The Philosopher as the Stranger and Unclassifiable Outsider
Socrates said of himself "I am utterly disturbing [atopos], and I create only perplexity [aporia]". He was later killed because he made people ask the wrong questions, in a sense. Today we are also in this situation: Don't ask the wrong questions and we won't kill you, the establishment and status quo tells us. The philosopher, by nature, will always be threatened and destined to die at the hands of the rulers because he or she does not accept the popular opinion, the dogma that everyone seems to love. This is problematic, to say the least. How can the philosopher, who creates tension and insights fear in the believers of dogma, be accepted as a fellow citizen? Or, in other words, how can the philosopher not be killed (metaphorically?) in this current divided and fractured time we find ourselves in? In this article, I will try and examine this "no man's land" the philosopher takes up, and how he or she can still survive without giving into dogma.
Unclassifiable
The philosopher occupies an unoccupiable space. This may seem like a contradiction, but that is because it is. The philosopher is a contradiction. The philosopher cannot be classified, he/she cannot occupy space, is not in the world, nor not in the world. Why do I say this? I think we can say that there are two people who exist: those who accept dogma, and those who do not. There are believers (in the religious sense) and non-believers. But the philosopher does not fit into any of these categories. The philosopher cannot or is not even agnostic. The philosopher does not take up any position, he/she, therefore, does not occupy any space, except for being part of the world, taking up concrete space. What is the philosopher then? This question cannot be answered, for asking this question presupposes that we can order the world in a way which the philosopher occupies space. As we showed, the philosopher does not occupy space.
The philosopher is unclassifiable, he/she does not fit any category for the simple reason that he/she transcends this rigid classification. One may legitimately ask if the "label" of unclassifiability is untranscendable, or, in other words, how can the philosopher overcome the "label" of unclassifiable? Or, yet in another sense, isn't "labelling" the philosopher as unclassifiable, in a sense, classifying him/her? Aren't we thus doing which we said we aren't doing? In a sense, yes, but isn't that creating a contradiction? Classifying the unclassifiable is classifying it into "something", but we can then ask, what is this something? There is no answer because the philosopher is nothing, or nothing worth classifying as something.
How can I say this? Why is the philosopher nothing worth classifying? This will be discussed below.
The Philosopher as Nothing
What is the philosopher? Who is the philosopher? Can anyone really be a philosopher? University buildings and seminars are full of people with the label "philosopher", but this is a lie. They are academics, who occupy the space of philosophy lecturer. Why are they not philosophers? Because they occupy space, they put forward theories and they indulge in dogma. This is a bold statement to make but just look at recent works in so-called philosophy journals and publications. These are dogmatic powerhouses, idealogue factories. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just another job, another space to occupy, it is only natural that that space should be filled. The philosopher I am talking about does not reside in the halls of academia. The figure I am talking about does not occupy a space in this manner.
The philosopher, firstly, is a stranger. This means purely that he/she does not stay in one space, i.e. occupying space. He/she is always traveling, always a stranger, never known for a length of time to become familiar. The image of a dark cloaked figure is conjured up: riding into a city and then leaving without anyone knowing him/her; thus a mysterious figure, inducing fear. Why would the philosopher not stay? Why chose to be a stranger? The reason is simple: Once he/she becomes familiar, dogma creeps in like the roots of a tree, grounding and keeping everything in place. This is the problem with dogma: it roots everything so that it cannot move. Dogma is the only thing the philosopher fears. Death does not induce fear, dogma scares the philosopher more than death.
The philosopher, secondly, is an outsider. Because the philosopher does not partake in dogma and does not participate in any form of politic (society) he/she will always be an outsider. Society will not understand the philosopher, thus shunning him/her to the edge, driving him/her over the ridge into the unknown. The philosopher resides in the unknown, but this is not unknown to him/her. The unknown is only "unknown" to those who are not familiar with it. In other words, the unknown needs the counterpart of "known"; in other words, the "unknown" is only due to a perspective problem. The outsider does not reside in the unknown, it is only from the perspective of the known that he/she (i.e. the outsider) resides in the unknown. But because of this misunderstanding, the outsider is pushed even further away from society. This implies that the philosopher is unwillingly put into this position, but this is not so. The philosopher willingly chooses to put him-/herself in this position, because he/she cannot bear to fall victim to dogma.
Lastly, the philosopher is unclassifiable for the reasons we just mentioned. Society is only there to put things in neat boxes to hide away from the fear of the unknown. Think of the following. If you wake up inside a cave, without knowing what will attack you, nor when this attack will come, you will constantly live in fear, and that will constantly be on "attack mode", i.e. I will kill first in order not to be killed first. We will all be on the outlook, fear of the unknown will be the only god. This picture today seems wrong, but this is only because we know what it is to live in such a peace where neighbores do not kill each other. The philosopher brings back this fear in people, because he/she cannot be classified, and thus brings back memories of a distant past. Why is this? Because the philosopher transcends the "neat boxes" which society created for them. These neat boxes, or dogmas, cannot hold the philosopher, thus bringing fear to people. The true philosopher will always be cast away from discussions because not even the most "objective" speaker will know what to do with the philosopher.
The philosopher is thus nothing, because there are no neat boxes the philosopher can fit into. Because he/she cannot fit into any of these "constructed" boxes, he/she is nothing in the eyes of those who created these artificial boxes.
What Now?
Standing on the edge of the space created by the status quo, the philosopher wanders into the unknown, out of the reach of those arbitrary creators, in search of new lands. No one will miss him/her, no one will look for the philosopher. Only a distant shadow of a memory will be left in those who chose to forget. The question still remains: what is the philosopher then, from the perspective of the philosopher that is? The question cannot be answered, a mere hint at a possible answer will suffice. All over the world, there are those seem to be unable to fit into the categories of society. Those who transcend the arbitrary lines drawn in the sand; those who cannot understand the dogma that envelops everyone. The philosopher is those who walk in the unknown, wishing life to be like it is, basking in the shadows of the unknown.