Does philosophy, taken to its fullest extent, ultimately cause us to deconstruct and question or beliefs to the point where we have gone beyond the rational? There have been many brilliant philosophers throughout history who went from smart, rational men, to totally non-sensical lunatics. By this I mean, they lost sight of real life and reality in their deep thinking. At this point philosophy has conquered them, not vis-versa.
You may ask, “What is so bad about being conquered by philosophy”. My answer is that it causes unecessary “angst” over certain things in one’s life — such as religious beliefs, depression, a sense of hopelessness, etc.
What do you think? I’m I splitting hairs here, or am I on track?
Rationality is learnt, as is irrationality for that matter. Man is ‘an animal whose type is not yet fixed’ as Nietzsche put it. Philosophy for some is the learning of rationality. For others it is the learning of irrationality. For most it is a mixture of the two.
Plenty of people who’ve never engaged with philosophy have religious beliefs, a sense of worthlessness and so on. Indeed, anomie is held to be present in ANY society where normative regulation has broken down, if you follow Durkheim (on this issue I do).
I can see why you’d be tempted to think what you have thought and I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never found philosophy to be depressing, it isn’t all bells and whistles and candlelit moonlight, but consider that in order to make such an assessment one would already have to be part of the game, one would already have to be philosophical. It’s like using language to debunk language…
On the other hand plenty of well respected thinkers have made similar comments to yours, so perhaps you can take this with a pinch of salt.
