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at risk of being the cheesiest nerd on the planet,
is it so unreasonable that I think philosophy as a discipline is actually terribly romantic?
I mean romance first in the idealist sense - there's no way to reach the end of philosophy. We're not going to know, 100%, absolutely, whether we're like, right about the what the universe is made up of. do ideas generate ideas? how do we reflect on abstractions? maybe we're really the brains in vat. maybe this is the matrix. But I don't mean that in the edgy way, I mean that in the 'so what??' way. If we're wrong but we're trying, if we're still making the effort, that's the important part, to me.
But I also mean romance in the sense of love - love for the pursuit, and love for everyone who has committed something to the pursuit. I would love to go to Milet, to meet the 2600 years of people who've looked at uncertainty and decided to make something of it. To decide to make something matter, despite it all! Philosophy is a history of ideas, and every person who sat down and said 'how can I understand? Where can I find meaning? What can I do to make the world good for other people?' Philosophy doesn't make sense in a vacuum. None of the ideas work without a society that built their creator. It's all about trying to help, to me. And I can't not love that.
I mean. What do I know, I'm still a student. I'll be the first person to agree that I don't know so much, that I still have so much to learn. But for all the unsurety that comes part and parcel to studying, one of the things I've seen through every era I've touched on, is that people just want to build something good for each other.
We're cynical as anything, in this generation, but the Summa draws right from Aristotle - if we do this right, the point of laws is to guide us to a world that people can flourish in. We're not so great at that, here and now. But there's something beautiful in the idea that we can do good. We have the capacity and the inclination, and imagine, with just a bit of help-!
I mean romance first in the idealist sense - there's no way to reach the end of philosophy. We're not going to know, 100%, absolutely, whether we're like, right about the what the universe is made up of. do ideas generate ideas? how do we reflect on abstractions? maybe we're really the brains in vat. maybe this is the matrix. But I don't mean that in the edgy way, I mean that in the 'so what??' way. If we're wrong but we're trying, if we're still making the effort, that's the important part, to me.
But I also mean romance in the sense of love - love for the pursuit, and love for everyone who has committed something to the pursuit. I would love to go to Milet, to meet the 2600 years of people who've looked at uncertainty and decided to make something of it. To decide to make something matter, despite it all! Philosophy is a history of ideas, and every person who sat down and said 'how can I understand? Where can I find meaning? What can I do to make the world good for other people?' Philosophy doesn't make sense in a vacuum. None of the ideas work without a society that built their creator. It's all about trying to help, to me. And I can't not love that.
I mean. What do I know, I'm still a student. I'll be the first person to agree that I don't know so much, that I still have so much to learn. But for all the unsurety that comes part and parcel to studying, one of the things I've seen through every era I've touched on, is that people just want to build something good for each other.
We're cynical as anything, in this generation, but the Summa draws right from Aristotle - if we do this right, the point of laws is to guide us to a world that people can flourish in. We're not so great at that, here and now. But there's something beautiful in the idea that we can do good. We have the capacity and the inclination, and imagine, with just a bit of help-!