Have you ever backed yourself into a precarious philosophical corner?

Question

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"Commentators have frequently diagnosed a syphilitic infection as the cause of the illness; however, some of Nietzsche's symptoms — and the long period before it presumably began affecting his mind — seem inconsistent with some cases of syphilis. While most commentators regard Nietzsche's breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy, some, including Georges Bataille and René Girard, argue that his breakdown may have been caused by a psychological maladjustment brought on by his philosophy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0V5lIh0--0
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OR: Do you think a precarious philosophical corner is but a small price to pay for [or better yet, the icing on the cake of] an Examined Life?
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Thank you for your comments.
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Dear beetmote... - I'm truly glad to see hating me (i.e. "a random person on this ridiculous website") has renewed your interest in life.

FYI, I've NEVER reported anyone - your precious lil' @$$ included, which is more than I can say for all the ridiculous violation notices that I've been getting lately thanks to cowards like you who hide behind newly-formed dispensable accounts and Y!A's incompetence in blocking "loving characters" such as your Majesty the FREAK. ... TALK ABOUT A LOSER - GET A LIFE MORON; go TROLL the diseased maggots that brought your hateful and mediocre moment to this world.
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My Dear Param: Thank you for the kind words; I am genuinely flattered that loving and intelligent friends, like you, remember me in their hearts - the rest is just the rest. … Let them go to town on their random hatred and Paris-celebrity; I'm here for the stuff that REALLY matter, like sharing happiness and exchanging ideas with my precious friends. :-)

Dear William B – Thank you for the heartrending account of that fateful day in 1975, but above all, I stand in awe of your courage to face your inner demons. You can go back and read your account with pride, my friend, for you have conquered forces beyond the organic limits of ordinary human emotions. As for your misspelling worries - well, I did NOT find any, but even if I did [and borrowing from a dear friend of mine] I would sooner hide the typos than claim ‘em against your authentic expression of humanity. I feel your pain, I hear the all-too-human survivor’s guilt, I agree with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I sense the occasional vulnerability of a profoundly decent human being, and I even respect the bipolar disorder diagnosis if you want me to (even though, I’ve NEVER been big on labeling people when it comes to mental health issues - though that’s my problem), BUT ABOVE ALL, I can detect the undeniable LOVING STRENGTH FROM WITHIN that has, somehow, kept you safe and ...

brought you meaning through it all. Keep trusting the LOVE to chart your flight paths and cushion the occasional hard landings beyond the good captain’s control. … And remember: This maybe a virtual venue, but there is a real person sitting behind each and every one of those keyboards – I would be honored if you consider this “humble man behind the machine” Your Friend. … May you be happy, live long, and continue to celebrate your loving life with your family and friends always.
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Answer 1

I cannot speak for Nietzsche's breakdown or his symtoms, but I can speak for me. I have never considered myself a philosopher, I even flunked the course in College. Others have accused me of being a philosopher because of my ability to be able to thinik fast on my feet and give an honest answer to any kind of question.

I have been backed into an emotional corner. On September 2, 1975 I was a B52 pilot missioning planning tomorrows flight. It took about 8 hours to plan the 14 hour mission. On September 3, 1975, I was waken by a phone call at 3 am, informing me that a student pilot and an instructor pilot where going to take my place and I had the day off. On the noon news I heard that my base had a B52 that had crashed with lose of life. I went to my squadron and discovered that it was my aircraft that crashed and three people died. One was the student pilot, one was the instructor pilot and one was the radar navigator. Later after reading the official accident report I learned that even if I had been the pilot, the aircraft would have crashed anyway. I wake up screaming at night with the nightmare of that crash. I see it from the ground looking up, I see it from the air from along side the aircraft, and worse of all I see it from the inside of the aircraft. This nightmare has continued for 35 years. I have learned the technical term for it, it is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

This one aircraft accident all those many years ago has changed me significantly. As it got worse, I could not concentrate, sleep, be in crowds, be alone, be in the dark, or be in the sunshine. Then came the panic attacks and the anxiety attacks. Finally came the bipolar disorder. Then I hit rock bottom. I finally went to the VA Mental Health Clinic and discovered that I have Mental Illness. That was hard for me to accept. After all I am 6 foot 1, a big masculine guy, a husband and father, I cannot be crazy. Well I have learned that being crazy is not walking around in a daze and drooling from the side of your mouth.

As for this preccarious philosophical corner, it is a huge price to pay for an Examined Life. I would never wish my conditions on anyone. Including the idiot who answered you first. The worst thing in life is loosing your grounding, your reality and knowing that you have. Trying despartly to find it all again. Knowing you will be on medication for the rest of your life. And mostly knowing that you know less and less about what is real and what is the nightmare.

PS: Spell check will not work with so many words, I appologize in advance for any misspellings. Also, after I wrote this I could not read it, so again I appologize for not even editting it or correcting it. But I believe in what I said. Thank you for letting me spill my problems out to you. You keep fighting the good fight and finding the icing on the cake.

EDIT: thank you for your very understanding words. The more I think about it the more I do not think I answered your question at all. I do appreciate that you have given me the space to vent my feelings, when sometimes I cannot even discuss them with myself. The one thing that keeps me going is family, friends, and cyber friends. They are all special to me. Thank you for being a cyber friend.

Answer 2

Dear "I",
Welcome back! Sorry to hear you are having some trouble (e.g., beetmote), but I'm sure you realize that you have a lot of support.

I have found your thoughts to often be clever and thought-provoking and always genuine. It is hard to see how they could ever be considered threatening! More like-enriching.

To William B. - I would like to add my appreciation for your efforts to share your painful experience. PTSD can be associated with a tremendous amount of anguish. I hope that your courage in facing that turmoil and sharing that experience with this group was partly derived from the knowledge that other people would read what you had to say with concern and compassion for your plight. I know I'm not alone in feeling that way.

To attempt an answer to the question- I know that when I'm backed into a corner, its typically because all my great philosophizing and analysis has very little to do with what I'm actually feeling!

I think that philosophy is only of value to the extent that it can be intimately connected to life's experiences and life's can not be experienced without a true integration of one's emotions and thoughts.

I would say, A life not lived is not worth examining.

Answer 3

I have my moments of darkness but none so intense that could put me in a corner, that too precariously!!! I have a sunny side which shows up sooner or later (actually, more sooner than later). So, no icing on the cake yet, for me. (Oh, that doesn't gel well! Isn't the icing what we are tempted to lick first? It has to be a price to pay for!)

What brought about the degeneration of Nietzsche's mind is debatable, but it's true our own thinking can bring us to grief and coupled with such a physical condition as syphilis could have hastened his mental breakdown...

P.S. I am soooo sorry you got a nasty welcome!!! But am I delighted to see you holding your own dignified self in this war of words!!! More powers to your words (diseased maggots??? LOL!)!!! YOU are in no danger of backing into any precarious edges (philosophical or otherwise). I am positive on that front. (Aren't you flattered people are creating accounts specially for you?) A sure sign of you being a CELEBRITY.....

WELCOME BACK!!!. We are with you and you were missed.....very badly.

You are welcome, my dear . You are smart, intelligent, witty (sometimes unintentionally humourous, like just now), nerd(?) (yes that too, in a complimentary way), ruggedly handsome (I'll take your word on that) optimist, with a great taste in music and a will to spread happiness, not malice, all around you (and, not at all arrogant). Why else do we love you so? Now cool down and cheer up!..............(diseased maggots, indeed??? what are those? pray do tell me). Simply love your fertile imagination (I haven't stopped laughing!)....(and the guy is not a total moron...he spelled Nietzsche correctly, didn't he?)

Answer 4

Fantastic question! But first a brief comment on other answers. This type of question, I think, is too profound for Life_is simple. As for beetmote (an obvious loser), his acidic response congratulates you for correctly spelling Nietzsche, and then he uses the word "complementary" incorrectly.

As for backing myself into philosophical corners, I do it every day and feel that public and private ridicule is a small price to pay; mind you, not to the extent of a nervous breakdown or madness. For me, the bottom line is joy and contentment from standing up and being counted.

Answer 5

Bataille and Girard are both also notorious for talking bosh. Attempts to diagnose Nietzsche's illness retrospectively is a fine frame with which to weave one's interpretation of his philosophy, but there's little medical basis for such speculation as even Freud (hardly immune to the lure of metaphor over evidence) acknowledged.

But I set aside your example and focus on the question. Yes, I have done so. And yes, I think such corners are the price to pay. They are, in fact, an essential part of doing philosophy with any integrity, because sound philosophy is driven by the need to work around these cul-de-sacs, "to shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle."

“The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. - The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.”

(quotations are from Wittgenstein)

Answer 6

I do NOT believe that even the most insidious "philosophical corner" anyone could back themselves into, would ever be the "cause" of any or all mental cognitive and behavioral problems in someone who is not already mentally unstable...

I can converse with the best of 'em...and "back myself into any philosophical corner" better and faster than anyone...

But to a normal, healthy mind...

That's called...

"Light-hearted fun..."

Nuf said...el oh elsky...

Answer 7

You can only back yourself into a philosophical corner with pride. Otherwise the doors are always open.

With Nietzsche it probably was organic.

Answer 8

All that we are aware of hails from sensory experiences. Sensory stimulations are maintained in our central nervous systems as chemical electric constructs that we refer to as concepts. It is the nature of our nervous systems to seek meaningful associations between our concepts, as many as possible. Those associations actually create new neural pathways, so to say, in an ever increasingly complex network of associations and conceptual constructs.

Where people oftentimes go wrong is to juggle merely the chemical electric constructs that we form so readily without adequately fueling the network with new sensory stimulation. There is a correlation between Alzheimer's Disease, for example, and highly conceptualizing people. Philosophers are notorious for forming elaborate conceptual constructs and entire models, paradigms and world views from a paltry sprinkle of reality-based sensory experiences. A diet of abstraction alone, though, leads to disease. Without objective sensory stimulations, solely subjective intellectual activity is ultimately physically unhealthy AND is precariously thin in validity.

Oftentimes, abstraction addicts and concept composers arrive at a point in their "artful" constructions at which they recognize the folly of their insignificant and relatively primitive house of cards, so to say, as it relates to the enormously larger and more meaningful construct of Nature. And, they abandon it, usually in despair or madness at that point when they back themselves into a corner. But, not always so.

Becoming aware is not an inner journey but rather a function between Nature and our human responses to its manifestations. There is no "meaning", no icing on a cake only with human abstractions. Been there. Learned that.

Answer 9

As far as I'm concerned, I am wondering:
WHY are so many interesting, wise, fabulous, etc. people interested in a private 'corner' for the rest of their lives in the pure nature !!! ?
I wouldn't be bothered by so much questions anymore, as the above mentioned people aren't at all, too.
Huh?

Answer 10

Not in the way you mentioned, I've often though about the universe is infinite, it has no end, so its like God and he said he knows all the stars by the names he gave to them, i just become awe struck by it.