Wittgenstein and the death of philosophy
One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the others being Bertrand Russell, A N Whitehead, and William James – in my reckoning) declared that the business of philosophy was to simply define concepts. It was, according to him, an exercise in semantics. For example, take the assertion: Happy people make people happy. Philosophy doesn’t concern itself with the truth or otherwise of this assertion but merely defines the term ‘happy’. The appropriate dictionary definition of happy (suited to this context) is: “enjoying or characterized by well-being and contentment.” [He is the happiest person I know.] A philosopher may debate what is well-being and contentment, and try to define them. In that sense, a philosopher is a lexicographer.

There are no longer universal truths, no metaphysic s or ontology. We are now in the realm of pragmatics – the belief that “an idea or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected.” [Wikipedia] In other words, how does the idea play out in the real world? In science, correspondingly, we see a reduction of truth to what works and what does not (performance theory). As an aside here, let us remember Hussain Zeeshan of HCU who went on reading and reading and never gave vent to his thoughts and went crazy; one doesn’t know where he is now but let us hope he is ‘happy’ somewhere. He summed up one time the whole of Noam Chomsky’s one-hour lecture as an explication of performance theory. Scientific theories are true or false only insofar as they the applications built on them perform.

With (speculative) metaphysics thrown out the window, out goes ethics (it is reduced to law) and ontology; logic is appropriated by math, and there is no field of enquiry left called philosophy per se. That being the case, it does not come as a surprise that the Bangalore university shut down the department of philosophy. One can only speculate (if that is allowed ;) that many more universities will follow suit. And hence it is appropriate now to write an obituary for philosophy and sundry philosophers: Anjum Zubairi was another failed philosopher (isn’t that a redundance?). Last seen, he was struggling to find his feet in a software company as a technical writer. Last heard, he committed suicide. Let us keep silent for 2 minute…

From the heydays of Socrates/Plato to “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” philosophy has gained in importance and it is now reduced to this ignominious end. And I have come to bury philosophy, not to praise it. Whatever service it did to humanity and lovers of wisdom in particular, it is no longer relevant now. A degree in philosophy doesn’t get you the job of a philosophy teacher, with more and more universities – in all likelihood – shutting down their philosophy departments. The department of philosophy at the university of Hyderabad had seen great days soon after its inception, but soon it became the last resort of morons: students who could not get admission in any other discipline started getting into that. Any obit of philosophy is not complete without mentioning Shankar; he had a Tee which said: Philosophy – I am in it for the money. I missed the irony and asked naively, “Is there a lot of money in philosophy, in the U.S.?” (That was where he was studying.)

He said: It’s a joke da. I don’t know his full name.