More Suggestions for Philosophers

By philosophy I mean both the work of public intellectuals which is supposedly philosophical as well as popular notions which also count as being some part of philosophical discourse. I am saying that philosophy has failed on both counts. The adoption of post-modernism as a particularly vicious form of sophistry by the present ruling class (i.e., the neo-conservatives), as a means of defining and controlling discourse, ought to give every professional post-modernist not currently on the neo-con payroll a chill (that would exclude for instance Francis Fukuyama and other collaborating intellectuals.) I am saying that our present circumstances, i.e. as being ruled by the Bush-Cheney (for prison!) cabal, constitute the terminus of post-modernism in its official and its popular forms. In 2006 there is no way one can simply go off and deconstruct a cereal box without being complicit in the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, is what I am saying. As for the solution, I'm glad you asked. If truth is taken to be part of real-world conditions, a committment that we make in the midst of difficult and conflicting circumstances, if consciousness is an object in the world capable of theorizing and cognizing itself, one which is fundamentally open to those objects which disclose themselves to it, if art is taken to be an excellence or fulfillment or saturation of a type of living, if science can be inspired by the deep desire towards understanding the world as givenness and as gift, and if morality is the cultivation of virtue rather than a capitulation to some essence of apodictic certitude, then we are halfway towards solving our problems, halfway towards liberating this country from its death-grip in the hands of a fanatical regime and its morbidly alienated and barely entertained populist constituents (i.e. paris hilton.)