Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, January 04, 2014

Thought Is Bigger Than Philosophy UPDATED

It is important always to remember that Thought is much bigger than Philosophy, that odd literary genre for mostly white guys still preoccupied with the preoccupations of Plato.

More Faulty Ivory Towers here.

UPDATE: To expand a bit -- as I went on to say in an affable exchange with Frank Pasquale that included this post/statement as a tweet -- Karl Jaspers' made an early earnest effort at planetizing philosophy with his proposal of axiality, but for those who bemoan the parochialism of philosophical discourse I have come to think it a better idea to marginalize philosophy by Thinking planetarily.

I should add, by the way, that I personally cherish the philosophy to which I have devoted so much of my own life and teaching -- as just another white guy myself, perhaps this isn't so surprising, eh? But I simply can't see how relegating philosophy from its pretensions of being the super-science or the highest adjudicator of history to being instead a quirky kind of poetry freighted with fascinating insights and awfulnesses all its own really takes anything away from philosophy that was worth having. I think neither philosophy nor the righteous efforts for a more capacious and relevant Thought have much to lose from such a move.

It's pretty funny updating a loose trifling philosophical rumination as if it's breaking! news. Twitter is wreaking havoc with my mind.

No comments: