questions I wonder about...

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Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1455
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

questions I wonder about...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

in reading Bernstein "Philosophical Profiles"
I've come across an interesting point..

That philosophy has been seeking its "foundational" idea's..
what is the foundation of philosophy? It is metaphysics or Ethics,
or logic or political philosophy or is it the modern ideas of
consciousness and epistemology?

In following Rorty, one see's that the modern foundational ideas
of philosophy lie in consciousness and epistemology...
for example.. Descartes "I think therefor I am" is consciousness
and for the next 200 years, from Descartes to Kant, sought out
epistemologically understanding, or foundational understanding in
what do we know and how do we know it, given the fact that
the question of consciousness limits how much knowledge we can know...

These are modern questions because the ancient philosophers didn't really
engage in questions of consciousness or epistemology....

so what passes as our modern ''foundational" thinking about philosophy?
or said another way, what is the foundation of philosophy today?
and given how many different subspecies of philosophy that exists,
it doesn't seem to be any sort of "foundational" basis of modern day
philosophy...

it doesn't seem to be ethics/moral.. and it doesn't seem to be
aesthetics.. the seeking of beauty and what is beauty...
and political philosophy has gone into hiding ashamed of being
associated with IQ45... so now what...

Where does one go to find the foundations of philosophy?

perhaps by going old school... we seek philosophy not as some
academic pursuit in which we read a few books, take a test and
promptly forget everything we learned because it has no
practical application.. philosophy has been disconnected from
our day to day lives... it is seen, correctly, as an abstract,
pie in the sky pursuit of knowledge... and we nee to return philosophy
back to earth and make it relevant again...

and to do so means we must apply philosophy as a way of life,
not as some academic pursuit.. by making philosophy our day to day
guide to existence.. as a way of life... not just something you read in a book...
and the path for philosophy to regain its position as "queen of the sciences"
is to live with a philosophical attitude toward life.. in which we seek
out what our experiences mean to us... to take our experiences and
explore what they mean to us.. philosophically.... so that
experiences are the practical application and philosophy is the
guiding light of those experiences... we need both the practical
and the theoretical understanding of our experiences..

if we act without thinking, our actions are random and if we
think without acting, we are impotent/ineffective..

to become whole, we must unite these two... thinking/reflection
and action/movement... it is not a question of one or the other,
but two as one....

that theories are not important without the action and the action
are random, at best, without the theory....

and how do we get to this new place of combining theory and action...

Kropotkin
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