Riddle

I have some friends - doctoral students in philosophy - who have at times mentioned to me that their parents and friends initially found their idea of "doing" philosophy as a major or at the graduate level, quite ridiculous. They were looked at as if they were cyclops, or as if their third-eye had gone blind. "Why has our dear X lost interest in life?" they thought -"Strange asceticism at such a young age!" But doesn't this bewilderment hide a deeper psychological truth? This situation is similar to the one we have with respect to religion in modern times. One now looks strangely at someone who says "I live my life as my religious Bible wants me to!" or "Even your 'science' needs my God!" One looks at this person and wonders if he is not in tune with his present-day reality. One is presented with a psychological absurdity, a riddle, that is hard to fathom. "Why" one thinks "the self-deception, the self-reproach and retrogression?" Perhaps then philosophy too has met a similar fate - it has outlived its own death, it has become the derision of common sense. What else is the meaning of "doing" philosophy in a technological culture, if not nostalgia for a bygone era, a romanticism, a cheap mask behind which to hide oneself, a sun-screen for those gloomy ones? Fair enough. However, one has to ask now: has anyone actually lived his life in this modern, post-modern world?

To my readers

In reading a verse, in listening to music, in watching a play one shows one's artistry. Yes, spectators are artists, too! These artists do not refer back the art presented to something already inside them. Rather, they create themselves in appreciating an artwork - they grow. The reader does not project himself on the words he is reading, in desperation to find himself in these words. Meaning is not reflected by a mirror. Instead, he recoils himself, to detect in these words, something into which he wants to become - he looks for the foreign, the alien, the strange, the unexplored, like a warrior, like a cultivator. He plays with the signifiers, and does not so much grope at the abstract signified. The listener does not play a tune over and over again only to enjoy his own stagnant passions - for these are not passions if they are stripped of their vibrancy. Music is not opium, not auto-stimulation, at least in this sense. Art is not meant to make its consumer "be at home" in his world. Quite the opposite.

Chimeras or Danger?

The internal disintegration of Europe as a culture, of European peoples, is reflected in (not so much created by) the works of its major writers and thinkers, especially of Germany. Signing on to generalize I will say: it was Kant who first questioned an uncritical acceptance of the scope and promise of scientific knowledge. But if there was any discernable direction to the inclinations of European culture, one could see that science was only growing ever-so-unthwartedly to define the tastes and prejudices of European culture! So Kant 's questioning manages to only announce the imposing growth of a certain absymal chasm between reality and knowledge, between what man thought and how man lived. He did not provide a cure to the disease, but boldly showed its symptoms. The Jena Romantics made a brave attempt, but in vain, to overcome this chasm, and Hegel thought he achieved the seemingly impossible. But people who came after Hegel managed to mockingly laugh at him, especially because he died. The real Gods do not die, you see! Now came, repeatedly, philosophy's (I say "philosophy" not without over-simplification, since I have left out the adjective "European", which is not insignificant!) pressing moments of decision - either, continue to philosophize in utter isolation, betraying the wisdom of peoples and their existences, conjuring abstract chimeras one after the other, or else do something, act to fill up the abyss, take up the dangerous path! So came the procession of upheavels: communism, the political strifes and revolutions, philosophies in action, the whimsical scape-goating of races, the search for European culture, the Ubermensch, existential inner-turmoils, nostalgia, disillusionment - all in the lofty name of spiritual integration, all in an effort to prevent the banal leveling of races, masses, and philosophies. But the end-result: two world wars and the ever-widening of the engulfing chasm! The inevitable: Europe disintegrates. But this disintegration is also a work of genius - the scattered pieces, it seems, have found a way to avoid facing upto the two-pronged question of philosophy, by continuously wearing masks and vaporising into shadows! The opiumated genius evades! The question however remains as the vestiges of an echo : What is philosophy?

The Romantic

The 'Adagio' in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata has a series of movements that is repeated a number of times. In this series, Beethoven slowly builds up the tempo towards a grand finale, an outburst of climax, as if he is preparing the listener for a long cherished secret. But then the Romantic in him takes over. Just when he is about to reach the climax, Beethoven deliberately strikes a low key, almost in resignation, as if he is groping to return to some unknown point from which he has already gone beyond in one sense, as if he suddenly loses faith in the magnanimity of the listener to fathom his treasured secret. One can almost imagine Beethoven shaking his head in disillusionment! Strange pessimism! Or Romanticism - a belief in the progressive ideal coupled with a nostalgia for a lost origin... Thus spoke Nietzsche of the maestro: "Beethoven is the interlude of a mellow old soul that constantly breaks and an over-young future soul that constantly comes; on his music lies that twilight of eternal losing and eternal extravagant hoping..." In short, Beethoven lacks his present.

GO!

Back home, an alarming number of people engage in a kind of innocent mass-frivolity - a national phenomenon, you might say. In traffic, waiting for the green signal to appear, they restlessly inch their vehicles beyond the threshold point in anticipation of the go-light. I've always wanted to pick up one of these commuters, grab him by his shoulders, shake him up, and ask him: "Where do you really want to go?" But I knew he could never answer my question.