Skip to main content

Philosophy ToDAY


Today is the World Philosophy Day, a friend reminded me in the morning. That friend is a philosopher. He has been a professor of philosophy for most part of his life. Great man he is like Immanuel Kant. The only one great person in my life who knew me from my infantile adolescence and stayed with me until now, the autumn of my life.

UNESCO observes the third Thursday of November as the World Philosophy Day, I learnt after I received the message from Prof. What does philosophy mean to ordinary mortals like me? [And you, may I dare to ask?] Philosophy died long ago. Poetry died a little later.

Prof and I were students of philosophy together at The Retreat in Yercaud [Tamil Nadu, India] in the early 1980s. My early twenties. His too. But he was a mature person unlike me. I was silly. So I didn’t learn much philosophy while he learnt too much and became a Doctor of Philosophy. What surprises me is that he has continued the friendship till this day in spite of my congenital silliness in contradistinction to his acute maturity. I wonder why he continued to take interest in me in spite of all the falls I had on my way.

Is he the real philosopher? Like Socrates.

He may prefer a comparison with Jesus perhaps because he is a Catholic priest. Was Jesus a philosopher? If Jesus was born in Greece, he would have been a philosopher, I think. It wasn’t easy to be a philosopher in the Jewish-Arab world, especially in those days. Even today can we expect any philosophy from those places where Jesus grew up and preached and teached [let me take this Shavian liberty with linguistics if only to honour Shaw on this day of philosophers – ah, I love to see Shaw turning in his tomb]?

My life is reaching a Shavian dramatic climax and there is no romance of the final Judgment Day in my philosophy. But my nights get disturbed by what happened in my past. That’s natural, I think. In our old age, we look back and wonder why we were like this. Does your philosophy agree with me, Prof? You can tick me off saying this is psychology. My problem is that I dabbled in too many things and lacked what you all call a focus.

I should have focused. On what?

Egolessness, I guess.

And I missed that. That’s my failure. The failure of the particular spermatozoon that won the stupid race which was clapped on by ignorance about contraceptives!

Shaw would tell me that it was a scientific problem with a nanosecond… a competition in which you won and millions lost out. And Prof would call it a miracle. My philosophy begins with the loss of millions and the idiotic miracle  that won…

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanNovember 16, 2023 at 10:21 PM

    Hari OM
    Ah, my friend, the minute one starts to ask the questions 'what? how? why?' one is entering the realm of philosophy. It all begins with determining the logic, or lack, in a matter then deconstructing it, exploring each detail, then reconstructing... we are all of us philosophers at some level on any given day. If we do not ask the questions, then we are merely existing. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 17, 2023 at 7:06 AM

      Yes, most of us are philosophers except that we don't use big words like hermeneutics and so on. But those who are only 'existing', without asking questions, seem to be happier. Lucky ones, I'd say.

      Delete
  2. Liz A.November 16, 2023 at 11:09 PM

    I don't think philosophy is dead. It just doesn't look like it once did back in the old days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 17, 2023 at 7:07 AM

      As Yamini says above, as long as there are people who raise questions there will be philosophy. But not the Aristotle type.

      Delete
  3. J. S. VilaNovember 17, 2023 at 1:09 AM

    The philosophie is a world with a lot of ways. And It is one of the first science in the thinking of people.

    ReplyDelete
  4. magiceyeNovember 17, 2023 at 8:01 AM

    One can never be egoless. Philosophy is a way of life where you question everything you see and listen to.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Shalet JimmyNovember 18, 2023 at 12:07 AM

    Please don't say philosophy and poetry are dead...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2023 at 4:54 AM

      I don't want them to die. But so many unthinking people, so much hard- heartedness...

      Delete
  6. CloudiaNovember 18, 2023 at 1:34 AM

    Thank you friend for sharing this philosophical post. Aloha!🙏🏽

    ReplyDelete
  7. KayNovember 18, 2023 at 11:00 AM

    Thank you for your visit, Tomichan. I confess I've not been a good student of philosophy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2023 at 4:14 PM

      That doesn't matter, Kay. I'm kind of dilettante - of many things.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anyone for a better world?

The above video was sent to me on WhatsApp by a friend who also asked me to write a blog post on the injustices of capitalism. The friend quoted Lenin: “Capitalism is going to give us the rope with which we are going to hang them.” I wasn’t particularly enthused by the message or the demand for a blog post because I am like Benjamin the donkey in Orwell’s Animal Farm . Benjamin is cynical when it comes to politics. He knows that no party or ideology is going to make any substantial difference as far as the common folk are concerned. What can be an alternative to capitalism, for instance? Socialism/Communism? Benign dictatorship? Theocracy? The video above shows the absolute heartlessness of capitalism. But has socialism/communism been any better in the erstwhile USSR, China, and present North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba? Dictatorship and theocracy are not economic systems, but have they saved any nation from injustices? I believe the problem is not with systems or ideologies . T...
12 comments
Read more

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...
18 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
45 comments
Read more

The Innards of Spirituality

When a huge concrete cross was being shattered with a demolition hammer, I laughed rather raucously. I was watching the breakfast news on TV as usual. Most of the time, breakfast news is depressing with news about drug addicts, rapists, murderers, and politicians. This video of a cross being brought down in a very unceremonious ritual officiated by revenue mandarins was unique in a country of people whose religious sentiments are more brittle than dry leaves in an Indian summer. Maggie was not amused at all by my laughter because she misunderstood that I was laughing at a religious leaf being crushed with a political hammer. “This is the same cross in front of which our X (I named a very close relative of ours) fell prostrate a couple of months back during their picnic to Parumthumpara,” I explained. “She is a very spiritual person and so she respected the cross, that’s all.” Maggie’s spirituality is more like a leaf in a storm: I am the satanic storm and she is the tenacious ...
10 comments
Read more

Insecure Leaders

Yakshi in Pinterest In his book The God Delusion , Richard Dawkins argues that nationalism, religious bigotry, and other forms of zealotry are often the result of insecurity, a lack of self-confidence, or a deep-seated fear of insignificance. Quite many of today’s world leaders, who are all extremely and unwarrantedly belligerent, reminded me of Dawkins though I’m no fan of the man’s scientific extremism. Dawkins is only one among many thinkers who expressed similar ideas, however. Eric Hoffer says in The True Believer that mass movements, including religious and nationalist ones, attract individuals who seek to escape their own personal failures or anxieties by identifying with a larger cause. There are too many people suffering from personal insecurities in today’s world, it appears. There’s so much nationalism and even more unhealthy religious fervour. In India, both nationalism and religion have got mixed into a lethal concoction. M any Indian newspapers of today have give...
10 comments
Read more