Our Time Comprehended in Thought
Hegel famously said that philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought. Now in the context of his particular system this actually has quite a specific meaning, concerning the relationship between conceptual and social development. But let's riff off it a bit, and consider it more just as a sort of slogan to undergird what was once called "philosophy of culture". Today's blog post is my ode to philosophy of culture, musings on the plausibility of its central presupposition and what it might look like today. I'm not really going to do any philosophy of culture in this blog post, just point to examples, summarise what I take to be an emerging overall picture therefrom, and suggest a line of future inquiry. We live in a society. What I mean by philosophy of culture is the attempt to draw out, clearly express, and expose to critique, the ideas underlying a given culture or mode of life. The core presupposition is that such a set of ideas exists. It is not after al...