Or well. That’s how I see it. I do not think convincing people they are wrong from your own viewpoint is very possible, many basic premises are pure axioms. The only way to do it is to show at inconsistencies inside their system.

Also, the 50,000-years argument: I plead transhumanism! :o

An example may be warranted. Supposing a theist world, for example, we may accept nihilism as itself an illusion, but one that arises from the problem of individual perception of the universe. The problems of nihilism, then, are strictly matters of perception rather than underlying substance. But if there is no creator, no external agency to imbue overlying purpose, then we are left with individual determination of purpose. Nihilism is then an essentially and fundamentally valid view that is much harder to rebut: you may construct complicated structures of purpose, reasoning, and affirmation, but I may always respond with the argument that in 50,000 years, all you were and did will be dust, forgotten, insignificant, and this is not even the batting of an eyelash on the cosmic scale.

Solipsism, of course, would be similarly stark, but work on entirely different mechanics. The point is that there is never any agreement on these first principles, and so we are simply hand-waving. As a postmodernist, I recognize the legitimacy of interpretation and subjective experience, so my assertion of a need for discussion of first principles is not dogmatic but rather practical in nature. What are we taking as given and what are we not taking as given?

This entire conversation is a collision between the hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion: ghostlightning reaches a point with the former, and then deliberately undercuts himself with the latter.

“After all the philosophical hair-splitting I just did here may perhaps be acquired only as a skill in a capitalist enabled educational structure. Hope may be the correct spin to apply to working with these ‘hopeless’ kids in the short term (they can split hairs when they’ve gone to college later when they’re full of hope).”

Another cause of leveling is media consumption, by the way. It’s had a marked and demonstrable effect on dialects of varied languages; people all around a country hear one particular dialect and, even if it’s only slightly, adopt it. Mass media has done even more, of course — without extensive travel, hard-to-find translations, and so on, it would have been once very difficult for a budding intellectual to be exposed to other cultures, but it’s much easier now.

Also, while you’re basically right about universities and their central role to the kind of thought you’re discussing, also remember they’re meant to educate more than the next generation of professors. So in having passed through college and keeping up the habits and contacts of such a life, you’re in that sphere as well, even though you aren’t directly attached to a university.

To me, philosophy can help meat up a novel like Dostoevsky did wonderfully. Or it can come from a long and established philosophical career, where it’s certain that your ideas will still be there for a while and that your stylized text will not go to waste.

Perhaps in an anime context “god is truly dead” in the Nietszchean sense… after all, evidence for a second season of Haruhi from Kyoto Animation grows less and less compelling; yet most people refuse to acknowledge this death out of inner fear and angst. Yet if we overcome this restraint, let go of the dying remnants of Haruuhism opens our eyes to the myriad other possibilities surrounding us…

LOL. delicious.

Regretting philosophy? I only minored in it, majoring in literature. I must say I share some of my own professors’ views that the best philosophy is expressed in literary forms other than oratory and essays (the novel comes to mind). i like philosophical content but I find it ridiculously hard to read ‘career’ philosophers. Perhaps this is why I like Camus best too.