Working out our economy and our problems

The western world is very disillusioned with the prior dependence it has placed in its economic flow of mind. The greatest difficulty in academia is offering an answer that is right, and theorists are never always right. Life is and never will be a science, as far as we ever understand it to be "life". There will always be metaphysical leaps and bounds, missteps and enthusiastic hops, but we will never give up our attempt to approach our conflicts and problems with inadequate equipment. At times the theorist (whether his title is an economist, scientist, political theorist, or philosopher) projects dilemmas onto a world which was previously much better without them. He sometimes wreaks more problems upon the common man than were already there in the first place. It is part of the drama of our lives and theories about our lives to confront problems, difficulties, and conflicts, and the way that we approach these intuited conflicts is by articulating them. Sometimes we articulate them wrongly, or sometimes we articulate them ineffectively. In other words, nothing is concluded into a productive science at the end of this battle because of too many ambiguous or ineffective words. And yet, we are forced to dynamically engage a world that does not fit under our thumb. We have to approach it with the pen and the mouth as well.

I read an article once by a scientist (I don't care to remember his name) who argued that we are much better off without "philosophy", and that philosophy has never given us anything to hold on to. In short, it has never given us answers, facts. I do not know how to respond to this other than clarifying that the aim of philosophy has always been to pave the way for a clear methodical way to make our lives understandable. Physics was once philosophy. Biology was once philosophy. Economics was, and still is, philosophy. Yet, we always want to blame our philosophers for not giving us a clear-cut science. Alan Greenspan can not be held responsible for economic problems in the West because he got something wrong. Part of his job is to get things wrong. His social role is to theorize, to project frameworks and contexts in which we can articulately sift through our problems of judgment, value, and the network of money flow. Yet, this does not mean we are better without him. It means that we depend upon his mind. And at the end of the day, we can have a president very profoundly say that it's not about "big government or small government"; it's about what "works" and is working. The meaning of Obama's message here is that the old way of articulating our economic crises is not working, and so we need to let go of our attachments to the previously vocalized categories. At the same time, we would not be where we are if we had not articulated the problem this way in the first place.

Not everyone is responsible for a life of study or persistent academic pursuits. We are all situated in a world which demands a type of excellence in whatever condition we find ourselves. The intended life of excellence can not always produce excellence, and this is often very tragic. My life as a philosopher is full of mistakes, misgivings, and words I would have retracted if ever given the chance. Yet, I can not say that I ever regret being a philosopher for the distress and pain I have sometimes caused others, either immediately or intermediately through what I've written or spoken. Sometimes we are wrong, and sometimes we are very right. The wave of postmodern criticism that philosophical theory should be kept as fragmentary as everything else, because of its failure to provide answers to life, is really due to a misunderstanding of philosophy as theory. Theory provides and continues to provide a framework in which the interconnection of all the other sciences and doctrines of these sciences makes the most sense to us and improves our lives. We will always perceive a need to improve our lives as a community. For this reason, we will always keep defining and trying to define what is not yet working but needs to work. It's not an easy job, but it's important to always remain sober and reasonable before we become too intolerant and resort to force.