ON THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY (a letter to Peter Unger)

"You can’t do any of what people have thought of as philosophy. You just can’t do it, it doesn’t amount to anything. When you do it, it’s all puffery, puffery gone awry." Philosophy is a Bunch of Empty Ideas, an Interview with Peter Unger, June 16th 2014
 
Dr. Unger, it seems to me you make the mistake of equating all philosophy with analytical philosophy (which is a tedious hash of irrelevant noise).

(Contrary to your claim) there is a philosophy that matters; there is a philosophy that rises above the pedantic motions of the analytical game.

Where analytical philosophy ends, another philosophy, which seeks to actually transform the individual and the world, begins.

An example of this would be the philosophy of Nietzsche, as it pertains to the transformation and creation of the individual, or the philosophy of Marx, as it pertains to the transformation and awareness of social conditions.

Because the intellectual wants to be intellectual (which leads him down the road of sophistry) he learns too late the meaninglessness of that game which is comprised of formal abstractions... only later does he gather enough sense to ask the question of what matters in the context of life. And here he is met with the profound conclusion of transformation [a philosophy of transformation!] which can rightly be called, transformative philosophy* (--that which not only proceeds from life, but that which is equally directed back at life--). However (and this is a tragedy), because the intellectual arrives at this conclusion so late there is little time left for transformation; he thus commits all philosophy to the flames. 

respectfully yours,
Jersey Flight 


*Transformative Philosophy is informed by Transformative Literature, and Transformative Literature is that which affects life as opposed to merely offering man a list of vain abstractions. I have often asked myself the question as to what I should read given the tragic shortness of life. For a long time I pondered this question, eventually I reached the conclusion of transformative literature. Pending the nature of life (which is that of brevity and confusion) man has need of practical power, which precept is both individually and socially true. 

[Transformative Philosophy was a term used by Richard Rorty in his essay, Analytical Philosophy and Transformative Philosophy, Nov 10th 1999. Transformative Philosophy develops an image of philosophy as a transformative care for self and others.]     

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