philosophy and what it needs?

so we come to philosophy… what exactly does philosophy need
to become relevant again?

some might say, it needs a revolution in thought, some say, it needs to
be reevaluated, some say it needs another Socrates or Nietzsche…

I say this, philosophy will become relevant again when it engages in
what makes philosophy so powerful… which is engaging in philosophy
as a way of life… not as something we study and then leave in the
classroom but at every moment of the day…

philosophy is meant to be a way of life, it isn’t something that we spend our
time studying and then getting a degree in and then maybe, or not teaching it,
but when we engage with philosophy as a way of life… which means we
don’t just study it, we practice it… every day is another challenge to
practice what we hold to be true… so if we are Kantians, then
we don’t just study the rule of Kant, act as if you treat everyone as
you want to be treated… so take that as gospel… treat people as
you wish to be treated…that is what it means to take
philosophy as a way of life… to take principles of philosophy
and engage in them as a way of life…

if we are to be “pro-life” that is fine but be pro-life in ALL aspects,
not just to protect the fetus, but to protect all life, at all times…
so you are against capital punishment as its goal is to end life,
and you are against the police violence against civilians as it
has caused the death of over a 1000 people every year
and be against the torture of other people as it causes
the deaths of people… if you are pro-life, you must be pro-life
in all instances, not just some convenient ones, but in ALL instances…

we cannot treat philosophy as some causal matter that we can apply
when it is easy and convenient, but we must apply our philosophy
at every moment of existence, even if and especially if it isn’t
easy and convenient… we must become our values and philosophy
if we are to live lives that matter…

we must mean what we say and to say what we mean, at all times…
our words and our actions must be one and the same…
and that is philosophy lived, as a way of life…
not just some subject we study like math or physics… and we forget
once outside of the classroom… either we treat philosophy as
an total engagement with existence, or we simple don’t bother with
it anymore…

philosophy to become something that is relevant again, must become
an vital and important aspect of our lives… we engage with
life with philosophy being the guiding principle of our existence…
we select values and then we live those values to the best of
our abilities…if we choose love as our guiding principle, then
we use love to guide all our actions, if we choose peace as our
guiding principle, then we use peace as our guiding principle
in all our actions…

and we use philosophy as a means of knowing what values are our values
and why we need to use those values in all cases of our understanding
of what it means to be human… I am human by the values I
hold to and practice at all times…

our engagement with being human requires us to engage with
life with philosophy as being the means and ways of understanding
the values through which we live by… what values are important?
we use philosophy to discover that…we use philosophy to discover
what values we use as a means of practice… in other words, we
must use philosophy as a way of life, so what values should we
use as a way of life?

when we take philosophy and use it as a way of life, instead of a
forgettable field of study to impress people, I study philosophy
as a ways of proving your wisdom or intelligence…
use philosophy as a way of life…

take philosophy seriously… that is the path to making
philosophy relevant again… by taking it serious…

Kropotkin

the point of philosophy is to take seriously what it means to be human and
what values we should hold and what actions we can take using those values
that we decide upon…

what values are the values you should, not only believe in, but act upon?

that is the point of philosophy…

to make choices in what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

so we have in philosophy, two sides as it were,
we have the technical side and we have the “human” side…

and we can follow this in the very history of philosophy…
Socrates stated that his idea of philosophy was to
“bring philosophy out of the sky” which is to say, philosophy
before Socrates was an engagement with what we call science,
it was engaged with an understanding of what the primary
“ingredients” of the material world… for example, philosophy
before Socrates was an engagement with what was the primary
ingredient of the universe… was it fire? was it water, was it earth,
or as one put it, was it nous? Socrates rejected this idea of philosophy
and wanted to return philosophy to the understanding of what it means
to be human… what about the soul? His common arguments were
about the soul and the various meanings of human arguments like
in “what is justice?” and how did that impact what it means to be human?

and yet after Socrates, the philosophical arguments went technical,
in other words, philosophy wasn’t about what it means to be human,
the arguments were the platonic arguments about the “myth of the cave”
and the best form of government, but not about what it means to be human…

in other words, after Socrates, the philosophical arguments became
technical philosophical arguments which was independent of
whatever reality or experience that existed at the time…
philosophical argument for the next two thousand years
had nothing to do with the current environment or
reality that one found themselves in…and it had nothing to
do with what it meant to be human… read your Descartes…
what was his goal? to find out what in reality cannot be
doubted? he found that the only thing in reality that can’t be
doubted is the mind itself… Cogito, ergo sum… I think therefor I am…
that is an argument that has insight into our daily experiences as a human being…
it doesn’t tell me what actions or inactions I can engage with to remain or to
be human… it doesn’t answer the questions of what it means to be human…
“Cogito, ergo sum” doesn’t tell me about the human condition and how do
I go about existing within the human condition…it is an technical argument,
a technical philosophical argument, not an existential argument of existence…

and we get that all the way though Kant, who offers us more technical philosophical
arguments, the “thing in itself”…is an technical philosophical argument,
not a existential argument about what it means to be human…

and it isn’t until Hegel, that we return to the questions of existence
that Socrates dealt with… what does it mean to be human?
and we get more examples of these sorts of arguments from
our existentialist philosophers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche who brings
philosophy back to human concerns like “what does it mean to be human?”

and a good deal of 20th century philosophy is about what does it mean to
be human… and some of it is far more technical philosophical arguments,
for example the analytic philosophers who write about technical philosophical
arguments, but not arguments about what it means to be human…

this is, in part, why philosophy isn’t relevant anymore because it doesn’t
engage with the human aspect of philosophy, the Socratic aspect of
philosophy…“what does existence mean to us as human beings?”

and so we must return philosophy back to human beings, just as
Socrates did all those years ago…no more technical arguments
about “thing in itself” type of philosophical arguments, but
discussions about who we are and how we should live…
what actions and beliefs should we engage with and why?

to make philosophy relevant today is to make philosophy engage
with the questions of what does it mean to be human?
not with the technical philosophical questions that analytic
arguments deal with…

One of Quines quotes is this:

“to be is the value of a variable”

and this:

“it is the one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit
of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on
dispensing with it”

does either quote help me become a better human being or tell me
what values I should or shouldn’t hold?

no, they are a technical statements, not questions of existence…
“how am I to live as a human being and what values should I hold?”

until philosophy returns to questions of what it means to be human,
it will not be relevant…

Kropotkin

much of the Medieval arguments are arguments of technical philosophical
arguments, not discussions of what it means to be human… for example,
the arguments of St. Anselm are technical arguments, the arguments for
the existence of god… " (god) a being then which no greater can be conceived’’
and this argument is about the existence of god, not about what it means
to be human or what values we should hold as human beings…

we need to return to questions about what it means to be human,
not technical questions of philosophy in order to make philosophy
relevant again…

Kropotkin