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.
Academia
Today’s complete identification between the figure of the philosopher and that of the academic seems to be surprisingly exempt from any serious questioning. Yet, it has only been since the times of Kant that academia has progressively claimed virtually all philosophical activity to itself. Most of the philosophers of antiquity and modernity – with the notable exception of the theology-imbued Middle Ages – simply classified as cultured gentlemen addressing other interested gentlemen.
Contemporary Western philosophy seems to have withdrawn from the buzzing life of the City of Men, deep into the intricate underground architecture of grammar and formalism, that little has to do with the pressing question of how mortal humans can inhabit the world. We could safely say that it has increasingly adopted the inward-looking, paranoid and formalist tendencies of what would be described in other fields of culture simply as ‘hipsterism’. The relevance and sharpness of contemporary philosophy does not seek its validation against the background of the world, but rather against the churchly hierarchies and intrigues of academic life.
Today’s academic environment increasingly resembles the anxious state of siege of the Salon of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in late 19th century Paris, or of the conservatories of classical music in the early 20th Century. When the Salon vanished under the assault of bohemian artists, and dodecaphonic classical music was swept away by jazz, a sudden burst of fresh air took the place of the smell of incense that was smothering both forms of culture. Unfortunately, philosophy seems to be still waiting for its equivalent of the bohemian and jazz revolutions.
Yet, it would be unfair to dismiss academic philosophy tout-court. Even at the court of Byzantium, or in the monasteries of Medieval Italy, philosophy found a fertile ground to survive in times of crisis. And academia, today, offers at least a safe shelter against the barbarism of late capitalism. As the world crumbles in what could be the end of the first global civilization, academia protects its monks and their texts from the incursions of the new financial Vikings, waving their flaming torches of privatisation and profit. Contemporary philosophers take upon themselves the mission of the wandering book-people of Farenheit 451, turning their cultural production into stubborn cultural resistance, and their life into a professional testimony – in Greek we would say ‘martyrdom’ – of knowledge.
It is not a coincidence that contemporary philosophy is so closely courted by the contemporary art scene: as with the Illuminated Manuscripts of Medieval Europe, or with Buddhist mandalas, the mantra of endless repetition always calls for beautiful illustration.
Teenagers
I will keep away from the silly hippy claim that ‘anybody is a philosopher,’ since philosophy, like all disciplines, requires skills and dedication, as well as talent. But I will happily claim that anybody can potentially be a philosopher, and that the path to philosophy doesn’t necessarily have to pass through the gateways of today’s academia.
In fact, the very history of philosophy teaches us about the possibility of de-linking this discipline from any academic environment. Before Socrates, at the time of the so-called Phisiologoi (‘scholars of nature’), philosophy used to develop without the aid of universities, classrooms, or even libraries. Curious minds – if endowed with enough wealth to free them from the burden of work – took pleasure in facing fundamental questions with the simple tools of dedication and time. The results were impressive: not only these uncultured – by moderns standards – men achieved to set the foundations of both science and philosophy, but they did so with a sharpness and precision that has rarely been matched ever since.
Obviously, this is not to say that libraries and schools have detrimental effects, but that a discipline such as philosophy can also emerge outside of their sphere of influence. And that a certain distance from the introvert attitude of institutions can often be more rewarding than sticking to the prescribed, academic path.
Let us return for a moment to ancient Magna Graecia, while also keeping in mind what we said about jazz, and also about French bohemian artists.
Similarly to the Homeric heroes sung in the Iliad, most Phisiologoi approached the pinnacle of their philosophical activity long before the average age at which students today begin their PhDs. They started producing original philosophy as adolescents, or, as we would say, as teenagers. Throughout the whole of ancient Greek history, philosophy was considered a discipline that was best pursued starting from the first years of puberty, if possible with the aid of an older master.
The same happened at the times of the jazz and bohemian revolutions. Due to their age and lack of classical training, most of those who were at the forefront of such history-making breakthroughs could have hardly applied for the position of Lecturer in any university of their times, or of today. Yet, with the impetus of a Gothic cavalry, they managed to crush the legions of the culture of their times and to raze the bastions of its monasteries.
What did they have, that contemporary teenagers lack?
Work
Contemporary teenagers do everything: they make and mix music, they take pictures on digital cameras and artfully play with them on photoshop, they play and program videogames, they make films, they design choreographs, and so on. They make everything, except for philosophy. This is quite surprising, considering that philosophy doesn’t even require any sophisticated or expensive technology in order to be produced.
But, perhaps, this is exactly the point.
As capitalism colonized the culture of leisure time, the entire realm of ‘fun’ and ‘leisure’ has become a protectorate of the Work empire. Having fun is a job, and any job requires a minimum financial and technological investment to be legitimate: it has to conform to the dominant economic, technological and cultural environment of its time. Philosophy has none of these attributes. It doesn’t really require any of the defining technologies of today, it doesn’t allow for any remunerative financial investment, and it doesn’t share the professionalizing tendency of contemporary capitalism – unless, that is, it takes place within the professional environment of the academia.
From the youngest age, children are now encouraged to develop any activity into a form of work-production. Whatever they do, it has to fit the ideal grid of what Work looks like. In the age in which technology has made human labour almost completely redundant to the economy, this means connecting human activity with the rituals of social conformism, rather than with any requirement of economic productivity. Work, today, is little more than a secular religion of submission of individuals to a cruel social narrative, founded on an everlasting guilt-complex and on the demand of their renunciation of their desire to fulfill the potential of their mortal lives.
We can witness this early focus on social conformism among teenagers, if we consider the phenomenon of ‘cool’ as a contemporary re-invention of the sphere of ethics. If we understand ‘ethics’ as the way a person binds him/herself to an idea of what is the ‘good’, or what a ‘good life’ looks like, we can interpret the ‘cool’ as a powerful, yet flexible, ethics of social conformism. Being ‘cool’ is a job in itself, in that, like Work, its ultimate aim is to submit one’s life to a process of alchemical transformation, until nothing remains of the autonomy of the living individual apart from the very autonomous choice of submission to social conformism.
Considering this complete colonization of life – and particularly of the moments of ‘leisure time’ – by the demands of social conformism masked as ‘Work’, we can possibly have a glimpse at some of the reasons why contemporary teenagers do not engage with philosophy.
On the one hand, philosophy is naturally resistant to the requirements of Work. On the other, philosophy’s main requirement – the availability of a truly free time in which one can develop one’s own curiosity as well as inquisitive skills – has become as rare and fast vanishing among teenagers as virgin rain-forests around the Equator.
Bringing philosophy back
Philosophy is in need of a tsunami of uncontrolled, fresh energy. It demands its own jazz revolution. I believe that the key to such a revival of the art of inhabiting the world and our lives, lies in the engagement of teenagers in the discipline. It will only be by undergoing a process of true popularization – alongside the maintenance of its academic confraternities, – that philosophy will be able to unfold its full potential of existential and cognitive empowerment.
However, contemporary teenagers seem to lack both the social encouragement to engage with philosophy, and the basic requirement of any truly free time, while at the same time being confronted with the byzantinism of academic philosophy.
If we were to imagine how such a situation might be reversed, we would have to consider a strategy of action on several levels, and particularly political, cultural and intellectual.
Politically, the struggle for a reorganization of economic production should be pursued also with the understanding of its implications for philosophy and, thus, for the possibility of autonomous and fulfilling living. De-linking income from Work, creating a functioning structure of free and universal social services, prioritizing the creation of free time – as opposed to the imperative of totalizing employment – would be the most immediate political measures to be taken, if we ever wanted philosophy to become a possible practice among teenagers. Philosophy demands radical political action, if not for ethical reasons, just simply for the evolution of the discipline itself.
Culturally, it would be fundamental to relentlessly challenge practices of social conformism, especially where they are strongest. This would require, on the one hand, the disenfranchisement of the individualist perspective among emancipatory practices – as opposed to the obsessive collectivism of most contemporary radical politics, – and, on the other, the propagation of this perspective not only through ‘alternative’ and minoritarian channels of communication, as it is most often the case, but also on the mainstream media.
Intellectually, contemporary philosophers should seriously consider complementing their academic production with the writing of more accessible texts, especially targeted at teenagers. Such books – or talks – shouldn’t only be dedicated to teaching readers about the history of philosophy through its authors and jargon, but mostly to the exposition of specific philosophical ideas as concepts which are profoundly related to actually lived life. After all, this is already what takes place in most so-called ‘self-help’ literature, where mostly mediocre authors expose mostly superficial concepts with an extremely powerful, extremely accessible style. Only when philosophers will accept to confront the competition of self-help authors on their same terrain, their work will truly be able to reach and inspire hundreds of millions of teenagers and adults living today. This might be too shocking a request for an academic world that has increasingly taken churchly characters. However, it was only through a man who was not afraid to learn how to speak with the birds, the scandalous Saint Francis dressed in rags, that the Church of the Middle ages managed to awake from its slumber and ultimately survive.
