Attempting to read Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness yet again... but find myself where I had been previously: completely lacking in intelligence to comprehend what he's talking about. Being-in-itself as opposed to being-for-itself and true belief and false belief. Belief being the the thought processes within the mind that replicate the self being the subject, the I. It takes me 10 minutes to finish a page and the book is over 900 of them. No matter...
What is my philosophy? What is my understanding of "everything"? I utterly get destroyed half the time in my philosophy class because he consistently calls on me for some of the most difficult questions. "Taylor, I'm going to pick on you again tonight. What are the notable similarities to Epictetus and Sartre's worldview?". How the fuck am I supposed to know? Epictetus was the very beginning of the semester and was a lousy bullshit Greek philosopher to begin with; stoic thought being a completely zombie like attitude towards everything present in "reality". If your child dies, one must not grieve but instead shrug your shoulders and state, "It was the way of the world,". You must treat the event the same way you would treat your neighbor's child dying, with complete indifference. But anyways, since being put on the spot, I had no answer whatsoever even though I could say about their differences in God but that doesn't amount to anything in this philosophy class; you must have proper premises to then be validated by even further claims to reach your conclusion. Since being ashamed of myself in my lack of response, I attempted to tie in some completely useless response/question in order to keep my own worth intact. "Well, why would Sartre want to plainly assume that there are other selves within the world without any other claims to back it?" and of course I come in with a (keep in mind that you can replace the latter with any philosopher and be right about it because Sartre is dead and therefore can't respond to any of these hollow claims, "Well, I feel that he's attempting to separate himself from Descartes' Cartesian Dualism of the mind...". Really? Really? That was a good answer when you can't make statements like that? It's mere speculation! How is speculation becoming that of fact or truth or Sartre's concepts? Such useless notions. I'm amazed how poor I am at Anglo-American philosophy; my roots are in to German or French which are not so fundamentally based on argument but more on stating my worldview and blending it with literary concepts or metaphors.
To be quite frank, the reason I lean towards those ways to interpret my philosophy is my laziness; complete laziness in trying to establish those premises when I can interpret it through metaphors. I don't wish to try and deduce it... what does that show of me? I'm no philosopher, I'm a lowly mind wishing to try on the mask of philosopher. I'm the followers of Socrates running around the city following him and acting as him at dinner parties through Socratically questioning everything of an individual until they are left embarrassed.
At the end of the night, when the dinner party has ended many hours ago, all the wine and women are spent, and the men lay to waste by both, it is the "I" who is embarrassed. Walking the streets of Athens, I here the chaos and disturbance of sound under my feet. I can't step any more lightly, but the moonlight catches the glimpse as to what I'm stepping on. The mask I wore for the dinner party? Not just one though, thousands are scattered across the streets. Where's the true face? How can the "I" find it when it's mentally layered with such things?
By the questioning of all, the over-analytical mind is left paralyzed in its indecisiveness towards a given action. (Did I come up with that or did I read that somewhere at some time? I can't tell anymore and that's an irritation much like a scratch one can't reach no matter how hard you try. I can't reach in my mind that scratch of small bit of knowledge to answer the question of the source these word).
It sounds too good to be my words- sounds too right.
What is my philosophy? What is my understanding of "everything"? I utterly get destroyed half the time in my philosophy class because he consistently calls on me for some of the most difficult questions. "Taylor, I'm going to pick on you again tonight. What are the notable similarities to Epictetus and Sartre's worldview?". How the fuck am I supposed to know? Epictetus was the very beginning of the semester and was a lousy bullshit Greek philosopher to begin with; stoic thought being a completely zombie like attitude towards everything present in "reality". If your child dies, one must not grieve but instead shrug your shoulders and state, "It was the way of the world,". You must treat the event the same way you would treat your neighbor's child dying, with complete indifference. But anyways, since being put on the spot, I had no answer whatsoever even though I could say about their differences in God but that doesn't amount to anything in this philosophy class; you must have proper premises to then be validated by even further claims to reach your conclusion. Since being ashamed of myself in my lack of response, I attempted to tie in some completely useless response/question in order to keep my own worth intact. "Well, why would Sartre want to plainly assume that there are other selves within the world without any other claims to back it?" and of course I come in with a (keep in mind that you can replace the latter with any philosopher and be right about it because Sartre is dead and therefore can't respond to any of these hollow claims, "Well, I feel that he's attempting to separate himself from Descartes' Cartesian Dualism of the mind...". Really? Really? That was a good answer when you can't make statements like that? It's mere speculation! How is speculation becoming that of fact or truth or Sartre's concepts? Such useless notions. I'm amazed how poor I am at Anglo-American philosophy; my roots are in to German or French which are not so fundamentally based on argument but more on stating my worldview and blending it with literary concepts or metaphors.
To be quite frank, the reason I lean towards those ways to interpret my philosophy is my laziness; complete laziness in trying to establish those premises when I can interpret it through metaphors. I don't wish to try and deduce it... what does that show of me? I'm no philosopher, I'm a lowly mind wishing to try on the mask of philosopher. I'm the followers of Socrates running around the city following him and acting as him at dinner parties through Socratically questioning everything of an individual until they are left embarrassed.
At the end of the night, when the dinner party has ended many hours ago, all the wine and women are spent, and the men lay to waste by both, it is the "I" who is embarrassed. Walking the streets of Athens, I here the chaos and disturbance of sound under my feet. I can't step any more lightly, but the moonlight catches the glimpse as to what I'm stepping on. The mask I wore for the dinner party? Not just one though, thousands are scattered across the streets. Where's the true face? How can the "I" find it when it's mentally layered with such things?
By the questioning of all, the over-analytical mind is left paralyzed in its indecisiveness towards a given action. (Did I come up with that or did I read that somewhere at some time? I can't tell anymore and that's an irritation much like a scratch one can't reach no matter how hard you try. I can't reach in my mind that scratch of small bit of knowledge to answer the question of the source these word).
It sounds too good to be my words- sounds too right.
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