I used to be interested in philosophy back in highschool, but now it’s just not doing it for me. Alot of it just seems to be like I think therefore I am, but if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be because if I was I would, but if I couldn’t, then I wouldn’t be able to, and if i… like bro maybe I’m dumb, but wtf are these dudes on about??? 😭
On another note, some of the worst of it like Nihilism goes so well hand in hand with capitalism.
Machiavelli is based…
But for real, philosophy lost its meaning after the fall of the roman empire. It became a sort of academic topic only, instead of schools that teach people how to see and live in the world.
But, like you said, this second aspect of philosophy is coming back now, but is being, of course, co-opted by capitalism, similar to what religion is, but for more upper class ppl ‘who know better’.
Phylosophies were also coopted by ancient imperialism, theocracies and feudalism, wtf do you mean that it is now that they became meaningless?
I’m not saying you are wrong, but we should remember that history, clasism, reactionarism, etc, didn’t begin in the Industrial Revolution.
Philosophy was seen as more than an academic subject before the fall of the Roman Empire (in the West). This implies ofc that it was co-opted by the Church after the fall of the roman empire, afterall, it was not in the interest of the Church to advocate of other styles of life and thought othen than Christianity… The Church relegated philosophy only as a means of academic subject.
Afaik, this paradigm is changing only now, where this view of Philosophy as more than an academic subject, but a way to live your life, is growing, but also being co-opted by capitalism.
Ofc that in ancient times philosophy was victim of politics. Hell, Socrates died because of this (btw a good text on this subject).
I mean, both Christianity and pre-Christian sophism during Rome’s Empire were lead to propagandize or tranquilize the population during different times, also as shown how Athenian Aristocracy coopted Sophism so it could be in their favour, not in any sort of criticism or actual real observations. Plato, for example, the father of current Idealism, was a super useful fool because basically made an school of thought that validated every single deity and religion regardless of how enormously and obviously absurd was, to the point we still see charlatans using the same idealist excuse when the demonstrated evidence go against their reactionary rethoric.
Also, gotta point out that before we were giving more specific names to studies, a phylosopher could be anyone from a conman and charlatan, to a mathematician, which thankfully, this sort of semantics disappeared.
The reason about why Marxism works is because its based in science, not idealist phylosophies, or simply “ways of living”. Dialectical Materialism is basically trying to observe the world as it actually is and live towards socialism without dogmas and without any sort of idealism and anti-dialecticalism, which btw, “Dialectical” isn’t about “speaking good”, but about evolving. Literally, Dialectical Materialism means: “Reality is physical an evolves”, which is how science demonstrates reality. Which, curiously, Socrates made some sort of simmilar observations regarding dialectics… But still… We lose tome on rethorics and spirituality and shit instead of focusing on the only life we have, giving our most fidelity to frivolous idols that have been… Manmade and obvious, to the point we harm a lot just because we fear some hell or whatever made up shit.
I cannot… be forgiving to the rethorics that are giving just a minimum consideration to this as even deserving some respect or good faith… I cannot anymore and I am done for in this, so this is my naked heart, my personal bias, exposed, because I am honest and sincere, and I am not willing to go with mental gymnastics nor intellectual dishonesty.