Think About What You'd Think About!

Think about what you'd think about if thinking were limited to the thinkers covered in this survey of modern thinkers, volume IV of Socrates' Children.

Socrates not only denies paternity, he demands a DNA test!

Petey, I reckon you know a lot about cyberspace. You ever come across anything like time travel? 'Cause sometimes I think I should have majored in philosophy. Back in '82, when I had all my brain cells, I'd have been a champion philosopher. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.

Granted, you have all the skills to be a modern philosopher: self-absorption, self-importance, solipsism, sanctimony, snobbery, superciliousness, and that's just some of the s-

Very funny. I suppose one of the most important points is that 1) all the thinking in the world only gets one so far in the absence of a certain "x-factor,"and that 2) in the end, this factor is more or less everything. 

Speaking of qualifications, in addition to intrinsic mental capacity or raw candle power, there is the good will (i.e., rigorous intellectual honesty) that is a necessary condition, while the sufficient condition is a vertilizing grace which is by definition extrinsic to oneself, and which requires its own qualifications, e.g., humility, surrender, and cooperation. 

You will have noticed that in our Age of Stupidity, "the intellect is atrophied to the point of being reduced to a mere virtuality" (Schuon). This is in contrast to pure intelligence of the intellect, which "immensely surpasses thought." 

But as far as I know, there is no acknowledgement of this elementary principle in the Land of Tenure, and one can well understand why, if you've heard the old story about the Professor's New Clothes. To put it another way, only when the tide of unreality goes out do you discover who's been philosophizing naked.

For example, biology is real, but is presently being obscured by a high tide of subrational gender ideology. This explains how Lia Thomas can swim in it. 

They say this whole postmodern fiasco starts with Descartes' little remark that I think, therefore I am. 

First of all, this gives waaaaay too much credit to philosophy, but there is truth in it, in the sense that this is one of the possibilities of human nature. If you add Descartes' methodical doubt of the self-evident to Kant's reduction of the world to our own subjective categories, that's more than enough to inspire centuries of mischief.

Here's how Schuon summarizes our situation:

all anti-intellectual philosophy falls into this trap: it claims, for example, that there is only the subjective and the relative, without taking account of the fact that this is an assertion which, as such, is valid only on condition that it is itself neither subjective nor relative, for otherwise there would no longer be any difference between correct perception and illusion, or between truth and error. 

.... if everything is relative -- in a sense which excludes all reflection of absoluteness in the world -- then the definition of relativity is equally relative, absolutely relative, and our definition has no meaning. Relativists of all kinds -- the "existentialist" and "vitalist" defenders of the infra-rational -- have then no excuse for their bad habits of thought. Those who would dig a grave for the intelligence do not escape this fatal contradiction.

By the way, I've looked into it, and the time machine is a piece of crap, it doesn't work.