Free Capitalist

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  1. Posted · Report post

    Since I'm not very familiar with recent Indian history, could you give an overview of what the Brahmins have recently been doing to 'take over' India, as well as what Brahmins are in the first place? From what I understand they're the top caste in India, right? You say they've been controlling India for so long, but isn't it true that for the last 700 years, since the Muslim Mughals took over, the situation was different? In short, please provide a context for your concerns, which may not be as evident for others.

  5. Posted · Report post

    A good public job also works wonders. I have practically none of my shyness left after 2 years of bartending. I have to talk to drop dead gorgeous women all the time. Not too much different than talking to dudes. Easier actually since I know nothing about cars, construction, or sports!

    Excellent idea TL. In a nutshell, this advice boils down to "give yourself a ton of exposure to various women in many kinds of situations".

    And that boils down to "continually challenge yourself and don't settle for a comfort zone". That is ultimately the only advice one could ever get. Constantly mentally put yourself into challenging situations with attractive women. And for good effort to be put in into being physically attractive. I don't see how these two cannot produce results in time.

    By constantly making myself stumble in front of women, is exactly how I overcame late-bloomer problems, how I learned to be comfortable and say the right things. That seems to be how Thoyd has gotten comfortable. I'm sure Ray might say something similar. There's no way except the hard way. I think you (bborg) are doing yourself a disservice by looking at your friends' easy hook-ups and thinking that's how it's supposed to be. It's not. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

  6. Posted · Report post

    When I'm not at school, I'm generally outside: climbing, backpacking, etc. It's rare for me to be somewhere girls are. (Actually, it's a joke around Webb (my college) that whenever we go to New York City or somewhere everybody's like "Look! There's girls!") I think I'm going to try to make time next semester to follow Ed's advice and take up ballroom dancing. It's been something I've wanted to do for a while now. But now I have changed the subject to a much less interesting (and much more discussed) topic.

    1) there's communal backpacking/climbing groups out there. I think, based on the context of your post, that you more specifically mean that you hang out where your other guy friends are. That's the real issue. Not the backpacking or camping, but going with your buddies. That's one of the problems if your other guy friends don't go to places with women. Then you're stuck. So you have to make an extra effort to go outside your group, sometimes even to a detriment of your standing with your friends, but because that's something you have to do.

    2) ballroom dancing is fantastic, on so many levels. One, you may meet a pretty girl there.

    Two, you get so much practice holding women at their waist, holding them close, that you lose a lot of shyness which, if exhibited, women always take to be a lack of confidence or masculinity, i.e. a killer perception. If you know how to hold a woman, and yet appear totally nonchalant and not having a "oh my god I'm holding the waist!" floating all around your mind, that is something that really appeals to them -- to know how to hold them, and at the same time look completely unfazed by this closeness.

    Finally there's just the skill of ballroom dancing. Women love a guy who knows how to move, and inexperienced men always think that dancing undermines their masculinity. Thus, the men who know how to move, and to appear masculine while doing it, get any girl of their pick usually without any exception. You don't have to be an expert either. I went just for a year, acquiring points One and Two above at these ballroom lessons, but I still impressed my current girlfriend who is something of an expert at salsa and tango; in fact that's how I got a first date with her, by being open and confident on the dance floor, when all the other guys tried to appear "cool" and "confident" by staying at their tables.

    With regards to the rest of this thread, I think my stance now is: I can do it, but I don't see why. I still do not understand why a woman cannot initiate the conversation and cannot send a little less obvious signals.

    Here's the thing, and I don't think it's been so far mentioned in the thread. Women don't send signals to communicate with you. That's absolutely right. They can't expect you to be a mind-reader, and they don't. They send signals subconsciously, by just being themselves, and reading that merely helps you gauge how you are doing. Signals is something women send out almost unintentionally, as an outward expression. For instance, it's always a good signal when they start playing with their hair or brushing it. Women love their hair, especially those that take care of it, so they take pride in it and the look it gives them, thus reaching for this exemplar of their beauty subconsciously when they are attracted and want to appear more beautiful in your eyes. Obviously, constantly looking to you and away is not a very good sign. By the same token, constant and attentive eye contact with you, is. But ultimately, you don't even have to know these signs to do well, they just augment your awareness of the situation. Women don't send signals as a means of communication, and you don't need them to be such. You need to just know what you want, and what of your qualities justifies you getting it. Also, since you're in college, college girls are almost as appearance-obsessed as guys, and so you have to exude a good and healthy look, to make a first good impression. That means things like, non-intrusive hair style, clean shave, musculature which fills in your t-shirt, etc. Then, if they're attracted, you're open to demonstrating that you're a good guy, also with an intelligent head on your shoulders, and above and beyond the meatheads she's got to deal with.

    For example, the last potential date I met started text messaging me ALOT, so I asked her on a date. Turns out, she just like text messaging. She was so uncertain about going on a date that I didn't know what to do. First she said yes, then she said no, then she said she was confused. ??? Now, I'm assuming (and hoping) that's a rare case, but the point is valid. I've encountered lots of examples where I think a girl likes me, so I start to reciprocate attention, and then she stops. It's hard for me to interpret these subtle things as signals when I find that they are often unaware that they are doing them.

    See the thing is, you're not supposed to make a move based on those signals. Do you like her? If yes, great job on asking her out. She says no? Too bad, she can go find someone else. It's really not a big deal.

    At the end of the day, all you have to concern yourself with is, since you're in college, that you look fit and healthy, that you exude a collected and non-unstable impression, that you act like you've got your principles, which she'll have to come around to (rather than you doing whatever it takes to get her). In general, you have to act to pull her to your side of the court, and by bringing attention to her and her attractive qualities, to indicate that she's pretty enough and a good girl enough to be something you'll pursue.

  7. Posted · Report post

    People's behavior is a metaphysical fact in the following sense. We are predisposed to act in a way in which other animals act without choosing. We're also physically built in accordance with that predisposition, women in one way and men in the other. Saying that we all have free will does not erase this fact of sexual roles. We have, and exercise, free will within the framework of the animal on which our rational nature is built on top of.

    We are also built, and designed, to walk on two feet and to utter discreete and intelligible sounds, but we have free will to walk on two hands, and talk in gibberish. That doesn't erase the fact that we were predisposed to do something else, and that this walking on hands was not it, that uttering meaningless sounds was not it.

    I mean well, but trying to agonize over whether walking on our feet is appropriate, or fair, especially to people with foot disabilities, is entirely beside the point. Those people with foot disabilities were born incorrectly. Tough luck to them. People with shyness were not born in any incorrect way at all, they have no inescapable debilitating prohibition. They can fulfill that part of their nature with complete aplomb, simply by working on it. Watching National Geographic is a good inductive source of how nature works. Agonizing over why it works, and the fairness of that, isn't open to discussion.

    What's more, I will add this. Agonizing over the fairness puts you at a deep disadvantage with a guy who doesn't agonize over it at all, who loves his nature, who (with complete triteness) listens to both of his heads, and who acts without a shred of guilt or doubt.

  9. Posted · Report post

    I can see nothing necessary or logical about any of this.

    There are two points about this.

    First off, one's perspective on the whole "male pursuit" issue is strongly determined by one's shyness or lack thereof. I have absolutely no problems with women being passive and sending signals to me. I am emphatically on Ray's side, and don't mind at all if women are secretive about their intentions. If I want it, I'll go for it. End of story, and she doesn't even have a lot of choice in the matter. Also I have learned to read those signs better. I can look at what a woman is doing and see for myself whether I'm working or not, without her even saying anything on the matter.

    But if you look back into my late-teen years, I was a completely opposite person in this respect. Not only was I shy and incapable of approaching women, but if someone were to approach me and enlist me into the ranks of 'male pursuit' protestors, I would sign up wholeheartedly, thinking the whole thing unfair and one-sided. And yes, I was extremely a late bloomer, as Thoyd was, and there's nothing pathological about it, nothing preventing the person from growing into who they were supposed to be from the start.

    So that's point 1. If you've experienced failure in getting women, it's only natural that you'll feel this expectation of you is unfair. If you've experienced success and efficacy, you'll feel nothing bad about it at all, and will yearn to rise to the challenge, to get the most attractive woman you want.

    Point 2 is: the discussion of whether this male pursuit is "necessary" or "logical" is absolutely beside the issue! It's completely irrelevant! This is not some theoretical construct, open to discussion; it is empirical fact. I wouldn't say to get over shyness; I do think people need to overcome it, but it is more difficult than simply deciding to get over it. What people should get over is this debate over its logical necessity. That is taking an empirical, biological fact, and trying to intellectualize it out of existence. Just take a remote control and flip onto National Geographic Channel, and watch lions in courting, with the female lionness, proud and strong as she may be, simply lying down on the ground and waiting for the lion to come over to her and do his thing. Trying to intellectualize over this does justify a recommendation to 'get over it' (meaning well all the while).

    Instead of trying to reason why, and whether it's fair, a better object of thinking is how to turn oneself into that lion, and how to get that lionness.

  10. Posted · Report post

    Sure. Ray says:

    Man must start by asking three questions which only philosophy can answer. "Where am I? How do I know it? What should I do?"

    Philosophy can answer these questions explicitly, but it is not true that only a philosophic man knows it. That's the whole point, that man by simply living knows it, and he needs philosophy only to verbalize it. That's why Rearden does not need to be as fluent in philosophy as Ragnar, because it simply does not matter to him what the proper difference between sensation and perception should be, what is the phenomenological difference between Kierkegaard and Sartre, or other such questions which however are not pointless questions. Doesn't it bear importantly on Rearden's life and well being that these complicated questions be answered? Yes. That doesn't mean he has to study them. Ragnar could study them and simply tell him the answer.

  11. Posted · Report post

    Rearden, as a businessman rather than a professional intellectual, needs a system of good working principles to guide him in making the choices and taking the actions he faces in his work and his personal life.

    How does this differ from the concept of implicit philosophy as described in this thread, in the sense of a basic set of guidelines, run as much by his sense of life as by explicit philosophical teachings? No one would recommend Rearden to study the differences between Objectivism and Kierkegaard, yet it seems that Ray is suggesting that without in-depth philosophical musings Rearden would amount to nothing in his life.

  12. Posted · Report post

    I haven't yet seen a differentiation between reading and studying; both have been used throughout this thread. The average man today must first learn how to read for comprehension. Reading Objectivism is indispensable to every single human being because Objectivism shows the average man that words have specific, real and definite meanings, that there is a relationship of those words to reality, and his possibility of thought and action. Reading Ayn Rand's non-fiction provides the possibility of one's own conceptual growth because he will learn how to study (he will learn how to comprehend reality). Reading Objectivism provides a spark for every first-handed possibility even in the most wilted of average men. Objectivism is the only philosophy in man's history that one can both read and study due to its internal and external consistency and integration. All other philosophies can only be studied. I am addressing Objectivism specifically since I have already spoken to the value of explicitly understanding other philosophical systems.

    You make a good distinction, as indeed reading and studying are different. Studying any philosophy, with all of its ins and outs, is necessary for even less people, for the true professionals, that's even with Objectivism. Just reading through Objectivism, and opening up the possibilities it describes, as you mention, is important for a far greater amount of people.

    But in terms of studying, this or any philosophical systems, I think it's pretty clear that professionals are the ones to lay most claim to it, since the rest of us normally have an implicit philosophy that works. I doubt that a vast majority of the members on this Forum can tell an Objectivist difference between sensation and perception without having to run to ITOE for reference, but that won't make their lives worse for it.

    I came to a new analogy today after the old martial arts thread was brought up again -- philosophy is just like martial arts, and is mostly for those who simply enjoy it; you don't need to be an expert in it as much as to just live 'in a good area'.

  13. Posted · Report post

    A quick example from the newspaper: rising oil prices. Who gets the blame? Those nearest to the typical consumer: the dreaded "Big Oil."

    Yes but this is not an implicit thought that people implicitly derive from the facts of reality. This is residue of a bad explicit philosophy, Marxism. Take a look at some of the pre-Marxist worldviews, with their own poverty and problems, and you'll be hardpressed to find this sort of mentality anywhere. Let's look at the Middle Ages, the heart of the darkness, when at one point merchants organized into an extraordinarily wealthy Hanseatic League, which monopolized basically all of trade in the entirety of northeastern Europe. If a plague hit, poverty spread, misery, disease, not a single person would blame this merchant league, however much it dominated their economic lives; they'd blame the world, blame their own sin (another bad explicit philosophy), blame this or that, but Big Companies were never even close to being a bogey-man for them. This can still be seen in Revolutionary America, when Hancock ran a huge smugling ring around British merchants, and was accused of being a smuggler, never of being a Big Business man.

    It takes principles and conceptual thought to see the causal chains leading to the effect of higher prices; it is not perceptually available, in the way numbers on a sign at a gas station are.

    I agree, but with a caveat. Yes, it takes modern economics to try and generally predict the courses of prices, and the fallout from government intervention. But let's look at the Rome again, since Ray brought it up; a time when modern economics didn't exist yet. So yes, they weren't able to predict and chart complicated courses of prices. But their economy was simply unbelievably healthy, because their tax seems to have been 0.5%, and their money was pure gold; and that was a result of a profund self-respect for what human dignity demands, and not out of complicated economical schemes. This self-respect was derived implicitly from their living and honing the idea of man's dignity, without ever reflecting that it could be false or that they could be wrong about man's greatness.

    These are not exactly examples of a "good epistemology."

    Let me clarify that bad thinking skills, or incorrect Marxist theories popping up at inopportune moments, is not bad epistemology. I was very precise with what I mean about epistemology -- namely, just the fact of seeing, trusting, and living in the perceptible world. It sounds trivial, but it's not, given almost every philosopher's attack on this very faculty since at least the time of Descartes. Or let's go back to Augustine, and the Dark Ages, the strongest attack on good epistemology ever. But yet, with all that 1600 years of attack on perception, and 99.999% of the population unaware of ITOE, people are seeing, loving, and enjoying this life in a way that Augustine would have found repugnant, trusting their eyes in a way that Descartes would consider childish and simplistic. Yes, a few people may accept Marxist ideas here or there, which is undeniable, and they may need better thinking skills which they weren't taught in school, but in the fundamentals of epistemology they've got the right idea.

    One knows that one ought to verify by referring to reality (and not the Koran or the Bible) through philosophy, by learning to rule out religion and faith as means to knowledge or standards of truth.

    No, that's not how I have seen people move away from the Bible in the Renaissance. If my facts are wrong here I welcome every correction, but what I've observed is that the Bible itself was reinterpreted according to people's better views, an thus the devotion to it was reinterpreted as going to church just on Sunday. People have reinterpreted godliness to mean health and success in this life, as a way to cherish god... so they lived well and cherished life, believing this to be the height of piety. Then they'd go back to an immersion in the Bible just once a week.

    I agree that individual men are driven primarily by their own implicit philosophies. But where does that philosophy come from? One could say he picks up a smattering of things based on the culture in which he grows up, but then what shapes the culture? Ultimately it is explicit philosophy.

    It's absolutely in part from explicit philosophy. As I showed above, your regular blue-collar workers would never themselves come to blame Big Oil were it not for Marx who injected the idea into the culture. But smatterings of explicit philosophy isn't the only source of implicit ideas. A powerful source is reality, just living, and that was the source for the primordial man, thanks to whose success in life we exist today.

  15. Posted · Report post

    What of the average person that held deep premises at the fall of Greece or Rome.[...] No, I do not think man can get by with just an implicit philosohy, and history has shown how they give up those so called "deeply held premises."

    That's a good question. But here's the thing -- Greece and Rome rose to their heights, without explicit philosophers as well! So you're right, people couldn't hold off the bad tide at the collapse of civilization, but it was brought to its pinnacle prior to philosophers as well. Philosophers flourished and elaborated on a civilization that has already flourished around them. That's the power of implicit philosophy -- it can raise or collapse cultures, without even explicit philosophy. There were some good philosophers at the end, but ultimately it didn't work. There were bad philosophical ideas flourishing around nascent Greece and Rome, but they took no hold whatsoever. I'm not saying implicit philosophy is all we need, that's not true. I'm saying that it is demonstrably separate from explicit philosophizing, and that it can be shown to have held its own.

    Now given that, if you agree with me on this last statement, I'll agree with you that stronger efforts by the good philosophers at the end would have definitely helped to stem the tide back towards civilization. Explicit philosophy helps pick up the slack when the people implicitly don't know right from wrong anymore. What I've been saying is that explicit philosophy doesn't give root to people's ideas of right and wrong, or to their ideas about metaphysics or epistemology. The primordial saw a mammoth, and ran to hunt him, already 100% convinced that he saw, and that reality existed, and that his own livelihood was his standard of value.

  16. Posted · Report post

    The thing is that Obama is very charismatic, while a vast swath of the public hates Hillary with a passion. If he wins, he'll be able to charm even parts of the right, as an 'outsider' and 'agent of change', plus other bromides such as that. He at least knows how to use those bromides. It's hard for Hillary to stand for anything idealistic, and a lot of people hate her already. She may have an iron will, but simply no one outside the Democratic party likes her. That's why I'd rather she were nominated. As bad as McCain is, I have a very hard time imagining him waffling on the war and finally doing something right in that regard.

  17. Posted · Report post

    Accord is defined as agreeing. So, to act in accordance is to act in agreement. A person can have an implicit understanding of "existence exist" and act accordingly.

    But, this is just the beginning and can be lost unless that person works to integrate and make explicit.

    Again, this step is useful but optional. Not everyone who hasn't read ITOE will have a terrible epistemology. In fact, 95% of people will have an implict good epistemology, never having read a single page of ITOE.

    I'm not taking away anything from Objectivism, this is merely empirical fact.

    So, if you are trying to state that man needs nothing more than an implicit philosohy, I disagree.

    I hope we agree now, that there is such a thing as implicit philosophy. That is what is meant by saying that men are driven by philosophy. It is not that they're driving by explicit philosophical teachings, but they're driven by what they hold most deeply as their premises. What they hold deeply may be helped by explicit philosophizing, but it may be still quite fine without such a thing. Good philosophizing brings a person's philosophy from, say, 95% to 100%. That doesn't mean the person originally had 0%. They had 95%. That is quite good, and the extra 5% is an icing on the top.

    That's how I would get back to Ed's question. Knowing Plato's forms or Kant's metaphysical system is useful mainly for intellectuals, who make it their profession to deal with ideas; and may be of some tangental use to a lay person. Studying explicit philosophical systems (that's what we mean by studying philosophy) is not in my opinion something indispensable to every single human being. Simply the fact that all of us here on this forum consider explicit philosophy important does not change the fact that we aren't the whole population. We're intellectuals, so to us it's important.

  18. Posted · Report post

    I forgot to add aconcluding sentence to what I've said:

    Rotting academic philosophies haven't meant as much as theory says they should've had, because we all have our own philosophy, which may or may not match what those philosophers teach us. It may not even match what we ourselves think we believe! How many self-professed Objectivists turned into dregs of men? Students of Aristotle had a worse record in being good men than pre-Aristotelians, who've never heard of the guy. The former thought they were good men. The latter were good men.

    The importance and deep-seatedness of implicit philosophy is an absolutely vital empirical fact, and I'm baffled that there's resistence to it.

  19. Posted · Report post

    When someone that has just come upon Objectivism finds themselves in a moral dilema they might ask themselves, "what would Howard Roark do in this situation?" Do they have an explicit understanding of Objectivism? NO. Are they acting in accordance to a philsoophy? Yes.

    Absolutely not. How can they act in accordance with a philosophy they don't even understand? How can they know what Howard Roark would do in such and such situation? They absolutely have no idea, and their correlation to Objectivism is limited only to literal examples from the book which state how he acted; everything else that they'd assume him to be, or to act as, or to say, is entirely out of their own imagination. It may be in accord with Objectivism, or it may not, and simply asking "What would Roark do" does absolutely nothing to guarantee them a knowledge of the answer.

    The point is, this sort of emoting and inquiring into what Roark would do is not acceptance of an explicit philosophy. It is still continuing to use one's own implicit philosophy, and merely putting into Roark's mouth what they believe to be true (unless it's limited by the literal examples from the book). To actually understand a philosophy explicitly, a person has to philosophize, compare and contrast, know even something of the opposite philosophies and understand what their principles are, etc. These are all necessary steps for an explicit grasp of a philosophy, and no shortcut can replace that, no instant association with heroes or a split-second emotional reaction.

    My point, therefore, is that aside from this explicit philosophizing, there exists a second definition of what a philosophy is -- one's deepest premises, arrived at with or without philosophizing. The primordial man, again, did absolutely no philosophizing at all, but he arrived at more or less correct philosophical principles, in order to survive. A 'post-modern' explicitly philosophic person would not be able to survive; an Objectivist would be able to survive better. All three men have a philosophy, but only two explicitly thought about it. That is the point, that aside from consciously thinking out one's principles, or studying various philosophical systems, people can arrive at an implicit philosophy without even having given a single thought to what epistemology means. Ed's question, then, is how important it is to actually go and study the various philosophic systems. It's a valid point, because it's not important for everybody. Tracinski asks, how could we prosper in the last 20 years if our philosophical departments are rotting, and how could the Greeks prosper without any Aristotle? The answer, I hope, is clear given what we've said. Aristotle wasn't necessary for their progress, as facts show. Rotting academic philosophies haven't meant as much as theory says they should've had.

  20. Posted · Report post

    Will a person have to move well beyond that initial grasp to integrate and achieve the values of philosophy, especially Objectivism? Yes. Do most people do the required thinking and integrating? No. But, that does not mean that they have not accepted and use their philosophy.

    Of course it does.

    How can they agree with a philosophy they haven't even fully integrated? What's true is that their philosophy may agree with the philosophy of The Fountainhead in the fundamentals, only, but you have no idea where they may disagree beyond that. Only by investigating and consciously philosophizing, with aid of other alternative philosophies, can one arrive at a complete and explicit grasp of the philosophy contained in The Fountainhead. Implicit, instant reaction is not a thought-out and purposeful process. Just as simply living, and containing an implicit philosophy required for living, is not a thought-out and purposeful process.

  21. Posted · Report post

    Ray you just contradicted your very own statement:

    What you are trying to call or name an implict philosophy is what I [...] would call common sense.
    every man has a philosophy whether he realizes it explicitly or not

    How can every man have a 'philosophy', if not every man investigates all of your philosophical questions explicitly?

    I say they do have a philosophy, and there are no quote marks around that word. It's not merely common sense, it's a philosophy, exactly as you said. It is that man's deepest values. This philosophy can be achieved without investigating. Primordial man had that philosophy.

    Explicit philosophy, that is investigation and comparison between systems of ideas published by philosophers, is a separate process. It is not necessary, but may achieve better results. On the other hand it may achieve worse results (which happens 90% of the time nowadays).

    Point is, explicit philosophical investigation is different from implicitly held philosophical ideas that one uses to live one's life. The former is not mutually interchangeable with the latter.

  22. Posted · Report post

    you just stated the same thing in different words.

    Not at all, it is more like the same word that expresses different things. This is the whole point, that's what I think many people have misunderstood Tracinski's point, and why Ed wasn't getting his point across in this thread.

    Philosophy as an academic field designates explicit inquiry into the nature of reality, nature of man, epistemology etc.

    Philosophy as fundamental premises denotes implicit, unquestioned and unreflecting views towards reality, epistemology etc. Usually, in most healthy people, this unquestioned and unreflecting set of beliefs is dictated by survival in reality itself; it's not a conscious realization, but absent are forms, unreal realms, distrust of senses, etc. As a contrast, only explicit philosophizing allows for a disconnect between the necessities of survival, and theories concerning philosophy.

    These are two different ways of looking at the same issue. A primordial man was not a philosopher in the academic sense, of explicitly investigating theories on epistemology and on metaphysics. He didn't even have a concept for such a thing as epistemology or meptaphysics. He simply acted, and was. That's why implicit philosophy present in every man is very different from conscious philosophizing on the various theories existing out there. Living, Ray, is not investigating. That's why we have two words, and they're not synonimous. Implicit philosophy is simply living. Explicit philosophical study is investigation. Not every man will have the latter, but every man will have the former.

  23. Posted · Report post

    I think why, emotionally, I felt that I was not learning as much as I should was that I looked at all that being an engineer requires and it seemed I was so far away.

    Right. when I was as a sophomore and at looked at the sort of Computer Science stuff older people were doing, I wouldn't have had a very strong confidence about myself getting there on time, in my program. In response to ewv, a sophomore is nowhere near sufficient to evaluate his college career. Of course we can all make a basic estimate of whether the quality of the engineering school at our university is high enough, but even there usually it's not even we who make that estimate, but national rankings and accredited professionals, who know what a school is supposed to provide. Other than this basic gut feeling at the bottom of the ladder, or the national rankings, I'd say the the experience itself of a sophomore is nowhere near enough. There were a ton of classes that I thought were superfluous at that age, or had a plenty of my own other suggestions for what and how I should be studying. I see now that the wisdom of the elders and professionals was more than correct in assigning me what I were to study. If one's school doesn't inspire that sort of trust, the best one has to go by is the meagre experience at the bottom rung of the ladder, and national rankings.

  24. Posted · Report post

    I note that this equivocation is also behind some of the attacks on Tracinski's What Went Right articles. He was accused of basic misunderstanding of man, when he denied that philosophy had something to do with early Greek flourishing, when philosophy was absent as a study; or when he denied that philosophy had a role in our modern (post-Reagan) happy upturn, when philosophy as a branch has gotten worse and not better. Well yes, the branch of study is in direst straits. People and their deepest values are not.

  25. Posted · Report post

    Philosophy is defined as the study of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence.

    No that is not the only way it is defined. It is also defined as man's most fundamental premises. A prehistoric man certainly did not have a detailed study of existence, of man, or of the relationship, but he did have his most fundamental premises.

    That's how the two concepts are different. One is the essence of a man's values. The other is an academic branch of study.