Sunday, May 24, 2009

Why I'll Never Make It as a Philosopher

This morning I was messing around on my computer in Navan and I found a little text file on the desktop. It's a short essay I wrote out of boredom a few months ago. Below is the unedited version (apart from the spelling correction of the word beautiful...)

Reading it, it's clear to me now. Why I'll never make it as a philosopher.

--File Begins--

Let me put pen to paper. Or the latest equivalent anyway. Let me compose for you, a story. Allow me to, paint you a picture.

There are fifteen of them, fifteen intrinsic causes for mans unhappiness. All from the same root, and all to the same net effect.

The first of these is want. Desire is an evil of the mind, I could say it was. The second is hate. See how wide these words are, how meaningless they are. I could arbitrarly pick another 13 and then continue writing until I had filled a 1000 pages and then I could pretend that I have answers. But of course, I'm limited by where I start. I'm picking words and working from them, that's far too limited.

So, what's a better way to proceed. Or to begin rather. I'll start with these net effects and work backwards. That is reasonale I think. So first, I must perceive something, with my eyes, my heart, my soul, whatever. I must make a distinction between what is better and what is worse. But thinking in this way, this is utterly impossible. I can not see the future, I can not say what will have a net positive or a net negative effect on the world, or even the specific parts that I might consider worthy of being protected or destroyed.

There is an extension there that comes into play, I can't see what is right or wrong. Even if through deliberation I could arrive on a decision of what is right and wrong.

I am without ability to discern right and wrong. On no level am I in any way capable of telling it. I am only capable of telling what is beautful. So, is it some kind of universily held belief that beauty is equivalent to what is right. Is that right? How do you approach a problem with no knowledge. Empirical discovery. It is impossible. From my perspective for that to be applied. There is nowhere to begin from, I believe that you always need to begin somewhere. There needs to be some truth, something to care your findings with.


So, there is the intuitive side of stuff. Do we really begin life with knowledge. It seems to me like we do. An almost certainty but of course, I don't know for sure. I feel that I know so much more than I've learned. That this beauty thing extends deeper than my day to day senses. There is an analytical side to me, I can do a technical job.

--End of File--

What's that, didn't make it all the way through? Go back and start again! The abrupt ending is a bit disappointing but it does look like it was transforming into some kind of Platonic argument.

Nietzsche would be disgusted with me.

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