I’d pull reference and context on the comment, but if you can’t go past the first ten pages of Google, then you probably wouldn’t really be interested in it. (grin)

I was just joking about the Marx comment

We’re off-topic but who cares? I think some people would argue that masturbation IS more enjoyable and fulfilling than masturbation (as Woody Allen said: “Don’t knock masturbation — it’s sex with someone I love”) but I guess that’s clearly not the point

Marx’s quote is kind of a loaded statement because he uses the term the ‘_real_ world’. But maybe what exactly he means by that, is only something that wanky philosophers would ask about it

In any case, Marx’s politics (if not itself actual philosphy) is clearly founded on a philosophy. So he’s a masturbator

I agree about the usual social discourse. Also, whether or not the point of certainty and conviction is knowable is – as you point out – itself a question for philosophy If it IS true (if a claim like that can be), there are still philosophical positions that would agree, so they may still prove useful.

I’d love to know the context of that Marx quote. Couldn’t find it in the first 10 pages of Google results.

You write that this statement boils down to ‘Masturbation and sex are both really great. Sex is exactly like philosophy.’ But it is worth mention that Marx’s comment denigrates philosophy by saying it is a singular activity, within the mind, and not as good as the act of living (implying life without prefacing every act with thought or necessarily caring that action is contrary to thought or belief).

He was not saying sex is like philosophy. He was saying philosophy is like masturbation — not as fulfilling nor as enjoyable as sex.

Ask most people why they believe what they believe and they will not be able to answer you. Epistemology is not the stuff of the usual social discourse. Nor is philosophy. More often than not, between the ‘cult of personality’ and the careful machination of agitprop and propaganda, thought is deftly set aside in favor of ‘belonging’.

The idealist knows philosophy is the underpinning upon which all thought proceeds. But outside the rarified air of the ivory tower, this reality is handily and rather easily ignored.

Then again, the point of certainty and conviction is arguably unknowable — so perhaps Marx had it right after all.