Philosophizing

Often I believe many of us feel like Ernst Jünger’s anarch, who on one hand need the power of the given structures and keep showing up for work which is not really theirs. On the other hand, they are able to use the time outside of their official time and place of work to think great thoughts and be somebody else. Living very different lives at the same time seems to become common place and I would grant that I am no exception. I was from early on excited by History, Philosophy and Psychology. My earliest academic work focused much on sociological and ethnological approaches of identity formation which was later on combined with a theory of gender and class. In my time at Linköping University, departing from a very deterministic point, I became more interested in the psychological workings of identity and culture which would lead me to a very broad reading of Foucault, who not only shows how identity is formed by determining structures of power, but also how the individual subject still may retain her freedom in creating her own way of living. From Foucault, the idea that identity is open for grabs lead me to Heidegger and Nietzsche. Even though I since then read much of the standard literature in Philosophy and engaged with many of it’s traditions, these are the three thinkers which I today still think with.

Since then I studied Philosophy with a large focus on ethics (meta-ethics, applied ethics, normative ethics), the philosophy of mind, the history of philosophy, metaphysics, logic, epistemology.

Currently, this lead me from the construction of identity and being to the question if machines can be intelligent if compared to humans. Where this will lead me? I have no clue yet. Certain is that I will keep on doing Philosophy and other fields which enlarged one’s knowledge of the world and humanity. I also believe that knowledge is valuable in itself and that it is also crucial for me to contribute something positive.

If I thus had to answer the question posed above, "Why Philosophy", I would answer that it gives the world around us an important depth