It is only very recently in my life that I got really interested in philosophy. Sure, I always loved thinking about things – and I loved science and freethought. These two facts virtually ensured that philosophy formed at least a background interest in my head.
It didn’t stay in the background for long…
At first, it was a fascination with the radicalness of philosophy, especially in famous movements such as postmodernism. I read Nietzsche, listened to the Teaching Company’s lecture series on existentialism, bought books like Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha …and so on. But my postmodernist phase was soon over, as I found a lot of phony interpretations of science that I didn’t agree with. Moreover, there a lot of people who were PoMos seemed to do what I call philosobating –- from philosophy + masturbation. Philosobating is reading Ayn Rand a lot, learning about this radical view and that without any sense of how it can be applied to real life, professing this value but practicing something completely different.
However, many of the metaphors I stumbled upon in existentialism were striking and some of the ideas I encountered there resonated very deeply within me. It was strange and wonderful, and such a breath of fresh air when compared to the unquestioning acceptance of dogma found in an average Indian student. Around me I only found minds which are merely receptacles of the most common and most mediocre opinions that are passed down by tradition, an education which does not instill curiosity, and perhaps dogmatic religion. Even the “intellectuals” only elevated trivialities and mediocrity to an art form and were no longer passionate seekers after truth (although none of them could really be blamed because there is no incentive for them to question or to think outside the narrow margins imposed by society) – and philosophy proved a huge respite from that. I’m glad that it was not always the case though.
Fast forward couple of years down the line and I stumbled upon the website called naturalism.org. There was a page on the site talking about success and failure and with a pretty radical notion – that no one deserves ultimate credit for their successes or blame for their failures. According to them, there are a variety of factors that shape people into what they are – and we can hardly be held responsible to those factors. When people win or fail, we only see a culmination of a huge interconnected web of cause and effect, of which the person is just a part. If this is true, why single out the person when he triumphs or falls?
I was very repulsed by this view, and I found it as an affront to the individualism I so strongly espoused. One more factor for my repulsion was that we hardly ever hear such a viewpoint – indeed, successful persons are trumpeted and looked upon as if they have descended from heaven, when failures are hardly if ever encouraged. Also, I somewhat misunderstood the position as saying that we’re all puppets ruled by fate, rather than just how cause and effect relationships almost completely determine the world (determinism). The more I read about it, the more convinced I became.
Anyway which brings me (finally!) to the point of what philosophy is, my experiences with philosophy has left me with a preliminary appreciation of what philosophy really is – or at least what I think philosophy should be. I can state a couple of things that distinguish good philosophy from pseudo-philosophizing:
Philosophy is not just thinking. Any noise is not music, any scribbling is not art and any thinking is not philosophy. Books by self-help or management gurus titled “My Philosophy” are rarely ever philosophy. Sure, they may be filled with insights or clever witticisms. It’s just that there is something more to it that makes philosophy tick.
It is critical thinking. Reason. Self examination. There are different ways of calling it, but it all boils down to being hard on your opinions. As Tim Minchin says, opinions are like assholes –in that everybody has one; but opinions are also significantly different from assholes in that they should be constantly and thoroughly examined. There are at least a couple of times in my life in which I let go of cherished beliefs – for example, my belief about about credit and blame I mentioned above, my belief in how demonically evil certain people in my life are, and my unjustified belief in a transcendent rationality that can act as a magic remedy for everything in life.
Philosophy should result in action. Thinking by itself does not provide the raw material for thought. There is no use if you have read all of Ayn Rand, Jean Paul Sartre, Camus, Advaita Vedanta, Robert M. Pirsig and Khalil Gibran and you still continue the lifestyle of doing what you’re supposed to, rationalizing and providing causal justifications for your inaction and that of others, not stepping out of your line when you sense injustice, and using your intelligence to form an impenetrable cyst around your own beliefs and rendering any possible criticism unlikely to be considered.
There are more I would be coming up with as I think more about what constitutes good philosophy. From now, I am pretty sure these points are quite evident. This is what I consider as philosophy.
–AravindhCee
Cognitto 