[D66] What Is a Philosopher?

[Antid Oto]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/what-is-a-philosopher/

THE STONE	 May 16, 2010, 5:00 PM 829 Comments
What Is a Philosopher?
By SIMON CRITCHLEY

There are as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophers – 
perhaps there are even more. After three millennia of philosophical 
activity and disagreement, it is unlikely that we’ll reach consensus, 
and I certainly don’t want to add more hot air to the volcanic cloud of 
unknowing. What I’d like to do in the opening column in this new venture 
— The Stone — is to kick things off by asking a slightly different 
question: what is a philosopher?

As Alfred North Whitehead said, philosophy is a series of footnotes to 
Plato. Let me risk adding a footnote by looking at Plato’s provocative 
definition of the philosopher that appears in the middle of his 
dialogue, “Theaetetus,” in a passage that some scholars consider a 
“digression.” But far from being a footnote to a digression, I think 
this moment in Plato tells us something hugely important about what a 
philosopher is and what philosophy does.


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Simon Critchley is chair of philosophy at the New School for Social 
Research in New York, and part-time professor at Tilburg University in 
the Netherlands. He is the author of several books, including “The Book 
of Dead Philosophers,” and is moderator of this series.