(AP) "Dance and laugh and play, ignore the message we convey, it seems we're only here to entertain."

(Since the song is so good, I just have to finish the quote)
"A rebellion cut-to-fit, I refuse to be the sountrack to it
Music saying we're still knee-deep in shit.
Well there's something wrong inside, we've played it safe, enjoyed the ride
You won't like this but I've got something to confide.
We stand for something more, than a faded sticker on a skateboard
Rain on your parade then we're out the door
And I don't even care any-fucking-more." (Still none of you...? That's what I thought...)

Anyhoo, now that my (somewhat extensive) title is out of the way, this is going to be my first Academic(ish) post. The impetus for this has come from conversations that we have had in my Hegel class. Or, rather, thoughts that have occured to me in consideration of comments that the professor made off the cuff a couple of weeks ago. The real reason that the topic has come up at all was the death of Pope John Paul II. Now, people obviously have some conflicting feelings about JPII (he was pro-life [& anti-euthanasia], anti-gay, anti-feminism [which *I* don't personally understand] and anti-stem cell research...but he was also anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-imperial and anti-nazi...).

My aim here is not to pass judgement on him (and even if I did pass some sort of judgement on him as a person, I think it is generally agreed upon [by the world's catholic population at least] that he was a very good pope). In terms of trying to enfranchise (sic) the world's catholic populations, speaking (at least) 8 languages and travelling to 117 countries and every continent (excluding Antarctica) is totally unprecedented and (I think) amazing. I am not going to take away any of the (what I believe is) rightfully due respect owed him. Rather, my aim here is to adress part of his history which is suspiciously absent from the frenzy of news reporting which followed his death. Now, what I'm relatively sure a lot of you (except those of you who I told recently) don't know is that the pope had a PH.D in philosophy (yes, philosophy!) and he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Krakow for 20 years before becoming pope. In fact, up until close to the time of his death he was still a professor emeritus on the books there. Now, the suspicious part: Among all the accolades mentioned in the news media after his death (he was an avid athelete, a scholar, a poet, an actor and even a stonecutter [this information is readily available on the internet]) there was no mention of Karol Wjtyla's graduate degree nor his tenured position at U of K. Well, that's not precisely true. A classmate of mine brought in the special "Pope's Death" commemorative edition of Time magazine and in it you can find out that JPII had a PH.D (although it doesn't say in what) and you can also find out that he was a professor (but it doesn't list a subject).
This may be very surprising to you, but I guarantee that this is not the first time that the topic of philosophy has been willfully avoided in media. If nothing else, consider that "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" when it was first released in hardback. Thanks to Val for pointing out that the "philosophers" in question were something more like what we would call "alchemists," but something tells me that a desire for factual consistency (and not wanting to trivialize philosophy by equating it with alchemy) is not what caused them to change the title. I can just hear Sally from marketing in my head, "but no kid will want to pick up a book with 'philosopher' (philosophy) in the title...it's BOOOORING." There are many other examples of this phenomenon. I do not want to go into any more depth about that here, but if you would like to know, you can always IM me and I'll be happy to clue you in.
The main bone that I have to pick with society-at-large regarding this phenomenon is that it is, I think, chiefly a misunderstanding about the aims and practices of philosophers which causes people to have this knee-jerk (or yawn-inducing - take your pick) negative reaction to it. For the rest of this post I will examine the entries for "philosophy" on YourDictionary (www.yourdictionary.com) and attempt to shed some light on what I think the real essence of philosophy is, and then make some closing reflections about philosophy in general. Here are the first four definitions provided by the above website. I will mention all of them and then I will pear them down to what I think is the best candidate for how philosophy ought to be viewed by the great unwashed:

1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.
2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
3. A system of thought based on or envolving such inquiry: "The philosophy of Hume."
4. The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.

I will treat these all in turn:
1. This is mostly an etymological fleshing out of the word "philosophy," which contains the roots for "love" and "knowledge." I don't think it's innacurate to say that philosophers love knowledge, but this should, by no means, be assumed to be the sufficient condition for being a philosopher. I'm sure mathematicians, physicists and anthropologists alike all "love knowledge,"(if you didn't, why would you be in academia? It certainly isn't because of the money.) but none are philosophers. Now, how about this last part. That is, that we (philosophers) arrive at our knowedge through intellectual means and moral self-discipline. Now, it is certainly true that we arrive at knowledge by intellectual means, but again, this doesn't pick out philosophy and only philosophy. I think it would be an insult to all other academic disciplines to say that we are the only ones who exercise the intellect. Now, to the last bit...I actually have a funny story about that. My first upper division philosophy class was with Keith Kaiser and at one point during lecture, he cocked his head to the side inquisitively and asked, "Do any of you ever get the idea that philosophers are just more moral than your average person?" A bunch of us nodded (I mean, they spend a good deal of time developing what it means to act rightly. Wouldn't it be a huge waste of time to work to gain those realizations and then act in contravention of them?). Kaiser laughed, "No, philosophers are no more moral than anyone else...we are just very good at talking about what it would be to be moral." (God bless that man, he should have been given tenure, maybe the university will one day realize..) And that's all I have to say about *that* part.
2. This is interesting...philosophers do study all of those things: nature, causality, epistemology (the study of knowledge), ethics and value theory...and we do base our knowledge on logical reasoning, but I think it's patently false to say that philosophers do not rely on empirical methods. I mean, what good would philosophy be if it didn't reflect our reality? (imagine that certain philosophers of physics rejected general relativity...would anyone have any reason to listen to the conclusions they would draw). Philosophers certainly use empirical methods not only for the philosophy of science, but also for the philosophy of language and ethics. We examine human experience and behavior and then attempt to correctly describe it...just ask Wittgenstein...well, that might be a little hard at this point...
3. This is just a certain subset of usages, I think. I think they're just trying to describe what it means when someone says something like, "the philosophy of Hume." But I'm a little unclear as to the reference and scope of "such inquiry"...in any event, I don't think this is relevant to the essence of philosophy.
4. Surprise, Surprise - this may seem overly simplistic to some, but I think this is actually and precisely what real philosophers do. We examine assumptions or beliefs in a WIDE range of fields (just look at def. 6 on the website - and that's far from exhaustive) and we critically evaluate them (using logic, deduction and yes, even intuition...). Philosophers provide a certain kind of check on the rest of society. Namely, we consider the ways that people talk about things (from faith to free will, knowledge of numbers to knowledge of intentions) and we ask ourselves one simple question, "Does this make sense?" Philosophy is really just a reasoned questioning process. Sure, studying philosophy has given me a love of knowledge. But it has also provided me with a method, or rather, a standard for evaluating new information by providing me with techniques for questioning, consideration and invalidation that are not always present or encouraged in our culture.

Conversational aside --- At this point maybe I should mention that it is my silly, idealistic dream to teach high school kids to do philosophy. They're at a formative stage for their cognitive capacities and I know, having been one once (a LONG time ago), that many of them are skeptical. And I think being able to add philosophy's tricks of the trade (so to speak) to their intellectual arsenal would only help the post-adolescent transition from the safe, caring and (generally) accepting world of high school (and, to a lesser extent [location depending], college) to the often deceptive, manipulative and even irrational (in some respects) working world.---end conversational aside.

I think it is more or less true that the media and "society" see philosophy as boring, hokey and even (lock the doors and bar the windows) impractical. And people may actually believe this. But, you want to know my honest opinion? I think the reason there is an anti-philosophy bias in the western media is that people in the know realize that it is dangerous to many of the institutions that "we" prize over all else. And so the image these people endeavor to project to people with their finger far from the pulse (jammed straight up their asses - thanks, K.S.) is one which makes philosophy seem bland, irrelevant and uninteresting...but I will save that rant for another post.

In closing I would just like to say the following: Consider the major problems of the day: Terrorism, Foreign Policy (and how best to reengratiate ourselves with foreign nations with whom we have, among other things, idealogical differences), Terri Schiavo and the right to die, Michael Jackson and child/sexual abuse, Domestic policy (from gay marriage to the right to arm, [the bounds of] free speech to stem cell research)...By and large, I think you'll find, our (and here I mean, people in general) positions on these issues are inextricably intertwined with our core beliefs and our fundamental assumptions about the way that the world is (and should be). Taking all of this for granted, then, doesn't it seem like what is needed is precisely to have philosophical discussions about these things. My diagnosis: let's remove "philosophy" from the list of rhetorically employed "swear words" ("oh, that's JUST philosophy") and lets attack these issues as they deserve to be attacked.

---End Communication.