We have in our society a crisis of major dimensions.  The crisis has been created by the universities and a general nihilism as reflected by our cultural leaders.  That crisis revolves around the issue of practical reality-based action and how it is impacted by negation and nihilism. The result of this problem will most certainly be a wild, random activism ruled by a more brazen nihilism than we see even today. If this problem goes uncorrected, there may well come a point in American history where all institutions will breakdown. I call this problem philosophy's inferiority complex.

This complex is seen most clearly by observing the nihilism in our culture and projecting that nihilism into the future.  The intellectuals trained in our universities have essentially given up their minds and are engaged in a wanton campaign of destruction of everything that relates to values, freedom and individual rights.  They are the harbingers of a new fascism that will be more brutal than any form of fascism before.  If it goes uncorrected, our cultural institutions will not be able to hold up.  Here are some examples:

The movie Fahrenheit 9/11 uses the basic principle of negation and seeks to brazenly and consciously manipulate the facts in order to fit the negation.  The assertion that President Bush lied regarding our going into war in Iraq is based upon a negation of the entire context of the events of 9/11/2001.  Our nation was attacked on our own shores by a group of people that sees the U.S. as an imperial/colonial threat to their own imperialist goals.  To accept this premise about the U.S. and then to build an ideology of hate around it is the basic approach of the terrorists and of Michael Moore.  Moore and the terrorists see the United States as an aggressor nation.  They muster all of the facts of history that they can easily manipulate, some opinions culled from cold war period communist propaganda and Herbert Marcuse, manipulate those facts by dropping the context in which they took place, even manufacture some facts, and then conclude that we are a dictatorship like Nazi Germany intent on terrorizing and dominating the world.  The facts are not as they interpret.

First of all, this country is primarily based upon the single most unique concept in the history of the world: the inviolability of individual rights.  This fundamental fact sets the foundation for an entirely different interpretation of history and of our intentions in the world.  The U.S. has been a liberator of oppressed peoples time after time and that includes the liberation of Iraq in our present context.  Seldom has the U.S. contradicted this principle (though there have been some contradictions).  It still remains true that in principle our nation is a liberator and we are essentially free people.  There have even been times when we knowingly violated our own principles and dealt with people that were not quite proper when it served a strategic objective such as in Pakistan in our present circumstance.  To call such an association immoral even though it may help us capture Osama bin Ladin is a complete dropping of context.  To state that such an association is an indication of the type of government we possess is a complete evasion of the reality that we see around us in our country.

What does this have to do with philosophy?  The victim of Moore’s movie is reality and the facts that define it.  When a large number of people in society base their personal and political beliefs upon negation of reality and obfuscation as a frame of reference, upon some facts, many non-facts, distorted interpretations and lies, all mixed into a sort of pseudo-truth, you cannot, as a society, develop effective political and institutional processes.  The truth is sacrificed to the distortion and those responsible for making decisions in the “real” world are unable to function.  Those who take their place are the inept, incompetent and envious.  Hatred then becomes the means of decision-making and there is no common ground between the positive and negative elements of society. 

I have long known that philosophy was in a state of crisis, though I have not always known all the reasons. That most of philosophy seemed to be a useless gibberish was enough to convince me of its problems. Yet, I had naively expected Western philosophy to become understandable and useful with the dedication of my time and the coming of maturity. Eventually, I came to the realization that the right philosophy, a philosophy for living on earth, was possible and understandable.  But it requires an intellectual foundation that is based, essentially on truth, knowledge and principled action.  Without these, we have no hope and we are presently drifting toward a militant nihilism.

Through study, I learned also that most of philosophy was indeed gibberish, but a devastating gibberish whose pattern had formed the foundation for centuries of exploitation of man by man, of war, hate and more war. I learned that because of this it was important to learn to understand the gibberish--so as to avoid the mistakes of the past.  I learned that the Michael Moore’s of the world were not intellectuals but anti-intellectuals, people who were masquerading as intellectuals for the sake of expressing their utter hatred of man and especially his mind.  Moore did it through negation just like many of his predecessors who, because of their nihilism chose to portray man as stupid, vile and easily deceived.  That their philosophical premises, once accepted, were the very factors that were contributing to social decline was ignored by a host of anti-man, anti-mind and anti-freedom propagandists and intellectuals.

Many youngsters today, sensing that ideas are crucial for man, go into philosophy classrooms with a genuine desire to learn. Yet, in spite of the fact that philosophy has guided mankind's development, many of these youngsters leave the classrooms with the idea that philosophy is meaningless and unnecessary; they leave as nihilists because their college professors, rather than teach them how to think, preferred to waste their precious youth in analyzing how men like Michael Moore created their different “truth.” Philosophy and the development of reason becomes for them too much of a bother. The introduction of a textbook on philosophy that I recently read will provide ample proof that it is philosophy instructors themselves who encourage such attitudes. It is called THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY, edited by William P. Alston and Richard B. Brandt.

After what appears to be a sincere effort to explain how philosophy is relevant, the editors make a statement that reveals the beginning of what I suspect is some sort of appeasement. In short, they descend from the ivory tower to the level of the kid next door to state, "Philosophy is the attempt "to get it all together." That these two philosophical minds resort to a jargon reminiscent of street gangs (or 1960s hippies) is not so horrible. It might merely indicate the awkward position in which a professor finds himself when he enters a classroom to find such mentalities staring blankly back at him. But instead of descending to the level of such minds the educator should realize that he is not going to be able to teach abstract concepts to people who are at home only with the pre-school equivalent of language. But more importantly, the use of such language, after presenting a well-thought-out discussion of the importance of philosophy, can only encourage disrespect from the students who want to look up to philosophers and philosophy teachers.  To be appeased in such a way would be a disappointment for anyone seeking to apprehend the brilliance of brilliant minds.  Such language, such vagueness and anti-intellectuality as is expressed in the statement “get it all together” is the very mentality is what they want to escape.  They do not want to be told that Michael Moore and his ilk are the endgame.  They want to understand not become more confused than they were when they entered the classroom.

Again, let me stress, their statement was only an indication of their attitude toward the students. To fully close the case, we must read further.

"You may find some of the readings that follow not easy to understand. You will doubtless not be surprised by this, in view of the foregoing characterization of philosophy. Any important enterprise is likely to be difficult, especially one as fundamental and as wide-ranging as philosophy. Philosophy has been the work of men who found dealing in abstractions relatively easy. Its problems have engaged the energies of many of the most brilliant men in human history. There is no other discipline which can number such a succession of intellectual giants; perhaps you will bear with them when the going is heavy."

It is as if the writers of that paragraph are apologizing to the students for the ability of brilliant men, as if they are saying, "We know you don't aspire to this sort of brilliance, in fact, you probably hate brilliant men, don't you? But please, for the sake of my introducing some ideas to you, (and possibly lifting you up to the intellectual level of a busboy) bear with it." Any half-witted savage would crush the skull of such a man with such an appeasing attitude. The type of student these professors are trying to appease are not worth teaching.  If this is what they find in their classrooms, then we are lost.  Why not challenge them to a higher standard instead of apologizing for the brilliance of impractical thinkers?

Let’s imagine that these students were, instead of studying philosophy, being taught a foreign language.  At first, they would find the words and sentences in the new language to be confusing gibberish, incomprehensible, not because it was too abstract, too complicated or too intellectual, but because they are new words, an outgrowth of a different geographical, cultural and ethnic background.  Imagine how the students would feel if the language teacher, the counterpart of the professor of philosophy, were to tell the students that he understands that Spanish, let’s say, is a difficult language but they should bear with the Spaniards and try to get through to the end of the semester.  How many students would not consider this teacher an incompetent?

That these two philosophical minds consider philosophy so impractical that intellectual appeasement is necessary on its behalf indicates the state of philosophy regarding its views of its own importance, particularly its view of the nature and importance of practical intelligence. There is not a lower state that philosophy could reach. The intelligent student who is trying to think abstractly, who believes that abstractions can have meaning and can be applied to the world, is the first loser. And he is the student they lose first.  This student wants to be an intellectual giant. He doesn't fear the task. If the men who teach philosophy say to him, "Bear with philosophers. They're just intelligent men,” might they not also say, "Intelligent students? Oh, we have some, but they're just the few who find dealing in abstractions relatively easy. We must bear with them." What will this do to the student’s search for intellectual excellence?  What about his/her ability to answer philosophical/ethical/political questions and find workable solutions? There is nothing relatively easy about dealing in abstractions. It is a difficult demanding job, and no one who undertakes it should suffer that kind of insult--nor are apologies in order.

Philosophy courses should be designed to teach students about philosophy and its development. They should present all ideas openly and with the conviction that ideas count. Whatever the problems of philosophy, and there have been many, intelligence is not one of them. No student should bear the burden of having to bear with intelligence. It is intelligence that he is trying to develop by going to school.  And it is nihilism, the attack on reality and the mind that wins when intelligence is to be put up with.  It doesn’t take much of a mind to see the obvious hatred and ignorance of the pronouncements of Fahrenheit 9/11.  But we should at least try to develop students who understand when they are being deceived.

THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY edited by William P. Alston and Richard B. Brandt is published by Allyn and Bacon, Inc., Boston.

 Posted on 8/4/04