“It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
It takes a certain kind of delusion to pursue philosophy.
To consider it, we must leave behind everything connected to our lives—it takes us instead to an abstract realm, removed from all certainty and common sense. People who are used to the sun rising every day, and the laws of mechanics applying, in philosophy find little to depend on. Intuitions, maybe, but apparently no truth. We approach conclusions from presuppositions, deduce some shape out of our surrounding confusion, only to reconsider our premises and find that—well, we can't prove they're true. Everything seems conditional. And yet, we must convince ourselves that we can get somewhere with it, lest we begin to see it as a useless exercise. That somewhere, in some space between or inside the webs of theories and ideas there's something waiting to be discovered. Of course, that being true only if philosophy is to us simply a truth-finding method. Funny, isn't it?
To engage with philosophy, we must literally confront the incomprehensible—and then keep on living life as if nothing had happened. We discover a monster under our bed (or rather, in our head), and then we must ignore it. This “must” is not an imperative statement, but a descriptive one; we have no choice but to return to life at some point, suddenly believe again despite its previous impossibility. We, thankfully, cease our questioning for a time, in order to engage with the world. Perhaps among its dense verbosity, its mouthfuls of compound nouns, idiosyncratic vocabularies, and academic jargon, it is lost—philosophy loses itself. In its quest against delusion, it quarrels with common sense. It tells us to 'doubt everything' when by nature we are casually certain about everything; it tells us to contradict everything about existence that we've ever known. To function, we must be certain, yet nothing of value could possibly be so. It seems absurd, ironic, tragic even.
But in any case, however we may delude ourselves, it is unlikely that we will make progress alone. And philosophy's siren call will continue to echo on the uncharted wind; no quotidian event could make a thick enough wax or a strong enough chain to keep us from jumping off the boat. For fear of beating the metaphor to death, maybe we could take swimming lessons together! That way, while we might not reach the siren's rocks, we at least won't immediately drown.
The philosopher needs companionship. Because when the world no longer makes sense, at least we can make fun of Johann Joseph Fux's name, together. Because when we've stared too long into the void—the void has begun to stare back, though there is debate as to whether it was or was not already doing so—we can instead switch to staring at each other after making the most esoteric, idiotic joke the world has ever heard. And maybe we'll laugh at the incomprehensible, and come to love it—or maybe we'll find a reason for existence along the way. In any case, if we must be deluded, we can always make our delusion a fun one.
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