No Nobel Prize for Philosophy?

[Patty23]

The 1st and greatest Commandment is to love the Lord.

If you break the 1st and greatest Commandment, how do you get to be a saint?

Exactly. See, at least Camus sees it as a fundamental problem. Secular Humanist/atheist sees it’s still rational to be good even if there’s no God.

The problem of “good” is actually more difficult than the problem of evil.

Why be good if there’s no God?

 

[Midwest88]

I suppose there is a common sentiment, verbalized by Stephen Hawking in his “The Grand Design”: Philosophy is dead because it has not kept up with modern science, and physics in particular - it’s all relative, subjective.

With that reasoning why then a Nobel Prize for Lit … Or Peace … Or Economics? Obviously I disagree with his Hawkings.

Philosophers can’t even agree with each other about anything. They each want to set up their own little philosophic empire, whether what they say is true or not, and usually it’s not true. How do you give a prize for that?

The literature prize is given, I suppose, because the purpose of literature is to tell the truth about the human condition,
and if a writer finds a new way or ‘style’ in which to do this and other writers soon follow his example as we’ve seen happen many times,
that’s worth a prize.

What kind of philosophy have you’ve been reading? And this ‘human conditioning’ talk … Mostly hot air and the same truth about feelings being “discovered” - it’s become repetitive. What style has a writer came up with that enough writers followed? Poetry still has a certain structure to it and Ginsberg went out to redefine that structure, even was an icon in The Beat Generation, yet no Nobel.

 

[laircy]

Exactly. See, at least Camus sees it as a fundamental problem. Secular Humanist/atheist sees it’s still rational to be good even if there’s no God.

The problem of “good” is actually more difficult than the problem of evil.

Why be good if there’s no God?

I’d say “Goodness” and “God” are identical, so it would be absurd to try to separate the two.
Without God there is no “Good” nor any people to “be good” or rational.

 

[laircy]

Camus and Sartre are honest atheists that’s it’s hard to not like them if you get what they’re saying.

They don’t have hatred towards God. In fact, they seem to almost want that there’s a God.

What can you make out of this?

Can one be a saint without God? That’s the problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against today."
-Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

I suggest you read Sartre’s essay “Existentialism is a Humanism” which you can find here:

marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

Kreeft made a syllogism out of Jesus’ words:

Seek and you shall find
Therefore, seekers always find.
It’s in the seeking that we get merit, it’s for God to either give you knowledge of him/wisdom (much like when Peter was told his knowledge of Jesus as God came from the father)
But it could either be in this life or in the next.

1. Non-seekers won’t find God and are unhappy and unwise.
2. Seekers who don’t find God are unhappy but wise.
3. Seekers who found God are both happy and wise.

Since we don’t just a soul, we can say that the 2nd possibility may apply to honest atheists.

I just read the essay, and must say that I am impressed that he has made such a complex philosophy under the assumption that God does not exist. As stated in the last paragraph, “Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position.” It really makes me take it more seriously lest I begin to think the silliness of New Atheism displays and offers the fullness of atheistic thought.

Do you happen to know why he did not believe in God? I am curious. He says that “even if God existed that would make no difference from (existentialism’s) point of view.” I don’t agree. It makes all the difference, as he mentions earlier on about the a priori values and essences existing in the mind of God, and since he operates assuming “God does not exist” then he has to say that existence precedes essence.

 

[Pancras]

It strikes me as symptomatic of the modern world’s disdain for philosophy, as opposed to science, that nearly all the Nobel prizes go out for the sciences. There is, of course, one for literature, and one for peace efforts.

Several philosophers have received Nobel prizes, but not for their philosophy so much as their literary efforts. Jean Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russell are notable examples.

I’m not saying there should be a prize for philosophy. Just noting that there doesn’t seem to be a truly prestigious recognition anywhere for the contributions of philosophers, not even life achievement awards, unless I stand corrected.

What do you think is the main reason for this neglect of the philosophers?

There is an abiding disdain for philosophy in the modern world, to be sure, but this is due largely to the embarrassment that most modern philosophers have contributed to the field.

While the original foundation of the Nobel prizes continues to be what determines the categories of prizes, and therefore, since Alfred Nobel did not provide for any ‘philosophy’ category, that alone could be an explanation as to why there is none. But a more penetrating explanation, it seems to me, would reside in how the Nobel prize establishment doesn’t want to be the brunt of jokes. However, it makes all the difference who is cracking them. Giving a Nobel prize to the likes of Barack Obama is pretty funny stuff, but not if you’re a flaming liberal. The culture and structure in which the Nobel entity resides is not subject to any external authority, it would seem, so the prize committee can pretty much make up its own rules, and if what it decides would be a laughing stock, it expects that the value of its award is enough to buy off any enduring criticism. But it’s a lot harder to buy off the stigma of giving the reward of utter stupidity. After all, everyone likes to get free money. And how “noble” it is to turn around and donate the prize money to ‘charity’!

(It depends on how you define “charity.”)

In the end, any decent philosophy that recognizes the truth of Catholic doctrine would be ipso facto disqualified for any Nobel prize, and that alone makes for the award of the alternatives into an abiding joke for all to see, even something that a flaming liberal wouldn’t be wont to ignore. That might be the whole of **the reason. **
.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

In the end, any decent philosophy that recognizes the truth of Catholic doctrine would be ipso facto disqualified for any Nobel prize, and that alone makes for the award of the alternatives into an abiding joke for all to see, even something that a flaming liberal wouldn’t be wont to ignore. That might be the whole of **the reason. **
.

This is an interesting point. I don’t know if any Nobel prize has been given to a Catholic other than Mother Teresa,and that was for her work with the poor, not her specifically Catholic philosophy.