Thinking is not a solitary affair, Cicero said. We think as friends. We are friends of thought of others who think. We think collectively. In the first person plural. And such thinking – philosophical thinking – has to emerge from a lifestyle.
The ancient Greeks are right. It’s a matter of a philosophical school. A school that lives a certain way. And lives communally. A school that thinks in a certain way. That holds certain thoughts in common. And is that what we are: a version of a philosophical school.
And what do we hold in common? Disgust. Disgust with the world. Expecting nothing of the world. Expecting no consolations … except for expressing our disgust in the world. Except for reading books about disgust with the world.
And dreaming of writing them: books of disgust, books disgusted with the world. We were a school – Cicero’s school. Of Gnostics. Or neo-Gnostics. Something very anti, at any rate. Something very non -.
We were Gnostics by default. We were spontaneous Gnostics, full of automatic disgust. We had a talent for Gnosticism. Even a genius for it.
Which wasn’t to say that our disgust couldn’t be developed further. Trained. That we couldn’t become anti-connoisseurs. Detectors of even the tiniest fragment of the disgusting.
A thought school. Philosophy as a spiritual practice: because that’s what it’s called: a spiritual practice. When thought is embedded in life, and life in thought. When it is a matter of how you think and what you think and how you live. And drink. And despair. And how you console yourself. A school of thought.
Work in Progress 