I avoid philosophy like one might normally avoid an ex-girlfriend. But I love philosophy, and I can't and won't stop thinking in that way, about this common life we're all living. I keep coming back to thinking about --- if not actually READING -- philosophy. So I've been fiddling with a word doc that may someday become a philosphy-related text, and in so doing, I have stumbled across an interesting idea that can be stated like this:
The proper role of philosophy the study of the human experience, as it is lived.
This would answer one of those nagging questions that I could never answer to my own satisfaction. Science teaches us so much about the world, it's leading to may answers about what traditionally was the purview of philosophers (most notably, questions about the nature and workings of the human mind, and that activity we call meaning). Psychology studies how we think and what we do. Anthropology studies human cultures. What's left for philosophy? Ethics. Virtue. Being. Meaning. Life, as it is lived. Wisdom. Looking at human living, from a systematic but not necessarily scientific perspective that treasures intersubjectivity more than objectivity. And it's not all that different from the job that it was when Socrates was doing it.
Whether this idea is a GOOD idea or not is outside of what I can accomplish this evening before I go to sleep. But it's interesting, to me.
2 comments:
of course its a good idea! i think that a strong period of introspection should be in everyone's daily planner. are you doing good for others in your day or are you mearly serving yourself? not everyone can be a nicholas, we need sonyas, gabes, and dougs but we can all be "victors of the people." the more people we have valuing, studying, and enforcing ethics the better future we can hope for for our children and our planet.
Perhaps philosophy is just another way (or style) of writing about being human.
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