source: Wikimedia Commons
I started this blog a while ago in order to reflect upon and inspire others on moral action. However, focus shifts, life changes and this blog lay dormant before it got anywhere. Now I wish to revive it, with a broader purpose of examining philosophy overall, but I think ethics will still be at it’s core.
Many people today never stop to think about philosophy at all. Outside of existentialism or spirituality, it’s usually treated as something dry and bookish. It’s considered the realm of intellectuals and university types. Something to be debated and labeled and categorized, and more than anything made abstract.
But what Socrates and his colleagues were really trying to establish was a process of active introspection. Philosophy isn’t supposed to be simply thought about and discussed but applied and lived. People must actively analyze and question their views and actions in order to live a better life. And it really must be recognized as a personal responsibility of everybody to tend to their philosophies.
I think there is an important contrast to be made between formal philosophies and personal philosophy. The formal philosophies could be seen as the methods with which we categorize and process the ideas that various philosophers have put forth through history. These are the academic aspects of philosophy that most of us avoid and leave to the academic professionals. On the other hand, we all have a personal philosophy, regardless of whether we tend to it or not. And most of us, in brushing off the formal philosophy, wind up neglecting the personal philosophy.
Most people’s philosophies are like a tangle of pricker-bushes on an estate. There’s just this thorny mess of untended ideas. We don’t entirely know where any given view comes from unless there is some explicit event that it grew out of. If someone were to ask us to sort through it all, we’re afraid to walk in. It’s too tangled. We just know that somewhere over here there’s really tasty blackberries to pick, while over there there’s really really big scary thorns waiting to tear cloth and draw blood.
But if we take the time to cultivate our philosophies by reading and thinking about the formal philosophies — the ones published and debated and formalized over the last few centuries — we can trim our own philosophies into something much more manageable and less scary. And this is really what philosophy should be about. Socrates encourages us to constantly reassess our views in order to live our lives progressively better. Building off of past thinkers, we need to encourage the growth of ideals that lead to a healthier and more successful life, while pruning what views no longer seem valid.
So this is what I now aim to accomplish with this blog. I wish to study and analyze the great thinkers of the past and present in order to find the best way to live a peaceful, ethical and rational life. Throughout this process, I will share my reflections in hopes that others may benefit from these ideas and become inspired to apply the Socratic Method to their own mental tangles.
After all, as Socrates famously stated, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
E.A.Coolidge on Philosophy 
