Poles Within Philosophy - A Manifesto of Sorts

I have an irresistible need to justify this addition of a new blog to the already vast collection of philosophy blogs. If I name the anxiety, does that mean I get a pass on the rather personal nature of what I'm about to write? Probably not, but the anxiety is bound up with the reasons for the creation of the blog, so it might as well be reflected on. Hopefully I will be able to demonstrate that there is a certain joy traveling hand-in-hand with said anxiety.

There are four poles that I find myself torn between. The tradition grinds against the creation of novel concepts, and personal ethics seem to conflict with the impersonal nature of coherent, productive concepts.

The first pairing is attached to one of the great conflicts in academia. The western philosophical tradition is massive, and carries extraordinary authority for good reason. If one is to engage with philosophy, there is no doubt one must carry with them a keen knowledge of the tradition. Exactly how does one go about producing the new without any knowledge of the old? One at least requires knowledge of what the problems are and how others have worked on them. Without this knowledge, one risks solipsism, a complete inability to engage others in dialogue. The other risk is banal repetition, a simple recreation of the wheel. What the tradition finally stands for is established excellence. Brilliant minds have produced brilliant works, and we must never cease measuring ourselves against them.

What must be resisted here is tradition-as-police. Sooner or later, one must speak in their own name - one cannot simply genuflect before greatness and consider this philosophy. What this finally means is that one must be willing to risk mediocrity - what else could it mean? We have to risk the (however justified or unjustified) disapproving stare of the patricians. This disapproving stare can take many forms: "You have misread X," "You haven't even read X," "Your concept has been done before, and done better." Surely these are far more withering criticisms than "you have contradicted yourself." Contradictions are bugs that can be stamped out; the risk that one is mediocre and perhaps displays a complete lack of talent are greater anxieties, at least for myself. But if philosophy is finally a praxis of creating concepts, I can't just linger around admiring the tradition.

As for the second pair, it is entirely native to philosophy. The title of this blog's shout-out to Spinoza is an attempt to capture it. Philosophy has long had a twin vocation - learning to die and/or live, and the establishment of intellectual norms (if not the actual production of knowledge). I think there is a tension here because I have the suspicion that Nietzsche is correct when he says every philosophy springs from a moral seed. It seems like there are two questions to be asked of any philosophy - one, what desire inhabits it? And two, is it true? The disappearance of the question of truth is an endlessly complex one, but we cannot forget that it is fairly new so far as the tradition is concerned.

When one creates a concept, it is entirely an ethical matter, ie an expression of human or inhuman desire? Or can we actually claim that philosophical concepts have an ability to hit upon the real? Here, I consider Spinoza's work to be exemplary - it is both an ethics and an ontology (marked by the coldly calculative nature of geometry). This is the sort of tradition I would like to find myself in.

So, these are the four coordinates I find myself thinking in. The will to risk mediocrity while measuring myself against greatness, and the attempt to create coldly impersonal concepts fused with ethical concerns. In practice, this will shake out into roughly four kinds of posts. Some posts will be a sort of apprenticeship - my attempts to figure out what the hell people like Badiou are saying. In other words, plain old commentary. Others will be explorations of concepts I personally favor. Ethology posts will be attempts to explore the desire inhabiting concepts, and finally, ethics posts will be where the rubber hits the road - the yolk of the egg.