About

Dear Reader,

I do not know how you arrived here, and I cannot promise that reading this blog will be worth your while. I know very little, and there are many mistakes here, simple ones as well as subtle ones. I am a philosopher and I explore philosophical questions, both systematically and not so systematically, depending on the days, wherever the exploration takes me.

Who am I? That is such a good question. We are already doing philosophy! I am not an academic philosopher - I was born 2,400 years too late to attend the real Academy… But philosophy does not belong only in the academy, and not everything produced in the academy is good anyway. You might ask: what right do you have to call yourself a philosopher? I have no right and I have all the rights. But is any “right” needed anyway? Who gives the imprimatur? Shouldn’t philosophy be for everyone, as long as you want to engage with ideas? Should only Sorbonne doctors be allowed to think about interesting questions? Do you acquire the “right” to be a philosopher by paying tuition at Harvard or Oxford? Beyond labels, titles and identities, ideas are what really matters, whoever you are and wherever you come from.

But what does a philosopher do, and what is philosophy, you ask? More philosophical, and meta-philosophical questions! Here is a provisional sketch of an answer. Philosophy is about reflecting rationally and critically on diverse topics that occupy our minds. It is making thoughts conscious, analyzing them, finding solutions to problems and sometimes being humble enough to formulate questions but recognize that not all questions have definitive, universal or easy answers. In the end, philosophy is Logos in action, it is an eminently human pursuit, maybe the most human pursuit.

What should I do with my life? What is the meaning of my life? What can we actually know? How do we know things? What does it mean to know something? What is being? What is time? How should we organize society? What is justice? What is happiness? Should we strive to be happy? These are the kinds of questions I want to examine here. Of course, many famous philosophers before us have thought about all these topics and more, for centuries analyzing, dissecting and offering countless clever ideas… That will not stop us from thinking and exploring for ourselves and by ourselves, all the while looking at what others have said and are saying.

Dear Reader, you are invited, but I am also writing for myself. I am not looking for fame and if you still wonder who I am, it will become more apparent as you read this blog, if you continue reading. I will be there with all my kinks, warts, ignorance and mistakes, I am afraid. It is all about discussing the ideas anyway. It will certainly be a world at odds with the values of the time and society I live in, which seems to be only interested in mindlessly making ever more money. I do not care about that, that is not me. And if you are here, it is probably not who you are either.

Let’s go! Let’s examine some ideas!

∎