8 philosophical ideas in kid quotes

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

How phrases from VKontakte publics are related to the names of Plato, Kant, Sartre and other famous thinkers.

Quotes for boys, in which images of "street-grown", tough, but at the same time romantic and appreciating the "brotherly" friendship of young guys are drawn, have recently been very popular in social networks. They are often ridiculed in memes for excessive pathos, frequent lack of meaning and mistaken attribution of authorship to famous personalities.

So, one of the Twitter users with the help of a neural network generated several such ridiculous phrases "with meaning."

Here there will be a thread of kid quotes that I generated with Markov chains based on the kid's public

But one way or another, some experience, a view of the world, life, and even a kind of wisdom are hidden in the kid's quotes. For example, they can be used to explain socio-political changes if desired. But they are closest to philosophy. Lifehacker has collected eight such expressions.

1. "Many would be horrified if they saw in the mirror not their faces, but their souls" - Platonism

In this quote, we are talking about the fact that the appearance and the inner world of a person can be very different. The idea of dualism - that the soul and body are not one - is more than two thousand years old. The ancient philosopher Plato was one of the first to talk about this in the 4th century BC.

Disciple of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, Plato in his treatise Plato. Collected works in four volumes. T.2. SPb. 2007 "On the Soul" ("Phaedo") presented the latter as an indivisible substance that determines the intellectual and spiritual characteristics of a person. The body, according to him, cannot live without a soul. It was in the writings of Plato that ideas about the immortality of the soul and the inadmissibility of suicide were formed.

2. “If you live, it’s beautiful. If a glance, then a clear one. If you hope, then only for yourself. If you love, then with all your heart "- epicureanism

The idea that you need to live your years in full, read in this quote, is also not new: it is practically the same age as Plato's ideas about the soul. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was one of the first and most famous exponents of it.

The Epicurean philosophers considered the main thing in life to be pleasure and the absence of pain. However, this does not mean at all that they were just messing around and indulging in passions. The Epicureans were worried about the structure of the world, they developed their own hierarchy of human needs. Among these people were also many poets and politicians of Ancient Rome - the heir to Greek culture.

Epicureanism denied the immortality of the soul, as well as the moralizing justified by religion. According to the Epicureans, the gods do not care about human virtues and vices. However, the concept does not at all imply that one can indulge in meaningless excesses.

3. "We are not like that, life is like that" - determinism

In this quote, you can see one of the opposite points of view in the centuries-old philosophical dispute about whether a person himself decides his fate. The belief that all our actions are predetermined is called Free will determinism. Britannica.

Its appearance in its modern form is usually associated with scientists (especially Pierre-Simon de Laplace), who were inspired by Newtonian classical mechanics to the idea that everything, even human behavior, can be predicted. For this, according to determinists, it was only necessary to find out how the particles of the Universe began to spread at the moment of its creation, and calculate their motion.

The opposite point of view to determinism is libertarianism. According to him, free will exists. And only man is responsible for his own destiny.

4. "Strength in Truth" - Kantianism

On the question of the admissibility or inadmissibility of lies, philosophers have broken many copies. However, this phrase, taken from the film "Brother", echoes one of the teachings of the German thinker Immanuel Kant. In his work "On the supposed right to lie out of love for mankind," the classic of philosophy writes that a lie cannot be justified even by good goals.

The concept of duty occupies a special place in the teachings of Kant. According to him, normal relations between members of society are impossible without truth, and society begins to fall apart at all levels. According to Kant, a lie, even if it is admitted without malicious intent, remains a lie and must be punished.

It should be understood that in the philosophical sense "truth" and "truth" are not the same thing. To put it simply, truth is a kind of understanding of truth - reality.

5. "When there is money, it is somehow easier to agree that happiness is not in it" - pragmatism

The idea that it is impossible to live by the spirit alone, which sounds in the phrase above, took shape in the USA in the second half of the 19th century in the concept of pragmatism. According to her, what is beneficial is true.

Pragmatic philosophers Charles Pearce, John Dewey, William James have stated that if a statement is considered true, this does not mean that it is in fact so. This quote clearly illustrates this principle.

In pragmatism, a large role is played by practical experience gained by trial and error, as well as the recognition that each person has their own truth.

6. "The wolf is weaker than the lion and the tiger, but does not perform in the circus" - structuralism

Structuralism appeared in the 50-70s of the XX century. This interdisciplinary direction studied culture on the basis of linguistic structures and therefore was closely associated with linguistics. Later, poststructuralism was formed on its basis.

One of the main ideas, to which the structuralist philosophers Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jacobson, Claude Levy-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault came, is that West D. Continental philosophy lies at the heart of any cultural phenomenon. Introduction. M. 2015 opposition of fundamental concepts.

His simplest example was given by Levi-Strauss K. Mythology. In 4 volumes. T. 1. Raw and cooked. M., St. Petersburg. 1999 French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss: raw food is a sign of closeness to nature, and cooked food is a sign of civilization. Also, in the above quote about animals, the concepts of external (physical) and internal (spiritual) strength are contrasted.

By the way, wolves do perform in the circus.

7. "Remember, brother: there is only no way out of the grave" - existentialism

The philosophy of existentialism was formed by the efforts of the French thinkers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre in the 50-60s of the last century. The main place in it was given to existence - human existence, initially devoid of meaning.

Existentialists wrote by West D. Continental Philosophy. Introduction. M. 2015 that people are doomed to freedom of choice and the search for the meaning of life. In particular, they cited the concept of a "borderline situation" - the moment when a person is faced with a choice without good options. Perhaps, some similar situation is being discussed in the above quote, if the conversation has already turned to death.

Also in existentialism it is said that a person suffers, since he is aware of the responsibility for his choice in front of other people.

8. “Someone sits at home and cries for a new iPhone, and someone on the street cries around the house” - neo-Marxism

Neo-Marxism emerged in the 1960s as a response to the emergence of a consumer society. Neo-Marxists considered Anderson P. Reflections on Western Marxism. M. 1991 that illusory signs of success, a passion for conspicuous consumption and popular culture have become a new means of enslaving man.

In their opinion, in this way, global and social inequality is aggravated, and people become “one-dimensional”: they are more tolerant of gender and racial oppression, lack of freedom, and poverty. The kid's quote tells us about this.

Of course, publics with kid quotes are not the best place to start studying philosophy, but even they can cause a certain interest in it.