What Makes A Philosopher?

[Philosophy Now]

Siobhan Lyons hunts down a philosopher’s essential ingredients.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/128/What_Makes_A_Philosopher

[A_Seagull]

A refreshing perspective.

Far too many people, who should know better, seem to think that a philosopher is someone who has read and studied the works of Plato and Kant; and preferably in their original Greek and German.

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A refreshing perspective.

Far too many people, who should know better, seem to think that a philosopher is someone who has read and studied the works of Plato and Kant; and preferably in their original Greek and German.

... and the same people disregard, as a qualification, whether understanding was achieved or not.

I, for one, enjoyed and was taken by surprize by the easily read and digested conversational style of the "Republic"; often I wished I had been there, present, to point out Socrates' fallacies (of which there are plenty in the book.) On the other hand, I never got any further than the first page of Introduction by Kant in the "Kritik der reinen Vernunft", before I could put it down, and put it down in haste and with ease. "Yikes," I said.

For the record, I attempted reading the English translations in both instances.

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Correction: please read "one of the many English translations" instead of "the English translations" in my above post.

[Pete Harrison]

I think it is also important to situate ‘philosophy’ historically – indeed, as Hegel would have it, as part of real recorded ‘history’ (anything else is myth, he writes) – as a phenomenon of civilisation and the emergence of the State. Philosophy is not just thinking about things, or reflexivity, it has a use-value in our society, akin to the promotion of particular works of art by art dealers and those who wish to capitalise on their profits. Philosophy is an academic industry where the occasional outlying punk might break through, to be almost immediately recuperated by the industry. Having said that though… I can’t think of any non-academic who has done this. So maybe it is a completely ‘closed shop.’

But this last is not my main point of contention, the suggestion I would like to offer is that philosophy is a requirement of thinkers who live in a State, or a mass society. This is perhaps obvious for moral philosophy, but it also goes for ‘logic,’ which is employed by ‘law.’

A State requires unity at various levels, and this unity is dependent upon guarantees of internal peace. The philosophy of ethics has as its central motive the answer to the question of how humans should live, both at the level of an inner life as well as at the level of society. Within this investigation are the concepts of right and wrong, and reaching over the whole intellectual edifice is the assumption that peace and unity are the ultimate prize. This should not be surprising given that the ultimate pre-occupation of philosophers mirrors the pre-occupation of the State itself, which is to work out the best kind of State and the best way to live within it. Aristotle, for example, is reported to have written one hundred and fifty-eight State constitutions and puts forward, long prefiguring Kant (‘What is Enlightenment’) and Steven Pinker (‘Better Angels’), an ideal of sociability derived from exchange and equivalence. He claims: “Without exchange there would be no association, without equality there would be no exchange, without commensurability there would be no equality.” An iteration of exchange is equivalence. Once everything can be considered equivalent or commensurate, then harmony is established, and the goal is achieved.

Philosophy isn’t clever, it’s authoritarian, but some of the people who think about things are indeed clever. And if they are adequately reflective they will realise that their thinking is bound by parameters they are unable to traverse.

(fragment from: ‘The Freedom of Things: An Ethnology of Control’)

[Siobhan]

I think it is also important to situate ‘philosophy’ historically – indeed, as Hegel would have it, as part of real recorded ‘history’ (anything else is myth, he writes) – as a phenomenon of civilisation and the emergence of the State. Philosophy is not just thinking about things, or reflexivity, it has a use-value in our society, akin to the promotion of particular works of art by art dealers and those who wish to capitalise on their profits. Philosophy is an academic industry where the occasional outlying punk might break through, to be almost immediately recuperated by the industry.

Thanks for your reply, Pete. You bring up a number of very interesting points, particularly in relation to the use-value of philosophy, and this is where I think the debate gets both interesting and problematic. While there are of course areas in society where philosophy is employed (often without people being conscious of it), philosophy as a phenomenon itself has become tarnished (in my view) by its means-to-an-end nature. It has become more of a self-serving platform, one that is too often conflated with the self-help industry, where people simply use it for other means, rather than also appreciating that philosophy can sometimes exist in and of itself. If you look at a large number of 'philosophy' books being published today, they either use philosophy as a crude means of fixing our lives, as nothing more than self-help 'how-to' guides (as in the case of trade publishing), or, as with many academic works, they trivialise philosophical content so that it has no bearing in the real world whatsoever. The notion is that philosophy can fix some need in us, which of course can be true, but then I think the danger is when we turn philosophy into a gimmick wherein we only seek to better our own lives, rather than seeing philosophy as a way in which to critically challenge the status quo.

And I completely agree that philosophy is an academic industry, which is one of the reasons why it has alienated itself from the general public. At the same time, so-called philosophers like Alain de Botton seek only to reinforce the idea that philosophy is a gimmick. Philosophy today is writhing between elite academia and tacky self-help.

[Siobhan]

A refreshing perspective.

Far too many people, who should know better, seem to think that a philosopher is someone who has read and studied the works of Plato and Kant; and preferably in their original Greek and German.

Indeed, this is what philosophy has become: an exercise in posturing. Fortunately there are those who aspire to approach philosophy in more compelling ways.

[A_Seagull]

A refreshing perspective.

Far too many people, who should know better, seem to think that a philosopher is someone who has read and studied the works of Plato and Kant; and preferably in their original Greek and German.

Indeed, this is what philosophy has become: an exercise in posturing. Fortunately there are those who aspire to approach philosophy in more compelling ways.

Yes there are.

What is your approach?

[Siobhan]

A refreshing perspective.

Far too many people, who should know better, seem to think that a philosopher is someone who has read and studied the works of Plato and Kant; and preferably in their original Greek and German.

Indeed, this is what philosophy has become: an exercise in posturing. Fortunately there are those who aspire to approach philosophy in more compelling ways.

Yes there are.

What is your approach?

For me, philosophy is an instinct in us all and should be treated as such. It’s regarded as redundant today (philosophy degrees in particular are regarded sceptically), because society prioritises the philosopher’s opposite: the entrepreneur, whose role is steeped in financial reward. You see this all the time: Australia’s former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wanted to make maths and science compulsory for years 11 and 12 at high school, but nobody bothered to ask why philosophy shouldn’t be made compulsory instead. Our values for certain kinds of knowledge are financially determined, meaning that the philosopher is becoming an historical figure, not a contemporary one celebrated by institutions.

When I teach my students philosophy I’m not teaching them how to think, or how to use philosophy for their own gain, but simply how to view the world differently through different philosophies and different ways of thinking, which I think they appreciate, even if they find it a bit difficult at first. It’s about challenging norms which we take for granted. To me, philosophy is a phenomenon for viewing alternate worlds, not a leveraging tool for personal gain, which is sadly what I think it has become in many instances...

Thankfully we have forums like this one and publications that seek to offer philosophy the platform it deserves, and I do think there are many people who appreciate this.

[Impenitent]

irony...

arguing (using verbal leverage) against leveraging tools...

-Imp