Quote:
|
Yeah and it makes me weep to think of all that energy spent on folderol and flapdoodle. Imagine if Saul of Tarsus would have been an engineer - he could have built a great aqueduct to water the deserts! Or if Augustine had invented the horsecollar and revolutionized agriculture 600 years early! Or if Luther had been a writer, and had written a classic novel still studied today for its insight into human character!
|
I think my own perspective is at odds with a lot of people on this board who are predominantly liberal, classically or progressive, and modernist. I have no real problems with this mindset so far that it represents the most revolutionary form of thought to ever exist. You want to talk about flapdoodle? If John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, among the liberal social theorists, had been engineers or farmers instead of philosophers, we would not live in the society we have today. Everything springs from ideas.
We think in terms of reductionism and practicality, sadly there is no use for virtue or wisdom anymore, unless it is deemed realistic.
Quote:
How is that different than someone who claims that science is everything? I think you are projecting your own monomania when you make claims about how atheists here think.
Philosophy is like abstract mathematics in that it can be useful - but only through serendipity and not design. One of the great flaws of philosophers is that they far over-estimate their importance, for philosophy is but one of many inputs that guide modern thought. Von Clausewitz, for example, had as much of an impact on the 20th century as Marx; Henry Ford and his cars did more to liberalize sexuality than any beatnik professor declaiming free love.
|
I entirely accept the legitimacy of atheism and the scientific method. I do not accept reductionism as a legitimate worldview. That's fine, we can always argue about it.
Philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge. Thus in its quest to understand the human condition, it encompasses all the disciplines. Even science is guided by a philosophy formed by thinkers such as Spinoza, Descartes, and even Luther (the Protestant roots of modern science are quite undeniable).
Clausewitz was probably more of a philosopher than Marx. In fact what made Clausewitz's theory so profound was it's searing insight into the human condition.
Ford probably read Smith at one point and Plato, Shakespeare, Rousseau and many others wrote the book on erotic love.