The Department of Philosophy invites you to the UMass Philosophy Society!

Everyone is Welcome! Come to meet other Philosophy students, engage in discussion, and share your thoughts on future activities! 

We hope to have interesting and diverse discussions this semester, so anyone who is interested is welcome to choose a topic and facilitate a weekly meeting. If you are interested in choosing the topic for next week, please reach out!


 

Upcoming Meeting

No meeting this week.  See you next semester!!!

Location

South College, W219

This Week's Topic: Nietzsche on the History of Philosophy (Beyond Good and Evil §6)

Led by Jeremy Katz

The passage
“It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; moreover, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy have every time constituted the real germ of life out of which the entire plant has grown. To explain how a philosopher’s most remote metaphysical assertions have actually been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to
ask oneself first: what morality does this (does he –) aim at? I accordingly do not believe a ‘drive to knowledge’ to be the father of philosophy, but that another drive has, here as elsewhere, only employed knowledge (and false knowledge!) as a tool. But anyone who looks at the basic drives of mankind to see to what extent they may in precisely this connection have come into play as inspirational spirits (or demons and kobolds – ) will discover that they have all at some time or other practiced philosophy – and that each one of them would be only too glad to present itself as the ultimate goal of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives. For every drive is tyrannical: and it is as such that it tries to philosophize. – In the case of scholars, to be sure, in the case of really scientific men, things may be different - ‘better,’ if you will – there may really exist something like a drive to knowledge there, some little independent clockwork which, when wound up, works bravely on without any of the scholar’s other drives playing any essential part.

The scholar’s real ‘interests’ therefore generally lie in quite another direction, perhaps in his family or in making money or in politics; it is, indeed, almost a matter of indifference whether his little machine is set up in this region of science or that, whether the ‘promising’ young worker makers himself into a good philologist or a specialist in fungus or a chemist – he is not characterized by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is nothing whatever impersonal; and, above all, his morality bears decided and decisive testimony to who he is – that is to say, to the order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relative to one another.”
Questions
1) Whereas Hegel claims that the dominant force in the history of philosophy is reason, Nietzsche– as we see in this passage– claims that it is the will of philosophers’ psychological drives. Which of them do you think is right, and why? Or is it something different? And in general, what is your opinion on Whig historiography?
2) If we accept Nietzsche’s thesis, does it follow that we should become radical skeptics?
a) Is Nietzsche’s argument consequently self-refuting?
b) Is not having access to truth necessarily a bad thing?
3) To what extent do you think it is possible to reason independently of our drives? One cannot deny that they have at least some effect on our thinking– “lying to oneself” is an omnipresent phenomenon. But is there any way for us to “put our drives aside” to enough of a degree that they no longer have a significant effect on our philosophizing?

Want to Facilitate a Philosophy Society Meeting?

 General Expectations:

  1. If you are interested in facilitating one of our weekly discussions, choose a topic to discuss and reach out to Tom (@email) or Kashish (@email). If you are interested in facilitating but do not have a topic in mind, you can select a thought experiment from The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten by Julian Baggini to discuss. 
  2. You should prepare a short overview of the topic for anyone who isn’t familiar (if not choosing from the book). The intro/overview should have enough information for people to discuss and raise questions.
  3. Come up with 3-5 guiding questions/talking points to direct and facilitate discussion. 
  4. All other club information can be found at https://linktr.ee/umassphilosophysociety

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