Transformation Machines

4What is Philosophy?

Wednesday July₂₉ 2009 · ‹Philosophy› · 2732 Views
 

Philosophy contrasts with normal life. If life is like driving a car, normality is to drive forward, and philosophy to revert to a wrong turn.

Most of the time, we do not philosophize. Our habit keeps us on the paths we are accustomed to. We simply follow the road lying ahead of us. We hardly notice crossings and turns any more than a straight road because driving has become automatic. We find comfort in the ordinary.

But every now and then, we get surprised; the way forward may be wrong or denied. When we get lost or face an impasse, we are forced to acknowledge our own mistake. We reconsider the taken path in which we had put faith in. This is the beginning of philosophy.

We become skeptical and reflective. Having recognized our failure, we have to backtrack to the point where we took the wrong turn. Since we did not realize the wrong way when we took it, we are uncertain where exactly we went wrong. Potentially every decision we took in the past must be questioned.

Only when we have located the problem, we regain our faith in ourselves. Having identified the bad turn, the right way becomes obvious and we can get back on track. Nothing holds us back anymore from resuming the state of normality.

Concluding, philosophy is like a backup plan. Only when we are stuck we enter philosophy. Its purpose is to handle the extraordinary situation and to rush back into normality; philosophy is abnormal.

Most of us dislike philosophy because it is uncool. We do not enjoy taking detours, running into dead-ends, or hitting walls. We do not enjoy revisiting our past which lead us to a crisis. We do not like being skeptical about our own beliefs. To make matters worse, the longer our fault dates back, the more we find it humiliating. We dislike philosophy so much that we try to stay in normal mode as long as we can. Because we are vain, we isolate ourselves from philosophy.

But polarizing our lives into normality and philosophy is uneconomical and dangerous. Take another driving analogy. If we know our way well, normality can become boring. We focus on reaching the goal as fast as possible which is why we ignore warning signs and floor the gas. Only when we are faced with an unexpected danger, like a deer crossing the road, we harshly break and throw around the steering wheel of philosophy. For a while we may drive more cautiously, but soon enough, we speed up again until the next hazard surprises us: an endless oscillation between boredom and thrill.

An improvement over separating our lives into distinct states of normality and philosophy is their unification. We want to live ethically and consciously, to take the right turn at every moment in life, so we can avoid hitting walls, regressing, or facing dilemmas.

When philosophy and normality is united, there are no wrong turns. It is as if there is only a single path ahead of us. Driving and steering move in tandem. It becomes ambiguous whether the driver is commanding the car or if the car is leading the driver. Driver, car, and environment become one.

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