosopher off in his/her lofty academic ivory tower. How about some "Action provoking thoughts"? (Yeah, get off our arses and actually DO something) Or maybe we can really be adventurous and participate in some "Thought Provoking Actions"??

The letter was published in the next magazine's "Letter's to the Editor" column with a smug editor's comment: "I rest my case"

Still can't decide who out-manouvered who in that skirmish, but ultimately it was a turning point for me and I decided to pack in my Masters degree, and reconnect with the tactile world.

***

hey Amanda , good 2 c u again :)

Postmodernism 101

Every now and then I allow myself the luxury of one philsophically-indulged, non-topical post, and today is one of those times.

When I was doing my Philosophy Masters couple years back, I was (un)fortunate enough to delve dig deep into postmodernism. To the non-philosophically inclined (and even the non) postmodernism, henceforth pomo, is just a loada arty-farty, left-wing, gobblygook Bullpoo.

Yes, and No. One area where it has related remarkably well to the Real world, is it's prediction of the World Wide Wonderland. Just check out the table below which I culled from "Postmodernism for Beginners" by Jim Powell. This book was published in '98, a time when there were no wiki s, blogger or web 2.0 beta s. But compare this same table to the WWW today and you can't deny that the internet is decidedly Postmodern. Which means that those gibberish-spouting, pomo frenchman (usually) hanging around Parisian coffee shops in the 80s and 90s were actually pretty prophetic. (right column added by Bipolar Guy) :


Next time I embark on one of these philosophical diversions, I'll quote a passage from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Brian Massumi (french or what?). This book was published in 1987 - PRE the www (as we know it), and it's predictions of the internet were even more accurate and detailed.

So: I'm not sure what these pomo dudes were on, but it sure gave their visions wings.

More Depressed Philosophers

If you don't see any posts on BiPolar Daily until Monday, it's because BP Guy has gone to Johannesburg (to see Miss L) and didn't find a nearby internet cafe.

Hot on the heals of yesterday's depressing observations about life, here's what another philosopher had to say (just to cheer you up). The philosopher in question is Schopenhauer whose greatest significance for me is that he was one of the few recognised western philosophers who took Buddhism seriously, and secondly that it was his writings that yanked Nietzsche out of his slumber and fired him up on his own flights into philosophy. It's also interesting that he made some comments about "madness" (included below):

If we should bring clearly to a man’s sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror.

For whence did Dante take the materials of his hell but from our actual world?

The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole…is really always a tragedy

…to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath.

The nature of life throughout presents itself to us as intended and calculated to awaken the conviction that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts and struggles; that all good things are vanity, the world in all its ends bankrupt, and life a business which does not cover expenses.

Everything lingers but for a moment, and hastens on to death

Madness comes as a way to avoid the memory of suffering.

The more distinctly a man knows – the more intelligent he is – the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.

Yikes!!! But before you try grabbing that blunt razor blade, a WARNING, for this is what the Schop man had to say about suicide:

Suicide, the willful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act, for the thing-in-itself…remains unaffected.

No way out. I had to drag out my old philosophy set works to glean these quotes, and I've gotta admit, it's fired up my appetite to complete my Masters degree in philosophy. I completed the first year in 2003 and all that seperates me from the extra letter behind my name are two 30 page articles to be published in a recognised academic journal.

So what stopped me? Three things: Firstly, at the end of 2003, I hit one of the worst depressions of my life. (you can read a post I wrote about it here). Having not been officially diagnosed at that point, I was still searching for external answers for my melancholy, and I figured that it was philosophy like Schopenhauer's that was causing the problem.

Secondly, BP Guy's finances were looking in a really crap state and philosophy as sure as hell wasn't gonna fix them. Afternote to myself: Your finances are even bloody worse now, so you should've taken yr chances!

Thirdly, ever since 2003 I have not been able to settle on a topic for my articles. Philosophy is a huge place and I have plenty diverse interests in it. My old Professor's patience is finally starting to wear thin. Every 3 months or so I email him a totally new idea for a topic, "this is it, this is the final one", but they never get further.

But I'm starting to think I can maybe do some research on "The philosophy of concrete poetry". A LOT of things have recently been geling in my mind around that common thread. And they're not limited to poetry man, they're to do with life, meaning and WHY. But best I save any further on that for a future post.

Anyhow, I've been dabbling in some WordArt again and the following piece brings to mind the bit I was saying about the follies of writing blogs for our audiences, which practice inevitably leads to:

Second Guessing

Adios

(7th "In-the-Pink" in a row! Unfcknbelievable! Viva Lamictal.)