I am a selfish philosopher. I take philosophy to always be for and about me. Back then when I decided to do my undergrad in philosophy, I wanted to understand what was going on in my life. I sought for general term tu understand my concrete situation. At that time a plurality of factors came together and resulted in serious mental health problems. Psychology and therapy haven’t been very helpful to analyse the patterns of thoughts that I had, to grasp the motivation behind them and to „find a way out“, whatever that means. Instead, it was philosophy and especially existentialism ,with Sartre’s concept of bad faith that gave me a point of reference. I remember that back then, I wasn’t really thinking in general terms, I didn’t work with an abstract subject that I constructed in my head or assumed from the existentialists. Everything was immediately applied to myself. Engaging with existentialist work was always an engaging with existentialist ways to think about me.
Though I have not been completely content with the insights that I arrived at, it was an improvement to the state that I have previously been in: I was no longer entirely overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions but rather, I had ways to structure them, an order to put them into; I had keys that could open up doors to further insights and a more thorough understanding of who I am. As you can maybe tell, I was very emotionally attached to existentialist philosophy. Unfortunately, this partially blocked me from thinking critically about existentialism. There were many things that I didn’t question, that I didn’t even consider questioning in the first place. Existentialist thought filled a blank space where an understanding was missing. I was so consumed, almost everything about it seemed right and good and fitting,

It wasn’t until recently that I turned away from existentialism. I „discovered“ a new framework to order and make sense of my life, hermeneutical resources and hermeneutical injustice. There was a time where I read a lot about these concepts, or at least a lot given my personal standards back then. Like a sponge, I absorbed these concepts. Also like a sponge, I stopped taking in new works once I reached a certain threshold. I began squeezing myself and poured all of those insights over me and my life. As I said: I take the philosophy that I engage with as for and about me. After a time of reading came a time of applying and understanding. I reframed literally all of my life. So much suddenly made sense. I obtained concepts and notions that enabled me to address problems, I could improve challenging and problematic situations that I found myself in. I could transform my thoughts about these concepts directly into a (for me) new language and most of all into action.* Again, personal importance and emotional attachment have been quite big. And, again, I had a hard time stepping out of this framework to critically examine it. For a long time, raising questions and searching for blank spaces didn’t even come to my mind. As if I didn’t even want these concepts to be anything but perfect in themselves.

I find this tension pretty interesting: The tension between personal, emotional attachment to philosophical theories on the one hand, and the need for emotional detachment for critical philosophical thinking about these theories on the other. Going back to the selfish philosopher again, to whom philosophy is essentially for and about themselves, does this mean that they are basically consumed by emotional attachment? And thus, unable to detach themselves and take a stance of critical examination? I would prefer not to stop at this conclusion. In fact, I think that emotional attachment and detached philosophical thinking are pretty compatible and the selfish philosopher would definitely benefit from their combination. They (and by this I mean I) should regard their emotional attachment and the meaningfulness of these concepts to them as a motivation to dedicate their further enquiries to their improvement. A refinery of the theory would after all also enhance their understanding of their real life experiences. Though, no betterment can be made if the theory is already taken to be infallible and perfect. Taking a step back for critical examination is central.
Speaking for myself, this insight – that the concepts that I valued would actually end up improving my understanding of them – was kind of hard to arrive at. I was afraid that I would end up losing the words that I just had found. I did not want to go back into a stage of restless searching for ways of understanding. Instead, I sought shelter in the seeming clarity of widely unexamined conceptions. A little bit of criticism would not refute a whole theory, but I was too emotionally involved to even see that. Not wanting to give up my recently found philosophy, I ended up doing no philosophy at all. And this is certainly not in the interest of the selfish philosopher. For philosophy being for and about them must come with a dedication to constantly philosophise about those very things that they hold so dear and are so important to their life.

The figure of the selfish philosopher remains an interesting one. They let themselves be deeply touched and moved by philosophical theories and are constantly on the verge of being consumed by them, their actual philosophical activity coming to a halt. Stepping back from the things they love remains the lifelong task of the selfish philosopher. For once they stop critically engaging with their theories, they cease to be a philosopher and simply become a stubborn dogmatist.

* This is a reference to an essay by Audre Lorde: The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.