the failure of, the reason philosophy is in a Cul-de-sac, which
forms the basis of why I began this thread years ago is because
philosophers have tried to make philosophy “scientific” and
“scientific” means science and science is about facts,
knowledge… and philosophy isn’t about facts, knowledge…
philosophy is about values… thus the failure of philosophy
over the last 200 years… existentialism is the closes philosophy
has come to approaching values instead of facts, knowledge……
we have Marx who created Communism… which he said
is based on History, scientific history, as I believed he called it,
and that is why communism failed in the soviet era………
he created a “philosophy” based on history…… but that isn’t
what “philosophy” is about…………not on facts or knowledge,
that is science… you cannot have an historical/scientific philosophy,
you can have a philosophy of history, but not a historical/scientific philosophy…
and Marx said his idea of Communism was based on “science”…
thus his failure… to complete his failure came Lenin and Stalin who
tried to turn an economic theory which is what Communism is,
into a political theory, which it is not… and that is why the soviet
union failed… it was an economic theory turned into a political theory……
and this is part of what our reevaluation of values leads us to…
to an understanding of such theories as communism and capitalism
and economics and history……. because economics is partly about values,
but it is also about facts and knowledge…… that is why economics
is so muddled today……… is it an “philosophy” or it is a “science”?
the answer decides if economics is really a “philosophy” or just
another “science” like physics…….
If Marx had made communism a value system, instead of “historical
materialism” he would have created something philosophical,
and not scientific……… if Marx had truly understood philosophy,
he would have done things rather differently because philosophy
and science is different……………
by examining our systems, our ism’s and ideologies, in light
of whether they are facts and knowledge or a question of values,
leads us to better understand such ism’s and ideologies as
communism and capitalism and socialism and Catholicism…
are they values based systems or are they facts/knowledge based
system/systems… a system is what such ism and ideologies
really are… a system of coherent thought about a subject…
and Socrates never ask such questions as what is an ism or
what make an ism different from another ism………
he asked, what is love, what is justice?
so, we can better understand that Socrates was
a philosopher and Marx was not… had Marx concerned himself
with values, he would have been a philosopher…
Marx was a pseudo philosopher, not a real philosopher……
as long as it pretends to be scientific, it is not philosophy…
if it is about facts or knowledge, it is science, not philosophy…….
so to be a “true” philosopher, one must not engage with science
or the scientific method or facts or knowledge, one must engage
with values like love or justice or community, courage, cooperation,
equality, fairness, freedom, harmony, individuality, peace, so on and so forth…
so which values should we hold and which values do we actually hold?
that is philosophy, not science…….
Kropotkin