MaroonBlog

Perhaps, but only if you consider nihilism to be serious philosophy.

We now know we're just a bunch of naked apes trying to get on as best we can, usually messing things up, but somehow finding life can be sweet all the same. All delusions of a significance that we do not really have need to be stripped away, and nothing can do this better that the great deflater: comedy.

However, nihilism seems to be more the absence of any real truth, a philosophy of no absolute truths, so really a philosophy of nothing. How can one consider nihilism 'philosophy' when its pronouncement that humans are merely animals and there are no absolute truths makes Hitler just as reasonable as Jesus Christ? Nihilism like this says that humans can't know absolute truths, because either there are none (I think this is the most common type of nihilism) or can't know them because man is merely an ape. If one can't know truths, than philosophy, which has the end of knowing truth, is an exercise in futility. So to a nihilist, like the author demonstrates himself to be by his opinions in the article, of course philosophy and philosophers are ridiculous, working futily at a non-existant end with pretensions of grandeur. Absurd indeed.

Back to that quote above--that naked Darwinism is quite funny. It claims at the same time that humans have no real significance, yet humans have the significant and unique ability to realize that they are just 'damned dirty apes'. The oxymoronic irony is delicious, and just demonstrates that Darwin is not a replacement for Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine. If man is nothing but a 'naked ape' (which we're not--Aristotle shows quite clearly that man is the only animal that has speech and is thus poltical, making man different from all the other animals) that has no higher and different end than other animals, than the selfish killing of children (lions and apes do this), murderous war for no other ends than selfishness (animals do selfish things that hurt the species all the time; often what is war other than a collective, political selfishness of men [interestingly, the political nature of war provides a great counterexample to the thought that men are merely apes]), and no need to create higher culture (show me a Beethoven, Michelangelo, or Dostoevsky of the animal world, please) are all what man can or should be. What a terrible way to view the world, for it is so manifestly wrong. And if you think otherwise, try engaging the first book of Aristotle's Politics, as very small start, for a taste of your own ignorance.

Back to the article: it reveals its nihilism even more clearly later on in the piece:

Any individual or group is shown to be ridiculous when only their pathetic and partial view of the world is taken to be everything. That's why no one escapes satire in the programme, which is vital for its ultimately uplifting message: we're an absurd species but together we make for a wonderful world.

The Simpsons, like Monty Python, is an Anglo-Saxon comedic take on the existentialism which in France takes on a more tragic hue. Albert Camus' absurd is defied not by will, but mocking laughter.

The piece seems to reveale that its worldview is one in which all cultures need to be celebrated, that everyone is special, that different opinions are all okay and part of the greater whole. What rubbish--how can a Hitler and Ghandi coexist side-by-side without one getting snuffed out?

What the Simpson's often does it ridicule many things, and the article takes that to be good because it deflates the false pretensions of philosophers that think their philisophical systems are absolutely correct. It's fair to point out things that are incorrect. However, to ridicule the basis for society without providing a new basis for it is nihilism in its purest form. I don't see any basis for society in the article other than an unthinking assumption that the world as constructed today in the west is good. As soon as someone askes why, the emperor is revealed to have no clothes for this author.

The article says that 'we're an absurd species but together we make for a wonderful world'. A few things: why exactly are we an absurd species? Are all species absurd? Is the absurdity indicative that man should be acting like another species that isn't absurd? Or, are we knowledable in our absurdity, but we can't act any other way because we are by our very nature unchangably absurd? What a tragedy that would be--to be knowledable that man is fundamentally flawed now and forever, with no chance of ascending to greater knowledge and perfection (in this case less absurdity), with our without God's aid.

Also, we live in a wonderful world. Why? Because we think it's wondeful? Okay, why do we think that? A gut feeling: sounds like Aristotle and Aquinas to me. Because people have looked at life in detail and explained through reason why the world is wondeful?--again, philosophy. Hmmm...man can't know truth, yet the article asserst many things are 'true'. As they say, 'does not compute..."

What this article seems to be doing is trying to make people feel that their ignorance is superious to the efforts of men to try to discover truth. The article is saying that man can't know truth, but that's good in itself. And since one doesn't know truth by default, everyone's good! Yay, let's have a hug and a nap. Blink, blink...

[I]t is no coincidence that the most insightful and philosophical cultural product of our time is a comic cartoon, and why its creator, Matt Groening, is the true heir of Plato, Aristotle and Kant.

Nietzsche is an heir too, in a way. And who are Nietzsche's unwanted bastard children? Hitler and Communist Russia. Me thinks it's not saying much to call someone an heir to Plato. Actually, I take that back--in most cases, and in particular this one, to call someone an heir to Plato is to be extremely demeaning to Plato.

One last thing for now: in the comments on the article, this insiteful comment is made:

Curiously, Julian's interpretation of Homer the Heretic is opposite to that the episode itself makes. The point is made (by Marge) that Homer has created these quips as excuses to disengage from faith, and has to be rescued from the fire by those still engaged enough to be willing to take action (Apu and Flanders). Far from being "simple philosophical truths", his quips are "tempting excuses for inaction". So perhaps the Simpsons' main gift is to be vague enough to read whatever you like into it.
William, Cambridge, UK

Perhaps the Simpson's has more merit (at least as being skillfully constructed to appeal to many people--a very small virtue, but still the cleverness deserves some recognition) and it's merely the terrible trite postmodern reading of it by the article's author that is deeply simplisic and flawed. However, if the reading of the Simpsons by the author of the above-linked piece is a valid one, than the Simpsons is in fact nihilistic and not good philosophy at all.

Now, as a substitution to this nihilism, I think this is a good start; to not provide such an alternative would be extreme hypocrisy on my part.

EDIT: So yeah, I went through this and edited it significanlty, and then lost the edits. This has crushed my will, so I now knowingly present a less thorough and well-edited critique than I would like. Maybe now you'll enjoy ridiculing me and my manifest ignorance even more now than you would have with the better version=)