School of Mystification

Since Marx wrote that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it," those of us whose training is in philosophy but who declare some sort of fidelity to marxist theory have often wondered whether we are anachronistic.  Many of us have tried to explain away this quote in various ways, sometimes going so far as to make bold and self-aggrandizing statements that Marx really meant that the point of philosophy is to change the world––even though it is highly doubtful Marx thought that armies of philosophers should be unleashed to reason our way to communism.  Thus, when I exited student life with a PhD in philosophy I found myself, like many other marxists with similar degrees, a bit jaded by this whole thing called "philosophy" and whether it had any use.

And though I've been working on a manuscript that examines this problem––what it means to do philosophy as a marxist, how to make sense of this quote from the Theses on Feuerbach––this whole business of philosophy and a degree that has meant being in school for the vast majority of life (and without a secure job) often causes me great annoyance.  [Note to any publishers reading this blog: I am not going to explicitly explain my take on this problem here but, if you're interested, please give me a book deal.]  This is probably why I have written jaded and grumpy articles about marxist academics who surrender and become nothing more than career academics, or why I have little patience for some of the more rarified discussions in philosophy that, at least in my grumpy opinion, seem like a waste of time.

What annoys me even more than my already dismal opinion of my chosen academic discipline is the meaning that philosophy is often accorded outside of academia––or, more accurately, the meaning given to philosophy by people who have never really studied philosophy but who imagine that they are philosophers and want to convince other people of their philosophical greatness.  Philosophy is bad enough but pseudo-philosophy?  If philosophers can only interpret the world than pseudo-philosophers can't even do that.

Case in point: the "School of Philosophy" which operates out of Toronto.  Almost every morning on my subway ride to work––to actually teach philosophy classes––I end up looking at an advertisement for this school of so-called philosophy that promises to teach potential students the meaning of life, how to be happy, and other such platitudes.  It's already bad enough that I have to feel like I'm anachronistic and that most of the world thinks philosophy is silly, I have to put up with advertisements for an institution that is engaged in confirming the common-sense opinions about philosophy: that it is all about opinions, quasi-religious reflection, and whatever other nonsense this School of Philosophy promises.

Complete with a stupid logo.

The School of Philosophy complains that philosophy used to be about "practical concerns" and that wasn't supposed to be "theoretical or academic".  Then it goes on to expound on such nebulous notions as "the wisdom within", "self-discovery", "different levels of awareness"… it even provides meditation for fucks-sakes!  Now maybe I'm some evil theoretical/academic philosopher, and so adherents to the School of Philosophy should not trust someone who has spent years actually studying the history of philosophy, but I was sort of under the impression, despite my anxiety about philosophy in general, that philosophers in general––from Socrates onwards––were not really content with proselytizing "different levels of awareness" but were more concerned with questioning what it means to be aware and the entire foundation for these so-called "levels".  I was also under the impression that philosophers, since the bloody pre-Socratics, were often quite wary of blithely speaking of "self-discovery" or extolling on "the wisdom within" without spending a lot of time (perhaps wasteful time, yes) arguing about the very meaning of wisdom, what it means to be "wise"––what it even means to know.  But hey, what do I know?  I'm just some misled theoretical/academic trainee in philosophy who spent all those years in philosophy in a university and who didn't have the foresight to benefit from the true philosophical teachings of the School of Philosophy's wise teacher, Paraic Lally, who has enjoined me to "awaken to conscious living."

My first encounter with the School of Philosophy was years ago, right when I had finished my MA.  I had applied at a university in Toronto for my PhD, and was still waiting to hear back about whether I was accepted, but was still in the process of moving to this city so that I could live with my partner.  Unsure if I would be accepted in this PhD program, and realizing that I needed to find some job with only degrees in philosophy (not very hireable), I saw an advertisement for Paraic Lally's oh-so-wise institution and, assuming it was a well-intentioned non-academic school for lay-people, decided to send an email inquiring about a job.  This was before the School of Philosophy had a website; I had no idea what it was about except that it claimed to be a school of philosophy.  But when someone emailed me back and told me that they were not interested in hiring people with formal degrees in philosophy, I realized I should be skeptical.  In retrospect, I should have guessed that they were looking for underpaid acolytes to work under their oh-so-wise true philosopher teacher who was going to explain REAL philosophy without any philosophy training because he was a true philosopher unlike those false theoretical/academic philosophers.  Plus, meditation is always a bonus––especially if you slap the name philosophy on it.

This whole confusion of philosophy with some form of new age mystification is not new.  The history of philosophy might be problematic for a historical materialist, but this pseudo-philosophy exists at a far deeper level of problematization.  When you get people such as Rhonda Byrne arguing that her so-called Secret is some sort of completion of the secrets of philosophy, when you run into astrologers at parties (as a colleague of mine has) who claim they have "degrees in metaphysics", and when some of your philosophy students like Eckhart Tolle, you begin to wonder whether a certain violence is being done to your discipline by students who might have flunked out of an introduction course years back.

Well at least the School of Philosophy got one thing right––philosophy should be about practical concerns.  But practical life has nothing to do with meditation and finding one's inner self, which is the opposite of practical because it is the nadir of mystifying and withdrawing behaviour.  A philosophy that deals with practical life already exists: it is called marxism––what Gramsci called "the philosophy of praxis" and it has nothing but hatred for hucksters who teach quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo and call it philosophy––perhaps even more so than it would hate career philosophers.