As the foundations of independent thinking are rationalized in the administered world, the public role of philosophy as magistra vitae becomes an intellectual afterthought. The tragic hallmark of philosophy as a discursive practice is its inability to fit the synchronized harmony of regime, order and institution. Philosophy is by definition the disruption of discourse. The demise of the philosophical system as a categorical process came surprisingly late. The negative operability, expounded well enough in the Frankfurt school, goes back to Socrates, whose irony is not ironic: philosophy is cultivation of ignorance. Its enlightening task lies in providing a gentle disappointment to the vanity of thinking, to speak in biblical terms, in a world only possible through thinking. The notion of philosophical authority entails the abolition of philosophy. Socrates is the triumph of speech without authority, so much that it cost him his life. Is the unexamined life worth living? Sartre would posit the role of the intellectual is never to go about his business. The division of labor must not be replicated in cognitive processes. The intellectual atomization of society ends in political disaster, which is often televised for all to see. In a world more and more atomized through technocracy, autocracy and entertainment, the sobering role of philosophy as speech without authority is dangerous. The administration can see through it, and it quietly works to remove Socrates’ heritage from universities. The unintended side effect lies in reminding the world that the philosopher is a mind of everywhere and nowhere.
The most striking memento of this reality is Plato’s Parmenides, where the main persona loquens, who in the end refutes the academic delegation travelling from Athens to meet him, is a groom. Antiphon had studied philosophy with great care as a youth, “though now he devotes most of his time to horses.” Further on, “we found Antiphon at home, giving a smith an order to make a bridle.” And Antiphon goes on to dismantle Plato’s entire theory of forms. The validity of a thought is independent of the person who expresses it. Parmenides is a most profound reflection on philosophical authority. Plato’s daring to embed, in the late dialogue, an unforgiving refutation of his own philosophy shows the Socratic echoes of a mind who shares its ignorance with grace and elegance (the dismissal of conceptual analysis as belles-lettres in analytic philosophy conveys more praise to Plato than intended). Maybe Aristotle drank from this source when stating the mark of a cultivated spirit: being able to contemplate an argument it disagrees with. The truculence of high office bearers in various institutions should pay attention. Philosophy is the voice that whispers from behind, in the midst of the applause: not so fast, little one, you are not as wise as you think. On a rather macabre note, philosophy has something in common with demagoguery. Both address the establishment, political or academic, with an ominous beware the obscure man, the groom who can rightly refute Plato and the man who wrongly kills Socrates. The most important distinctions are delicate and painful.
We ought to call philosophy the apotheosis of the obscure life. The relevance of the canon does not efface the historical arbitrariness in the fame of single philosophers. In the administered world, all forms of discourse are either commercial products or intellectual fetishes. It could not be shown, so far, whether a transparent form of discourse is possible beyond the constraints of power structures. The great and famous now widely remembered were the favorites of the aristocracy. The commercial censorship of agents and publishers has liquidated the emancipatory potential of the non-aligned word. The damnation of the truly free mind into oblivion is set out by the project manager in the business case. What other ways would there be to secure funding?
If Sartre is right in suggesting we are condemned to be free, the utopia of transparent discourse as the ideal channel of philosophical thinking can only be realized in the negative freedom of those condemned to be obscure. The moment Socrates becomes too known, he is sentenced to death. The genius of Nietzsche survives in being appropriated by power structures that could not silence his thinking. Our age has acquired more integrated methods of damnatio memoriae, or so it seems. The consolation of an esoteric dichotomy between obscurity and glory is fallacious. Philosophy is the social condemnation of the obscure life it celebrates existentially, just as much as it is the demystification of glory. The freedom to which unfreedom condemns the born and the unborn bears constant witness to a barbarity unafraid of itself, and on this raging ocean of irrationality philosophy is a little vessel in search of discipline. For discipline is what unbridled thinking needs. A rare resource where the critical cultivation of ignorance gives way to its worship.
The post Socrates in Exile: The Fate of Thought in a Bureaucratic Age first appeared on Blog of the APA.
Read the full article which is published on APA Online (external link)
