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Back to the Forum Archives Recently I have been writing a series I choose to call "The Gaffer's Philosophy." I will not describe that here. You can read it if you wish. In my other series, "History and Evolution," I have looked at philosophy and some of the philosophers of history. All this has prompted me to ask, what is a philosopher? It turns out that this is for me a most intriguing question. The question also begs the next question, who is a philosopher? It is clear to me that we must know the what answer to get to the who answer. These answers will also answer whether or not I may reasonably call myself a philosopher. Until recently, I have somewhat uncritically assumed that a philosopher is one whom the authorities identify as such. Thus, when I read a book on philosophy, I accept the author as an authority and accept his opinion. So Kant, Locke, and Plato are philosophers because the authorities so define them. But this begs the question, why is Carl Jung not on this list? Wait a minute here! Did not Jung and Plato address the same kinds of questions? Have they both not thought deeply about the nature of man and the universe? Why is one a philosopher and the other not? What about Martin Luther King and Gandhi? Does being politically active disqualify us? For my own peace of mind, I must resolve these questions. First, what is a philosopher? The great Booboo has said, "A Philosopher is simply one
who is too old and frail to be a linebacker and not clever enough
to be a coach." Now on a more serious note: This is a very frustrating thing I have learned about dictionaries. Too often, instead of definitions, they give examples. The above three are not definitions, they are generalized examples. To make sense of the examples we must look up the word philosophy. We do a bit better with the definition of philosophy from the same source. philosophy (fî-lòs´e-fê) noun These definitions make all true scientists philosophers. In fact, they are so general that almost any thoughtful person could qualify as a philosopher. This is more in accord with my own notion. That is, you need not be a recognized philosopher to have a philosophy. Everyone has one. Whether we formalize it or not, it will manifest through our behavior. In short, our life is ruled by our belief system, Our belief system is our philosophy. In general terms then, a philosopher is one who formulates a personal philosophy, whether formalized and expressed or not. That makes me a philosopher along with many other people. So my own position is, a philosophy is a personal value system arrived at by the pursuit of truth and wisdom through self discipline. This probably excludes the loudmouthed drunken redneck in the bar shouting his opinion as though it were a truth. It means, a philosopher must be someone who tries to understand . That makes me a philosopher, but I want a bit more. I want to have an effect on my world. That means I must formalize my thoughts and publish them. This is what I am now doing. I want to formalize a philosophy that can stand up to the Socratic type of dialectic investigation. If you ever began to formalize your own philosophy, as I have, you might discover, as I have, how full of crap you are. That is what happened to me. I have honestly followed up and tried to write it all out and formalize it. That is how the inconsistencies came out, and came out, and came out, ad infinitum. I discovered that I did not know what the hell I was talking about. In spite of that, I continue, and I remove the inconsistencies as I discover them. I make no claim to being a profound philosopher. I'm not sure anyone can make that claim, but these are my ideas on what is required for a useful philosophy. A useful philosophy must be personal, because it must be about man and the human condition, man's dilemma. A personal philosophy must deal with the issues of a man's situation as he finds it. The goal must be the betterment of the human condition. I see that as the evolution of man toward a superior life form. That is where I now find myself. I am dismayed at the lack
of morality in our current culture. I see disaster looming. All
of the values that are important to me have been undermined.
Our institutions are corrupt and rotten from top to bottom. Ethics
in government have become a joke. I want my culture to turn around
and look to our own emotional and intellectual health. I want
all of us to become what we see in only the handful of our best.
So. for better or worse, I am a philosopher expressing a philosophy
of human evolution.
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