Trevor's Wisdom

Philo Sophia, the love of wisdom, not of knowledge, not of science, not of logic, of wisdom, wisdom, but what is wisdom one might ask, I think wisdom is how to live life, isn’t that what wisdom is, isn’t that why they call stuff like ecclesiastes and proverbs wisdom literature, when was the last time anybody called any philosophy of mind textbook wisdom literature, it’s not wisdom, but this is what philosophy is now, it’s not the love of wisdom anymore, it’s just another scientific endeavor, what is the value of living your entire life reading books and learning all about stuff and being professionally successful and being totally influential in a field, if you don’t know how to live life or don’t have any wisdom about life, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now and I think it is something that hasn’t sat right with me since I got to graduate school. I was writing an article for the blog called the value of analytic philosophy and my roomate tedla loves analytic philosophy and thinks that anything older than 5 years has no more philosophical value, maybe that’s a mischaracterization, but I see this same attitude in all of the philosophers here, the so called professional philosophers, tim ripping on derrida, Quentin calling all of modern philosophy pop philosophy because they were not smart enough to get into scholastic universities, I guess there are a couple of issues here, I’ll try to name them one by one, in a totally analytic way, hah!
1) what value is it to have a theory or a philosophy, like Quentin claims this scholastic stuff is that is totally technical and very very rigorous if nobody except a very small select group of people can understand it. That is why Quentin said that scholastic philosophy died out, because it got so rigorous and so technical and so sophisticated that nobody could understand that. Does that have any value, is that even philosophy, is wisdom supposed to be that sophisticated that nobody can understand it. No, I think I agree with marie here, wisdom is supposed to be simple, not simple in that everybody understands it, but simple in that although not a lot of people understand it, once they understand it, they think, wow, that’s kinda obvious, why didn’t I think of that before. So I guess what I’m tryin to say is that etiquette is philosophy, etiquette is how to live life and lessons on how to live life is wisdom and thus, etiquette is philosophical wisdom, let’s move on to the second question
2) because philosophy is the love of wisdom and is supposed to be the study of wisdom and not of science, is analytic philosophy even philosophy? It chops the world up into little pieces and trust me, I think that in a way it has value because in order to understand the world, at least on some level, we need to chop it up into little pieces, isn’t tha twhat thscietific method does and what analytic philosophy does. But then I guess the question is is that philosophy or is it just science, the science of mind, the science of meaning, the science of meta science,
3) geez, I had all these thoughts, but now they escapte me for some reason, I guess I think of Quentin, I was over at Quentin’s house today with tedla and his house is a fucking mess, he hasn’t eaten in like three days, he was telling us how doctors years ago diagnosed him with faminism or something, that he is constantly in a starved state and close to dying because he is famished, and I guess he would be one of the first to say that what he is doing isn’t philosophy but is physics, but all the stuff that I’ve read of him according to the above definition, really isn’t philosophy. What wisdom can one glean about life from the kalaam cosmological argument, from an infinite number of infinities, from quantum mechanics, from any of these so called philosophical disciplines? I guess then according to this definition, what would count as philosophy is ethics, definitely, because it is about what is right and wrong and that directly relates to life, etiquette, because that also relates to life, probably health class, that that also relates to life, but does metaphysics relate to life, or more specifically living the good, virtuous, wise life? I don’t think it does, but maybe I’m wrong. Doesn’t epistemology relate to life, I guess maybe a little bit, but do we really need to be clear on internalist externalist justification in order to live the good life? What about lingusitics and the philosophy of language, truth and meaning, do these directly relate on how to live the good life? What about philosophy of mind? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a metaphysics and philosophy of mind major and I love natural theology stuff and I’m sure I’mm gonna love modal logic and I already like logic, but I guess I’m having a hard time seeing how some of this stuff relates to living the good life. I wonder if Quentin is living the good and virtuous life? He so wrapped up inn his studies and doesn’t even have time to eat, I think that is being downright unphilosophical, living in a house that is a complete pig sty (thanks for the term mom) is not loving wisdom, I guess we need to make a distinction between truth and wisdom, tedla talked about philosophy being the search for truth, but technically, it’s not the search for truth, it’s the love of wisdom, I think I’m gonna be done writing here for a little while, my inspiration has run out and I think it’s time for me to go to bed. I’m totally getting tired. I also don’t think I’m gonna smoke what’s next to me either, I’m going to bed and if I smoke that I’ll be up for another few hours and I need to get to bed because I have modal logic to learn about tomorrow. I guess that’s it for tonight, but I think I’m gonna incorporate some of that stuff into my the value of analytic philosophy blog that I’m putting together for the wmu blog. But this is a good start and I’ll post this on my blog just because