Usikker ramblings
There’s something about never feeling like you’d be able to fit in, or fit the requirements of what you wish to do in life, if activities in life can be said to have requirements. Yesterday I was in a colloquium¹ with a non-philosophy student and we did two things. First, we looked at the semester-essay that he had chosen for himself. I don’t remember the exact details, but essentially what he wanted to do was create a type of deontological system that could create obligations for say not flying, but make those obligations weak enough that it didn’t preclude him from eating cheese. This was in response to an author who had claimed that there exists no acceptable moral principle which as a result creates the negative obligation to not drive cars without needing to. I don’t know the precise reasons why the author came to that conclusion – I didn’t read the article –² ³, nor am I particularly interested in learning the reasons why.
There is something that erks me about the way of doing philosophy that is practised in analytical philosophy, this unending need to chop up problems into smaller and smaller units, and analyse those units as if that independent analysis is possible. It seems only possible if you make a lot of unstated assumptions about what exact system you’re using, and then proceeding from there. With assumptions, I guess you can achieve some kind of clarity. However, when I tried to express my frustration about that kind of philosophising, I ran into a kind of brick wall. I couldn’t express my arguments, I couldn’t point to specifics, maybe because I hadn’t read the article, or maybe because I was speaking a lot of nonsense. Which brings me to the next thing we talked about. My semester-essay.
For my semester-essay, I have chosen to write about Felix Guattari, or more specifically “What are the three ecologies in Guattari’s ecosophy, and what problem does his system intend to solve?” Guattari being an anti-capitalist philosopher/psychoanalyst who in his later life turned towards questions on the environment. I’ve been interested in his collaborations with Deleuze, and have held a reading group about their book “anti-oedipus” since December now. But, as you can see, I am not explaining any of their particular positions. While I may have a somewhat okay understanding of what a “machine” is in their philosophy⁴, the particulars of other concepts elude me. What the sentence “the body without organs is an egg” is beyond my understanding.
Suddenly, I have to justify towards this person, who I only know somewhat halfway, why I am reading a philosopher I do not understand, all the while I have the sneaking suspicion that I should self-censor my anti-capitalist beliefs. Thus, I am left with nothing. Nothing to point towards as to why I’m doing what I’m doing, incapable of justifying my “intellectual” activity. I mustered up something along the lines of “it criticises subjectivity”, but that was as far as I got.
When trying to talk to a friend of mine, who is way beyond me in his knowledge of philosophy, I feel like a stupid kid who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I’m behind in this one subject, and listening to other people have more advanced conversations about it frustrate me. I don’t know, here are just some frustrated ramblings.
1 What a study group is called in Norway “kollokvie” 2 My usage of the “dash” or “tenkestrek” here is not due to a usage of AI. 3 The article in question: IT’S NOT MY FAULT: GLOBAL WARMING AND INDIVIDUAL MORAL OBLIGATIONS 4 As I understand it, a machine is something along the lines of “an entity that has an input/output, that is coupled with other machines (with the same internal structures), and whose production is dependent upon which machines it is coupled with”