I have been reading a biography of David Hume, when I start
my research into a philosopher, I like to read a biography of them…
to begin to understand them, the times they lived in… what they faced…
and in reading Hume, I am struck by the fact that everyone claims he
is one of the top 3 English philosophers of all time and yet…
as I read it, I am struck by the fact that he has good and interesting
philosophy, but for the life of me, I can’t see how to translate
that philosophy into real life action…how am I suppose to act if I were
to live my life based on his philosophy?
ok, I understand how his cause and effect works… we act as if the past
gives us the future, but that cannot be true and… so what?
how am I to act given this information? what is an moral action given
my understanding of Hume?
he answers technical philosophical questions which is nice but
real life questions of who am I and what are my possibilities
he doesn’t answer… it is said Hume gave an understanding of self,
but I don’t see that…I see his philosophical value but not his
real life value… what does Hume say to me that will allow me
to live my life as an complete human being?
and I run into that problem a lot with philosophy…
they attempt to answer deep philosophical questions but
fail to answer basic questions of a person’s life… what am I doing here?
the who, what, when, where, how and why questions of life, philosophy doesn’t
answer those and that is part of the failure of philosophy…
how do I become who I should become? and who is that?
what are the values I should live my life by?
philosophy has become divorced from real life…
philosophy deals with technical questions of philosophy but
doesn’t deal with the questions that matter to me…
maybe that is why existentialism was so popular… it at least
dealt with questions of who am I and what are my possibilities?
what is the meaning of life and what is the point of life?
Hume would call these types of questions “metaphysical” questions
that because of their vagueness, they lead us into meaningless
arguments and discussions that lead nowhere…
but Hume doesn’t talk about how do I find value in my life…
how do I become who I am… he doesn’t deal with questions
that we grapple with everyday… what is the right thing to do?
and how are we to do the right thing? what is the point of all this?
for Hume, these profound questions are just dismissed as pointless exercises into
meaningless babble…
if philosophy doesn’t talk about what matters to us, what is the point
of philosophy? it needs to address those questions that keep us up at night…
or it doesn’t have a point or a reason to exists…
Kropotkin