Stop with the false etymology! I’m sure you think it would be lovely if these things you would like to be true were true. But they’re not.
The word Druid does have something to do with knowledge and truth/trees - perhaps even oak. But logs have nothing to do with logos
A professional is necessarily religious in the wider sense of the term - not necessarily of an established religion like Judaism, but in the sense that he is bound (“religion” deriving from ligare). To rely on one’s profession as you say - this is to be bound to its tenants of knowledge/belief.
The key issue here is in the method one adopts in order to interpret/manufacture raw evidence/materials into a fact/product. A professional is bound to a particular method insofar as he is conducting his particular profession.
Philosophy, the love of wisdom, implies nothing about method. Wisdom and love transcend particular methods and other restrictions/bindings. To then turn wisdom and love into something caged and diminished - into a profession - is just cruel…
Thats very presumptuous, Implying that everybody that reads this isnt a “professional philosopher”.
Im in a preliminary stage in my life, out of school/part time job. What makes someone a “professional philosopher” anyway ? To me philosophy is a lifestyle it is something that encompesses every part of your life that requires thought.
It’s a little like asking someone thats religous why they aren’t in the clergy. I have serious reservations about ever getting a degree in philosophy, what true philosopher would care about such a thing? If I ever did go to a college for philosophy it would be to learn not to get a degree so some beruecrat can say im an official philosopher.
Many philosophers didnt start of in philosophically exclusive careers and lifestyles though. Socrates was said to be a sculptor, Plato was planning on being in politics, Epictetus was a slave until he was banished from Rome and started his own school and Marcus Aurelius was an Emperor! It’s not necessary to make a career out of it, in fact I would go so far to say that anyone who’s a philosopher does whatever job there in better then if they were not philosophers.
If there are no opprotunities I’ll simply imitate Socrates and Diogenes of Sinope, live on the streets and share my philosophy for those that would care to hear a bums ramblings.
Some people don’t feel it’s there place to influence others on how they should think. I do, because I feel if im wrong and my student is wise enough to discover the truth then they are above any ignorance I may accidentally teach them.
Huge mistake! Think not that someone who makes a living writing for philosophy-magazines is “a professional philosopher”. Don’t think that someone who treats english, german or french as if it were mathematics, can even be called a thinker. I mean, think what you want. But think about it.
What is a philosopher? Most people will agree that there have been only a handful of them in history. Even though loads of people have been capable of following a logical thought process. On close scrutiny, it appears that the rare man (or the even rarer woman) who is considered philosopher is almost invariably a thinker who has come up with a narrative for his race, one that is both compelling and realistic. And… this happens to appear almost exactly the opposite of what you want to see here.
If we were were a species of robots, this site would be a whole lot more logical, but on the other hand, no philosophy would be needed, because everything would make sense by a simple process of deduction of which every robot would be capable.
Now for some philosophy: The most basic question has always been: “what is the meaning of (my) life?” Which is a question from the same ground as: “why being(s), and not rather nothing?” It stands to reason that one can not reach an answer to such questions relying solely on logic. One has to rely on the givens, and these are, unfortunately for you perhaps, not made out of logic.
To practice logic, one has to assume basic values. In mathematics, these are called axioms. In philosophy, the only axiom is the subject asking the question, and even this falls apart if the question is asked hard enough. So this is, also as there are many subjects and they all happen to value differently despite what some of them may claim, what we may call a highly unstable value. From such a value, nothing may be logically deduced, nothing becomes certain by following the thread of inference . In philosophy, faith in any outcome of logic is illogical!
Since philosophers have realized this, philosophy aims to create values, because what matters, or exists, is not “the truth”, but only the indefinite but pressing sense that there is an unrealized value to our experience. This unrealized which we only sense as a gap in our understanding but which drives us to explore, is probably due to our large brain, and presses to be defined by us, each of us individually but with the help of philosophers and other, more local life-teachers, lest this indefinite sense drives us mad.
I think you have to actually read some of the philosophy writings published, and drop the cliches. And no, you can’t be a professional philosopher or even just a regular philosopher if you don’t study it in academic setting. There is no man alive that can not only reinvent the wheel as it has been shaped and reshaped through the millenniums by the greatest minds on earth working and building upon eachother’s thoughts, but reinvent it better…from scratch.
For once I’d like to hear an academic philosopher say academia is unnecessary. It’s always the uneducated who say it.
For
I like the last line “For”, wow now that is something! I am wondering what a word like that with nothing after it can possible mean, now that is metaphysics at its best!
Academia is unnecessary. Ok ? I said it. Satisfied ?
Why do you suppose so many of the most original, enduring, and broadly influential philosophers disregarded (and even laughed at) professional philosophy/academia? I mean such folks like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, to name a few - y’know, the ones who’ve really mattered, the ones academic philosophers spend their entire careers interpreting and reinterpreting, all the while coming up with very little original thought of their own.
Academic philosophers are rarely (if ever) original enough to have a lasting impact on the centuries following them. Far more often than not, academic philosophers are merely scholarly workhorses that simply interpret the relative handful of real philosophers that exist and have existed. Genuine philosophers are extraordinarily rare and stand alone, stand apart - they do their own thing, and the rest of the world (including academia) simply follows in their footsteps.
I think it’s fair to say that some of the greats operated within academia and some did not. Nietzsche was an academic, he just wasn’t a professional philosopher. A better example is Hume, who wanted badly to be accepted by academia but was not. I believe that he was…a clerk at a customs house…is that Hume? Something like that. He was a true revolutionary, and probably would not have produced what he did “from the inside”.
Even Kant was not employed at a university when he wrote his first work, although he did, of course, resume that career soon afterwards.
x -
I’m pretty sure you can’t be a pro without going to school, but you can be a philosopher. I have known many scientists and artists who didn’t study it in school.
I think it is more of the matter that people don’t except a person’s ideas unless there is evidence provided that they are “well educated.” Ultimately it seems that logic has become less important, it is more important that a large number of people “like” you.
Okay, I’ve seen this cliche waaaaaaaaaay too many times on here. Personal experience has never confirmed it. Think about who gets interested in philosophy in the first place. It’s people like you, only with a bit more ambition who eventually make a living out of it.
When they do stand apart, they usually know what they’re standing apart from in extraordinary detail. All of the philosophers you mentioned (all three of them) who stood alone got their start in academia, learned what had thereto been known, and and only after that added their input.
