Transforming philosophy

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the paper is to defend the project of transforming philosophy carried out in my book Vernunft und Temperament. Eine Philosophie der Philosophie. In section 1, I distinguish between five philosophical genres in which transformation plays a role: 1. academic texts in which transformation is simply a topic; 2. texts meant to adequately articulate through their form the transformative experiences of their authors; 3. texts aiming to enable the reader to transform herself; 4. texts on other texts; 5. manifestos defending the project of transforming philosophy. Section 2 is such a manifesto. Its main thesis is: “What makes somebody – anybody – a good philosopher is that she is a real human being.” Many of the remaining 16 theses of the manifesto are elaborations on this main thesis. One example is the thesis that the philosophical activity is essentially a becoming – the development of an individual human being.