Hi there,
So you know the story of the philosopher's stone - the philosopher is looking for stones, throwing them away one by one, and eventually he throws the stone he is looking for away (without realizing it). But what if the stone is the philosophy itself? Can you redeem a philosophy that has cast itself a particular way, but does not justify its lack of context (for example) as time moves on? For example, Hegelian dialectics: what if people just started moving from past to present, without thinking about the future - how could you create proposition and opposition then? Would it still create the same meaning?
There are reasons to believe everything, but I think most are contextual, actually. For example, George Bush called Jesus Christ "the Greatest Philosopher" but was this actually a prophecy? Of what he would be at His return? Since the believers anticipate His coming, for most things? Is this the manner in which we return something like philosophy to meaningful currency with a culture that slightly remembers the past and lavishly spoils itself in the present, as if the passing of the cross into eternal history (significance) is only momentarily significant? If people said "Christ's philosophy is getting better and better" would you believe it? More? A little more?
I'm not saying that ideas should justify themselves, but there is a real sense in which it is up to us to carry forward the hope that they represent by keeping the memory alive. Philosophically that is difficult to do, even if you accurately read the times and find a niche interpretation of meaning that people see from sufficiently different angles, its not likely that they will jump to it - if indeed it reflects the Christ they hate (for exposing their sin, among other things). In time it will be demonstrated whether philosophy has been justified - by whether those who agreed with it, loved or chose love in some meaningful way - but perhaps wisdom would also say, it matters slightly less how much it actually means, in the end.
Thoughts?
So you know the story of the philosopher's stone - the philosopher is looking for stones, throwing them away one by one, and eventually he throws the stone he is looking for away (without realizing it). But what if the stone is the philosophy itself? Can you redeem a philosophy that has cast itself a particular way, but does not justify its lack of context (for example) as time moves on? For example, Hegelian dialectics: what if people just started moving from past to present, without thinking about the future - how could you create proposition and opposition then? Would it still create the same meaning?
There are reasons to believe everything, but I think most are contextual, actually. For example, George Bush called Jesus Christ "the Greatest Philosopher" but was this actually a prophecy? Of what he would be at His return? Since the believers anticipate His coming, for most things? Is this the manner in which we return something like philosophy to meaningful currency with a culture that slightly remembers the past and lavishly spoils itself in the present, as if the passing of the cross into eternal history (significance) is only momentarily significant? If people said "Christ's philosophy is getting better and better" would you believe it? More? A little more?
I'm not saying that ideas should justify themselves, but there is a real sense in which it is up to us to carry forward the hope that they represent by keeping the memory alive. Philosophically that is difficult to do, even if you accurately read the times and find a niche interpretation of meaning that people see from sufficiently different angles, its not likely that they will jump to it - if indeed it reflects the Christ they hate (for exposing their sin, among other things). In time it will be demonstrated whether philosophy has been justified - by whether those who agreed with it, loved or chose love in some meaningful way - but perhaps wisdom would also say, it matters slightly less how much it actually means, in the end.
Thoughts?
