Who I am as a philosopher

At the end of December many people reflect on the past year; on what they have done then or on what happened in the world. I am not that kind of person. I prefer to reflect, when I feel a need for it; not because it’s a certain date on the calendar. However, if I have the feeling to look back and this happens to be the time that many people do, let it be so. So, after having been busy in philosophy for many years, the question came up in me: Where do I stand now in philosophy? I started as a sociologist. Then I gradually switched to philosophy, to that extent that it became my passion and that I wrote a PhD thesis on a philosophical theme. Initially, my mind was in the grip of the philosophy of action and I was interested in methodology, too. But I have always had a broad interest and my interest in the philosophy of action became an interest in the philosophy of mind and action. In the meantime, also Montaigne had been added to my field of study. So it was for a long time, till more and more themes were added to my mental library. Then little by little my interest in action theory and in some mind themes faded into the background, and other themes came more and more to the fore, so that nowadays I seldom write yet about my old themes. But need I tell you all this? For certainly, as an avid reader of my blogs you’ll have seen this change.
When old interests fade away and new ones come instead, at a certain moment the question arises: Where do I stand as a philosopher? In fact, it is the question: Who am I as a philosopher? This question is not as simple as it looks at first sight. For it is a qualification of the question: Who am I? And there is not a simple I. The I can be looked at from different sides, and different positions will give different replies. For example, George Herbert Mead famously distinguished between the Self, the I and the Me. The Self comprises the attitudes of the group or community a person belongs to towards this person and towards one another in what they do. The I is the response of the person to the attitudes of others leading to a self-image. The Me consists of the attitudes of others towards the person as seen by him or herself. The essence of this theory is the relationship of the person – the I of my question “Who am I as a philosopher?” – towards the other. Especially, it is the place of the person among his or her relevant others. But if this is true, then I can reformulate my question into the question: What is my place among other philosophers? Or: How do I compare with them? However, these are still difficult questions, for there are many philosophers in the world. How to determine then where I stand? Even to determine my place among the most important philosophers would be quite a job.
In order to simplify my task and to find a quick answer, I searched on the internet and I found a website that answers my question, since it gives a Philosopher Personality Test. The test places you between seven very different philosophers: Nietzsche, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Epicurus and Aristotle. True, this is only a very small selection of the great number of important philosophers in the world. Personally, I would like to know how Wittgensteinian I am or how I compare with Montaigne, but this is what I found. I’ll spare you other details; you can find them on the website just given, but I did the test, which consists of 35 questions, and what did I get? My views are closest to those of Aristotle! See the picture at the top of this blog, which is the result of the test. How happy I am! For Aristotle is one of my favourite philosophers and the Stagirite would have been my first choice from the seven philosophers, would I have been asked whom I most would like to be. I would have been unhappy to be a kind of Nietzsche or Plato and just they were most different from me.
Should I really be happy with the result? People like to develop, but have I developed? Thirty years ago, I wrote my PhD thesis based on the action theory of Georg Henrik von Wright. This theory is fundamentally Aristotelian, as von Wright explains. Does it mean that I haven’t developed since I began to philosophize? You can see it that way, indeed. But to my mind, I have developed, as I explained above. Wasn’t it for that reason that I wanted to do the test? However, there is a hard core within me; it is the philosopher who I fundamentally am. This core is mainly Aristotelian. Yes, it is Epicurean as well, but then not so much philosophically but in my daily life.
And what kind of philosopher are you? Do you want to find out this, too? Maybe the test is a nice play for you to do on New Year’s Eve. For although the makers of the test “have strived to make [it] as reliable and valid as possible by subjecting this test to statistical controls and validation”, as so many internet tests, in the end it is fun (with a serious core).
Happy New Year