2024/08/01 by Matthew S. Strohl · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayae040
openalex publication_date 2024/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Like many people, I was first drawn to philosophy by the big existential questions. When I was in high school, I read Samuel Beckett and shuddered at the absurdity of mortal life. Awakening to the apparent meaninglessness of it all caused me to suffer terribly. I listened to David Bowie alone in the dark and wept about nothing in particular. But then I started reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Camus, and Sartre, and my young mind was blown by their vigorous answers to the questions that haunted me. It made me want to become a philosopher. Then I found out what professional philosophy is actually like. It has very little to do with the big, profound questions that drew me in. The further I progressed in my education, the more it became a matter of drawing progressively finer-grained distinctions, spiralling towards an ideal of vacuous clarity. I was dismayed to learn that dryness and arcane irrelevance are often treated as points of pride, even in a field as readily sexy as aesthetics. There is a place for highly specialized philosophy, but with the humanities facing a dire crisis of perceived relevance, we should all be taking a look in the mirror and asking what the hell we are really doing here, and whether there’s a middle path between exclusionary esoterica and pandering condescension that we might—as a discipline—pursue.