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What Philosophy Means to Me

Marko Zlomisli

Should we believe that after fifty ten minute talks, finally, once and for

all, the secret link between philosophy and meaning will finally be

revealed? What remains Catholic in me, hopes for such a final

accounting even as I know that it will not take place.

Since what will be given here, will never add up to a system, we must

valorize all the singular responses; for in the end, it is the haecceity or

this-ness of the singular that matters. In gathering together what is

singular, we are first of all bearing witness to what philosophy has given

us collectively.

In 1984, I was in grade 12; trying not to fall asleep in a class focused on

trigonometry. I was wondering when I would ever need to use ratios and

functions. I answered my own question thirty years later when it turned

out that trigonometry was useful when I was bricklaying the flower box

that Suzanne had designed for me to build.

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Ignoring the geometry lesson that day, I noticed that my friend was

reading a book with a strange title, written by someone with a last name

more difficult than my own to pronounce. I was immediately intrigued.

I took the book home: it was Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra. After

I finished reading the first few pages I knew that my intellectual life

would be devoted to philosophy. I was overjoyed when I actually found

out that I could study philosophy at University and University for me

has always been Brock. It was my home for six years.

The lecture and seminar halls in Thistle, which were smoked-filled at the

time, launched me back to Europe; to Vienna where I saw Freuds

Couch and understood psychoanalysis, to Paris where I attended

Derridas seminars and worked with him.

Philosophy was an event that opened worlds for me.

The first person I met a Brock was Prof. Miles who taught me Descartes,

Leibniz, Spinoza and Heidegger. He was filling in as chair for Prof.

Goicoechea who was in the hospital on his second heart attack. A few

years later I understood why when on our way to a conference, David


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and I stopped at a road side diner in Louisville called Joe Piggs. He

ordered the greasiest hamburger I have ever seen, topped with cheese

and bacon and washed it down with a hit of nitro spray.

All of my professors at Brock were mentors who educated me each in

their own way. Prof. Husain with clarity and rigor taught me to love

Plato and appreciate Aristotle. Prof. Sinha with his gentle way

introduced me to the world of Hinduism and the Upanishads. He was my

first teacher.

Prof. Goicoechea with his poetic, biblical and historical focus molded

my thinking in existentialism, medieval and post-modern thought to

such an extent that I will never be able to repay what he has given me.

Father Nota and Prof. Sprung made phenomenology alive and showed

me that things are never simply just things. With Prof. Malone I was

introduced to the Tao of the Mansion House and the logic of scotch.

Philosophy for me has always been existential; situated in the inter-play

between reason and desire.

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Thanks to the Philosophy Society, which to my mind was the real

philosophy department, I heard Northrop Frye, Martha Nussbaum, Jack

Caputo, Kenneth Schmitz, Charles Scott, Costas Boundas, Hugh

Silverman, Al Lingis, Raimundo Panikaar and so many others speak.

In 1985 when I began studying at Brock, my Father was throwing steel

into the furnace at the Atlas. He took me to the Chevy dealership in

Welland, put $10,000 in cash down on the table and bought me a new

Cavalier. He told me that the door out of the blue collar world was

through the gates of the university. I listened.

Philosophy allowed me to appreciate life in all its wonder, suffering and

absurdity. It showed me the usefulness of the theoretical and the

necessity of the practical so that I could read Nietzsche, bake bread, mix

mortar and lay bricks.

Deleuze said it best when he indicated that problems are not in the

mind but rather belong to the world. Philosophy is a practice through

which one invents for oneself better ways of living. For me this has

meant two things.

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First, philosophy has allowed me to make noble use of my leisure and

noble use of my work. It has given me a life light years removed from

the mountain village in Hercegovina where I was born.

Second, philosophy has allowed me to have a transformative

relationship, not only with texts, which I am still excited to read, but

with things, objects and persons.

Most importantly, Brock was the place where I first met Suzanne and

stole her away from her boyfriend. It goes without saying that it was

David who introduced us.

Philosophy has shown me how one might live otherwise and in my

teaching I try to make this world possible for my students.

All that I have said and experienced would not have been possible

without Brock and the Philosophy Society.

What has philosophy meant for me? In a word:

Everything.

Brock University, September 20, 2014


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