The call to return to philosophy and to its meaning in life is a call to return to a balance that the speed of modern life has taken from us.

In modern thought, the human being is a statistical unit, a small cog in the enormous machinery of cities whose growth continually makes human individuality smaller.

The meaninglessness of the world in modern scientific thought has not only rendered our lives meaningless; by stripping life of meaning, it has also stripped human suffering of meaning, while our suffering itself remains.

Modern humanity claims to have no need of philosophy. Yet with a little reflection on our own lives and those of our contemporaries, we discover that contemporary humanity is not without philosophy. It has adopted a philosophy of comfort-seeking whose sole aim in life is to feel good. Strangely, it is still not happy, while depression and anxiety have become pervasive maladies of its age.

The truth is that just as we are compelled to act in the world of action, for the same reason we are compelled to choose a philosophical framework through which to act in that world. The aim of philosophy here is not to learn a variety of philosophical doctrines, but to create a personal philosophy capable of transforming our way of life from unconscious living into conscious living.

Aydin Areta