Whatever ‘graduating’ means, I did that. A University degree is like a motorized miter saw, I have one but have no idea how to use it. I can’t even begin to tell you how much money I wasted last summer on botching my crown moldings.
Studying Philosophy and the history of ideas intensively for the past five years might sound difficult and deep and interesting, as if it required a certain degree of meticulousness. Although in many ways it did, the entire process has merely been an extension of something we’re all familiar with.
If you’ve ever had a several-hour long discussion over coffee and/or cigarettes about ideas, meanings of things, questions you find unanswerable, or most importantly, things that make you upset and keep you awake at night, you’ve done philosophy. Now imagine those heavy conversations spread out over a series of lectures and discussions for three hours a week in addition to reading either ancient, old, or contemporary thinkers and their works. This is the academic study of ideas, and it is filled with patterns of thought, veins of ideology, and the constant compounding, buttressing and tearing down of assumptions.
The question is, then; “What kind of bread does philosophy bake?” and the answer is that bakers make bread, not philosophers.
I am mostly interested in making a case for how to live and do things in better ways. Hopefully you might find something here that is insightful and helpful, but if not, let us hope it will be at least entertaining.
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