What is the worst idea in philosophy?

[Dr Adequate]

Mmm... the ideas I've cited so far are stupid but not particularly harmful. Let's go for the harmful ones.

How about:

"Faith is a virtue."

and

"Intuition is a source of knowledge."

If it wasn't for that little pair, the other stupid ideas in the world wouldn't last long.

 

[Beleth]

What he said, plus "eternity"

I agree - or more generally, that the mathematical construct "infinity" has any real-world analog.

 

[epepke]

Re: Re: What is the worst idea in philosophy?

In fairness to old Freddy, the ubermensch business was grossly misinterpreted. "Beyond good and evil" doesn't mean acting anyhow is justified, it means that one has evolved beyond those concepts. His philosophy wasn't written for easy reading, and his style, while brilliant, managed to be unfortunately obscure and sometimes mystical.

I completely agree and think that to say the Uebermensch encourages strong people to act immorally is totally wrong. "Beyond good and evil" means avoiding ressentiment and switching to a system in which good is what is life-affirming and species-affirming (translation of Nietzsche's own words). "Mensch" specifically denotes the humane qualities of people.

Nietzsche got in trouble, I think, for two reasons. First, he described unflinchingly the things that made people suck, and people don't like to hear that. Second, he was against traditional morality (sex = evil, repression = good, humility = good, self-esteem = bad, enslavement = good, etc.) which many people have an interest in.

However, his observations about people were largely correct, and his idea of how people should behave are, if anything, better than have been accomplished by the morality that he questions. Consider the story of the tightrope walker. Zarathustra would have been the one guy who gave someone CPR, surrounded by masses who just didn't want to get involved or were afraid of catching AIDS or something.

Not that Zarathustra is the Uebermensch, of course. The Uebermensch isn't here yet; it's a dream of how people might behave in the future. On the other hand, everyone who has ever built anything has a little of the Uebermensch.

The Nazis did like Zarathustra, the more poetic of his works, while most of them remained blissfully ignorant of his denunciations of nationalism, Germans, and particularly German nationalism.

Even that's not an excuse, as Zarathustra contains a chapter called "The State," which should put to rest any question of what he would have thought of the Nazis.

To TragicMonkey: You can get the original German text from the Gutenberg project, and even if German is not your strongest language, verify that the Kaufmann translation is pretty accurate (although the Hollingdale translation has something to be said for it as well).

 

[TragicMonkey]

Re: Re: Re: What is the worst idea in philosophy?

To TragicMonkey: You can get the original German text from the Gutenberg project, and even if German is not your strongest language, verify that the Kaufmann translation is pretty accurate (although the Hollingdale translation has something to be said for it as well).

I tried to teach myself German. This was about as successful as you'd suppose.

I actually know more Lupine, thanks to a recent reread of Watership Down.

I'm going to go silflay, even though it's fu Inle.

 

[Piscivore]

Re: Re: Re: Re: What is the worst idea in philosophy?

I actually know more Lupine, thanks to a recent reread of Watership Down.

I'm going to go silflay, even though it's fu Inle.

Heh, you need to read it again, because your Lapine is hraka

 

[Throg]

original quote by Dr Adequate
Mmm... the ideas I've cited so far are stupid but not particularly harmful. Let's go for the harmful ones.

How about:

"Faith is a virtue."

and

"Intuition is a source of knowledge."

If it wasn't for that little pair, the other stupid ideas in the world wouldn't last long..

Sadly, these are also surely the most pervasive of philosophical beliefs.

I should also like to nominate Cartesian Dualism and it's relatives both for it's absurdity and it's ability to survive, cockroach-like, the advances of science.

 

[Iacchus]

That there is a grand purpose to existence, and it is discernible.

How can you have a whole, without its relative aspects? Matter of fact, that's all discernment is, the understanding of the relationship between things which, are merely relative aspects of the whole.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

How can you have a whole, without its relative aspects? Matter of fact, that's all discernment is, the understanding of the relationship between things which, are merely relative aspects of the whole.

Uh-huh. Check that, Cap'n Sparky. And this has, what, exactly, to do with an over-riding purpose?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is the worst idea in philosophy?

I think the worst idea in philosophy/religion has been divine right monarchy, the idea that the dictator rules by godly decree. Everything from ancient god-kings up to those irritating nineteenth century monarchs. I'm sure there are still traces of that thought in various places still. It started out primitive, "Og is son of Sun God! Ugh!" but wound up with all sorts of spirited sophistic defense even in Enlightenment times. And how many times has that damnable Jesus quote "Render unto Caesar.." been used to justify stupidness in the name of the Christian god?

It's a bad idea. At it's very best, it encourages complacency, persuading the people to accept indifferent or downright awful leadership. At it's worst, it's actually destroyed civilizations because of incompetence, foolishness, or just plain madness of the ruler. You could even go so far to make a case that the idea actually retards the natural development of a civilization, wasting people's time and resources on foolishness when it could have been used for advancement.

Suppose the ancient Egyptians never had their idea of god-kings, but instead just had some guy in charge. Sooner or later, they'd start replacing the guy in charge with a better guy. I think this would inevitably lead to democracy. What would the world have been like if democracy had been established way back then, rather than being shortlived in a few Greek citystates? History would have been a lot different, if we reached the twenty-first century with four thousand years of democracy behind us, rather than a couple hundred!

 

[balrog666]

Afterlife.


BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!

 

[Throg]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is the worst idea in philosophy?

I think the worst idea in philosophy/religion has been divine right monarchy, the idea that the dictator rules by godly decree. Everything from ancient god-kings up to those irritating nineteenth century monarchs. I'm sure there are still traces of that thought in various places still. It started out primitive, "Og is son of Sun God! Ugh!" but wound up with all sorts of spirited sophistic defense even in Enlightenment times. And how many times has that damnable Jesus quote "Render unto Caesar.." been used to justify stupidness in the name of the Christian god?

It's a bad idea. At it's very best, it encourages complacency, persuading the people to accept indifferent or downright awful leadership. At it's worst, it's actually destroyed civilizations because of incompetence, foolishness, or just plain madness of the ruler. You could even go so far to make a case that the idea actually retards the natural development of a civilization, wasting people's time and resources on foolishness when it could have been used for advancement.

Suppose the ancient Egyptians never had their idea of god-kings, but instead just had some guy in charge. Sooner or later, they'd start replacing the guy in charge with a better guy. I think this would inevitably lead to democracy. What would the world have been like if democracy had been established way back then, rather than being shortlived in a few Greek citystates? History would have been a lot different, if we reached the twenty-first century with four thousand years of democracy behind us, rather than a couple hundred!

As someone living in a country where we still have officially have a divine right monarchy (albeit an essentially titular one) I have to agree. It may be apocryphal but I remember reading that the Windsors trace their ancestory back to the god Odin, in which case I live in a country with a monarch descended from a god from Norse religion with her power legitimated by the God of Christian religion.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that it's really that hard to get people to accept indifferent or downright awful leadership even in a democracy.

 

[seayakin]

Mmm... the ideas I've cited so far are stupid but not particularly harmful. Let's go for the harmful ones.

How about:

"Faith is a virtue."

and

"Intuition is a source of knowledge."

If it wasn't for that little pair, the other stupid ideas in the world wouldn't last long.

I think this is it for me. These two essentally are the basis for all religious arguments. I would also add a kind of corollary that I was reading about that Faith can be a source of knowledge. Check out the book of "Rational Theism" if you want to get a good laugh. I'll have to say I couldn't finish it because many of the arguments turned circular even though the authors arrogantly presented them as truth.

 

[Iacchus]

Uh-huh. Check that, Cap'n Sparky. And this has, what, exactly, to do with an over-riding purpose?

It all comes from the same place. So that overriding purpose is either there is or it isn't. It certainly is with respect to the way the whole of the (human) body relates to the sum of its parts. Where the whole represents that which is absolute and the relationship between its parts that which is relative. In other words purpose arises from a sense of wholeness of things.

 

[jmercer]

My candidate for worst idea:

The concept that "If no one individual owns anything, but it's all held in common by the state, everyone will be equal."

How many people died in the name of Communism?

 

[Throg]

My candidate for worst idea:

The concept that "If no one individual owns anything, but it's all held in common by the state, everyone will be equal."

How many people died in the name of Communism?

To be fair, quite a lot of people have died in the name of pretty much any form of government you can name. You're right that there has been a distinct lack of equality under any Communist government I can think of but that is arguably also true under every other system of government that has ever been applied to a large number of people.

 

[jmercer]

Arguably, you are correct. Why I've nominated Communism in particular is because it utterly ignores human nature. How could a government made of people possibly work if it ignores the nature of that which it would govern?

Being the "worst" idea for government doesn't make any of the other ideas "good".

 

[LW]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is the worst idea in philosophy?

It may be apocryphal but I remember reading that the Windsors trace their ancestory back to the god Odin, in which case I live in a country with a monarch descended from a god from Norse religion with her power legitimated by the God of Christian religion.

Don't know about Odin, but at least there's a polar bear in that family tree. (The supposed great-grandfather of Earl Siward of York, 1031 - 55).

 

[jay gw]

Why are some of these 'worst' ideas so common and popular?

I think that they are superficially attractive and plausible, like the idea of corn gods controlling the corn etc. fit into what humans can understand, but when you examine them critically they fall apart.

The weird thing is that so many people just accept these ideas without examining them, or so it appears.

I should also like to nominate Cartesian Dualism

What harm has come from this idea?

 

[Hawk one]

Arguably, you are correct. Why I've nominated Communism in particular is because it utterly ignores human nature. How could a government made of people possibly work if it ignores the nature of that which it would govern?

Being the "worst" idea for government doesn't make any of the other ideas "good".

jmercer: While I certainly have no qualms whatsoever with finding the Soviet regime oppressive, I could disagree with you exactly how communistic it really was, at least from a Marxist-communistic point of view. It would take me days and days to write why this could be so, but if you can find the following book Nomenclature by Michael Voslensky (NB: This is the Norwegian spelling of his name. Russian names sometimes have different spellings in Norwegian and English. "Gorbatsjov" vs. "Gorbatchev"(?) is one example.) If he is correct, and to at least some extent I believe he is, then it's not really correct to have called the Soviet regime "communistic". It was written in the early 80s, so I have no idea if it's available at all today.

To whetten your curiosity, here will be some of the claims he makes:
* The Marxistic theory predicts that the working class will make a proletaric dictatorship which will fade over to a truly classless society. What happened in Russia was that Lenin with his October Revolution took away power from the proletariat, and instead established the ruling class of bureaucracy, of which he or the rest had no intention to end.
* That the principle of the Nomenclature hierarchy was established during Lenin, and that the principle essentially remained unchanged (of course, the actual people working in these positions changed very radically...) when Stalin came to power. Thus, Stalin and his associates merely prolonged the work of Lenin, instead of opposing it, as is what most people reckon.
* How "humane" Lenin apparently was... And it's not a positive picture.

Voslensky was himself a Nomenclaturist for a big part of his life, and had access to plenty of documents that he refers to. As I said, he's probably not right about all, but if you're interested in the Soviet era, then you might want to at least take a look at his perspective. And if you're not, well, I won't force you to, of course.

 

[Dancing David]

How about Milton Freeman and
Free markets lead to democracy.