Metaphilosophy

I already gave an account of my intellectual journey in my post about why I became a philosophy major, but, conveniently, it mostly focused on the journey. Here I’ll focus more on the intellectual part.

Genesis

In the beginning, I was Roman Catholic. Both of my parents come from Catholic families and were happy about that, so we went to mass every week and I attended about twelve years of catechism school. I went through various periods of piety with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Sometimes I spent months with a set of rosary beads in my pocket and a scratchy wool scapular around my neck, and sometimes I purposely spent my hours in church sitting while everyone else stood, thinking about my mildly sinful high fantasy novel while everyone else prayed. When I look back I realize that the problem was that I never thought any of it made any sense, but at the time I was convinced that if I kept trying, kept repeating, kept pretending, I would eventually understand. Then God would forgive my years of asking uncomfortable questions. Or, more likely, Mary would intervene on my behalf. I’ve always identified with Mary much more than with God or Jesus.

When I was in high school I was Confirmed. The whole thing oscillated between deeply moving and deeply cultish; I chose my Catholic name, Cecilia, for the patron saint of musicians, and an abbot put oil on my forehead so I could become a soldier of God. I’ve always been a pacifist, so to have my teachers tell me that it was time to fight, even metaphorically, bothered me a lot. It only took an intro to philosophy course and a good friend who was a skeptic to change me from devoted Catholic to comfortable atheist. I continued going to church to please my mother for a year or so, secure in the knowledge that once I left for college I would no longer have to endure that weekly dose of boredom and guilt.

Exodus

That high school philosophy course changed many things for me. As I said in my post about the classes I’ve taken, it included Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Montaigne, Voltaire, Machiavelli, and Emerson. A motley bunch, to be sure, but for a curious and confused teenager it was very effective. Seneca and Emerson were my favorites. I’ve read “Self-Reliance” at least three times now (not counting the first time when I fell asleep every other paragraph because it was so difficult to understand) and even though I’ve never quite believed the transcendental metaphysics, it sends chills down my spine every time. It showed my high school self that coming up with my own philosophy was okay– no, essential– and it helped me defy my upbringing and become the token cynical materialist of the class, which was a position I thoroughly enjoyed. My uncle died that year, and that class also helped me find a new way to deal with death. I wrote an essay that seems rather existential now, concerning mortality and how we should seize this life, our only opportunity, and live it well.

All was good during my first year at college, because I enjoyed the academic life and because I was free to do my own thing without worrying as much about disappointing my parents. By my second year, however, having no close friends on campus was starting to get to me. I was used to solitude, but this was a bit extreme with my family being six hours away. I also started wondering about my purpose in life. Everything up to that point had led to college, but what was next? I had never thought about it seriously. I couldn’t come up with any ideas. I started wondering why I was here, why I was working so hard, and, ultimately, what I was living for, which turned into a full-fledged existential crisis. That year three SLU students died, including one who lived across the hall and one who was a friend, and then my grandfather died. Life felt very temporary. The question of my meaning became ever-present and ever more distressing.

I lost interest in most of my classes, especially my critical literature ones, and I basically lost the ability to write, which had been my greatest strength throughout my life. There was some kind of psychological block I had built up and couldn’t get around. During my sophomore and junior years I seriously considered taking a medical withdrawal from the university or simply dropping out.

Revelation

Bleak as this sounds, I found rays of hope in making some good friends, on the internet and on campus, and in deciding to try a new field. Peace studies and philosophy of science hinted at the same sorts of questions I’d considered in my high school philosophy class, and I started to wonder why I hadn’t taken more philosophy. I took a class on science and religion, which has always been an interesting issue for me, and because of that course I hesitated so long on my paperwork for leaving school that I just never went through with it.

Metaphysical questions consumed me and I decided to follow them where they led, which gave me at least a temporary purpose for life and a definite purpose for my education. I dedicated the remainder of my time at SLU to philosophy. I finally got to learn about existentialism, which had hovered in the periphery of my intellectual vision for many years. It sucked me in as I had expected that it would. I read and generally understood difficult things by people like Descartes, Plato, and Kant, giving me a sense of accomplishment, and I could write about them, giving me a sense that I was capable of being a scholar again. I very quickly began coming up with my own tentative theories and finding new questions to ask. I discovered Buddhism, the metaphysics of which fascinate me, just this semester, and I’m including pieces of it in my thinking already. My ideas haven’t changed a whole lot since my de-conversion in high school, but I have become much better at articulating and supporting them with my own words and with the words of others. Now philosophy questions are everywhere. I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to– but why would I?

For ethics this semester I read “Self-Reliance” again, and my inner English major is pleased with the way things have come full circle. I’m hoping that, despite the fact that I still don’t agree with the metaphysics, Emerson will help me figure out where I’m going next.

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Filed under: Assign 5 tagged atheism, Buddhism, Catholicism, death, Emerson, existentialism, writing

In the courses i have taken I feel that philosophy as conversation, the logical analysis of an argument, the explication of meaning, and conceptual analysis have been the most widely used methodologies.

In Existentialism we took turns facilitating the class and part of this was to give a conceptual analysis of something from the reading.

In Pragmatism I distinctly remember comparing the theories of different pragmatists descriptively.

The four methods completely new to me are phenomenology, deconstruction, philosopher as public intellectual, and integrating philosophy with other experiences.  I have a familiarity with what the first three involve but have never considered the last.  I have used it though in the decision making process, seeing how each option looks when viewed from various ethical systems.

I have attempted a phenomenological analysis of progress. I’m not positive what I came up with was strictly phenomenology but it was a first attempt.

Deconstruction seems like it would be very useful though difficult and a lot of work.

I think in the future maybe when I am older I will take it upon myself to be a philosopher as a public intellectual, writing in to papers (if they still exist) and probably doing some blogging (I’ve already started!).

As far as my personal techniques go I am a big fan of the logical analysis of argument.  I have recently tried a symbolization of an argument using the skills I picked up in learning relational predicate logic.  It was difficult and took a while.  I hope that my symbolization was close enough to the original argument that I didn’t significantly change anything.  The largest problem for me was choosing my words carefully when I tried to draw out the essence of the argument.

Philosophy being around for as long as it has with all these time tested methods, its surprising that there is so much left in the field of philosophy to accomplish. Though in fairness the field has produced much knowledge no longer called philosophy. I do wonder though if we firstly we could create a new technique and secondly if we could create one that would be more able than the rest to solve some of these lingering problems.

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Filed under: Assign 6 Reflection