Welcome readers, to Symposium: Thinker’s Digest. It is a small termly magazine dedicated to Philosophy at Melbourne High and in Victoria. This first issue is basically an introduction to Philosophy, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of studying it, and also a starting point for the Melbourne Circle to begin from.
The Melbourne Circle is a small group of Philosophers who have taken to the principle of Radical Skepticism as their Foundational Ethic. Radical Skepticism is an extreme form of the concept of self questioning. This concept of self questioning is the central point of focus within the Melbourne Circle and Symposium: Thinker’s Digest.
But what does it mean to question oneself? Many of you out there would have already performed or heard of the question “Who Am I”. Of course the obvious answer to this is would be “I am Jeff”, unless of course your name was Imran, in which you would answer I am Imran. But the Self questioning does not stop there.
After one has come to a decision of he or she is, then they must continue. We must continue until we feel that we cannot go any deeper, and even when we try to move deeper we find we cannot. At Symposium we feel that it is our duty to help all Melbourne High Students question not only who they are, but what they can “know”, what they can perceive, and what they can accept as being existent.
But why would a small group of Philosophers take it upon themselves to not only answer these questions for themselves, but to also question others of these questions? Many may be mistaken in believing that we feel the urge to show off our understandings to others who have never attempted to answer these questions nor want to. But this is not true.
In reality The Melbourne Circle feels a responsibility to the children of Melbourne High School, philosophical responsibility. The world is increasingly becoming less moral and less rational. If George Bush or John Howard had of studied Philosophy then they would probably have thought twice about neglecting to sign the Kyoto Agreement.
Melbourne High School has a reputation for producing society's leaders, and it is for this reason that it is imperative that each Melbourne High student, and any high school student for that matter, receive not only a Theoretical education but also a practical one.
We have this incredible army of human calculators and exam machines, we have an abundance of those who have mastered the arts, but what we lack are people who can actually justify their actions. At the end of the year I could ask a the this years dux of the college any question about rocket science or astrophysics and he would be able to explain to me off the cuff how M theory works or some other high brow scientific explanation, but would he be able to tell me what it is that is truly valuable.
When we catch the train in the morning, eager to get to school so that we can discuss the various chair designs in the school we simply refuse to ever question why it is that we want to get high pay jobs, why we want sporting satisfaction, or even why we live. And it is for this reason that even the most intellectually brilliant amoung us may never know anything at all.
Until you can explain to another what the nature of existence is you know nothing, because all knowledge of individual aspects of existence are left totally unaccounted for without a firm understanding of the domain of which these things exist in.
Without an understanding of the key questions that philosophy asks us, all other study and knowledge is pointless, and will remain pointless until we can understand what is valuable, what defines existence, and what we can truly know.