Most humans—not just drunks or children—have no idea what they “have in mind” when they are doing things: they are just doing the “done thing,” “what they always heard one should do.” This is the same as saying that their purposes are ultimately not their own, not under their willful or conscious control. Every human who cannot give an explicit and rational account of his own ultimate motives is necessarily a slave of some kind of force beyond his comprehension. And, if you have ever tested the philosophical aptness of most people, you realize that most people are indeed overwhelmingly obscure to themselves. The question “why?” is an alien language to most people. They get by without interrogating themselves in this way, for the most part. The Socratic “examined life” is truly an orphaned idea in modernity, more than ever a fragment out of a previous culture (of Hellenic aristocratism) with which we share very little if any root-values. — kennethsmith: If you will allow me to continue my effort to understand.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 02:56:54 +0000
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