The Mission Statement Series

An ongoing series in which I describe (hopelessly) what it is I'm trying to do with this blog and (hopefully) the forum that will someday share a server with it.

Philosophy in Practice (part 1)

Philosophy in Practice (part 1)

I have been interested in Philosophy for several years now. in 2008 I earned a Bachelor's degree in the subject and subsequently learned a very disheartening lesson about how low Philosophy ranks in our society.

It's that I was unaware of our collective disinterest; it's just that - upon receiving my degree - I was the target of people's apathy rather than Philosophy itself. I felt like I didn't have a degree at all; and employer's felt that way too.

So there is my first reason for creating this blog:

1) To give myself and others who are interested (if such people exist) another medium to philosophize.

I am aware that there are other places where philosophy happens but I'm talking about an active child-like form of Philosophy that I haven't found elsewhere; a Philosophy that you do. The way Philosophy was when it mattered. It should be connected to the goals and experiences of the persons involved rather than a recounting of the brilliance of dead Europeans. This my next point:

2) To promote Philosophy in it's original sense: a faith in our ability to reason

Philosophy is what happens when someone looks at a situation that they cannot understand and begins the task of unravelling it slowly. Some early Philosophers argued that Philosophy could only happen verbally among more than one individual. Obviously these ancients wouldn't be impressed by the large community of academics who read their works over and over to regurgitate into term papers.

I don't mean to suggest that the literary remains left by dead Philosophers are useless. In my opinion they are vital but they are useless without a body of real Philosophers to talk about them.

I think I'll end here today.