Tonight's subject is philosophy. No need to run screaming; I'm not going to share any of my personal opinions on the matter with you. I'm just going to talk about philosophy in general.
A while back I had a friend of a friend who was always cold to me, and I never knew why. Years later, I found out the answer. I turns out that when we first met, I found out she was a philosophy major in school, and apparently gave her a lot of grief about it. Now, I have no recollection of this happening. But it sounds like me. I've always thought philosophy to be a soft, and stupid, major. (Part of me was sorry, but another part thought, what philosophy is it that holds a grudge for three years? Don't you people debate a lot?)
Not that I think the subject is unimportant. Some days, it's all I think about. But in the field of philosophy, there seems to be no attempt to winnow out the truth. There's an old joke:
A university dean, facing a budget crisis, decided to chide the head of the physics department. "Why do you need all this equipment for experiments?" he said. "Why can't you be more like the math department? All they need is paper, pencils, and a wastebasket. Or better still, be like the philosophy department. They don't even need the wastebasket!
It's true, philosophy never throws anything away. Take any philosophy course, and you'll be taught mutually exclusive, even highly contradictory philosophies. Some may even be flatly disproven. And yet, they Must Be Taught. I think if a university professor ever tried to espouse a specific philosophy to students, and taught that this or that other philosophy is a complete failure (or worse, neglected to even teach it), they'd ride him or her out of there on a rail.
I've had people try to give me philosophy books to read. I've developed a nice system for dealing with them. The books usually consist of a logical form of argument -- state assumptions, draw inferences, reach conclusion -- and I can at least credit them for that. Usually. But I always see the whole thing as a big shaky tower, built up from the axioms. As such, I usually only read until I reach what I perceive is the first faulty inference. Then I think, if they're just going to build on this, why should I read on? The tower already will not stand. (Not that I could do any better. The small towers I have built for myself have failed to achieve any great unity or height.)
And usually I find that the conclusions these philosophers come to are the ones they were already convinced of before they started their formulating. Their ideas are always a product of their time and place. Like, Ayn Rand escapes communist Russia, becomes a fervent capitalist, then formulates a philosophy. Starting at first principles, she builds and builds upon them until she arrives at -- capitalism! What a surprise!
Okay, I'll say it. I'm basically an existentialist without the angst. If I even understand the term correctly.
I'm mostly through with Albert Camus' The Plague, which got me thinking on these lines. Obligatory quote:
But the narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worst side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are the general rule. The narrator does not share that view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness.
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