Our world today doesn't suffer from a lack of interesting problems. Refugees, civil wars, ecological disasters, terrorism, mass shootings, self-driving cars, autonomous robots, exoplanets, alien life, the meaning of life, TV, anxiety, personal fulfillment, status, living in cyberspace, violence, freedom, whistle-blowing, free speech, safe speech, censorship.
Every news article one reads seems to pose new questions: ethical, existential, metaphysical, practical. One would think that beings that have so many problems in their lives would utilize all the wisdom their incredibly diverse cultures offer, to try and deal with these issues, to try to solve their problems and find peace.
But this is not happening. Instead, we largely ignore what our best minds have found out over centuries of thought and inquiry, and we are content to let TV serials deal with our problems on our behalf. One look at the world's current state is sufficient to see how well this works.
Daily Philosophy is the proposal that perhaps things don't have to be like this. There is nothing to stop us from looking at humanity's treasure of wisdom and thought that we have accumulated over the ages, and to try and use some of that in order to better understand our world and our problems today, both political and personal.
This is not something we should leave to academic philosophers, either. Academic philosophy today is rarely interested in the questions that really count. Philosophy of language, ontology, metaphysics, especially as conceived of in analytic philosophy departments all over the Western world, completely miss the point. The most interesting, pressing questions one is not even allowed to ask: about the meaning of life, the meaning of technology and what it does to us, what it means to be human, what the value of freedom is, and so on through the whole list above.
But this shouldn't stop anyone from asking. We are all humans, and the wisdom of the ages belongs to all of us. We all have a right to access it, to understand it, and to use it to make sense of our world. And the more of us do that, the better the chances are that we might actually find some answers.
So, let's begin asking the interesting questions!
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Daily Philosophy - Philosophy for life
NonfiksiA series of short articles on philosophy topics, with a focus on how philosophy can inform everyday life. Each article is just ten paragraphs, and can be read in a few minutes. Over time, these articles will cover many topics, like the nature of hap...
