Against the death of philosophy

Against the death of philosophy.  Philosophy has surely changed for its practitioners throughout its history.  This is philosophy whether as practiced in the West or in the East, or anywhere for that matter, anywhere where there are changeable humans and changeable philosophers at the ground of the inquiries and passions that make up the lifeblood of the enterprise.  We philosophers today, at the beginning of the third millennium, must contend not only with the host of contradictory methods towards and proposals for what constitutes the world or what drives and moves our lives, but must deal too with changes in the charge of the atmosphere itself, questions about what use philosophy has in a world obsessed with usefulness, or what grandeur there could be in the useless, what connection there is between philosophy as a way of life and the other transfigurations of our lives happening as a consequence of being timely beings, say our connectedness now to peoples around the planet through internet and satellite technology, or how to practice philosophy, and to what avail, when the dominant attunement or mood of our age is boredom with all things, boredom at the ground, not least with our once high-flying aspirations to know or to grow into more confidence in our ignorance, what philosophy has to say, if anything, along with religion and science and the arts, about our–likely, more and more likely–extinction, and other such monumental considerations.

            But we don’t give up our task for all that.  Philosophy does not die for all that. It would be a mistake to say that we are tireless in never giving up; it might rather be closer to the mark to say that tiredness itself could turn into, perhaps has already turned into, a ground for philosophizing, our growing tired or being tired with all the challenges and our being called to confront them while at the same time never being able to keep up with them, our being forced to play, as it were, a lose-lose game with fits of delusion and make-believe during its quarter-breaks and halftimes.   It follows us wherever we go, this mistress or mister of ours, and those who speak rashly about the death of philosophy forget the tenacity with which we cling to whatever has already hooked us.  Now we are caught in the stream and on the hook, and we will travel where the waters go, from stream to calm pond, from pond again to creek and river, from the river, to the ocean, the monster, and we will have to go that way, like it or not, even if we can no longer recognize that which lures us.