Bookish Philosophy and Immediated Realism

Abstract

Disputes among conflicting “schools of thought,” located predominantly in philosophy departments in universities throughout the world, have degenerated into an academic, bookish philosophy that threatens to replace the discourse of wonder with the jargon of specialists. An elite process of inbred, intellectual decay renders all schools to a discourse that restricts philosophical discourse to print media, professional / professorial standards replace open-ended discussion, and “publish or perish” deflates the value of discourse. Literacy becomes the benchmark of understanding, and illiteracy is equated with lack of understanding. A tyranny of the articulate dismisses the wisdom of ordinary discourse, and the book itself becomes a coffin whose colophon page is a gravestone inscribed with the date of death of the corpse text within. Escape from this inevitable condition can be found in a return to the ordinary, common language and direct realism of the everyday human through a process of mediation, unmediation, and immediation.