So let me do it again.
It seems to me that, broadly speaking, when one is discussing Western Philosophy, as it has come down to us in the Greek word for the activity, based on the Greek conceptions of the activity, it is oriented around thinking. To be a philosopher is to think. Your “philosophy” consists in the thoughts you regularly think, those you emphasize. Even, say, the Stoics, offer “meditations”, but these meditations consist in structured thinking, albeit perhaps with some structured visualization.
Broadly speaking, in the 20th century prominent philosophers pointed out that words are not and cannot be truth. They then posited that words have been used to CREATE truth, and can thus be used to create any truth anyone wants, which means that all truths are contingent. This means, practically, that philosophy, as the process of thinking about truth using words, is empty and useless, except as a vehicle for the acquisition and maintenance of political power. We continue to see the results of this process. We have men saying they are women, and using this exact argument to claim their “personal” truth is irrefutable. It is as absurd as it is logical, within this paradigm.
I have always been a bit fuzzy on Sartre and Heidegger, since although I have read summaries of their work, listened to a lecture series on Existentialism, and read the comic books about them, I have never actually read their work. I have not read Sein und Zeit, or L’Etre et le Rien. They are thick, difficult books, and I already know I disagree with their conclusions. Why allocate that time? I haven’t read William James to my satisfaction either, and I know I like his ideas.
But this concept of Being is the logical antidote to the “malady” of language. What you cannot say, you can still be. This is reasonable enough. It leads away from philosophy, but towards something other than functional nihilism (although not far enough, from what I can tell).
What is missing in all this, and this is my point, is a “technology of Being”. Most Eastern meditative practices focus on wordlessness, of growing beyond concept. They are able to do this because they have a METHOD. They have many methods. There are hundreds of ways to “meditate”. In the Sanskrit, the phrase usually translated as meditation means literally “To give attention”.
And I can’t help but feel the inherent, latent elitism in all this, from a Western perspective. Philosophy was the domain of the leisured gentleman, who at some point became the leisured intellectual. It was what smart people with time on their hands did to convince one another of their genius, to pass the time, and to enjoy the delights of elaborate intellectual artifice. Thinking can be a type of artwork. I myself, skeptical as I am of the orthodox Darwinian ideas regarding speciation through Natural Selection, share an aesthetic appreciation for the simplicity and grandeur of his scheme. But science, of course–TECHNOLOGY–does not deal in aesthetics as a primary concern.
I see people talking about “mindfulness” as some sort of cure-all. Then the next minute I read that meditation doesn’t help people be much less pissed off at all.
I think it is hard to embrace spiritual technology when you refuse to accept a role for the spirit. I have more to say, but it hasn’t formed into words yet.