Well burrowed, old mole!

(a) context          

     In every generation, someone makes the claim that philosophy is dead, and yet, like the ever-imminent Christian Apocalypse, this death never seems to come.  History is done, philosophy is dead, the stars are not wanted now, put out every one, pack up the moon and dismantle the sun etc etc… This mentality of self-pity or whatever you want to call it usually is the result of taking some theological, philosophical or scientific hyperbolist a bit too seriously.  Wittgenstein did not murder philosophy with the Tractatus, nor Hegel with his Phenomenology,  nor Fukuyama with his End of History, nor Dewey with his frightful pragmatist nonsense, what they did was to provide a certain type of enabling optical illusion, an excuse for the tired, for the weary for those whose fantasy was such a death to seize upon. 

        Philosophy will never die as a result of its problems being “solved” or “dissolved.”  It will only be clinically dead for as long as a people lack imagination enough to practice it.  The definition of philosophy in these terms falsifies it.  Philosophy is about the creation of the problem, about posing a problem, about problematization, not about reconciliations or solutions. As soon as one “problem” is “(dis)solved,” life has already thrown another mountain in the way of the sensitive mind.  As Emerson put it in his essay Circles:

There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story, – how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo, on the other side rises also a man and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder generalization.

What Emerson is saying here is beautiful.  It can also be shown as its “photonegative” if you will.   Every ‘finality’ has a hole in it;  every theoretical machinery thrown before you is less than equal to the world to the cosmos, Reason, being or whatever, it has a flaw, it has an oversight, it has some authoritarian dogma that thrusts itself forward groundlessly that you can get your staff under in order to flip the entire edifice. Personally, I prefer Emerson’s formulation with its emphasis on the creative and active orientation, but we should understand that this depends on the negative, the lack, the surpassibility in all theoretical work as an enabling condition.

        Personally, I commend the efforts of true philosophers toward closure.  It ups the stakes for my thought after I read them.  They seal their riddle tighter and thereby force me to work harder to transcend them.   However, I deplore the efforts of their epigones to render unthinkable, to interdict, to taboo the sort of flexibility in thought and language that is necessary to get around the master.  Philosophy should not provide a shelter for stupidity.  Philosophy should try its best not to reproduce the structures of society that perpetuate stupidity.  When the philosophical community uses practices of non-argumentative exclusion (i.e. violence) to secure some treasured dogma, or prevent the philosophical articulation of certain types of experience or certain problems, it becomes institutionalized stupidity, and regardless of the external pressures brought to bear, becomes a farce.  The bureaucrats of the spirit thereby impose their formula by force much to the detriment of wisdom…

(b)proposal

      Though there are surely a large number of propositions that could be advanced in aide of our gay science, I shall here limit myself to one and one half.  Perhaps others can object that I have excluded a good idea, and they will be absolutely right.   I shall limit myself to the proposal of an alternative institution and a brief statement of something that can be done there.  Though some may find it strange to speak of an institution, expecting from me a theoretical proposition or something of that nature, I ask them to hold their skepticism in abeyance until the end of the proposal. 

     At the time when I first conceived this proposal, I had been traveling between my home and Lower Manhattan to attend a certain occupation there.  This experience has wrought much positive change within and without the participants therein.  We find ourselves together, a part of a sort of global movement.  This movement has to do with combating austerity and trying to induce the birth of a new society.  It is loosely organized, and was brought into existence through the force of example, and a philosophical call, like Marx issued in the manifesto, for the instantiation of a certain spirit in a concrete institution.

     As a firm believer in philosophy as a human right, in philosophy for all, I was elated to observe the proceedings at Zucotti Park.  What they had was a popular assembly, like those popping up around the world.  The format of discussion permitted everyone to have a turn and to call any item of the agenda or the procedures into question.  Though at first things were a bit tedious, once people got used to it, it worked very smoothly.  The debates at the park, crucially, transitioned between theoretical and practical concerns, accommodating both, linking both into the eventual practices of the community—from marching to drafting manifestos signs and slogans. 

      My modest proposal is this: we should organize popular assemblies for philosophy in our own communities especially if we live away from the great centers.  These should be open air spaces where people can come and go as they please, where free food and drink is provided, where nothing is off the table, and where the discussion can lead to manifestos creative productions and group actions.  Most importantly, there should be extensive outreach to bring in non-university people.  Philosophical education is perniciously denied to secondary school (and primary school) students in the United States and most other countries and this cuts off so many from an activity they could love if only they had the opportunity. 

       In what sense will this revitalize philosophy? For too long (since Kant’s day?) philosophy has been tied to the university.  This institution is currently failing philosophy drastically.  This institution is content to gut philosophy in the name of budgetary concerns and staff the departments with adjuncts.  This institution promulgates the lie that philosophy is not important to society.  This institutional ingrate denies its own dependence on philosophy in its historical evolution.   It also cuts off philosophical research from broader currents in society.  These assemblies can operate autonomously as a sort of supplement to the universities, allowing scholars to let their hair down and allowing everyone access to the philosophical. Lest we should forget, Socrates spent his days in the agora, the town square observing and problematizing the ways he saw there.   

         What should be discussed? I would advocate for the discussion of everyday life: work, food, technology, love, sex, music, books we’ve read and so on.  This discussion should lead to communal reflection where people say aloud the ideas they have around these topics in a collective body that wants to hear them.  Yes, something like group therapy, but also something like a seminar and something like a social movement. 

      Though I have not been able to fully articulate this possibility, I think it promising for the revitalization of philosophy the human being and society.  Only practice will permit the  articulation of this possibility, and that is not the concern of an individual mind, it is the work of numbers of people coming together and challenging one another. I am sure there are points I have missed and I regret that my descriptions have been short, but when do things ever come to a ‘fin’ so often in life things are arbitrarily terminated before their ripeness.