The Phenomenology of Living: The Foresight of the Coming

When F. Schlegel wrote in 1798, “über keinen Gegenstand philosophi[e]ren sie seltner als über die Philosophie” [No thing is philosophized about more rarely than philosophy], it was understood that Schlegel criticizes the fact that mostly the question about what philosophy is hasn’t been asked; but in fact, even Schegel was knowing very well that this question has already been asked many times and there are already several answers. In this regard, here what Schlegel pointed out is actually not about needing to add a new definition to the question concerning philosophy, more like, he tries to emphasize the necessity of finding the meaning of philosophy; namely, he criticized that we comprehend philosophy regarding making philosophy ─as if it’s a kind of methodology─, however, what should we do is that we must apprehend philosophy within the making philosophy. That is why Schlegel didn’t interest in the question of “what is philosophy”, but the question of “what is the meaning of the philosophy.” This small difference was so important for him because he always strived to demonstrate that philosophy is not a thing that has been produced but has been occurred. In this regard, it cannot be understood within the definition in a frame of the logical categories, it should be inquired in the genealogy of all existence. So, Schlegel called this new kind of investigation regarding philosophy as the philosophy of life ─or in the more recent literature it called as life-philosophy─; shortly, what philosophy is can be grasped in the question of what life is. Life and philosophy are not the opposite components for each other, we do not comprehend life by using philosophy; more like, we apprehend philosophy in the meaning of life. Because actually what we understood is always life-philosophy before we divided them as life and philosophy in an abstract way. In this respect, life-philosophy is not to combine life and philosophy but to see the point that they cannot be separated. Then, there is a very promised new way to understand all these compelling questions. But of course, now we should ask, what is life-philosophy?… This text relies on several different philosophical approaches, but especially three of them create the core structure: Ernst Cassirer, Alexander Pfänder, and Ludwig Klages.