Who are the Philosophers of the 21st Century?

in #philosophy5 years ago

There's a certain paradox of philosophy in the 21st century. When we think of philosophers, we think of people all throughout history, from ancient Greece to the mid to late 20th century. But in the past 50 or so years, where have the gone? There are ostensibly more philosophers today (in nominal and real terms) than ever before, so why does it feel like there's nobody doing any actual thinking?

What does it mean to be a philosopher? I'd say that, as a simple and colloquial definition, it's somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about thinking. They think about ideas, systems, concepts, things that may be intermediaries between physical things and processes. In other words, they're meta-thinkers. In this world of ideas, anything is possible. You can think whatever you want with no consequences. This is what philosophers (purportedly) do, they think of a lot of things, and they come to conclusions. Their conclusions can differ wildly in nature and content, but they are conclusions that nobody else has.

The philosopher thinks for a while and then comes up with something - an original idea. That's the whole point, it's a new way of looking at something. Anybody who's read Peter Thiel's Zero to One knows where this is going. Entrepreneurs are the philosophers of the 21st century, whether they know it or not. They come up with an idea, they ask themselves "What do I know that nobody else knows?"

The difference is that now, technology has given people unprecedented power to make their own ideas real. People who in the past may have only been philosophers are now called entrepreneurs, and now they don't just write stuff down and tell people things. They show them. All philosophers produce something that is the manifestation of their ideas, and it has now evolved to the point that a philosopher's idea can be shown to be truly valuable or not. The criticism of philosophers for so long has been that they don't actually do anything, they don't make anything. Now they can more than ever.

We now can separate good philosophers from bad philosophers much more easily. Most of the time it's difficult to "prove" one thing over another, but as it becomes increasingly easy to be an entrepreneur, it will become increasingly easy to see whose ideas succeed and whose don't.

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Entrepreneurs have existed throughout the history of Mankind. Naming them the philosophers of our day and age is a cop-out - you are just playing with words (sophism) - while also denigrating our real philosophers.

We have a number of philosophists and some of them either have their own channel of You Tube, or appear in person to lecture at various halls.

A philosopher is also a person who thinks and endeavours to become wiser. Monetary success does not prove you are wise; just that you saw an opportunity and took action. I suppose you will next write an article naming them Warriors, because they have the courage to attempt to make their dreams come true.

To me, this sounds like sucking up to the corporate marxists, in case they win the war against mankind.

Thanks for reading!

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