through europe

Whenever pro-intervention liberals excoriate me for ignoring what Syrians ask, as long as it furthers my political goals, I say they’re absolutely right. In a certain sense, I am less sympathetic to the Syrian population – especially when it’s the orientalist kind of sympathy – than I am ideologically motivated against USA and the NATO.

 

And why should it be otherwise? Aren’t we struggling against the Industrial-Military complex, against the politics of drones, against a pseudo-feminist Kissinger like Hillary Clinton? This must be first of all our struggle, our own interest, regardless of what other communities think or say. Whatever 'call for justice' invokes the trigger-happy arm of the State, the supersonic precision bombers of the Empire, the death penalty for the offender, we should reject it without any bogus sense of guilt.

 

Historical conditions

 

Although Epicurus founded his famous school, ‘The Garden’, at the end of the 3rd century BC, it was only centuries later, at the apogee of the Roman Empire, that his message reached its maximum level of diffusion.

By the time Classical Antiquity started fading into Late Antiquity, the Epicurean school challenged the Stoics and few other philosophical and religious schools – among which the obscure middle-eastern cult of Christianity – for hegemony over mainstream philosophy throughout the Empire.

This might sound surprising, if we think that one of the main principles of Epicureanism was lathe biose (live in hiding). Yet, Epicureanism owed its success to the perfect timeliness of its message.

 

 

Aerial protests

 

Only two generations ago Korean people were so poor that starvation was a frequent and widespread experience. Today, Koreans have reached the same level of wealth and consumption of the most advanced countries in the West. The minimum wage is 4.800 won per hour, more or less 3.5 Euros, and the majority of workers manage to cash around 1500 Euros per month. Teachers are paid better than in Italy or England, around 2000 Euros per month.

 

But for the youngest generation the prospects are not as rosy. Renting a house has become impossible for the majority of young people, who cannot afford to pay advances of fifty thousand dollars.

 

Incheon Airport

 

I had been hesitant for weeks.  After accepting the invitation I had a second thought and tried to call off my early availability. I was scared by the distance, and the humid hot weather of the summer of Seoul. So I declined the invitation of the Korean publisher of some of my books.

 

I sent him an email: “I’m too sick for this journey. I suffer from asthma, the long flight and the sultry moisture would be bad for my health.”

 

But my publisher, who is a very nice guy, kindly insisted: “Do you really believe that the Northern Koreans will launch a nuclear bomb while you stay here?”

 

The sarcasm of his message made me hit the roof.

Philosophy, in all its many and wide articulations, is perhaps too large a discipline to encompass with only one definition. It is thinking developed into understanding, and understanding unfolded as imagination. It is theory – in its etymological meaning of passionate, empathic observing – of life and of the world. Having observed life, like sailors used to do with the stars at night, philosophers draw a map for the rest of their journey, which they follow and change as their journey progresses.

Although philosophy has been often thought to have to do with understanding the world, or with changing it, I would claim that it essentially has to do with the art of inhabiting it.

 

Yet, such a fundamental discipline has long been relegated to the miserable position of an ancient dance remembered only by the elderly, or of a fast-fading dialect. Something of a secret cult to be performed far away from the world, deep inside the catacombs of academia.

 

Such a regression, I believe, originates from two main sources: one is to be found among the philosophers, the other among those who are not philosophers, and in particular non-philosophizing young people.