As I sit here, just thinking… and how many people do that?
I am thinking about my relationship with philosophy.
I have been reading philosophy for over 40 years… looking, seeking,
searching and for what? I don’t know, perhaps I may never know…
I am thinking about philosophy and using philosophy as a way of life……
But as I think about my engagement with philosophy, I remember my past
readings of philosophy… I began with the Greeks and Romans…of ancient
philosophy, the schools of philosophy… of Stoicism and Epicureanism and
Platonism and Aristotelianism……. As I read them, they did not engage with
me, with who I am…They were cold and sterile, at least to me and I
did not find a home in ancient philosophy……
So I recalled my readings in medieval philosophy… and they left me even colder…
The medieval philosophers left me cold because they engage in a topic in which
I could find no respite from life…….
I recalled my readings from the Renaissance writers and they too didn’t engage
with my heart… The Renaissance writers were about rediscovery, they were
at heart, Librarians…and that left me cold………
Next came the enlightenment writers… and for the first time, I was engaged…
They at least were about trying to find a new path, an individual path,
a path that didn’t depend upon the old authorities like the bible or Aristotle
for guidance…
But in the end, the enlightenment writers seemed, at least to me, unfinished,
incomplete…they hadn’t finished their studies and then, I reached the German
idealism that I am now engaged with… and after two months of study,
I am left cold by them………I have read them and my heart is left as cold
as my head……. I cannot engage with them as we don’t talk about the same
things………
As I have stated, I have read philosophy for over 40 years and although I haven’t
reached them in my studies yet, I have extensively read Kierkegaard and Nietzsche…
I have almost all their books and have most of what they have written…of
what I have read of “modern” philosophy, most of it leaves me cold, but not
Kierkegaard or Nietzsche…….I have “engaged” with both over many years
and I shall do so again, shortly…
What do I demand from philosophy?
I demand engagement with philosophy with both my head and my heart.
Philosophy has to engage in the past, present and the future.
For philosophy to engage with me on a personal level, as a way of life,
it must engage with me on a very personal level.
Kierkegaard once wrote this
“What I really need to get clear about is, what I must do,
not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede
every act. What matters is to find purpose, to see what it really is
that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth
which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to
live and die”
Remove the word god and this could be me………
I sit here, all alone in my condo, wife and daughter have gone to work…
I sit here with my headphones on listening to music, as I do at every chance I get…
As I listen, I attempt to hold a conversation with my soul………
In a crowded room, where every one congregates in the middle, you will
find me by the wall, headphones on, listening to music……
In fact, I suspect if you ask people to give one image of me, they
will say that I keep to myself and isolate myself, either with headphones or
with a book………And yet, and yet, I try to engage with myself in what
I am to do, even in my old age, I am still trying to find my “purpose”……
one might say, Kropotkin, you are full of contradictions… yes,
a thousand times, yes… but to say I am full of contradictions is
to say, Kropotkin… you are human… yes…
Perhaps I have confessed too much, perhaps I haven’t confessed enough…
for all of writing, all of philosophy is a confession of the soul…
my philosophers of choice is a confession……. I am a man…
the person I most resemble is Goethe… not in talent, for I will
never have that kind of talent, but in the reserve I show people
and yet my inner soul is in torment… I contain my emotionalism
under a cold exterior……. I laugh and cry and fall in love, in silence,
out of sight of other people……… I watch a movie the other day,
and I cried, but silently, inside of myself……………
How can I find a philosopher or philosophy that engages me on
several levels, mentally, emotionally, psychologically……
and so I keep looking…………
Kropotkin