Radical Profession

“Whenever one finds pretensions to a following, in a school of philosophy for example, questioning is misunderstood... the best professional ability will never replace the authentic strength of seeing and questioning and saying”- Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics

Philosophy belongs to everyone; no less than the mystery of being appears in and envelopes absolutely everyone (everything).

Even as the universe could never be complete if a single atom or moment were absent from the totality, no one is separable from anything and everything else that appears in the world, as the world. Everyone belongs. Everyone has a right, even a duty, to question. Everyone should realise that in seeing and saying they are as near to ultimate reality (ultimate reality being their root source) as anyone else, regardless of whether one is a trained philosopher with all the jargon or not. Heidegger, in the passages from which the above quotation is taken , is resolute in saying that unlike technical expertise in any other field, philosophy and the concern of philosophy, is intimate to the being of everybody.

The jealous guarding of wisdom and knowledge by traditional elites, be they accredited intellectuals, clerical hierarchs, ideologues and propagandists for political and social power, has been as great a retardation to the being of humanity in the past as the cheapening, fetishising, and misuse of ideas as identitarian costumes for gaining attention which is prevalent with ‘popular’ philosophy today under neoliberalism.

The power of the latter, of neoliberalism, and it’s almost inescapable grip, is manifested most strikingly in that even self-professed opposition to it almost invariably ends up mirroring and eventually serving it’s hegemony. I confess to have become thoroughly disillusioned by trends in online ‘Marxism’¹ , some of the most popular brands of which begin well enough with the acknowledgement that identity-mongering is a net cast by the ruling power to bewitch and control the population, but then end up sliding into identitarianism nonetheless, albeit of a broader scope- (So called ‘civilisational identity’ is a particularly noxious new version of the same old silliness).

Philosophy, and access to ultimacy are the birthright and inheritance of everyone. The traditional clutching of authority in matters philosophical or theosophical/theological by conservative elites and the modern degradation of philosophy under neoliberalism are two unbalancing poles that rip us apart and rob us of authentic engagement with this miraculous world we appear in and as.

The way of wisdom must be realised to be open to everyone – no one has a right to browbeat and demean another just because they’ve learned some fancy terms and intellectual tricks with a couple of letters to their name. At the same time, we should treat wisdom and engage with philosophy with seriousness. It’s a precious ability and in it’s very commonality it is all the more precious. Empty word-juggling was the imposed impotence of European philosophy in the middle ages. Today, a much wider and richer sphere of humanity’s wisdom heritage is open to us (for the moment). We should at least understand that opposing the hierarchical authority and pretensions of the elites does not necessitate a degrading and disrespecting of the concerns and richness of philosophy itself, as our common inheritance (and as aids and tools in our right to question and see for ourselves).

1. I’m still dedicated to the principle of radical wealth redistribution, even on the purely humanistic grounds that for humans to really have the opportunity to fulfil themselves, everyone should be ‘free and well-favoured’