I was reading a book where the writer wrote this:
‘‘The point of philosophy is to find out how to be happy’’
I am 67 years old and I have not heard anyone ever, ever praise
philosophy as being useful and I haven’t heard anyone say that
the point of philosophy is to be happy… another read said that
the point of philosophy is to prepare one for death… again,
never heard anyone ever say that…or the point of philosophy
is to discover how we are to treat others, morals/ethics…
again, nope, haven’t heard that one either…
The Greeks and then the Christians have said that we exists
to contemplate the creator/god… again, nope, haven’t heard anyone
legitimately say that… (and BTW, that contemplation of god, forever
may be single biggest reason why I will never ever want to go to
heaven, heaven to my mind sounds too much like a utopia for me
to ever want in) or perhaps the search for philosophy is the search
for peace and happiness? I have read everything from Plato to
Sartre, and virtually not one philosopher has made peace
and happiness as the reason for studying philosophy…
and having read all those books, I have noticed that philosophy
itself has, I was going to say lost touch with the average person,
but frankly, I don’t think philosophy was ever in touch with the
average person…let us take Plato’s Republic, that isn’t
a script for the average person to plan their lives around…
Plato’s Republic is utopia that is a dystopian one because
it is a fixed, set utopia that doesn’t allow for movement between
the three classes… and the three classes are also set/fixed
into a limited viewpoint of what human beings are… there is
nothing outside of the three classes even though human beings
are become something far outside these three classes…
the Republic is an ideal state which is far too narrow to
actually include all people within it… for example, Artists,
where would Artists fit within Plato’s Republic? or Philosophers?
and there is no reality to the idea of eternal forms that drives
much of Plato’s thought… for where does this idea of
eternal forms come from? Plato doesn’t actually answer
that question but the answer is clear enough, it is an
argument for god… god gave us those eternal forms..
that is why they are, to use a modern term, ‘‘a priori’’ before
experience… and that the Greeks were essentially a
religious people… (the charges against Socrates were
religious charges, not political charges and it was from
the Greeks that we got the idea that the point of existence
was the eternal contemplation of god, for that isn’t in
the bible nor is it in any other early religion)
So, why bother studying philosophy? Many here won’t do
philosophy to save their lives, MR. A, for example couldn’t
do philosophy to save his life… exactly the same way
Ophelia couldn’t engage with philosophy to save her life…
and if you are one of the few who actually engage in
philosophy around here, why do you engage with Philosophy?
are you trying to find happiness or preparing for death,
as I am much closer to death than most of you, I can’t see
how philosophy does prepare us for death… unless
we ‘‘old school’’ it by returning to the ancients in terms
of becoming Stoics, to name one possibility…or we
could engage with other post-Plato philosophies…
Epicureanism or Cynicism, or perhaps Skepticism
(to be sure, Skepticism has had very long life in
philosophy including Nietzsche and Hume) but where
in our ‘‘modern’’ philosophies can we engage in
what philosophy can bring to us happiness or
prepare us for death… In our modern philosophies?
As I continue to read philosophies, I am beginning to see that
modern philosophies aren’t engaging in what I want to engage with
which is, what does it mean to be human? as a human being,
what should I engage with as a human being? is it happiness or
is it preparing for death or to understand my own place in
the world… I no longer see how philosophy fits into my life…
philosophies engagement is with things I am no longer interested in,
for example, Kant’s critique of Reason… I have read that book,
a marvelous cure for insomnia… but it doesn’t engage with what
I want to see in philosophy… which is basically, what am I to do?
and I cannot know what to do until I understand my role/place
within the universe/world… Knowledge must precede actions…
if there is as I have suggested, no such thing as a universal, then
my own actions don’t belong to any universal, it is specific
to me and my own beliefs… it is individual, not collective…
But Kropotkin, you have argued, extensively, against
individual actions, you have argued for collective actions
as opposed to individual actions, how do you square this
circle? I don’t and that is the problem… how do I or anyone
for that matter, justify our own individual self/actions, in a world
that needs collective actions? it is, to be blunt, a contradiction…
and one that must be solved before we can move much further on…
the ongoing and since the beginning of time conflict between our
individual self needs/actions/beliefs and the state/society needs
and actions/beliefs…therein lies the problem, how do I
justify my own individual needs and actions in a world that wants
and need collective beliefs and actions?
in a state/society that demands us to be workers, producers
and consumers, what if my own individual self doesn’t need
or want those choices? That is one of the questions that
my own readings of philosophy have failed to answer…
the battle that has gone on since the beginning of human
existence, what has more weight, our own needs and wants
or the society/state needs and wants? How does my individual
self/needs and want, get fulfilled in a state/society that has
determined to override my own needs and wants?..
How do I juggle the state/society needs with my own?
and there hasn’t been a single philosopher that I have read
that even engages with this problem…Where is the line
between meeting my own needs/wants and the line
for meeting the states/society needs and wants? How
do I say yes to both?
Kropotkin