The first-person is alien to philosophy.

*

Philosophy as argument on both sides of an issue of the day is trivial. Kant’s brilliance, and his appeal, is that he argues both sides of a philosophical issue, some eternal question that bothers us, literally side-by-side in the text, with a vertical line running down the middle. Kant proposes solutions to the conflicts presented by these opposing arguments, but strictly speaking, this is unphilosophical. The cardinal rule of philosophy is that we know that we don’t know; philosophy is agnostic on answers to decisive questions, even if we have to decide them in order to live our lives. Others might decide differently, and we must learn to tolerate that. They say that family is given in order to teach tolerance, which is comedic because we think of a family as a source of comfort.

But if we are to give comfort to others, rather than take it from them, we must present ourselves as welcoming of divergent opinions. Knowledge is arguing both sides of an issue; if at all possible, we should strive to have no opinion. There is a reason why it is disparaging to call someone opinionated. It is very liberating, especially for the novice, to know that one need not have an opinion about everything. We also call somebody a busybody in disparagement, and that includes being a moral busybody. It is of the order of sanctimony to propose to tell people how they should live, and this is no less of the province of religion than of the province of that quicksand for the would-be philosopher, issue politics.