TABOR - Tradition and Contemporaneity in the Romanian Orthodox Church
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Philosophy and the Agora (an essayistic diagnosis of French and German philosophy)
In this essay the author makes some assessments in connection with French and German philosophy, respectively. Philosophy is nothing else but social involvement, it is the raising of the voice in the agora. The French, unlike the Germans, transformed philosophy into poetry and used it as a political weapon at the same time. For them, philosophy is involvement and not analysis, as it is for the Germans. Unlike the French, the Germans are characterized by elitism. But elitism not as exceptional results, but as isolation in the ivory tower of observers. For the German Geist, philosophy is phenomenology and phenomenology is analysis. They take the classical forms of thought: analytics, dialectics and logic and turn them into surgical knives (Kritik) for dissecting the social, cultural, religious “reality”. The foundation of this way of making philosophy is their elitist attitude, an attitude of detachment from the convulsions of the world. The involvement of a German philosopher or university professor in the life of the parties is the most serious violation of academic taboos.
 

MIHAI D. GRIGORE