in reading the news and in reading the responses to the news on ILP…
it leads me to, somehow, connect both the responses on ILP and the
terror attacks with philosophy…
how is philosophy, pursuit of wisdom, suppose to engage with
terrorism and the many responses to terrorism?
that depends a whole lot on how you view philosophy…
should philosophy, as done by modern philosophers, be this, passive,
beneath our dignity, not relevant to philosophy type of philosophy?
or should philosophy be as one famous philosopher thought,
“it isn’t enough to understand the world, we must change it”
Karl Marx said that…
or should philosophy be as the ancients did it, both as a way of life
and as a antidote to the storm and stress of daily life… becoming
indifferent to the daily news and becoming above it, by becoming indifferent
to it…
let us first explore this way of life idea…
philosophy was for the Greeks and Romans,
not just passive attempt to understand life and the universe,
but as a way of life… each school of the ancient world, was a
school in how we make philosophy a way of life…those schools,
now just names in philosophy books, were attempts to just to know
philosophy but to live philosophy… that was the point of philosophy,
how to live the philosophic life and the schools were the means to
understand how to live the philosophic life…it wasn’t knowledge for
knowledge sake, but knowledge to live the philosophic life…
so the various school, epicureanism, stoicism, Platonism, Aristotlism,
Pythagorean, Cynic and hedonism, were all schools or ways of life,
how to live the philosophical with the school of Stoicism, for example,
or using the cynic school to reach the philosophical life…the goal was
to discover what the philosophical life was and then live it within the schools…’
but our understanding of philosophy isn’t about the philosophical life, but
rote learning what Plato meant by “eternal forms” or Spinoza one substance…
philosophy today doesn’t engage with how do we live with the philosophical life,
BECAUSE NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIFE IN THIS MODERN DAY AND AGE…
if ancient philosophers like Socrates and Plato came back to see what has happened to
philosophy since their time, they would be agast and dismayed at what
philosophy has become…because they wouldn’t considered that what passes
for philosophy today as philosophy, is philosophy…philosophy then had an active
engagement with life that we don’t have today…they would consider our modern
philosophy as empty, vacant, worthless, passive…
so we return to the question of how do we engage with philosophy in terms
of our modern events like terrorism? passive or active?
is philosophy meant to help us understand terrorism or is philosophy meant
to help us become indifferent to current events like terrorism? and in becoming
indifferent, we rise above it and thus are better able to control our emotions
and actions in light of those current events like terrorism…we see how
philosophy works with abstract idea’s like “eternal forms” but how does
philosophy work with emotional idea’s like terrorism?
is philosophy even the right choice in such modern current events like
terrorism? so many questions and so few answers…
and I must go to work, as promised…
Kropotkin