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?)
