The Elusive Subtlety of Some Philosophical Ideas

By John Price

The book covers a wide range of topics which are considered important for living a meaningful, purposeful life. Much of the ideas are original, with some of them against conventional wisdom and possibly controversial. There is also some effort at influencing thought and improving mental attitudes, and also some tips on developing intellectual ability and creativity. The author has chosen the topics in the book for which he feels strongly and passionately about, e.g., inter-person relations, world peace, etc. In many cases he approached his subjects with a new, unique, even contrarian, angle. The book aims at rendering the non-obvious obvious and the not so obvious more obvious. 

 

The author has been a professor at a research university and has published more than 30 books. He has also published some research articles on new innovations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Price
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201317591

Book preview

PREFACE

Man is a thinking animal capable of abstract thought. But quite often it is difficult for him to distinguish between the real truths and the untruths, the real and the unreal, suffering from mental fogginess and confusion. He is quite frequently opinionated and biased in his thinking. He may need some form of training to enable him to think objectively, clearly and rationally. The study of philosophy may help to inculcate in him a state of mind that is critical, curious, inquisitive, objective and rational. This book may help in this respect.

More important is the acquisition of wisdom in life through a study of philosophy so that we may live a more meaningful life, the life of a gentleman as is envisioned in the philosophy of the great sage Confucius.

It is also aimed in this book to make the non-obvious obvious and the not so obvious more obvious, as its title suggests, which is of great importance.

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John Price, PhD

CONTENTS

1.  Can man really learn to be good from his past through history?   

2.   Role of personal success in society 

3.   Is government necessary?

4.   Patriotism from a different angle: is patriotism bad?

5.   How education should mold society: has education done a good job?

6.   Can there really be selfless people?

7.   Creativity seems rare: how to create more creativity

8.   Man prides himself on being civilised: is he really civilised?

9.   Can man really determine his future or is his future pre-determined?

10. Contradiction of individualism

11. Why follow fashion?

12. Must a person be admired only after death?

13. Is a person born the way he is?

14. Violence is considered bad and is illegal: what about violence in sports?

15. How can one tell the real from the unreal?

16. Dubiousness of good and moral action

17. Education for knowledge or money?

18. Is logic not as important as is thought?

19. Absurdity of rote-learning

20. Logical argument often doesn’t work: then how?

21. An unfashionable person could be fashionable without trying

22. Why people have religions

23. Are people expecting too much from life?

24. Is there good in superstition?

25. Are religions important?

26. Logic has some apparent intrinsic weakness: is it reliable?

27. How can the problem of environmental pollution be solved?

28. How a person’s intellectual ability can be developed

29. The press and press freedom

30. Complex problem of inter-person relations in society: can it be solved?

31. Is lasting world peace achievable?

32. How should life be lived?

Bibliography

1  CAN MAN REALLY LEARN TO BE GOOD FROM HIS PAST THROUGH HISTORY?

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Without history, we would not understand why we are now what we are. We actually learn about our present from our past, i.e., our history. In fact, from our history, we can forecast our future, we can forecast the trend of future events. History seems to repeat itself often, if not all the time. This is never truer in the case of wars. Men have been fighting each other since time immemorial. History has lots of battles and wars recorded. From history too, we know that man generally has a penchant for power, wealth and the good offerings of life, that man is apparently normally unappreciative of those who are better off than he is, that man is selfish, self-centred or avaricious, and many many more. His good deeds too, e.g., his self-sacrificing acts, would also go down in history.

Of course, it must have been hoped that man would learn from history not to repeat past misdeeds. But, alas! He never seems to learn his history lessons well, or, his history lessons seem to be easily forgotten. Nevertheless, history has to be written so that posterity would have a chance to learn not to repeat the misdeeds of their predecessors. Whether they would really learn from history is another thing for us to worry about, but history should be preserved so that posterity would at least be given a chance to learn from the past and know how to avoid the mistakes of the past.

From history, we not only learn about our ancestors, but the ancestors of other races, other nationalities, other peoples, as well, and we could thus have a better understanding of them as well, so that we could co-exist better with them. Likewise, these other peoples would understand us better when they know our history.

We have to know, to understand, our origins. To do so, we need to study the history of civilisation. Without history, real factual history and not something fictitious or make-believe, we would not only be ignorant of our origins, but also our true selves and possible futures. Whether it is European history, Indian history, Chinese history and what-have-you, we cannot afford to be ignorant of our past, our history, from which we can extrapolate our near and far future.

It is from history that we learn of the foibles of man, his strengths, his weaknesses, his kind deeds, his misdemeanors, and so on. At the same time, we are also parts and objects of history, i.e., we consciously or unconsciously become part of history.

It has been said that historians sometimes distort history. If that is true, we may never be able to learn the real truths about our past. Of course, we could not only obtain our history through books but from our elderly who could provide us oral histories of their experiences as well. Records of past events are normally stored in archives, which are accessible to researchers and historians.

In any case, we should remember that historians, being human, are also likely to make errors. It

is not really their fault if a genuine error in historical recording is made. It is the historian who willfully distorts the facts because he has and an axe to grind that we have to look out for, e.g., an historian who writes history prejudicially to depict a situation in a good light, which is unjustifiable. In fact, during the Second World War, when Nazi Germany under the stewardship of Adolf Hitler had been having an expansionist policy, Hitler’s supporters had written history which put the German dictator in a good light, for instance, his theory of the German Master Race and his persecution of the Jews, his anti-Semitism. And, Hitler himself had written a history book, which is titled Mein Kampf, for posterity. Such biased presentation of

historical events might be regarded as propaganda. We have to be on the alert for propaganda which poses as history. Otherwise, instead of studying history we might end up studying works of fiction. It should be noted that recording history from archaeological findings, archived materials or interviewing witnesses is not totally fool-proof or free from errors; the historian might not even be certain of the significances of all the materials available to him and could be in a dilemma as to how to interpret history and so he has little choice but to depend practically entirely on his judgement, which might well turn out to be wrong. That is why history has been found to have been modified or re-written at times in the light of new evidences.

Practically all of us have heroes and idols. They could be singers, film stars, politicians, our parent or parents, our friends, our teachers, or, historical figures. For a person of great courage, we could emulate a great historical figure such as Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. For a person of great leadership quality, we might emulate Abraham Lincoln or even Adolf Hitler, who are all famous in history. For a saintly person, we might adore Jesus Christ or Buddha, though it is doubtful whether their saintliness could ever be emulated. The good, the bad and the ugly could all be found in history and we could choose to emulate, hate or ignore any of them.

In some way, the historical figures seem to be mirror images of ourselves. Perhaps, by studying history, we are actually studying ourselves. For instance, who would not have thought that after the decline of Nazi Germany and the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the dictator, the world would be ridded of ruthless dictators after the Nazi debacle once and for all, supposedly having learnt a bitter lesson form the Nazis? Alas! This was not to be as other dictators as ruthless or more ruthless than Hitler have followed suit. The big question here is: What really is the use of history if the bad elements of history keep being repeated, when people seemingly never learnt from history, and worse, history might indeed have served the undesirable purpose of providing many bad examples for posterity (who are possibly not too good intrinsically) to follow? If this were the case, it is then perhaps better to de-emphasise the importance of and the study of history, i.e., history would be an undesirable subject, which is perhaps comparable to yellow culture. Perhaps, then, only the desirable aspects of history, the good examples, the good facts, should be emphasised on and studied. But, this would be a kind of bias in the presentation of history, which might not be desirable.

What do you think is the use of history? After all, history appears only to demonstrate

that the basic nature of humanity has always remained the same, as manifested in the many instances of history repeating itself. Humanity should be goaded to make it a point to really learn from history and not allow it to repeat itself, if it really wants, if it really treasures, lasting peace and harmony.

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2  ROLE OF PERSONAL SUCCESS IN SOCIETY

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To practically all of us, ambition is a virtue. We admire an ambitious person. We also admire a successful person. We have to put the cart before the horse. To be successful we have first to be ambitious for success. Without ambition, an aim to achieve, success would not be achieved. However, a person could have success given to him without his even trying. For instance, if a person were born into a family which owns a successful business empire and inherits the business, would he not have been born into or thrown into success? Just like a prince who ascends the throne by birth-right rather than ambition or effort. Unless we were born this lucky, we would normally have to strive to achieve success.

On the other hand, we tend to be scornful of those who lack ambition or are lazy.