Is philosophy - like all other arts - an exceptional birthday gift that only a few are blessed with?
Or is it merely an academic subject that anyone can learn to profess via study?
Philosophy, which I like to use the Science of Inquiry to best describe it, is like any other science in terms of gnoesis (proper learning) IMO.
A person needs an early disposition of genetics and experience to carry the potential as a philosopher. Without the proper tools in place, that potential can be warped considerably. In more literal examples . . .
If you’re born from and into a family of “doers” that like to fix and make, then you might carry on their success as a technician. Your skill grows by your devotion to solving the most real and relevant issue. But it requires you sacrifice the common practice of stopping and asking about all of its meaning.
If you’re born from and into a family of “thinkers” that want to constantly ask questions, then . . . given a fairly balanced upbringing and some discipline, you will grow academically and intuitively toward the “soft sciences.” But your devotion to thinking over these strange things will make you a black sheep in the garage of handymen.
Spoken like a born philosopher. I will hennceforth seek out and pay attention to your observations.
I would add however, that a good philosopher should have a practical grounding in all forms of human endeavor and should, at the very least, be on hand-shaking terms with the handyman.
All philosophers are fags.
Fags are born faggots.
All philosophers are born faggots.
Not those who lust after young maidens and can drive a golf ball three hundred yards.
The distortions in human nature, including homosexuality and crudity are merely minor subjects for philosophical thought.
All philosophers are people.
People are born.
Therefore, philosophers are born.
Not all people are born to philosophize
at least not to the depth required to come up with original and revolutionary observations on the meaning of existence.
Mutual. Thanks, and absolutely.
Well, then, I’m utterly proud if I may be a faggot. But I wonder what criterion transforms a faggot into a fag.
In an essay the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote, “nothing in biology makes sense if not seen in the light of evolution.”
He was influenced in this observation by the writings of Teilhard de Chardin.
What could be added is; nothing expressed in philosophical writings, post B.C.E., regarding human consciousness, makes sense in the light of evolution.
"The Origins of the Species " introduced philosophers to whole new ball game.
de Chardin was first at bat.
Let me preface my response by suggesting that practice always comes before theory. We can’t actually have a philosophy of anything until we’ve come to a partial engagement with real events and processes.
So this question is whether philosophy is more like an art, in which otherwise seemingly quite ordinary people possess unprecenented and exceptional talents… or more like a science, which founds itself so rigorously that any relatively intelligent laymen can be given to understand basic theoretical principles and major practical consequences after only a short time with an educated instructor.
The irony is that this question is an excellent one, but precisely because it seems to leave no room for the real answer. Such an ‘impossible’ question is classically ironic, because it must demand precisely and only a philosophical kind of answer…
To extremely simplify things, let’s suppose that philosophy is lodged evenly between art and science. But then both art and science would be considered only as potential conditions for philosophy, and neither it’s ultimate source nor transcendent power. Let’s get more precise: philosophy cuts a transversal line across art and science. The way of seeing for traditional Western philosophy is a phenomenological auto-realism, which of course encompasses our subjective engagements in anything, not just art, and science, but politics, and perhaps even more profoundly, love.
To be faithful to the event: this is the task of all philosophy and revolution throughout the history of the universe. We must affirm a true reality above and beyond illusions, but that this reality can only be approached partially, through a subjective perspective. Subjectivity is not meant to be something we blame our troubles on, but that which we must affirm resolutely as life itself, and take responsibility for ourselves.
So we must recognize philosophy as a sort of experimentation with new and partial forms of subjectivity. The real issue when we say: “Philosophy’s conditions lie outside of itself” is that a true philosophy affirms what is impossible for philosophy ever to do-- the possibility it presents in all its manifestations, which can only be characterized as a healing. Yet metaphysicians are not physicians of the soul, but cartographers of the unconscious and the cosmonauts of the absolutely true.
Ultimately, philosophy cannot break free of its conditions. Philosophy will always be to some extent an art when practiced as an activity – that is, with intuition, creative engagement and style pertaining and of central importance. Yet, when considered institutionally, philosophy is also to some extent a science, a series of forces which ‘legally’ determine what philosophy is. Philosophers beind such that they question their methods of inclusion even as they yet enforce them, and this very capacity is what has kept philosophy relatively free.
Philosophy, above all, agrees not to let prejudices have the last word in interpretation. We must allow a second, rational voice to be heard. Kant speaks beautifully of the still, silent voice of reason which can yet make itself heard over the ‘howling’ of unconscious desire…
No and no.
A person need only want it. But who does that?
Agreed in part. To that must be added to what you more or less alude to below; any engagment must be predicated by a thorough grasp of the history leading up to the event, and a reasonale prediction of its future consequences. Without this holistic grasp, philosphy would have neither relevance nor purpose.
The confusion in defining the precise nature of the philosopher lies in the problem of identifying the true sequence of historic event The true philospher must travel himself back in time and see the first event for himself and follow its sequence from there. The history of scientific discovery has done a phenomenal job of helping us in this epic work of unearthing the origins of the first event - but there is still much that reamains unclear, or distorted by the bias’ imposed by historians and other precocious assumptions. (De Chardin, I believe, is the first philosopher to truly try to unravel the sequence. He had Darwin where previous philosophers had not. Where he leaves us with a blank is in the field of quantum discoveries.)
Philosophy is rooted squarely in theology - in an understanding of what is ethical behavior and what is not. Thus its true calling is spiritual and it is from this source that the material is analysed.
=D> , especially the last.
=D> especially the last
Philosophy does not require any learning, infact Ive met many people who would say that accepted knowlege is infact a hinderance on philosophy as it restricts your mind to rules, like science does. But philosophy does not have rules, if it did there would be no point to it, it would just be another science. Philosophy needs to be seen without the impacts of cirtain learned knowlege because this knowlege may be wrong.
This does not mean that an educated person makes a worse philosopher but does mean that some one who will give no ground in their own mind because of a learned knowlege, be in scientifc, or supersticious. Will not make a good philosopher.
To me children have the potential to be the best philosophers. They have no preconceptions as to what the truth is so they use their mind, rather than reciting something they have learned. Children have some of the most increadible ideas. However children may have the potential but they never will be the greatest philosophers, unfortuantly the peek of persopnal intelectual ability is reached on entering adulthood, and by they our minds have been inundated with learned knowlege that we take as the truth alot of the time without even realising it. I find that the best way to overcome this is no matter what your ideas are, to keep socrates in mind.
“Wisest is he who knows he does not know” This may be a paradox in the way that it is layed out here, but its message is cirtainly one of the best pieces of advice when thinking about philosophy. Steven hawking said something similar.
“The greateest downfall of man is not ignorence, but the illusion of knowlege”
So in summation Philosophers are born, anyone who has freethinking can be one, you dont have to be educated. The first philosophers were not. Whats needed is an open mind and a good pair of ears, (we cant always see faults in our own work)
Fresh style in the way that I spit;
The old ideals need tearing apart and I’m born to rip.
truly the only thing to make one a philosopher is to ask why or why not; nothing but the question is needed.
Well said. Welcome.
What is it that makes us ask the question?
Not all people are born with brown hair, but you don’t question whether they became naturally brown after or before/at the time of their birth.
Besides, philosophers are just people who love wisdom. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t love wisdom at least slightly.
That would be ignrance then… either Stephen isn’t all that bright or his intent wasn’t to make a sensefull statement.
I do not agree asking a question qualifies anyone as a philosopher.
But the motive for asking a question at all… ah! therein lies the qualification!
Indeed! The possibilities are far more interesting!
How about this, guys? 
Every living thinking subject is going to reflect, to a certain minimal extent, on the actuality of their existence. That is, everyone at least has an implicit ontology because they are able to organize their perceptions according to (albeit unconscious) rules.
But, you’ll say, cavemen were not actually spending much of their lives wondering whether their perception represents the whole of reality (solipsism) or merely a part of the world (monism with subjective interpellation) – they were just existing, just acting, just being (‘realism.’) In these terms, all people prior to philosophy were pure materialists. But we know this isn’t true.
We know that fantasy comes becomes reality, that magic comes before science. As children we grow to understand that there is a difference between what the world actually is and what is said about the world by authorities on the subject. This gap, if taken too seriously, is critical enough to permanently damage the subjectification process. Culture can’t stick either if we don’t take seriously enough, or if we take it too seriously.
In fact, philosophy can’t remain in either of these stages for long. Even our serious comments are meant in a somewhat light way, and our jokes often intend a profound transformation through laughter. Everyone, then, is a philosopher because everyone laughs.
In short, telling a joke is already ‘doing’ philosophy. It is in this sense a dialogic form of magic: a hidden truth, subtly distorting the conversation (or narrative-space or whatever) until it is suddenly revealed, in all its light and glory. The laughter which follows is more than destructive enough to rip apart our preconceived systems of knowledge and power… Philosophy questions authority in precisely the same ways humor and irony do, that is, by repetition: either by irony–that is, being on the side of society but holding us accountable for the fact that society is not running according to even its own principles-- or by humor: that is, by taking the ideology TOO seriously and showing its palpable absurdity.