Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

I haven't read a lot of philosophy though I have read a lot of reviews of various philosophers. I was browsing through some stuff on Sartre and one critic said that Sartre thought that God is logically impossible because of the following:

God has to be a being-in-itself-for-itself.

I don't see the logical contradiction and though several reviewers repeated the conclusion, they didn't say why.

I break it down like this:

Being-in-itself: The aseity of God, autonomy,self-contained,independent.

Being-for-itself: This is what I'm not sure about. Whatever this means Sartre must have thought it contradicted the other statement.

One interesting thing I found is that Sartre seemed to think man's purpose is to BECOME a being-in-itself-for-itself, i.e., man's desire to be God. That doesn't surprise me. I believe Sartre thought it was impossible but was still the goal we should strive to obtain. What a burden atheists place on themselves.

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

The Muskateers believed in "All or one and one for All". I wonder if Sartre might have just been full of BS.

PairTheBoard

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I wonder if Sartre might have just been full of BS.


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No doubt he was. I just wanted to understand the content of this particular BS.

But to be fair he was also very insightful about human nature. I think his line "Hell is other people" is one of the best literary descriptions of fallen mankind ever. Pure brilliance.

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

You really ought to read Being and Nothingness by Sartre if you're interested in understanding his phenomenology.

Anyway, simply put:

A being in itself doesn't have consciousness.

A being for itself does have consciousness.

All sort of problems arise when something has consciousness which doesn't allow it to be in itself...(this something always remains outside of itself due to the way perception works). It is this whole investigation that is actually the cool part of Sartre. The 'nothingness' part of it all is very key and the treatment is also unique from what I understand.

I butchered the whole thing I'm sure but I actually haven't read Sartre, just Maurice Merleau Ponty...and probably need a primer on the whole school of thought before I actually start making a ton of sense.

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Yugoslav

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You really ought to read Being and Nothingness


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That's what I'm trying to avoid. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] May have to bite the bullet someday.

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A being in itself doesn't have consciousness.


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If this is true I haven't understood what he means. Wouldn't this apply to an inanimate object?

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I wonder if Sartre might have just been full of BS.

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He was a philosopher, wasn't he?

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

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You really ought to read Being and Nothingness


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That's what I'm trying to avoid. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] May have to bite the bullet someday.

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You're probably sort of kidding saying this...but if you really don't want to read it, then your question really isn't important. Because, if it were important, you'd certainly want to read the book and come to a fuller understanding from the *source* of your question.

Or, you can hope someone with a fairly rich understanding of Sartre happens by this thread. Of course, it will be tough to be sure if this individual even knows Sartre thoroughly...b/c...well, you know so little, [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

I am just getting back into 'heavy' reading since I graduated from college...but Sartre could magically appear on my list as I haven't read anything more than excerpts from him. I think my problem was I read several hundred pages of Maurice Merleau Ponty and it really killed all motivation I had to continue in that vein of Philosophy.

Or just read Kierkegaard....you most likely will enjoy it more and may very well get more out of it.

Yugoslav

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You're probably sort of kidding saying this...but if you really don't want to read it, then your question really isn't important.


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That's not entirely true. I think what Nietszche says is important but I literally can't read him because I can't stand his style.

It's really more a time issue (translate lazy) and was hoping for a shortcut.

Interesting you mention Kierkegaard - I've been considering wading through some of his stuff - he's one of the few name philosophers I've never read at all though I've never read any of them thoroughly.

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For the most part philosophy is for people who are not smart enough to tackle tough questions that have indisputable answers. But unlike artists, linguists, etc they want to pretend otherwise. (Exceptions: Descarte, Leibniz, Russell.)

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

Here's an article that may interest your, and spur you to investigate further....

Learning From Sartre - John T. Mullen

It's too long to paste in it's entirety, but this section might grab you...
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Anyone who has ever seriously committed himself to following Christ and conforming to His character quickly discovers how difficult it is to do. There are hindrances everywhere, but the greatest of these is the sin within the disciple himself. Indeed, the motivation for following Christ in the first place is to be rid, eventually, of the sin that destroys life and offends God. Hence we are exhorted to turn from our sin, which we do by ceasing from various activities that we know to be sinful and by undertaking others that we know to be good. So far so good, but there remains a nagging uneasiness. Our behavior may be better, but how much real growth in holiness has taken place? The feeling that we have only scratched the surface of this problem creates a deep desire to get to the bottom of our sin, to start attacking it at its very core. But how? What exactly is the very core of sin? If we knew this, we would certainly be better equipped for the attack.


Christian theologians have often addressed this question. The most notable example is Augustine's description of his stealing pears in his youth, a passage that has long been widely read in the Western world. Augustine was struck that it was the very forbiddenness of the act that caused him to take such delight in it; the pears themselves were no attraction at all. His analysis is a chilling anticipation of Sartre:


So all men who put themselves far from [God] and set themselves up against [Him], are in fact attempting awkwardly to be like [Him]. And even in this imitating of [Him] they declare [Him] to be the creator of everything in existence and that consequently there can be no place in which one can in any way withdraw oneself from [Him]. . . . And was I thus, though a prisoner, making a show of a kind of truncated liberty, doing unpunished what I was not allowed to do and so producing a darkened image of omnipotence?


Augustine realized that the essence of sin is to place oneself in God's rightful place, to attempt to be like Him in ways impossible for one of His creatures. Usually, such attempts involve a denial of God's authority to command His creatures and to set limits on their behavior. Sometimes, all creaturely limitations are thrown off. Sartre, as we shall see, took the latter approach.


If the true nature of sin has been identified for so long, it might be asked, what can an atheist like Sartre possibly contribute to our understanding of it? His "contribution" consists in turning the very essence of sin into the foundation of a philosophical system. He concedes as much when he tells us that "Existentialism is nothing else than an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position." Or again, "Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism." As he develops his thought, we begin to see how sin has infected us in ways we are not even conscious of. This is handy information for anyone whose highest desire is to turn away from sin, and it keeps one focused on what sin really is. Sartre is, of course, perfectly oblivious to this assistance he is providing for the Christian church.


The cornerstone of his philosophy is the sovereignty of human freedom. He is quite frank about what he means by freedom. For Sartre, freedom is nothing less than the power to define one's own being, to determine what one is. Anything outside oneself that exerts any influence over one's being is by definition an obstacle to freedom. He explains: "It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are. Furthermore this absolute responsibility is not resignation: it is simply the logical requirement of the consequences of our freedom."


This leads Sartre to distinguish between being-in-itself, which lacks freedom and cannot choose what it will be, and being-for-itself, which is continuously determining itself and hence has no fixed essence of its own. Man, says Sartre, is the latter: "There is no human nature, since there is no God to have a conception of it." This means that Man is in a constant process of becoming what he now is not. Since Sartre cannot say that Man ever is anything at any particular time, he equates Man's being-for-itself with nothingness. It is amusing to note that those who begin by assuming the sovereignty of human freedom must go on to conclude that they are as nothing. But it is more important to note that Sartre's assumption is arbitrary. It is the starting point for his speculations, for which no defense is ever given.

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The author is clearly a Christian, and rejects Satre's arguments; however, the fact that he still finds them to be useful might impel you to want to investigate then further....

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For the most part philosophy is for people who are not smart enough to tackle tough questions that have indisputable answers. But unlike artists, linguists, etc they want to pretend otherwise. (Exceptions: Descarte, Leibniz, Russell.)

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I don't get this...

Do you mean to say the following two things:

1. For the most part, philosophers aren't smart enough to solve tough mathematical and/or scientific questions that can be 'proven'?

2. *And* instead, they spend time investigating answers to tough questions that cannot be 'proven' but think that they *are* proving the answers?

If so, I don't think this is the case at all.

Aside comment: a unique aspect of philosophy is that it fundamentally encompasses any other academic discipline or way of thinking....with the right background in philosophy and/or tools resulting from analytical thought in it, one will likely be even better prepared to tackle tough questions that either have or don't have 'provable' answers.

Yugoslav

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

Thanks for the post. I've read other Christian assessments of Sartre and existentialism and this author says much the same thing.


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This leads Sartre to distinguish between being-in-itself, which lacks freedom and cannot choose what it will be, and being-for-itself, which is continuously determining itself and hence has no fixed essence of its own.


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Looks like I'm going to have to go to the horse's mouth. I don't see how being-for-itself can describe God so if this is accurate Sartre set up a false dilemma. He found a logical contradiction by basically saying A is non-A - but the Bible says God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

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You're probably sort of kidding saying this...but if you really don't want to read it, then your question really isn't important.


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That's not entirely true. I think what Nietszche says is important but I literally can't read him because I can't stand his style.

It's really more a time issue (translate lazy) and was hoping for a shortcut.

Interesting you mention Kierkegaard - I've been considering wading through some of his stuff - he's one of the few name philosophers I've never read at all though I've never read any of them thoroughly.

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Many philsophers are tough to read due to translation issues as well as the fact that their writings are basically 'academic work' and difficult to digest without a deep knowledge base in the specific subject.

Anyway...one reason I mention Kierkegaard is that there is less 'wading' and a bit more 'enjoying' the work in-and-of-itself (;) ). I think Either/Or is a must read but he much shorter pieces which perhaps would be 'easier' to start with. I wouldn't choose The Sickness Unto Death to be the first one to read though, despite the seductive title.

Most other Continental philosophers use extremely dense writing and also have little to no interest in brevity or in being concise, [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].

Try some Kafka and/or Dostoevsky along with Kierkegaard if you're having a hard time digesting Nieszche/Hegel/Kant/Heidegger/etc.

Yugoslav

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My problem with Nietzsche isn't the difficulty it's his arrogant, supercilious attitude. It just rubs me the wrong way. I've read some of Kafka and Dostoevsky, a little Hegel and a fair amount of Kant - now there's a tough read, mostly because he wasn't always sure what he was trying to say so the language becomes ambiguous.

I'm saving Heidegger and Wittgenstein till after I read Sartre, which hopefully will be never.

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For the most part philosophy is for people who are not smart enough to tackle tough questions that have indisputable answers.


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What questions are you talking about? Which ones have you tackled? Of those, which ones have you solved?

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My problem with Nietzsche isn't the difficulty it's his arrogant, supercilious attitude. It just rubs me the wrong way. I've read some of Kafka and Dostoevsky, a little Hegel and a fair amount of Kant - now there's a tough read, mostly because he wasn't always sure what he was trying to say so the language becomes ambiguous.

I'm saving Heidegger and Wittgenstein till after I read Sartre, which hopefully will be never.

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Oh! If that's your problem with Niezsche then Sartre should be fine from what I've read/understand.

If you're really just interested in how God/religion is dealt with in existential philosophy I'd go with Kierkegaard.....if you notice a theme it's b/c I've enjoyed reading/gotten the most out of his work than almost any other philosopher I've read.

Yugoslav

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For the most part philosophy is for people who are not smart enough to tackle tough questions that have indisputable answers. But unlike artists, linguists, etc they want to pretend otherwise. (Exceptions: Descarte, Leibniz, Russell.)

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I never thought I'd say this about one your posts, but...

POTD. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

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Strange that I had this marked from my reading to post on this forum. It is perhaps appropriate for this thread.

"Metaphysics is a refuge for men who have a strong desire to appear learned and profound but have nothing worth hearing to say. Their speculations have helped mankind hardly more than those of the astrologers. What we regard as good in metaphysics is really psychology: the rest is blah. Ordinarily, it does not even produce good phrases, but is dull and witless. The accumulated body of philosophical speculation is hopelessly self-contradictory. It is not a system at all, but simply a quarreling congeries of systems. The thing that makes philosophers respected is not actually their profundity, but simply their obscurity. They translate vague and dubious ideas into high-sounding words, and their dupes assume, as they assume themselves, that the resulting obfuscation is a contribution to knowledge."

–H.L. Mencken, from Minority Report

.

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

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For the most part philosophy is for people who are not smart enough to tackle tough questions that have indisputable answers. But unlike artists, linguists, etc they want to pretend otherwise. (Exceptions: Descarte, Leibniz, Russell.)

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LOL

Careful, though, you're bordering on self-parody here....

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

I'm happy yet shocked to find Mencken agrees with God on something:

18For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19For it is written,
"I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE,
AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE."
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.


8See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.


1And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
2For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
3I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,
4and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

20O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called "knowledge"--
21which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith

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Sounds like Mencken had a bad time with Hegel.

Yet it's a sentiment that could only have serious strength after Hegel.

As for Sklansky's contention that philosophy is for those who cannot solve other problems, I find this to be far too 'modern' as well. The only 'indisputable' problems up until Newton were mathematical, and of an even more dubious nature than philosophy (excepting Archimedes).

It takes the entire body of philosophy as we know it to make the statements that Zeno and David made, yet there's something hopelessly utilitarian about both. The intelligent mind should seek out philosophy and then choose to dismiss it on its own. After all, when we're not dealing with indisputible things, we're left to come to our own conclusions.

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Mencken wrote, in part, to jolt, in addition to bringing his skeptical no nonsense approach to things. And he does a good job of it, but note that he mixes separate realms, as if metaphysics is the all of philosophical speculation. But such analysis detracts from the pleasure of reading such a great prose artist.

Cicero may have said it best: “There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.” I think that anyone who has waded through the bog of even a small bit of philosophical writings would have a hard time auguring against Cicero. But then he also said: “Philosophy is the best medicine for the mind.”

In the end, I often wonder if it is more profitable to go fly-fishing or bird watching than to try and muddle through some difficult text about why my existence is so meaningless, the why or why not of God’s existence, or how my knowledge about the external world is all wrong. So what? Beer still taste damn good after a long day of work doesn't it.

-Zeno

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I'm betting that most philosophers could not get a Phd in math, physics or chemistry form a good university even if their life depended on it. Maybe I am wrong. Plus they are making a futile attempt to ascribe meaning to a world without God.

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Your own words make my point:

"Anyway, simply put:

A being in itself doesn't have consciousness.

A being for itself does have consciousness"

Surely you realize that to the vast majority of people (including me) this is an unclear, imprecicse statement. Yet you make it without an accomanying explanation. That is either because

1. You want to appear smarter than you really are by using jargon unknown to the reader. or

2. There actually is no way to make this statement totally precise. So leaving it unexplained is both necessary and again makes you really look smarter than you really are.

As to:

Do you mean to say the following two things:

"1. For the most part, philosophers aren't smart enough to solve tough mathematical and/or scientific questions that can be 'proven'?

2. *And* instead, they spend time investigating answers to tough questions that cannot be 'proven' but think that they *are* proving the answers?"

Yes to #1. But I don't think they think they are proving anything. Rather I think they are well aware that they are invstigating questions that have no indiputable answer and choose to do that so they can hide their incompetance (even while looking smart). There are exceptions of course.

I realize that to major in philosophy you need to take a course in symbolic logic. So philosophers are smarter than average. However my guess is that the vast majority of philosophers struggled with that course. Whearas mathmeticians and physicists would almost always ace it.

I should say that everything above is an opinion. I wouldn't be totally shocked if it was wrong.

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To think that philosophy is wild assertions and speculating on question that are definitionlly unanswerable shows a complete and total lack of understanding oh what philosophy actually is.

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For the most part philosophy is for people who are not smart enough to tackle tough questions that have indisputable answers. But unlike artists, linguists, etc they want to pretend otherwise. (Exceptions: Descarte, Leibniz, Russell.)

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This whole statement is rendered redundant by the fact that Science is a philosophy. Not surprising you made it as most people have a very feeble understanding of ontology and epistemology.

In laymens terms you are to ignorant about the subject matter to have an opinion that in anyway approaches validity.

Machines can be biult that pawn the average human being at math. You have a subjetive mind and that is what defines you as an entity. If you want to spend your life trying your best to get your subjectivity to resmeble an objective automated process or a pale shadow of my deskttop calculator go for it, well done you have just decided to utterly squander youre existenze. Might as well kill yourself now.

The mind that thinks>The mind that adds multiplies and subtracts.

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Your own words make my point:

"Anyway, simply put:

A being in itself doesn't have consciousness.

A being for itself does have consciousness"

Surely you realize that to the vast majority of people (including me) this is an unclear, imprecicse statement. Yet you make it without an accomanying explanation. That is either because

1. You want to appear smarter than you really are by using jargon unknown to the reader. or

2. There actually is no way to make this statement totally precise. So leaving it unexplained is both necessary and again makes you really look smarter than you really are.


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Pffft. What are you on man. Is this not the philosophy forum?

The Op wants clarification on the meaning of a couple of assertations by Satre. These assertaions dont exist in a vacuum, and as Philosophers hate ambiguity he will have spent alot of time defing exactly what he means in his use of philosophical terminology.

Every field of human knowledge has its unique terminilogy that is opaque to those unversed in this particular field. Exaplain string theory in un dumbed down way and 99% of those listening will not understand the "jargon" used in such an explanation. Philosophy is no different.

As this is a philosophy forum, I think the use of technical philosophical terminology should be acceptable with out attack by those whos own exposure to philosophy is obviously limited.

By the nature of your un provoked aggression it seems you are threatened by philosophy. Is your massive intellectual ego afraid that even if you were to make the effort to engage with the subjective matter your intelectual limitations would leave you still uniformed.

As to the nature of inteligence, my pocker calcuator is dumber than a snail yet is brilliant at maths. Computational ability can be demonstrated therefore to require literaly no inteligence.

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Surely you realize that to the vast majority of people (including me) this is an unclear, imprecicse statement.


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Yeah, like you never do this, [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]. And yes, I do realize that what I said is fairly unclear.

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Yet you make it without an accomanying explanation. That is either because

1. You want to appear smarter than you really are by using jargon unknown to the reader. or

2. There actually is no way to make this statement totally precise. So leaving it unexplained is both necessary and again makes you really look smarter than you really are.


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I actually don't really care if I look smart or not (feel free to read my STT forum posts...this point should be obvious). It is very difficult for me to make a point about Sartre's work precise b/c as I've mentioned, I haven't read nearly enough of him or given enough thought to go in depth. This is the reason I recommended the OP to read Sartre's work directly. That's certainly what I'd want to do before going any further in my explanation than I already have. I do feel that I could study Sartre's work and make the above explanation clear to much of 2+2. In a similar way to how you could take a fairly complex scientific concept and distill it into terms that people without such a background could generally understand.

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As to:

Do you mean to say the following two things:

"1. For the most part, philosophers aren't smart enough to solve tough mathematical and/or scientific questions that can be 'proven'?

2. *And* instead, they spend time investigating answers to tough questions that cannot be 'proven' but think that they *are* proving the answers?"

Yes to #1. But I don't think they think they are proving anything. Rather I think they are well aware that they are invstigating questions that have no indiputable answer and choose to do that so they can hide their incompetance (even while looking smart). There are exceptions of course.


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Okay, that's much clearer to me. I actually agree with you it would seem. There is a very large % of philosophy majors I've met who want to look smart due to feared incompetence, yet they would have trouble looking smart in math/science course. In fact, there is a continuous burden on many/most (philosophers and people in general) to appear smart in many situations and this hinders them from actually becoming smart and/or being able to truly understand subjects (hey, as long as one can repeat the jargon one reads, that's enough).

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I realize that to major in philosophy you need to take a course in symbolic logic. So philosophers are smarter than average.

However my guess is that the vast majority of philosophers struggled with that course. Whearas mathmeticians and physicists would almost always ace it.


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Yeah, pretty much. I certainly agree with you here. I had a very easy time with my logic course, although I didn't really enjoy it and didn't take more advanced ones (however, I did end up doing a lot more symbolic logic due to my thesis talk/paper - hopefully that, indeed, made me even 'smarter' [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]).

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I should say that everything above is an opinion. I wouldn't be totally shocked if it was wrong.

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I think that the philosophers capable of work in mathematic/scientific veins are able to engage in extremely useful work that influences more narrowly focused scientific/mathematic people. Philosophers (the best anyway) are able to provide a fundamentally different view of science, math, social sciences, etc, than the individuals mired within those disciplines. Ideally the philosopher has dual interests to leverage his/her analytical tools in another discipline.

Yugoslav

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Should we compile a list of great mathematicians/scientists/physicts who found philosophy to be vastly important to their respective fields?
My friend and I just compiled this list off the tops of our heads in about a minute.(You mentioned a few of these earlier)
Descartes
Russell
Leibniz
Popper
Newton
Frege
Pascal
Einstein
Carnap
Whitehead
Kaufmann
Godel

Do you not trust these brilliant minds that philosophy is significant in order to understand what your scientific discoveries actually mean? There is a whole field of philosophy called philosophy of science that gets to decide what your empirical studies actually mean. Steven Hawking regularly corresponds with a prominent leader in philosophy of quantum theory in order to better understand the meaning of his studies. I will go ahead and take their word for it when they say philosophy is a very important field...espescially when it comes to 'science.'

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For the most part philosophy is for people who are not smart enough to tackle tough questions that have indisputable answers. But unlike artists, linguists, etc they want to pretend otherwise. (Exceptions: Descarte, Leibniz, Russell.)

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There are many more exceptions (e.g., Whitehead, Hume, Mill, Nietszche); but in general, I agree.

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Do you not trust these brilliant minds that philosophy is significant in order to understand what your scientific discoveries actually mean?

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I wouldn't say that philosophy is unimportant; I'd say that, in general, full-time professional philosphers tend not to be very good at it.

To paraphrase Richard Feynman, whenever some philosopher of science (as opposed to a scientist) says something about what is absolutely essential to the fundamental nature of science, it is always rather naive and probably wrong.

IMO, if you want a solid, clear, logically consistent analysis of some philosophical issue or another, you'd be better off going to a mathematician instead of a philosopher.

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So full time professional philosophers are not as good at philosophy as mathematicians. So if I want to know if electrons really exist or not should I go to a phd. student in physics or one in philosophy of science? I'm taking my shot with the philosopher of science, sorry.

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I'm happy with your reply. And I admit that I am unfamiliar with the exact definition of philosphy. Al I know is that the little I read makes it seem like they want to make things more complicated than they are.

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"Machines can be biult that pawn the average human being at math"

An amazingly ridiculous statement.

"If you want to spend your life trying your best to get your subjectivity to resmeble an objective automated process or a pale shadow of my deskttop calculator go for it, well done you have just decided to utterly squander youre existenze. Might as well kill yourself now."

Playing right into Not Ready's hands. Philosophy, to my knowledge, never discovers any ultimate truths anyway. It discusses questions that can't be answered (if there is no God). The reason you shouldn't kill yourself is the same reason a poodle shouldn't. (Assuming poodles go to strip clubs.)

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That's because you've assumed how things are. Many philosophers don't, and think they can reason to 'how things are'. I don't think you're so much concerned with how things are than how things act, or to possibly start a semantics war, how things exist.

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"Philosophers (the best anyway) are able to provide"

Agreed. But the subject allows less than the best practitioners to go on with what they do without being exposed as incompetant. Thats my gripe. The same is true with many other fields of course. The difference is that everybody knows that about those other fields.

To make it clear, I have no problem with people being philosophically minded. I just don't like it when the subject is made unnecessarily formal.

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The reason you shouldn't kill yourself is the same reason a poodle shouldn't. (Assuming poodles go to strip clubs.)

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This is perhaps the most profound insight in the whole thread.

Yugoslav
#1 scrippa stunna...

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I have totally changed my opinion of you.

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

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Playing right into Not Ready's hands.


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Please explain.

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Philosophy, to my knowledge, never discovers any ultimate truths anyway.


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No merely human endeavor does. But humans have questions about ultimate truths. It's one of the things that separates us from animals. I believe this is true because we are created in God's image. And since as a race we've abandoned the knowledge source that provides the answers we've invented philosophy to fill the void.

Re: Sartre\'s Contradiction
 

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I have totally changed my opinion of you.

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Or don't have a sense of humor?

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Yugoslav