I was thinking this morning about philosophy…
not anything specific, but in general…I have
always held that philosophy, done right, should
be invaluable to us individually and collectively…
So, why isn’t it being more valued?
Why does philosophy have a worse reputation than
a serial ax murderer?
I think it comes down to how we use philosophy…
I have read all the great classics of philosophy…
from Plato to Sartre… (I am reading Karl Lowith right now)
and the thing I have noticed about philosophers and their
writing, is there separation from what it means to be human…
Or said another way, Philosophy has lost contact with
human beings… Let me give you an example…
I have tried over the years to read Kant… but I have a
very hard time connecting it, Kant, to my own life…
I cannot connect what Kant is saying to my life,
what does it mean to be human, what values
should I have, why should I become this instead of that…
Philosophy has disassociated itself from our daily lives…
it is abstract, verbose and has nothing to say about how
am I to live my life… there is no connection between my life
and what philosophy says… I’ve read works by Kant or
Hegel and it has nothing whatsoever to do with my
life…
Here is a random paragraph from Kant’s Prolegomena…
‘‘The conclusion of this section is therefore: that metaphysics
properly has to do with synthetic propositions a priori
and these alone constitute its aim, for which it indeed requires
many analyses of its concepts (therefore many analytic judgements)
in which analyses, though, the procedure is no different
from that in any other type of cognition when one seeks
simply to make its concepts clear through analysis.’’
What the fuck? Does this have anything to do with my life
or how am I to live my life? And most philosophy falls into
this, for lack of a better word, gobbledygook, that has no
relation to my life… or nor does it tell me anything about
what it means to be human…
anyway, I am trying to connect philosophy back into people’s
life…quite often around here, I read how the society is bleak
and the strong have taken over and the average person is
totally fucked… and yet, at no point, do I see these negative
people offering us any kind of possible response…ok,
we are sheep being led to slaughter, great, what should
we do about it? the vast majority of the negative people
around here offer us no answers, no possibilities,
no hope…don’t tell me how shitty the world is, tell
me what I can do about it… what should I do?
it is just another Kantian question…
''What should I believe in?"
and how can this philosophical ‘‘gobbledgook’’
answer my Kantian questions? I read very little philosophy
these days because most of it doesn’t engage with my
own concerns and needs… I believe philosophy should
be used as a ‘‘way of life’’ as a means of knowing
''what am I/we to do?" Philosophy has gotten so abstract
and unreal, with no connection to my real life…
and that is what I write about… trying to connect
philosophy back to reality, not abstraction…
to where philosophy actually has an impact on
our daily lives…and answers the questions of
existence, what does it mean to be human?
What should our goals and purpose be?
where am I on the road/tightrope of Nietzsche,
going from animal to becoming human?
How do I fit into the scheme of things,
how do I fit into the state/society?
Like in Quantum Physics, we have the very small,
and we have the very large, how do I, as very small
thing, fit into the much larger state/society/universe?
I think the fit, the connection between the very small
and the very large is not just a physics problem, but
a very human problem…How do I connect to the
universe at large?
Kropotkin