So, we have in philosophy, several moving parts…
we have the areas of philosophy, epistemology,
metaphysics, political philosophy, logic, aesthetics,
ethics, and Axiology (the study of values)
and we have the Kantian questions, ''What am I/we to do?"
‘‘What can I/we know’’… ''What should I/we believe in?"
and these Kantian questions are an attempt to bring philosophy
down to earth…
and we have the last area of philosophy which is making
philosophy a ‘‘way of life’’…
So, we have the theoretical, the practical and the living of
philosophy… in philosophy itself, all three aspects play a
role in how we approach philosophy…for most people,
they approach philosophy as a theoretical science…
they study the theory behind philosophy… so Kant’s
ethical theories are not put into practice or lived as a
‘‘way of life’’ but Kant is studied as a theoretical philosopher…
and as such, easily forgotten 2 minutes after the class has
ended… but as a practical matter, or as ‘‘a way of life’’
can we in fact, engage in Kantian ethics, as a practical/
way of life, matter?
That no one takes Kant seriously as an ethical philosopher,
kinda answers that question…
and if we look at most philosophers, we can’t bring their
philosophies down to earth, we cannot use most
philosophers as models of a ‘‘way of life’’ or in turn
as a practical matter…
Take Hegel for example, can we use Hegelian philosophy
as a ‘‘way of life’’ or as a practical matter? Not as I understand
him… or perhaps, Plato… let us turn Plato into a ''way of life""
and what would that look like? I have no fraken idea what that
might entail…the only ancient philosophers that we might
want to emulate in terms of a ‘‘way of life’’ or in some practical
way, are the Stoics… but they reflect the hard nature of existence,
but what about the softer side of existence…what of love and
beauty and aesthetics that are part of our life?
Stoicism doesn’t seem to deal well with this important part
of life… am I to treat love the same way I treat death?
that is a harsh viewpoint… So, Stoicism seems to deal much
better with the hard elements of existence, with death and
the finality of existence and the suffering that makes up
much of existence, as being part and parcel of Stoicism…
Can not one philosophy take into account the harsher
elements of existence, like Stoicism and still be able
to handle the softer side of existence, love, beauty,
the allure of certain parts of existence…
But that runs us right into epistemology… the study of knowledge,
what we know and how do we know it, what are the limits
of knowledge and how do we know that? Many philosophical
problems have at their base, at least, epistemological questions…
once we grasp that our knowledge is limited, now what?
We human beings like to pretend that we have a great
deal of knowledge, but in fact, we are very limited in our
knowledge… depending on our answer to the question,
''what are the limits to our knowledge"
the very questions of philosophy, for example, aesthetics,
depends on the knowledge of the person asking the question…
one who is not very knowledgeable about ART, for example,
isn’t going to have a very good answer to the question
of aesthetics… their limitations of knowledge, of ART, prevents
a well-rounded answer about aesthetics…questions about
aesthetics requires some sort of knowledge of beauty and
ART… at its heart, aesthetics is a question of epistemology…
what do we know and how do we know it?
As of right now, today, we don’t have any sort of overall
understanding of psychology… at one point in time, it was
thought that the knowledge of Freud and his practices were
the knowledge needed to the understanding what makes
a human being tick…today, 2024, virtually no one defends
Freud right now…but what psychological theory do we have
that can explain what it means to be human? None that I can
see…and much of the sciences are in the exact same place,
physics, gravity, evolution, quantum mechanics, don’t
tell us a story of what it means to be human in 2024…
or even a very good story of the discipline in question…
several scientific disciplines are in crisis today…
physics to name just one… what is the connection between
the world of the small, the micro world and the world of the big,
galaxies and solar systems, the macro world… how do we connect
the two scales? the large and the small?
that is just one area of science that is in crisis…
how exactly does gravity work? what happens inside of a
black hole? once again, the questions of epistemology,
what can we know and how do we know we know it?
What are the limits of our knowledge of gravity or of the
quest to unite, ''The theory of everything" or ‘‘TOE’’…
is there even an answer to the ‘‘TOE’’ question…
and how does any of this relate to the questions of ethics,
or morality that seems to plague the human race?
What does it mean to be ethical, to be moral? where is
the source of that knowledge? and what are the limits to
knowing ethical questions? and once again, epistemology
seems to be a key or primary question within a field of
philosophy… How do we know if an action is ethical?
Ethics is as much about the exceptions as it is about the
rule the exception disproves… Murder is wrong…
unless and there are plenty of exceptions to this rule
that Murder is wrong… Murder is allowed in the
defense of the state… thus the Armed forces are allowed
to murder and this gives us the basis for the murder of
civilians by the police… self-defense… but how do
we prove this? what knowledge allows us to know
that self-defense is acceptable under certain conditions…
and how do we know those conditions are the right
conditions in which to murder in self-defense?
and these questions are theoretical questions, not practical
questions… of questions of ''What am I/we to do?
or what part of this can be used as a ''way of life",
can the question of self-defense be used as a practical matter?
that philosophy covers the theoretical side of existence,
but fails to cover the practical or ‘‘way of life’’ side of
existence is fairly clear…
We have several moving parts to philosophy
and they fail to adequately cover both sides of
the equation… the practical/way of life and
the theoretical side… right now, philosophy
is engaged in the theory side of existence,
and not in the practical/way of life side of
existence… what does it mean to be human
in regard to philosophy as a ''way of life?"
In a review of philosophy, as mentioned, most
if not all philosophers engage in the theory of
philosophy, not in the practical or philosophy
as a ‘‘way of life’’ From Descartes to Spinoza to
Leibniz and unto Kant and Hegel… we are dealing with
philosophers who engaged in the theory of philosophy,
not in philosophy as ''way of life""
Philosophers as a whole, aren’t very good in the
‘‘day to day’’ existence of life…but most people,
most, are engaged in the day to day aspect of
existence and philosophers are not…this is
why philosophy has lost its place as the
‘‘Queen of the Sciences’’… it no longer
engages in the day to day existence of people…
it engages in theoretical questions that don’t
matter to the vast majority of people…
and given all of this, I still haven’t even begun to
place philosophy and existence, human existence
in its right place…
Kropotkin