I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Friday Flash, I share an epiphany or aha moment from the past week.
I have been continuing to think, since yesterday’s blog post Why Do Philosophy, and How, about how to do philosophy. How do you do it when you’re 58 years old, and not up for going back to school yet again, and you don’t hang out with anyone who has more than a passing interest in philosophy, or in living the vita contemplativa more broadly?
In the paper I quoted from extensively yesterday about Hadot and Sloterdijk on how philosophers do philosophy, Adam Robbert writes:
While Sloterdijk emphasizes Plato’s Academy, one could also investigate, as Hadot does briefly, the construction of other philosophical institutions, such as those of Aristotle (the Lyceum), Epicurus (the Garden), and Zeno (the Stoa), each places of practice that lasted for centuries. Along the lines of philosophical media ecologies and basecamps, one wonders if, alongside different beliefs and practices, these schools did not also differ in design and setting, each one affording an intricate mood or ambiance encouraging of that school’s discipline and world view. One also wonders whether or not the modern classroom provides anything like this requisite philosophical ambiance.
And later he continues:
Philosophy thus issues from within different ecosystems of activity, from within different practice landscapes and basecamps, to use Sloterdijk’s term. However, much like secession can occur anywhere secessionists dwell, so too are the basecamps of the practicing person none other than the person’s own ecology of practices, to borrow Isabelle Stenger’s term, and such places of practice can emerge anywhere. In Sloterdijk’s words, “They come about wherever those practicing parties who have resolved to secede step out of the river of habits.” In taking present action as the co-condition for future execution, then, a summit is always a new basecamp, a new basecamp merely an old summit.
And so I find myself in my basecamp here, writing alone, wanting a place of practice for myself and others who seek deep conversation, contemplation, and an exposure to contemporary philosophical ideas.
So I’ve decided to start my own philosophical club. I have no idea if I can attract people to the place of practice I aspire to create. But I am going to try it anyway.
My plan is to create something like the Highlands Ranch Philosophy Club. I’ve already reserved a conference room at the local library to meet every other Friday morning in September and October. I’m going to seek potential attendees via my personal network, through Meetup, and with flyers posted at local venues around Highlands Ranch.
My intention is to focus, at least initially on contemporary philosophers such as Agnes Callard, Byung-Chul Han, and, yes, Peter Sloterdijk.
I have much work to do before I’m ready to launch the various supporting pieces of this effort.
I am leaving basecamp, and setting out up the mountain.