The Philosophy of Philosophy

Preface: This post contains my thoughts on topics that have already been widely debated and potentially well established. I might strike a nerve or come off as extremely opinionated and unread in this topic. But that is the whole point of this post, I don’t believe in certain generalized arguments and ideas posted by others about philosophy. This is extremely biased towards my own experiences and if you think this might enrage you and you would not like your philisophy questioned please close this post or read one of my other blogs.

Philosophy has been well established for thousands of years! Many people, much more capable and qualified than me have put in their entire lives to thinking about philosophy. On the contrary, I have never read a book on philosophy, never listened to more than a few snippets from famous philosophers and a few quotes from those same philosophers. Why do I get to comment on philosophy? Well, let’s start with defining Philosophy* very broadly.

Specifically, what philosophy means to me. To me philosophy is a framework of thoughts and actions that try to provide an answer to the question why X. Science is extremely similar, it also asks why “X”, but along the lines of why “X” works.(Most examples here are focused on moral philosophy, which I am very interested in and would definitely like to understand more about.) In philosophy, the question is why do “X” focusing on a reasoning or rationale behind performing an action. Philosophy to me is the guiding principle behind actions that every one of us takes. A person follows a specific career path, because they believe in something about that path. It could be that the career provides some meaning to their life and that meaning is the driving philosophy. If someone works just for money, that is their philosophy. Even not knowing why one does something is alsa a philosophy - one that says that person doesn’t really care about the work! There is always a driving force behind actions you take in your life, and those actions are driven by philosophy.

And by that definition, every person has their own reasoning and thoughts for acting a certian way and every philosophy is equally valid. A few people seem to forget this import distinction, I think it is in a way human nature to do so. Everyone’s philosophy is important to themselves, and in the process, people seem to forget that others also have philosophies that are just as important to them. Validity here means when an idea taken in a vaccum and examined, the person’s philosophy is justified equivalently to every other person’s philosophy.

This might raise a bunch of questions, what about legality?, what about morality? legality and morality are based on philosophies that the general public has come together and decided are good to follow for a functioning society. I don’t focus on thase here. I want to specifically talk about the hypocrisy and the irony that certain people bring to conversations arguing how their philosophies are much better or valid compared to others.

I have three claims that I have personally experienced with my exploration of philosophy and key interactions I have had with other “philosophers”.

  1. I find it hard, if not impossible to agree that someone else’s philosophy will apply to my own life and situations. There is no way for a person who lived 2k years ago to determine a general framework that will work in my situation. Sure it will work to an extent, but not in every case and every situation. One of my friends who I discuss a lot of ideas with, reads a lot of philosophy. In one such debates they said that a few people have dedicated and thought about certain questions all their life. While I agree that it is true, and these philosophers are popular and their ideaologies have been followed by millions for a good reason. But that does not mean that their ideas will apply to my life. Aristotle could have extremely achievable and attainable goals. But those might not really apply to my life. That’s okay, I’m not condemning anyone that does philosophy. I’m just saying I would rather find my own philosophy rather than have someone dictate it. It’s like the argument for mastery, if you try to mimick an expert in a field, you rarely will reach the same results as them, as they know the exact reason for taking an action, while you are just replicating the effort and those can work only in a very specific setting.

  2. I don’t believe that anyone can ever truly know the perfect philosophy. I was a part of an exciting maker space, where we usually have a lot of discussions on different ideas. I got into a discussion once with one of the other members, who claimed to have “Understood philosophy”.
    There are three issues with such a claim. The claim assumes that there is only one true answer to this question. The claim is cyclic, any answer that can be given by anyone can be refuted with further why questions. The last issue is that this interaction split us into one all knowing and one non knowing person. I do believe that the person had an answer to fundamental questions. In fact, there are scientific answers to such questions too, so there’s no need to theorize and hypothesize. But that need not be the only answer.

  3. By extension, no one can impose others to follow a specific philosophy or criticize other philosophies as “wrong”. The Thirukkural, in my mind is a set of philosophies. I remember having discussions with my brother on how each chapter of the thirukural covers a variety of ideas that all contradict to each other and the sayings are not meant to be taken as a rule book, but more like a map of paths you can follow. I believe that is a wonderful guidebook that is impossible to follow a hundred percent word for word. Such is the same for other philosophy writings and books to me. I have had some seemingly philosophy conversations with people who I have lost respect for after they claim their ideas are philosophically superior. This has ranged from people talking about me cycling in cold ( because I like it and no other reason ) and why I have never been vegetarian ( I would ) or even worse, why I am non-vegetarian, quoting my philosophy is bad.

To me, all of this just says that, I have tuned my own philosophy to ignore what others think and explore it myself, which has led to some fundamental understanding and allowed me to find serendipity in the world we live in. This is totally opposite to and perpendicular to scientific exploration - I believe that science should be thouroughly discussed. But I just won’t discuss philosophy with anyone again! No doubt I will be engaged in some form of debate in the future, as I cannot show this blog to everyone I am going to interact with. But I just hope, if you have read till the end, have the mind to see how others can also have their own philosophies and follow it, and that is totally fine! Hope you have a wonderful day

  • On the very first important line, I might lose some of you, as philosophy is not something that needs a proper definition. But stick with me