Lars Fr. H. Svendsen

Moods and the Meaning of Philosophy

Following Heidegger, I argue that our understanding is always attuned in some way, and our attunement always contains an understanding. Every philosophical investigation will therefore be carried out within or be subject to a certain mood, even if the philosopher may not be aware of this. Is there a particularly prevalent mood in contemporary philosophy? I argue that it is in fact boredom. An airport becomes a place of boredom when it fails to provide you with what you want from it: the opportunity to enter an airplane and leave it. Along similar lines, a philosophical text becomes boring when it fails to provide you with what you need from it. It lacks a purpose. What Kant described as “pedantry,” a self-contained and formalist style of writing, has become the norm in academic philosophy. In order to truly matter, philosophy must maintain its relation to the pre- and postphilosophical, to its origin in problems that have an emotional impact on us and to its possibilities for transforming our lives. Such a philosophy is possible.