Operational Definition of Philosophy, and some problems with Simplification

In this blog we do both academic philosophy and popular "pop" philosophy. In my last post I gave a link to Rosenbaum's pop philosophy article, so I want to talk about pop philosophy a bit.

Operational Definition of Pop (popular) Philosophy: An operational definition of pop philosophy is philosophy which is written with a very large audience in mind, especially to the extent that such philosophical ideas will be simplified.

I'll remind you that Simplification is great, but if we miss out on some relevant material we're in big trouble.

Thusly, popular music includes the Beatles, who write great love songs, but does not necessarily include less instrumentalist and composer Jon Brion. The strength is we get the Beatles on the radio, but the weakness is we do not get Jon Brion on the radio.

Nietzche wants to "do philosophy with a sledgehammer" getting rid of Idols of past heroic philosophers. This hammering is my biggest problem with him as a philosopher. I often joke with Rick, saying that I do not understand all of this stuff but I understand that it is important. He retorts: I understand all of this stuff but I do not understand why it is important. Nietzche himself would not have most of the ideas that he did without reading the classics. He was a professor of Classical Philology; the study of original source texts.

One of the theses played with on this blog, and in my life is, "Everyone is a philosopher, they just may or may not know it." I cite the fact that we use maxims and idioms in order to get through the days. I cite the fact that everyone has to employ some morality in order to assess their goals. Everyone has to make some meaning in order to keep living.

Why can't everyone be a philosopher? Is this an existentialist question? Well basic set theory says we have to denote a group somehow. Intuitively we know that philosophers have a certain number of traits that other people do not.

How is this relevant to our original paragraph; relevant to popular philosophy? I think it's pretty clear that if we are all philosophers then philosophy is pretty popular. Ha! But the reason we scorn pop music, pop psychology, and pop-whatever is because they gloss over some good stuff.

I can't name any really bad music right now, but I certainly can say the Eugenics movement, as it was popular science, was a bad call.


Thought terminating cliche: All of these things are things to think about.