Philosophy itself.. a dialogue about philosophy
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 5:07 pm
Having spent the better part of my life, thinking about
philosophy, it helps to occasionally rethink it.. and by that I mean,
revisit the grounds of philosophy itself...what is philosophy?
Philosophy: love of wisdom.. or so goes part of thinking about philosophy..
we seek philosophy because we love wisdom.. but within some schools of
philosophy, they encourage one to approach philosophy from different grounds...
not from love, but from a disinterested, impartial viewpoint..
our very approach to philosophy is questioned right from the beginning...
when you look at philosophy, are you engaged in it impartially or disinterested,
or are you an active lover of philosophy? How do you begin your search?
Which leads us to a second question, why philosophy? What are you trying to
discover or find out? And that leads us to one of the basic questions of philosophy,
are we engaged in philosophy from love, a disinterest, or perhaps something else?
For example, Aristotle wrote in one of his books, (The Metaphysics) the opening line
of his books is this...
"All men by nature desire to know"
We seek philosophy because we want to know.. currently, we do not know,
but we are engaged in a search for? and that is one of the questions
of philosophy, what are we seeking? What knowledge are we seeking?
to be happy, to be content, to gain wisdom, to be informed, to engage
in philosophy as a way of life? Why philosophy and not theology or
history or ART or any one of a dozen possibilities of gaining knowledge?
or said another way, what are we searching for and why?
I have always contended that we seek philosophy for the wrong reasons and
therein lies the reason for philosophy's failure.. and that failure rest with
what exactly are we going to do with the philosophy we discover?
Ok, we have this philosophy, now what? What am I going to do with
this or any philosophy I might discover? I might spend years trying to
understand Kant's philosophy, ok great, now what are you going to do with it?
Why seek philosophy in the first place and then what are we going to do
with it once we have discover it?
These are fundamental questions of philosophy that no one seems to ask...
or as the dog that caught the car might ask, Ok, I caught the car, now what?
in my years of research in philosophy, I have come across some different
theories about the point of, the goal of philosophy...
In Pierre Hadot book, ''What is ancient philosophy?"
He suggests a different reason to seek philosophy,
one that the Ancient Greeks followed...and that is philosophy as
a way of life...Plato's academy wasn't just a collage as we know it,
philosophy was treated as a way of life. and Plato's academy was
a place where people learned philosophy and then learned how
to use that philosophy as a way of life...and every single ancient
Greek school was just that, a school in which we learned the philosophy
and then how to use that philosophy as a way of life.... thus Aristotle school
was a place to learn knowledge and then how to put that knowledge into use
as a way of life and this goes for Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism and all the
other Greek schools of philosophy...Which isn't how we use philosophy
today...Plato believed in eternal forms and that becomes abstract knowledge
for us today, learned in a classroom and forgotten/left there..
not to be used in the ''REAL'' world..
and that is where we have gone wrong.. the philosophy we have learned is
simply knowledge that is used as answers to a test and then forgotten...
if you read biographies of philosophers, and I have a large collection of
philosophers biographies, you see for the most part, that philosophers
don't live the philosophical life they write about....I am looking at you
Descartes and Schopenhauer... the one exception seems to be Spinoza...
that is some places for us to start in rethinking what philosophy
actually means, to us individually and collectively...
more later..
Kropotkin
philosophy, it helps to occasionally rethink it.. and by that I mean,
revisit the grounds of philosophy itself...what is philosophy?
Philosophy: love of wisdom.. or so goes part of thinking about philosophy..
we seek philosophy because we love wisdom.. but within some schools of
philosophy, they encourage one to approach philosophy from different grounds...
not from love, but from a disinterested, impartial viewpoint..
our very approach to philosophy is questioned right from the beginning...
when you look at philosophy, are you engaged in it impartially or disinterested,
or are you an active lover of philosophy? How do you begin your search?
Which leads us to a second question, why philosophy? What are you trying to
discover or find out? And that leads us to one of the basic questions of philosophy,
are we engaged in philosophy from love, a disinterest, or perhaps something else?
For example, Aristotle wrote in one of his books, (The Metaphysics) the opening line
of his books is this...
"All men by nature desire to know"
We seek philosophy because we want to know.. currently, we do not know,
but we are engaged in a search for? and that is one of the questions
of philosophy, what are we seeking? What knowledge are we seeking?
to be happy, to be content, to gain wisdom, to be informed, to engage
in philosophy as a way of life? Why philosophy and not theology or
history or ART or any one of a dozen possibilities of gaining knowledge?
or said another way, what are we searching for and why?
I have always contended that we seek philosophy for the wrong reasons and
therein lies the reason for philosophy's failure.. and that failure rest with
what exactly are we going to do with the philosophy we discover?
Ok, we have this philosophy, now what? What am I going to do with
this or any philosophy I might discover? I might spend years trying to
understand Kant's philosophy, ok great, now what are you going to do with it?
Why seek philosophy in the first place and then what are we going to do
with it once we have discover it?
These are fundamental questions of philosophy that no one seems to ask...
or as the dog that caught the car might ask, Ok, I caught the car, now what?
in my years of research in philosophy, I have come across some different
theories about the point of, the goal of philosophy...
In Pierre Hadot book, ''What is ancient philosophy?"
He suggests a different reason to seek philosophy,
one that the Ancient Greeks followed...and that is philosophy as
a way of life...Plato's academy wasn't just a collage as we know it,
philosophy was treated as a way of life. and Plato's academy was
a place where people learned philosophy and then learned how
to use that philosophy as a way of life...and every single ancient
Greek school was just that, a school in which we learned the philosophy
and then how to use that philosophy as a way of life.... thus Aristotle school
was a place to learn knowledge and then how to put that knowledge into use
as a way of life and this goes for Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism and all the
other Greek schools of philosophy...Which isn't how we use philosophy
today...Plato believed in eternal forms and that becomes abstract knowledge
for us today, learned in a classroom and forgotten/left there..
not to be used in the ''REAL'' world..
and that is where we have gone wrong.. the philosophy we have learned is
simply knowledge that is used as answers to a test and then forgotten...
if you read biographies of philosophers, and I have a large collection of
philosophers biographies, you see for the most part, that philosophers
don't live the philosophical life they write about....I am looking at you
Descartes and Schopenhauer... the one exception seems to be Spinoza...
that is some places for us to start in rethinking what philosophy
actually means, to us individually and collectively...
more later..
Kropotkin
...... let us hope he can answer with more than a sentence