Posted by The Happy Tutor
What drew me to philosophy as a teenager were the eternal questions:
What is it to live a good life?
What is it to be a good person?
What is most true? And how can I contribute to it, or bear witness to it?
What is the beautiful? And can I create or advance it?
What do we owe one another in a good or just society?
What is human excellence? How can I cultivate it in myself and others?
Now, many years later, I listen to Theorists, talking among themselves, and the words just buzz past, though now and again I recognize a name. I am listening still for answers to the original questions, for they seem more timely than ever, but instead of answers I hear are mainly quibbles about the slippage of signs, or the history of rickety discipline (English majors pretending to be philosophers). Those quibbles, and the among Theory scholars, do not answer the craving or tell me my duty as a man and a citizen. Quibbling, nor even the history of lit crit, is not my idea of human excellence, virtue, truth, beauty, or justice. Quibbling may be fun, particularly among those who excel at it, but it is not the height of human achievement. Signs slip, but time slips away, and to spend it so is to waste one's life.
Like Diogenes, I go about the streets with a lantern in daylight seeking an honest man, or a person who lives well. Whose life exemplifies virtue? The Theorist? Politician? Pundit? The Think Tank Thinker? The rich man or woman? The powerful? The Philanthropist?
To make a point about self-sufficiency, Diogenes, who called himself, "a mad Socrates," would masturbate in public, saying, "I wish I could satisfy my hunger as easily." Truth maybe is best taught by public pranks. Or, who knows? Maybe mental masturbation as practiced by Critical Theorists is a better joke.
Of all role models we have to ask: If I become like him, or imitate her, will I be better or worse as a human being and a citizen? Does excellence in quibbling over terms like "justice" prevent injustice? Does quibbling over "truth" excuse our lies and evasions? If no one has a knock down theory of the good, can I be as bad as I please without moral consequence?
Each of us draws our own self-portrait daily in every word we write. To the theorists, I ask: "What kind of human being is it whose daily life is consumed in writing like that? What other acts, say, of kindness or civic engagement, are neglected? Has the theorist seen himself or herself as a character in a play by Aristophenes? And if so, was it funny or instructive?"
We can and do evade words like "True," "Good," "Beautiful," "Virtuous," or "Just," but in the final accounting we are false, bad, ugly, vicious, and unjust all the same. I am no better. I am just a Fetish Action Figure, a Dungeon Master to the Stars, giving pro bono spankings in the Dumpster behind Wealth Bondage. You, though, could be somebody if you tried.
I mean (whack) no disrespect (whack). Turn about is fair play. I accept my chastisement in return.
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