My blog last
week about a cord hanging from a letterbox can be classified as an instance of philosophy
of everyday life. This is a kind of philosophy that describes, studies and
comments on phenomena around us that are often ignored because they are considered
banal or not important since they are seen as routine. Everyone knows them but
nobody talks about them, for why should they? In this way philosophy of everyday
life ̶ or everyday philosophy for short ̶ should be distinguished from Grand
Philosophy, which discusses Grand Questions, like evil, what is good, what
gives life meaning, what is consciousness, free will, and so on; you’ll be able
to think up such questions yourself. Now it is so that I have nothing against
studying grand questions. I have done it myself in the past, also in these
blogs, and I intend to do so in future as well. They are very important.
Nevertheless, the importance of big questions is no reason to ignore the “little”
phenomena that make up the stream of life, for to my mind they are as important.
Without the stream of life there would be no life at all.
One of my
main interests in philosophy is the philosophy of mind and action. This kind of
philosophy is sometimes also called psychological philosophy. In the same way
philosophy of everyday life can be called sociological philosophy. While in
psychological philosophy the individual is the focus of study, in sociological
philosophy our attention is fixed on phenomena in their social settings. So,
for a philosopher of everyday life a cord hanging from a letterbox is not
simply an action done by someone for a practical reason but it tells us something
about society or social life as a whole; in this case that a characteristic of
the society concerned is trust. Trust gives this action a meaning that is more
than only practical but that is social and philosophical. Sociological
philosophy must be distinguished from philosophy of sociology. The latter
discusses the non-experiential foundations of sociology, while the former says
something about society as a whole and about man as a social being. However,
when describing everyday phenomena, everyday philosophy doesn’t want to judge
and it doesn’t want to answer questions that tell us how we should arrange our
lives; questions that can serve as guiding principles of our actions. This
approach makes everyday philosophy also different from Grand Philosophy. Both
types of philosophy are looking for a meaning in the phenomena they study, but
while in Grand Philosophy ascribing a meaning involves ascribing a judgement
about what is good or bad and what we should do, ascribing a meaning in
everyday philosophy is a way of trying to understand why (for what reason) the
phenomenon concerned happens and how it is related to other phenomena. In this
sense everyday philosophy is often more a kind of theoretical sociology (just
like psychological philosophy is often more a kind of theoretical psychology). Indeed,
the difference between sociological philosophy and theoretical sociology are
relative and they are ends of a sliding scale.
Why is a
philosophy of everyday life important and necessary? Actually, I would say,
because life is more than highlights, main points, essentials and morals.
Basically, life is a stream and when the stream is absent, nothing happens. The
significance of everyday philosophy is also (more or less implicitly) expressed
in this quotation from an article by Finn Janning (pp. 2-3; see Sources below):
“A philosophy for everyday life is … an
investigation of the raw reality of life, taking in all of life’s many
ingredients. Such a philosophy is necessary because — this is my claim or
thesis — we still have not tasted life in all its richness. We tend to cling on
to certain norms or ideals in a way that does not honor our own experience and
intuition. At worst our life becomes an imitation, image or representation of
more authoritative ideals. An image is a copy, that is, a simulation of the
real reality. We have lost contact with life because we follow ideas or images
of how life should be. To paraphrase Jean Baudrillard … life no longer precedes
our moral map, nor does it survive it. Instead, the moral map now precedes life
and engenders it. We live our life as an imitation of a moral model, as if such
a model was not just another human artifact.
A
philosophy for everyday life tries to overcome seductive simulations and
beliefs that the truth is certain, unchangeable, and universal. Instead, [it] …
views each step as a courageous act because it invents the ground it steps
onto. The point is to make philosophy, in every movement, concrete rather than
abstract (or transcendent). … [A] philosophy for everyday life is relational. It
favors direct contact.”
Or as Eric
Kim, a photographer said about street photography:
“I used to think that street photography was
all about getting that one good shot... Wrong.
Street photography is about cleansing and easing your mind. Street photography is
about enjoying your walks (slowly) with your camera in your hand. Street
photography is all about finding the beauty in the natural world. Street
photography is about the common, plain, and rugged.” (source: see below; my
italics). And so it is mutatis mutandis for the philosophy of everyday
life as well.
Sources
- Finn
Janning, “Philosophy for Everyday Life”, on http://www.philosophyoflife.org/jpl201501.pdf
- Eric Kim, “How to Be a Zen Photographer”, on https://erickimphotography.com/blog/zen-street-photographer/
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