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Ethical Emotivism
Pop philosophy for the modern age?
It is the age of authenticity. Living one’s authentic truth is the zeitgeist of this new era, the truth of the heart and of the mind, composed of perspectives and partial understandings, palimpsestic.
The stories we tell ourselves, at peace with our own versions of the past. Each mind pulsates to a narrative of its own construction, but who is left to arbitrate what actually happened?
W e are living through the revival of everyday philosophy. The (much missed) role of the public intellectual is back in the guise of Jordan Peterson. The self-help industry is mid-pivot: out with specificity (how to eat, how to dress), in with the all-encompassing “how to be alive”.
Spurred on by existential crisis on competing fronts (pandemic lockdowns, the side-hustle on top of the “996” — nine till nine, six days a week, the cost of living crisis), we are casting around, collectively, for information about the meaning of life and how best to live it.
How do we go about forming an answer to that question?
Since the Second World War, modern philosophy hasn’t been of much everyday use. Analytic philosophy speaks in its own meta-language, and its mathematical focus doesn’t readily convert to easily digestible ethical principles.
