How to spot an 'ultimate philosopher'?

Suppose there's such a thing as an ultimate philosopher (UP) - some exemplar, standard-bearer, epitome of the love or pursuit of wisdom - and suppose that the essential subject matter(s) of philosophy is contained somewhere or other in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP).

Now, do we expect at some point such a hypothetical UP to revolutionize a sizable number of fields contained in the UP? And can we expect much in the way of such revolutionizing without some very extensive interaction with current or contemporary professional practitioners (namely, academics) in the philosophical discipline? Beyond blog postings, how much engagement is going on with "the current literature" in this or that field by this here philosopher?

By the way, I have set a personal manuscript/draft deadline for the end of this calendar year (2021) for Better Living Through Philosophy. So presumably some mastery of what's in the SEP is an essential prerequisite for completing any such project adequately? What are the basic parameters of success or failure here? What's going on, where is this leading us?

My initial "area of specialization" is, roughly speaking, ethical philosophy with a secondary emphasis on political philosophy, but really my main area of focus as time goes on is, roughly speaking, philosophical and/or epistemological method and/or metaphilosophy, and some tie-in or other between the fields of ethics, epistemology/method, and aesthetics. Roughly speaking, the most preferable general form of human living in human-specific terms, the 'Good Life,' is rational activity - activity expressive of reason (a, or the, 'better angel of our nature'). What sort of main directives does this give us in ethics? Well, rationality in this framework is the primary virtue, whether conceived in intellectual (or epistemic) or practical (or ethical) terms. And to cut to the chase, the main key to living well for a human being depends on the quality of that agent's reasoning, i.e., questions in ethics are intimately tied to, mirrored in, and perhaps reducible (with some constraints) to questions in epistemology, once we get the basics of the ethics down at least. (This explains, e.g., Ayn Rand's focus in her later work on issues of method and knowledge-building, i.e., epistemology.)

Throw into this mix a perhaps or seemingly exhaustive inquiry into the nature and role of philosophy itself in human life (whether its role in the present world or in some future world defined by a more perfect epistemic union as it were). "Philosophy" is derived from "philo-" and "sophia", or "love" and "wisdom," but "sophia" but me distinguished from "phronesis" or practical wisdom. "Sophia" is theoretical wisdom more specifically, i.e., is concerned with the rules and terms of proper organization of one's conceptual material (respecting the rules of context and hierarchy), and it's one's conceptual material that in term serves to organize one's daily living. And in some way, however removed hierarchically it may seem from the "ordinary" activity of living - the daily sensible concretes and problems solved within their own distinct context - Philosophy proper (I mean, just look at those topics at SEP if you haven't yet) comes to bear on a human life well-lived. Maybe it has something to do with Socrates' dictum about the (human) unexamined life not being worth living. (He was sentenced to death by those to whom he said this, BTW.)

Even if one isn't a full-time philosopher with some Ten Thousand Hours of specialized/expert knowledge, one's being familiar if not conversant with the basic subject matter of philosophy, to the extent that this possibility is actualized, facilitates better living, somehow in terms of a deeper understanding of the organizing principles upon which one conducts one's life. (Should they be organized along perfectionist lines and specifically along Aristotelian-intellectualist lines?) Or so this is what I take the main thesis of Better Living Through Philosophy to be.

My study of philosophy has not been extensive and exhaustive enough yet to make any dents in subfields I don't specialize in, of which there are many to be found at SEP. Nonetheless, I have identified what I believe to be a moral imperative given my understanding of the philosophical enterprise in human life as bare-bones outlined above (which, to clarify or reiterate, is a task for metaphilosophy to discover and formulate), and that imperative is this: philosophical learning should be spread as far and wide as soon as possible. And in some hopefully-impressive, hopefully-epic, and hopefully (and above all) fun fashion, Better Living Through Philosophy is in my conceptualizing of it meant to be some kind of combination of crash course, guided tour, introduction, manifesto (for action), treatise (of underlying theory), magnum opus, motivationally useful example-setting and case study in philosophical reasoning.

I think if most everyone can get on the same page as to some basics as to the value of philosophical reasoning, and being able to even identify better and finer instances of philosophical thinking (I tend to like the Aristotelian sort, maybe for its example-setting and theoretical perfectionism; I've written a book on this topic), then I think this is a wisdom-juggernaut in the making toward which humanity seems to have been progressing over history. The so-called end of history is that point in time in which humanity as a whole will have reached a new threshold upon which further development is premised. This threshold would include common humanity-wide commitments to basic conditions of human flourishing (or eudaimonia or self-actualizing), premised upon a community-inclusive conception of what is in each agent's best interests. This means a shared commitment to ensuring as much as feasible opportunities, resources and capabilities for a community's members. These include a variety of goods and conditions such as: air, water, food/nutrition, clothing, shelter, safety, pleasure, play and movement, social connections and networks (family, friends, schoolmates), education, income and wealth, irreducibly individualized skills/interests/careers/hobbies, civic, historical, scientific, economic, and philosophical literacy, protections of rights and freedoms, autonomy, creativity/curiosity, irreducibly individualized thought, initiative, motivation, vision, will to power-or-difference-making -- the many factors that go into a successful human life (usually, the more the better). (How do we frame the meaning of life in terms of making a difference in the world? We might say Einstein and Hitler both lived meaningful lives, it's just that they are of opposite evaluative significance.)

And so, among the prerequisites, the common commitments of a human community characteristic of this advanced human (or trans-human, or ...) condition is philosophical learning. And what particular features of humanity-wide philosophical learning will tell us that we are at end-of-history stage? I have two key identifying criteria in mind: (1) Philosophical learning begins as early in life as possible. Some evidence suggests that this can be as young as 5 or 6 years of age. (2) Steelmanning-only allowed. Other names for the principle here: principle of interpretive charity, studying up for the Ideological Turing Test, Mill's knowing all sides in their strongest form, and Rapoport-Dennett Rules.

With all that in mind, is an ultimate philosopher someone who, in the year 2021, is doing perhaps exhaustive research for book-length publication on the topic of 'better living through philosophy,' since that task hasn't been carried out by someone else (not nearly to my satisfaction) yet, and even if the topic-project doesn't propose revolutionary theses (yet) for Philosophy Proper (the SEP items)?

Things I've spent a good amount of time (hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands of hours) thinking about: Philosophy as such, Objectivism/Rand, ethics (namely eudaimonist ethics), political philosophy (namely the moral ground of our rights-claims), how to enjoy and/or rank in value-added terms such things as: films and film directors, music albums, pieces and composers, baseball and basketball legends. Now I just need to combine all the themes going on here into a coherent presentation that anyone else might find of interest.

Or is an ultimate philosopher the long-bearded man alone atop a mountain, answering desperate visitors' questions with questions? (Or is that not a philosopher but rather a sage?)

A libertarian social safety net

For reasons the merits of which are not altogether clear to me, a great many people have been habituated into the thought that a social-welfare safety net has to be administered, coercively (at the point of a gun), by the state.  We're not even talking here about emergency measures that perhaps only a state-scale entity could take during a deep recession or depression, or during a deadly virus outbreak (there's one I have readily in mind at this very moment), but rather an ongoing, cradle-to-grave, offensive-to-liberty, welfare state.

Consider: the United States had, by today's standards, a very small federal government, outside of wartime, for the first century-plus of its existence.  Somehow the people managed to get by without all of today's largesse; somehow it managed to develop into a world power with a per-capita GDP growth rate not unlike what came after.  As for what has come since, non-military spending at all levels of government (federal, state, local) has steadily increased to over 30 percent of GDP today, even as GDP has expanded many-fold during that time.

On its face, this indicates that it's not some pressing, life-or-death need that feeds the welfare-state mentality, but rather a mentality reflecting a contempt for principles of liberty (to adopt a phrase used in the title of a Walter Williams book).

(As for pressing, life-or-death needs, there will be, for the foreseeable future given foreseeable technological and production frontiers, such pressing needs at the margins.  Even the "successful" (using a specifically statism-inflected moral standard) Nordic-style welfare states still have nonzero poverty rates, e.g., around 5% in "Denmawk!"  And the economically-advanced nations continue to hoard wealth out of the reach of the desperately needy peoples of Africa and elsewhere; part of the prevailing welfare-state mentality is that "universal healthcare as a matter of human rights" doesn't extend to such geographically less lucky peoples.  That is, the pressing-needs-at-the-margins argument that is the wedge in the door welfare-statists use to get us to the 30-percent-of-GDP level we have today, is selectively not expanded to cover the entire world.  The expenses would then supposedly be too unreasonably demanding of the wealth-producers' talents, energies, time, and lives, see - that is, the global top x% selfishly lives high while letting others die.  As for a sustainable, i.e., capital-intensive route to economic development for the geographically unlucky people, transfers of already-produced wealth from altruistic first-worlders, to thereby be consumed by the unlucky ones, won't cut it, however warm and fuzzy it makes the altruistic ones feel.  Only in the era of globalized capitalism has the global poverty rate been declining (dramatically).)

Human beings flourish as members of communities.  That's a point well-recognized by sages like Aristotle.  But it's a category error to lump "community" in with "state" or government.  A sine qua non of state institutions is physical force, i.e., compulsion or threat at the point of a gun.  Under the classic libertarian analysis, physical force must not be initiated or introduced into human affairs; its only proper use is to repel or redress initiated force.  ("But what about x, y, z, this that and the other thing, be it public goods, public health emergencies, depressions, etc.?"  Is it really that such pressing needs and concerns can't be addressed by non-state means, or is there a failure of imagination involved?  And is even a hardcore libertarian analysis not amenable in any way to libertarian interpretations of the invasiveness to human autonomy that is a public health threat?  Are we even really sure that economic depressions come from the operations of a fully free market under fair legal constraints?  Are the likes of David Friedman just out to lunch?)

Now, my vision for an ideal social order is something like this: Aristotelian-eudaimonist-perfectionist ethical norms, under some wide or universal recognition of the idea of better living through philosophy (including philosophy for children), combined with libertarian social-political norms.  (Are there such things as incorporated cities even in an 'anarcho-capitalist' framework envisioned by Friedman et al?  There are incorporated other things, so I don't see why not.  So there may be cities, but perhaps not city-states - presumably the form of polity of primary focus for an ancient Greek philosopher - cities being localized and more under direct control of the territorial participants.  So, would such cities have the (delegated) rights to regulate the size of soft drink you can purchase within the city limits?  More on that in just a moment.)  Under such a social framework, based on eudaimonist or flourishing norms alone, there would be a large private-sector-based social safety net, probably operating under the virtue-based norm of aid that Rand/Galt promulgated in Atlas Shrugged (and which Rand-bashers refuse to acknowledge, having lazily/recklessly caricatured her egoism in base, non-virtue-based terms).

So let's say I am posed the question, "If you could eliminate the ongoing cradle-to-grave welfare state right now, given all its offenses to human liberty, would you advocate for that?"  But under scrutiny, the terms of the question are a moot point.  Hypotheticals or counterfactuals should be treated with all the seriousness they deserve, which is to say, they need to consider not merely the consequent but the preconditions for the antecedent.  (That is to say, hypotheticals or counterfactuals are open to abuse in the absence of proper context-keeping.)  That is to say, there is no conceivable scenario, under proper constraints for conceiving things, in which the welfare state is going to be eliminated right now.  (Properly constrained conceiving - as distinct from, say, imagining - doesn't permit conceiving of pigs who can fly unaided, hence the saying.  No proper concept of "pig" allows for it; it would drop the context of how we came to form and maintain the concept.)  The prevailing norms of American society won't allow for it.  The people would have to be converted to the Aristotelian-etc. principles I note and link to above, or be moved considerably in such a direction, or some such widespread values-alteration.

Would cities or other territorial communities make laws or regulations about soft drink sizes, or sexual practices, or other matters of virtue?  Or is there something about the libertarian norm that reflects and informs how people ought to treat one another generally speaking?  Or more exactly, is it something about what explains, grounds, or informs the libertarian norm (linking again) that involves a perhaps-judgmental yet laissez-faire attitude toward how people conduct their lives?  I mean, let's say that rather than paternistically regulating soft drink purchases, people apply Rand/Galt's virtue-based approach and condition social aid on either past virtuous behavior or on education for future virtuous behavior?  I think that this eudaimonist-libertarian way of thinking, actually present but largely implicit or inchoate in a great number of American people, helps explain what they find so offensive about Mayor Bloomberg's paternalism (which flows over into the mentality behind his highly intrusive "stop-and-frisk" policies, a mentality I don't see being extricated from his worldview all that soon, the same as with the elitist hubris behind his comments about farming skills).  Anyway, eudaimonist-libertarian social norms would emphasize education toward people exercising their best judgment, and then leaving it up to them to exercise their judgment given their own context of knowledge and hierarchy of values.  Like, duh?

To sum up: Like perhaps quite a lot of libertarians, I'm all for a robust social-welfare safety net and other virtues of sociality and community, just not at the point of a gun.  And with enough imagination (fueled by an intellectual perfectionism and/or the kind or quality of thinking behind Nozick's appallingly neglected framework for utopia) as well as ample benevolence, wouldn't it be a better safety net than the one currently existing?

[Addendum: Under a broadly prevailing culture of Aristotelian intellectual perfectionism, would there be even nearly as much need for social safety net institutions, or would people be a lot more self-sufficient in that regard?  I urge much properly-constrained imaginative conceiving in this regard.  Much like Rand, and contrary to the usual lazy caricatures of her, I have a very high view of human potentialities even as regards the less talented; while I don't envision a repeal of the bell curve, I envision a marked 'rightward' shifting of it under culturally Aristotelian conditions.]

A bit of stoned blogging about Better Living Through Philosophy / End of History

(this is all from one hit, mind you, plus a bunch of stuff accumulated over decades right here in this stoned noggin)

An idea that keeps re-occuring to me as I get stoned and admire/examine my really nicely-stocked physical (and digital) library: One possible(-world) humorous subtitle for my in-development Better Living Through Philosophy book is something along the lines of:

or, 100 essential books condensed into one

First off, the value-added if this were pulled off as represented would be really high for one book...

So the monetary angle aside for the moment, and looking at this from a theoretical-philosophical-moral angle with all the implications involved . . .

It has a certain similarity to what the venerable 20th century philosopher-public-intellectual Mortimer J. Adler was doing with what is arguably his magnum opus, Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought, which is more or less a 960 page, double-column synthesis of the (Western) wisdom of the ages contained in the famous Great Books series of which he was the chief architect/curator/commentator.  So at the very least I would like to approach something similar to what Adler is doing in just that one book.  For the average reader/citizen, just that one book is arguably a godsend from the condensed-value-added standpoint.  For yours truly, it was more or less an edification or beefing up of a bunch of stuff I had already integrated, book-smarts-wise plus lots of attentive cultural observation, over the course of decades.  Also, if I could condense what Adler was doing down to something more like 420 single-column book, it would be that much more value-added-wise.  Thing is, Adler's magnum opus is not even in print any more; you have to buy it in a used marketplace somewhere, or find it at a local library.  It belongs in every learned person's personal library, anyway.  I have it in mine; it's like a no-brainer, that one.  Is it in yours?

If it's in mine and not yours, that's one distinct research-advantage I have over you.  And I use it now as as source of inspiration for how to compose an epic, sprawling, magisterial and fun - above all, fun - book on the subject of Better Living Through Philosophy.  And that's just the tippy top of the iceberg when it comes to books in my personal library to draw inspiration from.  Now to induce whatever principle is involved here:

I have selected a few hundred of what I regard as essential books for Any Learned Person to Have on Hand, for my personal library.  I've had to be somewhat selective in what I have been able to purchase and make room for, but I think I have developed a really strong sense, over decades of experience, for what is a promising, uh, lead when it comes to various things cultural and intellectual.  It doesn't mean I know a ton of shit about a ton of shit.  (One promising beginning lead here, though, might be the New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge, which I have on hand.  Do you? . . .)  It does mean, though, that I am probably the very best researcher that I know of.  I fucking love what I have in my personal library (paper and digital...) and I especially love how I have it so nicely organized.  How do I have it organized, you ask?  Well, isn't that something of a trade secret, if you will?  Do I just wanna give it away, right here?  I've told a few close friends about how I have it organized.  If a Resurrected-Aristotle were to organize his library nowadays, on what sort of principle might he organize it?  How are libraries proper organized, pray tell?  What comes first?...  (I've given this subject a lot of thought.  Have you?)

Then I have about a dozen Oxford Handbooks (you know what those are, right?) in my physical library (they're kinda pricey...).  Do I have any in my digital library?  Well, do I?  You tell me.

I really find Oxford Handbooks quite useful, most of the time.  So I'm able to distinguish more useful Oxford Handbooks from less useful ones.  How about you?

So I've got Adler's Lexicon and then I also have the (out-of-print as well) Adler-edited Great Treasury of Western Thought.  A Resurrected-Aristotle would definitely have this one in his library, right?  (In the Academy, Aristotle garnered the nickname of 'The Reader,' BTW.  Books were definitely important to him.)

So one thing Aristotle (in a manner similar to Adler, but perhaps different) might do or consider doing in composing a treatise on the subject of Better Living Through Philosophy is to, more less, take the reader/audience on a guided tour of essential (Western-intellectual-tradition) books for a learned citizen.

So, what selection criteria would Aristotle use to narrow down his selection of essential titles through which to usefully take his audience on that guided tour?  I don't know, actually; I'm not Aristotle, after all.  I'm me.  And I have some idea of either what my selection criteria are or of the product of my selection criteria.  So in my list of top-100 essentials I would have those two big Adler books I've mentioned, probably a number of Oxford Handbooks (the more useful ones, anyway), and then, letsee, I have the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (both 1st and 2nd editions) on hand.

But maybe that's all the leads I'm gonna give on that subject in this post.  I already have a shit-ton of promising leads already on this blog.  I know where to go to find 'em just in case.  I know when I "reviewed" Norton's Personal Destinies on this blog.  I have quick recall of a lot of destructive-leftism-related links just in case the need to prove my point yet again about destructive leftism arises (yet again, sigh).  (BTW, those losers-qua-leftists up on stage last night were going on and on about Better Living Through Big Government.  They just don't get it, do they.  Would Resurrected-Aristotle-in-Drill-Sergeant-Mode tear them a new one, or what?  [Edit: How about this, which I'm not sure the leftists would ever figure out on their own in a million years: Better Social Capital Through Philosophy.  Eh?  Eh? {Edit: Is a warranted induction on the principle here expressed as follows: Better x Through Philosophy, where x could stand for any number of desirable things?  Ya think?}])

So anyway, I think I know (about) a ton of promising leads on certain important End-of-History related subjects.  (You know all about what 'End of History' refers to, right?  I've given this subject more than a teensy bit of thought over the years, mind you.)  That doesn't mean I know (about) a ton of leads on a ton of shit.  I couldn't tell you who won the Kentucky Derby in 1963.  I do know that Wilt Chamberlain was NBA MVP in his rookie season but not the season he averaged 50 points a game and scored 100 in one of them.  Now who in the fuck would have beaten Wilt out for the MVP award that year?  I know.  Do you?)

So the one hit is starting to wear off, the magic inevitably to wear off as well.  Now I've got the munchies.

[Addendum 10/16 (un-stoned): I'm sure getting a lot of emails from academia.edu with links to papers closely connected to the topic of Aristotle's intellectualist conception of eudaimonia lately; how about you?  I don't know/remember how this turned out to be the case, but it's not a bad subject to get a lot of academia.edu emails about, is it?  What would be more perfect a topic to get such emails/papers about?]