/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.9874876]

When will you jettison your search for Wisdom and swallow the anti-philosophy pill?

>Philosophy is generally understood as a search for truth. This gives rise to two reasons why it is seldom practised in our day. Firstly, studying the history of philosophy generally leads to the conclusion that the truth is unreachable, so it is not very sensible to set out in search of it. Secondly, we have the feeling that, if there were such a thing as truth, finding it would only take us halfway. It would be far more difficult to sell the truth that had been discovered, in order to live by it in more or less secure conditions - a task that experience shows cannot be ignored. The market for truth today seems to be more than saturated. The potential consumer of truth is faced with the same superfluity as the consumer in other sectors of the market. We are besieged on all sides by advertisements for truth. Truths are to be found everywhere and in all media, whether scientific truths, religious truths, political truths or truths for practical life. The person seeking truth thus sees little prospect in sharing the treasure they might find with other people - and, in due course, gives up the quest. As far as truth is concerned, people today are accordingly equipped simultaneously with two basic convictions: that there is no truth, and that there is too much truth. These two convictions seem to contradict one another, but they both lead to the same conclusion: the search for truth is not good business.

>Philosophical criticism, therefore, has led to a situation in which every truth is identified as a commodity, and accordingly also discredited. This result, however, allows a different suspicion to emerge: Is it not philosophy itself that transforms every truth into a commodity? And indeed, the philosophical attitude is a passive, contemplative, critical attitude, and thus in the last analysis a consuming one. In the light of this attitude, everything present appears as a commodity on offer, whose suitability has to be checked so that it might possibly be bought. Let us assume that a person no longer spends time going through this procedure of checking, but rather simply takes what comes into their hands by chance: acquaintances, lovers, books, conversations, theories, religions, authorities and truths. In this case, truth loses its commodity form, as it is no longer checked out but rather practised - just as you practise breathing by taking in the air that surrounds you. In certain circumstances, the air that you breathe may actually be deadly; but not breathing is of course also deadly. In both cases, therefore, it is impossible to develop a distanced, contemplative, critical, consuming behaviour towards breathing - you carry on breathing even while you are buying a new air conditioner.

[Anonymous No.9874894]

that's interesting, it's about time anti-philosophy stuff started coming out

[Anonymous No.9874897]

You mean romanticism?

[Anonymous No.9874902]

did not read, but I agree that thinking is for fags