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lump together wonder is a mute state of appreciation an aesthetic attitude towards being more appropriate to a religious mystic or an artist than to a philosopher wonder for me has never brought with the question why my personal pre philosophical beginning is one that remains with me still it is a recurrent sense of uncanniness of the world seeming strange and contingent it raises the question why in its most ultimate sense why is there something rather than nothing why this something rather than other possible somethings and how is it possible for parts of this something to reflect upon both themselves and the whole the thought this leaves me with is that there must be a systematic answer interlinking everything the second element that follows up this pre philosophical beginning is the experience of contemplation contemplation complements the uncanniness since it is the activity that most feels like it is answering the questions raised by the uncanny state when i am thinking particularly hard about a problem my thoughts become quicksilver and fluid but also highly structured ideas spin off from ideas and link together forming larger and larger wholes this state is engrossing and all consuming and i can lose track of myself and my surroundings for hours while the state is productive it is also an example of what aristotle calls nicomachean ethics 1 a complete state one that is done for itself i don t want the contemplation to end and am glad that the questions i am asking seem eternally capable of greater refinement and elaboration so contemplation need never end this also explains why i think that explaining philosophy as beginning in disappointment does not capture why i do philosophy disappointment is a pragmatists answer to why we do philosophy as it is their answer to why thinking occurs thinking for them is an activity done in order that we may cease thinking it is caused by problems and seeks their solutions i do not consider my questions to be problems they are opportunities read more posted by brent vizeau at 11 35 am no comments labels reflections on philosophy reflections on philosophy paul ennis interview i would say that everyone should approach the tradition in two ways one path should be straight forward and probably pretty mundane the other should be sporadic and a little more intuitive the combination tends to be effective and helps satisfy the twin demands of any good philosophy writing rigor and originality regarding what we ought to be doing well i don t think it is my place to prescribe any kind of ought to other people since this is not my area whatsoever i suppose my ideal ought would be something like staying true to that fundamental impulse to inquiry no matter the cost brent vizeau first off thank you for taking the time to have this conversation i want to begin by asking where does philosophy begin i will preface this by making clear that i don t mean with thales or the greek miracle rather i mean to ask about the motivation for doing philosophy at all and for taking the approach perspective that you do i want this to be able to go a number of ways so i will suggest a few ideas to help hone in on the sort of place i think this question could go it is often thought that philosophy begins in wonder or curiosity simon critchley argues instead that it begins in disappointment it has been pointed out to me that philosophers like hegel have one great obsession that colors their whole approach do you think that there is this kind of pre philosophical element at the beginning of philosophy if so what gets you going what is your experience of first moments motivations paul ennis i really don t know how to answer this question because i have never answered it for myself i have no idea why i do philosophy though i do have a response to the oft asked question of what philosophy is or does philosophy is to know why you believe what you believe i suppose my base motivation for pursuing philosophy is that i really do want to know why i look at the world the way i do certainly i don t have one great problem like hegel or heidegger had i am jealous that they knew so early what they were trying to figure out there is a whole series of problems that i want to solve but the answers seem to sprawl out across all kinds of disciplines but i do take these events of philosophy seriously even though the greek beginning has been hugely compromised and even the enlightenment has come under attack for its quasi theological approach which hegel had already accused it of in the phenomenology i still consider these fundamentally positive interventions into the history of thinking that would be my shotgun answer but the core of philosophy for me is something entirely different it is a prolonged investigation of fringe albeit rational problems such as but the possible examples are legion the emergence of transcendental subjectivity you have to be a peculiar sort to take this as a guiding theme for your life s work but once you become familiar with the force of the historical meditation on these kinds of problems it is difficult to extricate yourself from it so i m not sure it is a simple case of being motivated to answer certain problems prior to reading philosophy and then working that problem out in dialogue with the great thinkers rather it is a kind of slow accretion where you don t have a problem to sort out but then through reading great thinkers you become convinced that these problems matter then the latent ideas that you would normally have pushed aside start to bubble to the surface and you learn to take them seriously so i don t think there is a pre philosophical impetus more like a post philosophical impetus if that is possible of course the philosopher can t help but ask what is possible read more posted by brent vizeau at 11 16 am 3 comments labels reflections on philosophy reflections on philosophy j glass interview you can t pick a set of rules for inquiry and systematically exhaust those alone because the rules themselves will go unchallenged i actually think that ideally a philosopher in so far as he inquires seeks only to live up to his own expectations and answer his own personal questions he has to cater to his own interests and passions because only thereby will he do worthwhile work but ideally his inquiry can be made available to others and be useful to them after the fact it s important to be discerning and not attempt to read loads of books just for the sake of exhibiting one s erudition but it s important to do oneself the justice of becoming familiar with approaches taken by others to similar problems brent vizeau first off thank you for taking the time to have this conversation i want to begin by asking simply where does philosophy begin i will preface this by making clear that i don t mean with thales or the greek miracle rather i mean to ask about the motivation for doing philosophy at all and for taking the approach perspective that you do i want this to be able to go a number of ways so i will suggest a few ideas to help hone in on the sort of place i think this question could go it is often thought that philosophy begins in wonder or curiosity simon critchley argues that it begins in disappointment it has been pointed out to me that hegel had one great obsession that colored his whole approach do you think that there is this kind of pre philosophical element at the beginning of philosophy if so what gets you going what is your experience of first moments motivations j glass the embarrassing answer as to why i got into philosophy which i d appreciate you keeping to yourself lest my emo image around the department get further out of hand is when i was a kid i was overly afraid of death and thought about it constantly i didn t know what i wanted to do with my life and there seemed to be a lot of pressure to do it right since i was so obsessed with not dying for nothing everything practical seemed trivial on a sort of cosmic scale philosophy seemed to be the most promising in that it might allow me insight into life and a life path when i started i was really into philosophy of space and time because it seemed like that could really reveal the secrets of the universe i was a bit of a positivist and then i realized that that wouldn t do and some metaphysics further than space and time was needed and then i figured that personal identity would solve my problems if i knew what exactly a person was i e what i am then i could figure out what my existential issues were and what i should be doing if one could know exactly what a person is one could know exactly what a person should do and then finally i figured that the problem was in the should and value seemed to stand at the bottom of all my problems including my previous fear of death which had in the meantime mostly been shirked due to my busyness with school and wanting to get a job as a professor eventually so all of my philosophical endeavours have been a really selfish sometimes government funded quest to sort out my own existential crises and even my current research isn t really an exception read more posted by brent vizeau at 10 53 am no comments labels reflections on philosophy reflections on philosophy david pitcher interview the philosopher is the one who considers wonder s lack of linguistic expression a deficiency or form of ignorance and is pressed to render this experience in language so that it might be understood communicated and related to concepts and other truths philosophy then begins in wonder and ends in ponder philosophers are not merely clerics of language and servants to concepts they must always be capable of returning to the source of signification and guiding others to return to the same source a good work then would out of these deep and tortuous clouds of symbols fulgurate down to the ground like a lightning strike and make the world shine brilliantly for a scattered audience if only for a moment brent vizeau first off thank you for taking the time to have this conversation i want to begin by asking where does philosophy begin i will preface this by making clear that i don t mean with thales or the greek miracle rather i mean to ask about the motivation for doing philosophy at all and for taking the approach perspective that you do i want this to be able to go a number of ways so i will suggest a few ideas to help hone in on the sort of place i think this question could go it is often thought that philosophy begins in wonder or curiosity simon critchley argues instead that it begins in disappointment it has been pointed out to me that philosophers like hegel have one great obsession that colors their whole approach do you think that there is this kind of pre philosophical element at the beginning of philosophy if so what gets you going what is your experience of first moments motivations david pitcher i agree with plato that philosophy begins in wonder on my understanding of the initial moments of moving from practical life to theoretical life one is confronted with an object concrete or abstract from which a truth or meaning is derived channeled or experienced but only in an inchoate felt form it is merely sensed perceived but not made explicit or coherent some folks may prefer to leave it at mere marvelousness as in aesthetic enjoyment and some may declare it a revelation or an oceanic feeling as in religious experience psychologists invoke it as catharsis and scientists call it serendipity poets may refer to a moment of acute awareness and problem solvers exclaim that it is insight inspiration or intuition the philosopher is the one who considers wonder s lack of linguistic expression a deficiency or form of ignorance and is pressed to render this experience in language so that it might be understood communicated and related to concepts and other truths philosophy then begins in wonder and ends in ponder it follows from this emphasis of wonder that wonder is a necessary condition but not sufficient condition for the spawning of sophistry this is the point at which discussions of curiosity and disappointment emerge philosophers seem to have some kind of need for explication and a demand for elucidation it may seem that i am begging the question by defining a motive in terms of a need but the idea is that regardless of this need wonder is the starting point human motivation is far too varied obscure and irregular to consider any particular motive essential to any behavior including philosophizing for example one might be tacitly guided by her father s love for eloquent expressions leading her to desire paternal recognition by mediating wonder with ponder another may succumb to bitterness and paranoia to the extent that out of his hallucinatory psychosis he creates a fantasy world that is masked by its sole tie to reality viz an indubitable fundamental truth a vengeful yet cowardly individual may be dissatisfied with a priest s dogma and channel his frustrated anguish into emotionally expressing his profound experiences so there are a whole breadth of complex motives many of which we are unaware that lead us to our passionate search for truth nevertheless if we are considering the utter beginning of philosophy then it must be said that the first moment is wonder and that other moments grounded in myriad motivations mediate the transition to ponder read more posted by brent vizeau at 10 34 am 1 comment labels reflections on philosophy august 09 2010 the graduate student experience i had never seen this video before though i think many others have if you re a grad student then this should resonate well with you if we were to wait until we had read all the relevant precedents of any given philosopher that we happen to be interested in then we would never get off the ground well we might get off the ground but there is certainly no way we d ever catch up to our interest posted by brent vizeau at 11 30 am 10 comments labels advice derrida heidegger older posts home subscribe to posts atom major philosophy the great philosophical question used to be why is there something rather than nothing today the real question is why is there nothing rather than something jean baudrillard the perfect crime the great philosophical question used to be what is only insofar as it is today the only question is what is only insofar as we can know it could it be time to get back to the first of these questions brent vizeau major philosophy tags advice 4 anarchism 1 badiou 5 bataille 1 baudrillard 3 brassier 1 bryant 3 careerism 1 chomsky 1 civil rights 1 derrida 1 g20 1 graham harman 5 heidegger 3 hyperreality 2 ideology 4 interview 1 jokes 1 kant 2 leibniz 1 meillasoux 2 modesty 1 nihilism 1 noumena 1 object oriented ontology 3 ontology 3 parallax 1 phenomena 1 philosophy 1 police 1 politics 3 protest 1 publishing 1 reality tv 1 reflections on philosophy 7 speculative realism 2 the hills 1 writing 2 zizek 3 blog archive 2010 24 august...