I tell you all this just to show you the tremendous enthusiasm with which the merest beginner will set about attaining the very highest goals provided someone gives him the necessary prompting and encouragement. Things tend, in fact, to go wrong; part of the blame lies on the teachers of philosophy, who today teach how to argue instead of how to live, part on their students, who come to the teachers in the first place with a view to developing not their character but their intellect. The result has been the transformation of philosophy, the study of wisdom, into philology, the study of words.


-Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter CVIII (written, roughly, two thousand years ago)

Hard to agree or disagree without getting all philological

Hard not to agree.

Hard to agree that this applies now.

He's talking about exactly what happened in Socrates', Plato's and Aristotle's time: sophists teaching eristics instead of dialectic. Arguing for the sake of arguing: not arguing for the sake of truth.

Modern philosophy is arguing for the sake of truth and living...not JUST arguing (we call that rhetoric).

I was wondering if Seneca’s comments still applied today. Not a justifiable criticism of modern day philosophy? For those modern philosophers worth reading, I agree - However much truth may be an idealistic goal; or the practical application to living sometimes ambiguous.

-Zeno

I don't think modern philosophy is just the study of rhetoric--very good philosophers are often very poor at talking to people outside their discipline--but I also don't think it is very close to the "study of wisdom" as conceived by the Stoics either. For the Stoics, philosophy was a way of life, one that emphasized the transforming power of knowledge. Many very excellent philosophers don't view philosophy as a way of figuring out how to live--their questions are often either more abstract or narrower than that. This is not new though. With the rise of epistemology in the seventeenth century and the replacement of metaphysics by science I think the ideal of the philosopher as a moral sage was bound to be lost anyway.

No it isn't.

Who does (or should or could or whatever) fill that role in a technological, atheist society?

Buddhists? Psychologists? Fox News?

Science replaced metaphysics. Is there general agreement on this?

-Zeno

Absolutely not.

Information on Stoicism for those interested:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/

Stoicism

Stoicism was one of the new philosophical movements of the Hellenistic period. The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held. Unlike ‘epicurean,’ the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins.

The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them. The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics' teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves, or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so.

Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the soul). Their views in logic and physics are no less distinctive and interesting than those in ethics itself...................


When considering the doctrines of the Stoics, it is important to remember that they think of philosophy not as an interesting pastime or even a particular body of knowledge, but as a way of life. They define philosophy as a kind of practice or exercise (askêsis) in the expertise concerning what is beneficial (Aetius, 26A). Once we come to know what we and the world around us are really like, and especially the nature of value, we will be utterly transformed. This soteriological element is common to their main competitors, the Epicureans, and perhaps helps to explain why both were eventually eclipsed by Christianity.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius provide a fascinating picture of a would-be Stoic sage at work on himself. The book, also called To Himself, is the emperor's diary. In it, he not only reminds himself of the content of important Stoic teaching but also reproaches himself when he realises that he has failed to incorporate this teaching into his life in some particular instance. For the influence of Stoic philosophy on a life in our times, see Admiral James Stockdale's account of his use of the philosophy of Epictetus as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

*****************************************

I feel that Wittgenstein tore this notion to shreds.

The reason philosophy is so much about word games is because it tries to deal in matters that are poorly-defined in the first place, like "wisdom" and "character."

Not among people who still believe in libertarian free will in the twenty-first century.

Yes it is.

There's so much more to metaphysics than just free will.

Metaphysics is still a rather large and vibrant subject area in philosophy.

I predict science will reign supreme once the dust settles in debate.

-Zeno

Wanna bet?

The problem with your view is science can't do everything you think it can. There are some questions which it can't answer: science has limitations.

One question for metaphysics is the "reality" (ontology) of unobservables (which scientific theories might posit). This is NOT a scientific question...it's one for metaphysics, which bears directly on science though. This is the realism/anti-realism in science debate.

My view is that all questions are scientific ones. I understand of course that this view is not held by professional philosophers or, possibly, even by a majority of scientists. This leads inexorably to definitions of science and philosophy and the interplay and sphere of influence that each has. Philosophy is under the umbrella of science. I do not expect you to agree and I have no desire to convince you of my position. After all, I may be wrong.

-Zeno

You're wrong for a number of reasons...first of which you're confusing which is foundational. Philosophy of science undergirds science. As does epistemology. Also, as I indicated, there are some questions which science can't answer.

HOWEVER, you may just be a logical positivist who thinks that the only questions that are meaningful are the ones that science can adjudicate. That was a popular position (very popular) at one time.

None of my teachers, philosophy or otherwise, taught me a thing about how to live. Neither did I come to them with a view to developing my character.

Stoics remind me of Houyhnhnms.

The only way I knew how to be a good student was to obsess, though I was fortunate (or unfortunate, lol) to find what I was good at obsessing on (math). For me this was not a healthy, well-balanced lifestyle. My teachers were the ones who were good at what I wanted to learn, though they did influence what that was. Apart from that apect, however, I never wanted to be like them, although to an extent I did become like them.

Absurd. Tell me how the following questions are scientific:

What is the value of science?
Is there a "good life" worth living?

There are countless others, but the above two are enough to demonstrate the general point. Science cannot even be used to justify itself (you need at least some vague form of pragmatism for that).

Cheers

Then they were not "teachers" in the ancient sense of the term. They were just salaried talking-heads about technology.

Cheers

Do you mean that you didn't learn anything or that you weren't taught anything about how to live from your teachers? I am actually doubtful that either is true...

I think the student/teacher relationship involves a sense of awe, and that there is something ancient about that.

They were also good themselves at obsessing.

Math and logic are not technology.

Difficult to quantify imo. I mean that I never wanted to be like them, except when it came to being good at math.