The Philosopher in the 21st Century, a brief reflection

Who is the twenty-first century philosopher? What does philosophy look like in our times? Would the ancient wise men of Greece and Rome even recognize their modern peers? Is philosophy today so detached from what it once was that, if transported by magic to our times,  the Platos, Socrates and Ciceros of old would find themselves intellectually alienated among the philosophers of our time?

I

Perhaps the true philosopher, these days, is indeed a dying breed. Philosophy is still discussed as a discipline in universities across the world, and yet those who study it do so in the most scholastic of ways, either as undergraduate students, post-graduate students or university professors. Philosophy is tackled by these scholars of varying stature as somewhat of an immutable field, as something to be learnt and dissected, not unlike things like biology, mathematics, economics or history.

The academic philosopher studies philosophy as he would study literature or art, not so much as something to be created, but rather as something to be preserved throughout time. He takes to the study of these disciplines as an Egyptian priest took to the preservation of corpses, producing mummified dissertations, giving the appearance of life yet lacking the organs and the vitality of truly living creatures or entities. Indeed, he takes up the torch of the Christian monks in the monasteries of medieval Europe, transcribing the knowledge produced by better men in more glorious times.

What comes out of our modern philosophy departments is no more philosophy than what comes out of literature university departments is literature or what comes out of fine-arts schools is art. Those are places of contemplation rather than creation, of conservation rather than innovation.

Academic philosophers are burdened by a system that suppresses creativity and often prioritizes faculties such as mechanic memorization and a recurrent deference to authority which, while qualities of the scholar, are enemies to the free thinker. In the same way we do not turn to universities to find the great literary talents of our new millennium, neither should we look for the greatest thinkers of today in the halls of academia. Let us leave the university professors to their memorizing and dissecting of past works and to their games of mutual aggrandizing. For true philosophy, however, we must look elsewhere.

II

Where then, is the true philosopher of the 21st century if not in the places of scholarship? Where can we find our Platos and Aristotles, our Socrates and our Ciceros, our Nietzches and our Sartres? We should look far and away beyond the universities and their scholasticism, to where men venture deep into questioning the world we live in, free of intellectual chains. Often times we can find those men in the freedom of new media such as you tube, itunes or even Netflix. In these new media channels, in their own ways more democratic and irreverent, we find at least the spark of creativity that we can also find in the works of the great thinkers. Daring modern thinkers, often unconventional in their ways, can be found in those new media, tackling some of the great questions of our time. Along with groundbreaking men from academia like Yuval Noah Harari and Jordan Peterson, we find unconventional, informal and yet daring thinkers such as Joe Rogan, willing to ask the kinds if questions one must ask in order to understand our rapidly changing world.

Most academic-minded people will certainly be shocked by such statements and yet this is exactly why the philosophy of the 21st century won't come out of university campuses, but will instead be forged mostly in the wild spheres of the world wide web. Academic philosophy is saddled with a necessity to seek shelter in the authority of old, famous philosophers. Yet there is only so much we can say about and learn from our great, yet old, long dead philosophers. Most things of relevance have already been said about their works many times over, leaving all posterior discussions in a state of redundancy.

What we need, really, are new voices, asking different questions, in different ways and in different places. If we are to build a philosophy for the 21st century, it should be new and daring, fresh and uncompromising, inquisitive and revolutionary. These are all the things that academia is not, yet philosophy must always be.  

III

In the age of science and technology we live in, the role of philosophy must also change in relation to older times. The philosopher of the future, and in fact the present, should delegate a number of past philosophical inquiries to the new fields of knowledge, driven by scientific methodologies and instruments. Yet let us not think that the age of the philosopher is a thing of the distant past. As the world moves forward the questions change and will need answers. Some of those answers to new questions will come from the natural, computer and social sciences, and yet some questions can only be answered philosophically, because they can't be measured or weighted by scientific methods. Our scientific minds can give us nuclear and biological weapons of unparalleled power, yet we must reflect hard and long on when, how and where these weapons should be used, if at all.

Never have we had, as a species, such formidable power. And yet, as uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, "with great power comes great responsibility". This much is true not only in the panels and screens of pop culture but also in real life. We may not have a Spider-Man in the real world, but we certainly developed super-powers as a species. What else should we call nuclear bombs, self-driving cars, personal computers, fighting jets, cloning, the internet or interplanetary space rockets? The future has changed us, it has changed the world around us, and philosophy has changed along with it. Yet, perhaps unlike the Christian God, Philosophy has not died as a result of the onset of the modern world we now inhabit. Philosophy has changed and must continue to change in order to allow us to make sense of the new world we have created for ourselves. It must, above all things, act as a counter-balance and as a moral guide to all the power we have accumulated through technological advancement. Never before has the need for responsibility been so great or urgent.

Let us welcome then this new breed, the new philosopher, a citizen-thinker of the future. His role is to make sense of a brave new world in which men have acquired the powers of the gods. In which moribund religions desperately cling to life, supported by the despair and the blind belief of radicals in search of meaning and identity in a meaningless, globalized world. A world in which millions, billions, are deep into a state of stupor, constantly entertained and pacified by a never-ending stream of video games, television series, movies, youtube videos, social media feeds, sports broadcasts and online news.

What has happened to us? What has happened to Man? Each passing day we are more machine than man. Each passing day we are less ourselves. Each passing day we are closer to extinction, in one way or another, literally or figuratively. Even if we survive nuclear holocaust and climate change, will we survive the personal computer and the smartphone? Will we survive genetic engineering and all-powerful, all-controlling, all-censoring electronic devices and companies? Will we survive AI? If we are to maintain our humanity, if we are to curb god-like powers with human responsibility, we must be philosophers in the 21st century.

Bruno Franco Netto