Previously,

Heidegger’s Hegelian Phenomenological Method (Part 1/2)

Heidegger’s Hegelian Phenomenological Method (Part 2/2)

Dr. Carlo Alvaro and Dr. Richard Carrier Debate the Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Joy of Philosophy (4/4)

On the Essence of Hiding; or, Philosophical Truth

Philosophy and the Will

So, in these few posts, I talked a bit about what philosophy is and the problem it is addressing. To fully appreciate what I mean you would have had to have been a teenager in North America in the 90s, a time of profound angst and boredom, before the technological band-aid came, before social media. It was a time of eternal recurrence, as poetized in “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes:

• I was tired of my lady
  We’d been together too long
  Like a worn out recording
  Of a favorite song

With Rupert above we sang and danced to the idea that beings lose their lustre merely as a function of our spending time with them.

With Alanis Morissette in “All I Really Want,” we listened to how our lives were lived out distracting ourselves and running away from ourselves, our essential restlessness/homelessness. She writes:

• Why are you so petrified of silence?
  Here can you handle this… ?
  Did you think about your bills, you ex, your deadlines
  Or when you think you’re going to die?
  Or did you long for the next distraction?

To be sure, today’s issues are not those of these poets, for in many ways things are far worse even as the narcotic of social media tightens its grip, especially on the young. Just the same, the question of philosophy remains the same, and we ask it anew for our time as we try to remedy the gulf and antagonism between (a) Human Nature and (b) The Human Condition.

Thanks for reading!