The Modern Philosopher Is More Than an Archaeologist

Philosophy is not the study of philosophers; it is the study of life.

It is an interesting development that atheism has become associated with modern philosophy when these so-called philosophers seem to have more gods than any other. We cannot speak a sentence from our own minds without calling on support from some mind now dead and gone. The philosophers of yesteryear were allowed to speak on the universe, life, the mind, and we are allowed only to speak about those philosophers.

The modern philosopher lives like a newly minted adult who is scared to stand before his father as a man and equal. We use our tongue to repeat, our mind to remember, and our capacity for thought only to understand another’s words; our desire to discover and faculty for creation we ignore completely. The philosophers of bygone eras have become overbearing teachers; their shadows have been cast so long that we in the present day have yet to see the light for ourselves.

From Ancient Greece to 18th century Germany, the spirit of philosophy, of human curiosity, with little reprieve, toiled and its fruits were abundant. It seems that one too great came along and no one has risen in earnest thereafter to challenge his record. It seems to me that when Nietzsche declared, “God is dead,” he killed philosophy as well. Ever since, like scavengers, we have fed on the remains of yesterday’s genius.

Today every thought must be accompanied by a reference. Where did Aristotle, or Hume, or Hegel, include a reference? When Descartes stated, “I think; therefore I am,” he did not mean that he should be the last one. I make no claims at being a Nietzsche, a Socrates, or an Emerson, but they were men, not prophets. They were born as ignorant babes, grew from there as children, contended with the awkwardness of adulthood, and died as flawed as you or I. I will not justify my own vision and thought by it having been seen or thought by some other man as well. I have eyes and a brain just as functional as any that has ever existed.

“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose, These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is it an insult against my capacity for reason alone if you say you cannot determine the accuracy of what I have said — what I have said solely on the basis of logic — without reference to some perceived authority? It would seem you insult your own ability to reason even more. You ask if Kierkegaard or Plato said it as well, so that I might bolster my claims, but are you not simply shuttering your mind’s eye in order to defer to the judgment of another? Can you not see the truth or falsity of my statement just as clearly as any other person?

Is the modern mind a degenerated and devolved form of those belonging to the men of the past? I think not. Any person who has the thoughts of Montaigne or Schopenhauer, before having read either of those men, is no less of a Montaigne or Schopenhauer because they were once before preceded by those of their ilk.

The modern mind is not inferior to the mind of the past; indeed, it’s superior, as any living thing is superior to any dead thing. The wellspring of their intellect has run dry, while yours and mine still draw from infinite depths. Add to this another incomparable advantage: I can learn from and react to the thoughts of those who came before me, but they died deprived of those that each day come from me.

We have been so thoroughly discouraged by the difficulty of being original that we can no longer defend our own individual existence. However great an Aristotle, even if given a thousand lifetimes, he would never be able to replicate the universe of thoughts that have flowed from your mind. No matter how brilliant Plato was he could never encompass the grandeur of your soul. Genius is only ever a niche, and each of us has been vouchsafed our niche by the unrepeatable complement of particulars that has made us all wholly individual from birth.

And, yes, of course with millennia of history behind me, there will be a redundancy to my thought. The existentialists, the Stoics, the hedonists, the transcendentalists, do not all these groupings of thinkers exist on the basis of their overlap? Why should I be made ashamed of any lack of originality on my part when none before me were? If I am to be only a student of Nietzsche and Aristotle then what was Nietzsche but only a student of Schopenhauer — what was Aristotle but a student of Plato?

My body and brain were gifted to me by a higher source than any man, by Nature, and I will not hide away this gift for the sake of not offending the sensibilities of the scared and sycophantic philosophers of the day. In so many essays, discussing what is only accessible to any mind by their reason, incapable of being empirically tested — I have been asked to give references and sources, to list some other person who may have said what I am saying, and who by virtue must be all the more correct.

I say but Nietzsche did not do this, neither did Aristotle, nor any other of the men who you would have me cite, and everyone is all aghast that one living today should ever try to aspire to the heights of a Nietzsche or an Aristotle.

And worse yet is when we certify an individual as sufficiently well-versed in philosophy because they have adequately acquainted themselves with the lives and thoughts of a group of deceased men. I have yet to come across a modern school for philosophy. I laugh at the holders of degrees that say they have been taught as much, so often does what should rightly be called a floor look to them as a ceiling.

One reads “The Dialogues of Plato” to study philosophy. Mind you, the dialogues themselves were how Plato studied philosophy. He did not read the words of others; he put forward his own thoughts for refutation and development.

Today we study the results of a dialectic, whereas participating in the dialectic was their study. To learn philosophy, to be a philosopher is to be a student of life; these certificate-wielding pedants have studied only what is dead. They might be morticians or archaeologists, but they are not philosophers.

In every field, there are those who are quick to deem one person or another “the greatest of all time.” Until we have seen the last generations of humanity, the greatest will always be yet to come. You may cage yourself. I am not here to advocate freedom to those who, instead of looking at the sublime directly, wish only to spend their lives looking at the backs of the men and women who, in their own time, looked at it directly.

I, however, will leave my own mark, and I applaud all others with the courage to try and do so as well.