Brief Note on the Philosophical Life
This is unedited, because I need to get back to work:
Davidson was talking about what the concept of a philosophical life could possibly mean in a contemporary context the other day, and it caused much walking-home-on-a-brisk-Hyde-Park-Tuesday-evening discussion. I got to thinking, and this is, as Foucault would say, only to put it schematically: much of what had been proposed regarding this concept focused on what the philosopher himself does, to himself. It places the action, and the burden of the important action, on the philosopher himself. But I was thinking of people I know, as usual, as models for what this could be, and thinking of Foucault himself, and want to put this conceptualization forward: what about a vision of a philosophical life that places the philosopher as a kind of facilitator, one who uses his/her unique gifts and training to made possible the expressive acts of others, the speaking, living, making, doing of those around him or her? Like Foucault, who did what he could to allow the people he was concerned with to speak for themselves, or like Brandon and Rich at PIFAS (certainly among the best philosophers I’ve ever known–Ramsey too, and others), who, rather heroically, gave both psychical and physical shape to a space of human flourishing. Now, look, anyone can run a warehouse, anyone can put up studios, but is there not something uniquely philosophical about the forms of facilitation that certain individuals and groups engage in in order to make such spaces not just possible, but to allow them to live and flourish? I think, probably, yes.