Writing Philosophy

Writing philosophy is hard. It requires one to be clear and wise. It is hard enough to be one … but both? It is a lot tougher and a lot more complex than it appears when you aren't doing it.

So why do it? Ultimately this is the question asked by the masses for centuries. Why do certain people do what appears to be "over-thinking" when it just annoys the rest of us? This is why students, in the beginning hate critical thinking classes. This is why Socrates got sentenced to death. Annoyance.

The answer (though it is not specifically the topic here) is that our world demands a certain kind of complexity inherent in "process" thinking. Most of the world operates from "rote" thinking and because of this they don't want to see this truth and don't want to change. The morons basically fear the work necessary to match their brains to reality in such a way that things work. Because when you "process," things work. Reality becomes not your master, but your slave.

Writing philosophy is hard. I find myself being unclear when I don't know it. I try to be wise and I try to support some of my arguments without breaking rule #3 (don't support arguments that are self-evident, see Reid: the explanation is no better than the simple obviousness of the question ...) but even when wise I return to the writing to see that it was unclear or rushed.

If find myself lacking wisdom. Asking too many questions (another way of looking at what got Socrates killed) without enough answers eventually starts to look like a lack of wisdom. Perhaps humans by nature lack much of this wisdom and so what we are doing is just outlining this deficit. I also find that often philosophers create, or attempt to create wisdom, by using big words and phrases (see Heidegger and Deleuze, et al) and when (if ever) their text is understood, it really lacks meaning. See the joke about Continental Philosophy, that it takes years to understand that a single text can be boiled down to one sentence.

The challenge is then nearly insurmountable. Make writing clear and wise when 1) nobody else can, 2) history doesn't help because nobody has, and 3) your brain has a hard time self-analyzing.

My answer? It isn't really as hard as the question. My answer? It is the same as Nietzsche's answer. Unsystematic philosophy. His method was to provide answers through poetry and aphorism. Mine is to ramble. So was Dostoevsky's. When I try to work a topic I find my mind moving "sideways" rather than in a linear fashion. This perpendicular structure reveals multiple topics, side-avenues, back-alleys, and all of the things that tie reality together as it is translated by the human mind. This is why literature works - when it works.

So, when you find me rambling ask yourself this: Do you have a clear and wise answer? Because if not, if you are a stuffy academic locked in your sterile office with three-hundred students that are learning nothing, hating philosophy, and playing under the desk on their I-pods, maybe you should consider that, as a teacher with expectations of structured and linear methods for critical thinking, you have missed the point.