My philosophical future

My Philosophical Future

My future will be philosophical, there’s no doubt about that. Whether I come back to academia or not I have become conditioned to live philosophically. I will question the unquestioned, most especially my own beliefs, my own actions, to listen to be heard, to take the time to think just for thinking’s sake, to wonder.

I might go back into academia but perhaps not in philosophy. I think I can apply skills developed within and through philosophy to so many other academic and professional focuses, most especially politics, but also environmentalism and law to mention just a few. I could definitely see myself working in either three of these fields, especially a focus at all oriented toward social justice.

Can philosophy be its own end? Can going to graduate school just to carve out a career that is often a privilege and rarely a chore really sufficiently philosophical? Is a philosophy professor even necessarily a philosopher? (thanks Eske Moellegaard for introducing a tremendously thought provoking discussion on this question when he visited out metaphilosophy class). I wish. I used to think. I’d love to believe, but sadly, I think not. But is this really all so sad?

Philosophy is simultaneously both a means and an end. I have been for some time quite attracted to the idea of becoming a professor in philosophy, but right now I just don’t know. My concern, and I hope this doesn’t offend anyone who is a philosophy professor, is that academic philosophy, like academia in general, is far to specialized. We’ve discussed at length in class how factionalized the discipline remains with splits between Contintental and Analytic and the ongoing marginalization of such subfields as eastern philosophy, Latin American philosophy, African philosophy, feminist philosophy (essentially anything and everything critical of philosophy from within philosophy). I don’t want to live a life reading, writing, discussing and teaching issues that I have not had some direct experience with myself. Philosophy is much more than books, ideas, and theories. It’s about acting, living and praxis. This is not to say that I can’t do all of this from within academia. In many respects my greatest ambition remains finding a place within academia and radically change it from the inside out. Education is so political. Moreover, I think I could make a good professor or teacher at the high school level. In all likelihood I probably will be back in school at some point down the road, after all, what else do I know. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to say here. School has been my life since before I can remember. I’m so used to structure. Structure is such a paradox. It motivates and demotivates. It guides and it confines. My ambiguity towards all the structure in our educational system inspires me to experience something else, anything else, because if not how will I ever know if this is the pace of life that I’m best suited for. Like I said, I know nothing else, except summer, but unless I want to be homeless, I’ll avoid living in my typical summertime mode.

My life is and will forever be philosophical. There is no turning back, and like the protagonist in Plato’s allegory of the cave, the shadows on the cave wall can never, at least in my eyes, be real again. I am forever searching for the right balance of truth and value. I will never rest because if there is one thing I know it is that I will never possess my end. Thus, my life is an endless journey as I meander the world and my mind for a little peace of mind, for the ability to sleep tight at night knowing that I did what I could to make the world a better place. I can never just know something for itself. I don’t care if I heard it at a hockey game or read it in Heidegger I want to share that experience with someone, anyone. Philosophy is inherently communicable, because lacking my intentionality to communicate what knowledge would I be inspired to seek, to create. Since communication implies action, a knowing how, the maturation of any philosophy requires philosophical experiences.

Philosophy is a part of me. What I have learned in academic philosophy shapes how I will approach and work through any future project whether intellectual, ethical, or even the most mundane task. Philosophy is under my skin. It is the lense through which I perceive the world, and I couldn't be more grateful for the perspectives it has shown me.