Re: What we Learned from JW's Monism
Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2021 5:15 pm
First of all I think JW is also looking to impress, which is only human, for example with his German-skills. He sprinkels in German all the time, the question is just what that adds to the debate. I am not saying he in truth does not understand German, he most certainly does to at least a high degree. But being an American and reading those people and understanding them is surely extremely, extremely hard. Just that I could not even understand some of the German he sprinkled into his videos. I understood a little, google did the rest. And I am German, as you know. Which is no crime, after all he is not German and sure the Americanos will find it cool. And I learned from him that Heidegger suposedly used words that do not exist. Sure it is possible that he made them up, but I am not going to read all of Heidegger so see if he really used certain terms like Mitstimmung on page 399 - or not. Nor do I understand why its all so important to him. It would have been nice if JW would have sent sources and quotes along but he never did. It makes you wonder. But I am not sure if it matters, there are many who think that we can not grasp the nature of reality because all our analysing happens in our head and is useless in their opinion. Because we are imagining it and can not touch things as they are.Dave casarino wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 5:05 pm I must also ask what is the actual relevance of all of those germans JW was going on about without getting into much depth upon? Did heidegger and kriekgard and husserl and the like (however their long names are spelt) really somehow make metaphysics utterly irrelevant? he kept stating this yet never gave an in depth answer as to why, does anyone here know why he would think that?
I am guessing that the old Germans are a passion of his, good on him and his right. Hey, maybe he understands "the old Germans" better than myself, it can not be ruled out! For example there are people who study Latin etc. So its not impossible. He said he read them in German.
His take is that "these thinkers" demanded silence in front of the mystery and that we should shut up. Nothing wrong with that either, it is one of the major questions we all must ask ourselves, it is naive to skip it.
Heidegger also wrote a book "Was ist Metaphysik"? and I only just read the blurb on amazon and am completely anable to imagine what he may be talking about, it sounds like gibberish. That they even said what they supposedly said is nothing I can verify because I did not hunt for it. And it is possible that they came from a different angle than JW thinks. Were they thinking or talking about consciousness even? I will shut up, I dont know.
As for Wittgenstein, I a not sure if he even cared about any of this, I think he was a language-guy to a high degree. Not sure...He did not really trust his own thinking and second-guessed it, that is what I read somewhere. Well, maybe they were crazy