An Unfortunate Philosophical History (Now With Happy Ending)

When I was a senior in college, I had to write a final paper. The idea was that we'd choose a topic of study that had likely been covered before and then find an interesting or new interpretation of that idea. With the discipline of philosophy, this is a lot like trying to write a fresh and exciting episode of Friends about Ross and Rachel's complicated relationship. There's not much left for territory unless you expand into completely new ideas or study one idea in depth. I decided to study an idea in depth: The idea that being living proof was the best possible argument for your ethical system. It wasn't a complicated or ultra-specific idea, like some of the other students had chosen, but it was problematic to my adviser, all the same.

ME: I'd like to explore the idea that a system of ethics is invalid if it cannot be lived, and that actually living according to the logical consequences of your ethics is the best proof for its validity.

PROF: OK. I'm not quite sure what you mean. Can you explain in more detail?

ME: Sure. It seems to me that if you preach a system of beliefs with logical contradictions, it'll be impossible to live out its logical consequences, since reality conforms to logic. It seems to me that any non-obvious contradictions in the argument, or any mistakes in the facts of the premises will come to the surface of any ethics as soon as you try to actually live by it. It also seems to me that any philosopher who does not or cannot live by (or point to someone else who lives by) his or her own moral ideas has little or no business telling others what to do. [Note: It seems to me that I had to use the phrase "it seems to me" a lot throughout college. This makes sense as long as you realize that college as it exists today is partially designed to convince you that you can't really know anything for sure...and that you should somehow be sure of your uncertainty.] Like Wittgenstein tried to live by his philosophy and failed miserably and gave up philosophy for a while to teach kindergarten. It's because there was a fundamental flaw (it seems to me, lots of flaws) in his thinking.

PROF: These are interesting ideas... [Then, after a few minutes of tapping a pen on the desk and stroking the philosopher beard...] I'm not sure you'll find much source material for reference. I don't really remember coming across those ideas anywhere.

ME: [Blank stare] You're kidding, right? It's just...well this is the whole purpose of philosophy, right?

PROF: Well, I guess some people might call that the purpose of philosophy. But, nope. Not kidding. Weird, huh? It's an interesting idea, but you don't really have enough room in such a short paper to present an idea so fresh. It's more something that you'd do in a graduate thesis, or even doctoral.

ME: I understand about the length, but I thought there'd be all sorts of writing on this stuff. Like I said, isn't this the whole purpose of ethics? To understand the logic of right living and then actually live it?

PROF: Maybe there's something for you in here...[takes a book off the shelf by some obscure philosopher] this would be a good counterpoint to Being and Time by Heidegger, which has some sections on the concept of genuinity, and might hit on the ideas you're talking about.

It didn't come close to what I was talking about, but by the time I got partway through my research, I had to commit to using Heidegger and all sorts of other obscure sources to argue a point I didn't even really want to make. It's a thirty page disaster, and is on file in my college library for posterity. It's proof that even when you pay thousands of dollars, education by others is always limited by their self-interest. If philosophy were actually simple, accessible, and understandable, then philosophy professors would have precious little time to explore irrational and non-functioning philosophies of the past. Plato, anyone? There are entire courses of study in college philosophy where at the end they say, "But everything we've taught you so far is bullshit and here's why." I wish someone had just passed out the bullshit detector on day one.

My paper was basically incomprehensible, and was ripped apart by my professors on presentation day. At first I couldn't believe they gave it a passing grade, but then realized that they were the same people who set me on the path to this complete nonsense. I considered myself an academic failure, and my idea as one that was either totally wrong or outside its time.

After college I studied up on rationality, and eventually found the novel The God of Athiests, by Stefan Molyneux. In this novel, there is a character who is a graduate student proposing a big new philosophical idea. His advisers respond in a similar way to mine. It's a lovely read otherwise, but contains an amazing breakdown of how and why postmodernist thought has disintegrated any hope of actually receiving a decent higher education in most modern universities. I learned more from this book for the price of a couple of DVDs than I did from thousands of dollars worth of credentialed and certified professional education.

It's amazing, the money you can save just by deriving your philosophy from first principles, using logic and the scientific method to test your ideas. It's lovely, the life you can live if you're tenacious about adjusting your actions to match that same philosophy...I'm only a fraction of the way there, but infinitely better off for it. It's astounding how few people attempt or accomplish this in life, and how infectious their disease can be.