Tag: philosophy

[philosophy] January 26, 2003 at 9:13:00 AM CET

A monster clone

I hate my father, I'm ambivalent about my son and I dislike myself. But I want to be cloned as soon as possible. It is the only consolation that science has to offer me against death

Michel Houellebecq

(via arts & letters daily)

I don't know Houellebecq personally and I don't really want to but after such a statement I can't refrain from hating him. No. I exaggerate. It is more that I am nauseated. And that I feel extremely sorry for him.

It also bothers me that what he writes here seems as honest as e.g. Rousseau in his Confessions but at the same time he lives on creating scandals with exactly this kind of confessional writing. And he lives quite well according to the sales of his books.

Of course there is also the possibility that Houellebecq makes all this up. I don't believe that but I wouldn't like him more if this was the truth.

On the other hand there is something fascinating about Houellebecq. Something irresistible. I feel like a moth flying into the flame when I read his texts. This small essay on cloning reminds me of the dilemma of the scientists who developed the atomic bomb which was so well described by Dürrenmatt in Die Physiker and which can be condensed into two sentences:

Alles Denkbare wird einmal gedacht.

(Everything which is thinkable/conceivable will be thought/conceived one day.)

and

Was einmal gedacht wurde, kann nicht mehr zurückgenommen werden.

(That which has been thought/conceived once cannot be reversed.)

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[philosophy] January 12, 2003 at 1:30:32 AM CET

Fantaisies

J'aime vraiment l'expression Il y a du monde au balcon. Et ce qu'il se cache derrière. Faux. Quand il y a du monde au balcon ça ne se cache pas du tout...

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[philosophy] January 12, 2003 at 12:59:15 AM CET

Drugs

Ernst Jünger via caterina.net:

Tea is in my opinion a phantasticum, coffee an energeticum -- tea therefore possesses a disproportionately higher artistic rank. I notice that coffee disrupts the delicate lattice of light and shadows, the fruitful doubts that emerge during the writing of a sentence. One exceeds his inhibitions. With tea, on the other hand, the thoughts climb genuinely upward.

Even in the English translation Jünger's style is crystal-clear. And as Nietzsche the other giant German modern writer he has some insights into everyday stuff only few have. Even if they are quite trivial truths based on practical experiences.

I'd like to be a teetotaller but I guess I am more the opposite though I have been a tea addict for most of my life. I can't start the day without a pot of tea. It wakes up my mind. Besides drinking their infusion I also love to smoke leaves. Of a different kind of course. But that's another story and I am happy to have survived day number two without smoking...

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[philosophy] January 7, 2003 at 9:20:06 PM CET

A practitioner of civil disobedience speaks

Today's philosophical quotation:

One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Bertrand Russell --The Conquest of Happiness

A politician following this advice would have a good chance to get my vote. But I don't think he could ever succeed in a democracy. That's why I ask myself sometimes the question if democracy really is the ideal form of government. I don't know any real alternative to democracy. This is just an undigested idea.

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[philosophy] January 5, 2003 at 3:31:07 PM CET

Love, pain and the consequences

An old Daily Philosophical Quotation

Today's date: 23 Dec 2002

We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love.

Sigmund Freud --Civilisation and its Discontents

which makes the following line from Joni Mitchell's The Last Time I Saw Richard come to my mind:

... all romantics meet the same fate someday Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe

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[philosophy] November 12, 2002 at 9:07:18 PM CET

Can't help falling in love

Isn't this the most succinct sentence to wrap up what love is?

I have no control when I fall in love. I can't choose love, it chooses me. It is unavoidable fate. There is something irrational involved. And usually it is not even the "fault" of the person to which the love is directed. This person can almost do what she wants it won't change my feelings towards her. I am at her mercy and I enjoy it. Everything she does has a meaning which only I can see. I don't think it is correct to say that my love is blind. Quite the opposite is true: love is like a mind-expanding drug. Every gesture, every look and every small word confirms my love. It is like being awakened from the dead. I notice so many details I haven't paid attention to before. When I am with her everything around is so much more intense: the colours and perfumes of the flowers, the cool breeze, the clear sky full of stars, the music playing in the background at her place. Everything is magic and who could resist magic...

Love is a present I can't refuse. But usually it doesn't last long. Can't help falling out of love is as frequent as the opposite.

Josh triggered this with his post from Sunday.

The next entry will be on music, I promise.

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[philosophy] November 12, 2002 at 8:21:09 PM CET

Circuli vitiosi

Staying away from the internet for a week and getting back into it is weird. When rereading the blogs and internet sites I usually "flick through" (or maybe more accurate "scroll") I found out that I didn't miss much in that week. It is almost hard to get back into the habit of flying through almost a hundred sites per day. My internet addiction doesn't seem to be too serious yet.

On the other hand this reminds me a lot of another of my addictions. When I stop smoking for a week in hindsight I never have the feeling I missed anything. And when I slip then the first cigarettes are always terrible. I need to smoke at least twenty to find them tasty again. And after another 2,000 they are disgusting again and I have to stop again. Those bloody vicious circles.

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[philosophy] November 12, 2002 at 7:47:20 PM CET

Death and life

An old daily philosophical quotation I kept in my inbox as it somehow got stuck in my craw:

Today's date: 19 Oct 2002

It is strange, this painless death. Like stepping through a door held politely open for him. It doesn't seem right, somehow; a trivialization of the event. Death ought to be harder to achieve. Better to be hunted down, rooted out, hurting and bloody. Then death would come as a relief. It would be welcome.

Richard Selzer --Raising the Dead

This reasoning seems so plain wrong to me. Death is the most trivial event in life. Next to the beginning of life after the most banal and animalistic pastime which is sex. And the door to death is open all life long. We can die at any time. There is nothing mysterious about physical death. Thinking about what comes after is what gives death its special aura. And of course we do not achieve death at all. Death comes to us. Like life actually. Or did you achieve life?

Behind those sentences there seems to hide a calvinistic work ethic: you should earn your death! And then as a bonus death is a relief for you. What a bizarre way of thinking.

On the contrary I would argue that after this often painful life we merit a painless death. What's the point in suffering just to die and disappear or whatever happens after? If medicine was only capable to reduce the pain of those dying of horrible diseases and wounds medicine already would be worth it.

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[philosophy] October 12, 2002 at 6:22:06 PM CEST

Is there a God?

The Onion A.V. Club asked and many VIPs answered. My favourite responses: John Leguizamo:

Yeah, but there's not just one God. There's a whole lot of gods, because one God couldn't have possibly made so many mistakes all by Himself. This had to be done by committee.

Laurie Anderson:

Yes.

Do you want to elaborate on that?

LA:

Well, okay, at the risk of being completely corny, it exists as a potential in every single person. That's what attracts me to Buddhism, because it's the only belief system in which there is no God at all. There is no big authority figure; there is no ultimate anything. You are God. And that's really terrifying. Suddenly, you realize, "Oh my God, that means I'm responsible, and there's nobody to grovel in front of, no one to blame, and no one to praise. I need to do this myself." That's almost more than anybody can take, but that's what I admire about Buddhism.

Herschell Gordon Lewis:

Is there a God? I don't think that's for me to determine.

Clive Barker:

There is an organizing force to the universe, but I don't believe it has a gender.

William Shatner:

There is, but we don't know where. Or who. And, indeed, why.

My favourite answer of all time has always been the one by Bertolt Brecht in his brilliantly to the point Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner (Stories of Mr Keuner):

The question if there is a God Someone asked Mr K. whether there was a God. Mr K. said: "I advise you to reflect whether your behaviour would change depending on the answer to this question. In case it wouldn't change we can drop the question. If it would change I can help you in that way that I say that you have decided already: You need a God."

(my translation)

By the way long before Brecht Nietzsche wrote something very similar but less mysterious in the second volume of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, all too human), aphorism 225 in a free translation by me:

Belief makes happy and condemns - A christ following unauthorized trains of thoughts could ask one day: is it really necessary that a God plus deputizing scapegoat exists if the belief in the existence of these entities suffices to produce the same effects? ~~Aren't~~ Wouldn't those entities be superfluous in case they actually ~~would exist~~ existed? ...

P.S. There is a very active profound discussion on this big question going on at kuro5hin: Is there a God? Introduction:

This article presents a philosophical framework for discussing the nature and existence of God.

There is a brief discussion of epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), a review of the classical arguments for the existence of God, then a section on the so-called "problem of evil", the question of why God would permit suffering caused by either human nature or natural events.

The attached poll will decide, once and for all, the nature and existence of God. Join the ultimate debate now!

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[philosophy] August 17, 2002 at 5:24:00 PM CEST

The Search for Meaning Some pointless ramblings on an old philosophical question, probably THE philosophical question.

Couldn't it be that when you come up with this question (what is the meaning of life?) you have lost it already? There was a meaning before when you were innocent and didn't ask yourself these kind of questions. Asking this question is maybe being too nosey like biting into the sweet apple which triggered the expulsion from paradise. Or like opening Pandora's box which released all evils.
If there would be ONE meaning of life AND we would be able to find it we were all robots. Life wouldn't be unpredictable anymore. Everything would be clear. There would be no mystery anymore. Life would be boring. We would all be striving towards that meaning like the moth flying towards the light and getting consumed in the flame. The multi-facetness of life would be lost. Therefore when we speak of meaning here we actually should use the plural meanings. Everyone has to find his own meaning. Only one meaning for all would mean totalitaristic ideology. Actually we had that, last time it was called communism. I think the word meaning is just a placeholder for something else and this something else is something different for everyone. A little bit like the word God. And some smart people don't use the words God and meaning of life anymore as they don't mean a thing.
Another approach leading to the same result: What does this question mean? What does meaning in the context of life mean? Originally meaning relates to words. Words in a foreign unknown language have no meaning for me. I can't understand them. I don't know what the words stand for. Applying this line of thought to our question: wouldn't it be hubrus to assert that one has understood life? I'd guess someone who says this actually proves that he has not understood life. The meaning of life is a meta question which doesn't lead anywhere. It only leads to paradoxons like the one of the Cretan who says "All Cretans lie". The meaning of the word life is something I can maybe try to understand (where does life start etc.) but not the meaning of life itself. The question simply doesn't make sense.

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