WOLFISM XXVIII from Wolfie's blog

What is philosophy?

First, let’s be clear: there are two kinds. Academic philosophy is the sister to science and mathematics. Literary philosophy is of a different family, that of novelists and playwrights. I’m a literary philosopher. I follow in the tradition of other literary philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Camus, and Santayana.   

Academic philosophy concerns itself with propositions to be debated, bringing in the points and counterpoints of as many other philosophers as would be illustrative, and then debating the merits of them all. Literary philosophy, by contrast, has a different aim entirely, which is to describe. To describe the world and life in the world as the philosopher sees it, often in a narrative form, often with picturesque language, often autobiographically.

Academic philosophy concerns itself with propositions that require proof. It avoids inductive reasoning, which is reasoning from personal experience to make global assertions. Academic philosophy considers inductive reasoning to be illegitimate because personal experience can never be proven to be globally valid. Literary philosophy, by contrast, has no problem at all with inductive reasoning, because literary philosophy doesn’t concern itself with proof, but rather, with assertions that emerge organically from the general experience of living in the world. Its audience is not the rigorous logicians, but rather, anyone whose general experience of living in the world is such that the philosopher’s assertions ring true.

Literary philosophy has an aesthetic dimension, as is certainly true of Nietzsche, Camus, and Santayana. Reading them is like reading the exposition in novels and plays. Their prose is crafted not as a dialectic (a word that makes me think of “diuretic” and with good reason) but as journalism, or history, or the narration of a documentary film. They have far more in common with the essays of George Orwell than with the gray analytics of Kant.

The poet John Keats wrote in his Ode on a Grecian Urn: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The literary philosopher finds much to agree with in that, demurring only due to this key point: Ugliness, too, is truth, and truth ugliness. Literature in all its moods is wisdom.

Perhaps the foregoing will assist you in understanding me. ISCHYROS DIAVOLOS!