There are many issues with contemporary academia; most
scholars seem to acknowledge this, although their particular opinions on the
issues and causes vary as much as Justice Kennedy’s opinions on the U.S. Supreme
Court. I’ve been thinking about academia alot[1]
lately; as a person who fancies himself a philosopher, and as a recent BA
graduate, I have been thinking about the nature and interrelation of things
such as “academia”, “the intellectual life”, and “philosophy”. Academia seems
to maintain it has a monopoly upon the practice, or “profession” and “teaching”,
of philosophy. But can “philosophy” really be a day-job? Can “philosophy”
really be taught? Or does the nature of teaching philosophy actually corrupt
the very nature of what is claimed to be transmitted? In other words, are the
phrases “professor of philosophy”, “teacher of philosophy”, and “student of philosophy”
actually contradictions in terms? Can “philosophy” be transmitted from teacher
to student, or must it be practiced individually by the philosopher? What is
the nature of that which is being
transmitted from teacher to student, and is it true philosophy, or merely the
faint resemblance of true philosophy, the outer appearance of true philosophy
obscuring the essential corruption wrought by positivistic historical
commentators?
Well if you cannot tell my answer to those questions, then
you may need to take rhetoric lessons before you pursue authentic philosophy.
In short, I think that philosophy cannot be taught or transmitted, that the
very act of transmission properly
understood corrupts the nature of the philosophical method, and that to
understand philosophy, one must be a philosopher himself, one who analyzes the
arguments of others in a dialectic of honesty in pursuit of truth. Such a
methodology precludes “teaching” and necessitates active participation—“philosophizing”.
Philosophy can only be philosophized among philosophers; it cannot be
transmitted from teacher to student in an allegedly “philosophical” tradition,
for such a tradition necessarily precludes authentic philosophy. Philosophy is
better understood as a verb than a noun; the notion of “teaching” philosophy relies
on the concept of philosophy as a positive corpus of thought produced by
notable thinkers which can be dissected and fed to malleable students often
incapably of true philosophy. Such academic passivity precludes philosophical
activity.
The academy presses scholars by capitalist production to “produce”
intellectual fruit through rigorous publishing requirements, which strangle
genuine insight—that which must wait for the whim of the intellectus. Therefore academia is doomed to be positivist &
merely historically descriptive, which has lead to its irrelevance and to the distortion
of philosophy and the corruption of the very thinkers’ methodology.
Intellectual ideologies such as Radical Feminism and Neo-Thomism
are not based on intellectus or ratio, but on anger and on the desire
for bringing about a radical new world which they have envisioned as ideal, not
so much as a result of their philosophy but as a goal towards which quasi-argumentative
constructs which they would consider “philosophy” have been formulated. Since
their conclusions have been preformulated, these “scholars” must conform
reality and the free dialectic of truth to their narrow path toward their pre-ordained
esoteric revelations. These movements (insofar as they can be classified as
coherent “movements”) are not based on the quiet contemplation and intellectual
activity of the truly philosophical life, but are falsifications of honest
dialectics and are thereby disbarred from the category of authentic philosophy.
[1] I firmly hold that “alot”
is a true word, due to continuous popular usage and the nature of verbal
contraction as proven time and again with words such as “to-day”. I have
accordingly chosen to revert my autocorrect.
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