Good Evening Friends,

Without philosophy there can be no toilets; and without toilets there can be no philosophy. I will, shortly, discuss Slavoj Zizek's theory about the connection between ideology and toilets. As you know, I have given a very broad definition of the term 'philosophy.' I have called philosophy (which we think of a synonymous with imagination, the soaring spirit of speculation) the unmanned space probe of concrete human knowledge.

Simply put, what I mean by this is, for example, the airplane had to be imagined first before it could be designed and built.

I have called philosophy an intellectual activity that is about something I have called "groping for the infinte." I conceived that little phrase under the influence of the ideas of Jean-Paul Satre, the late, great French Existentialist philosopher, - as I understand them - who imported an idea into his system from "the most discerning ethicists," who had shown, to his satisfaction, that most of our actions strive for a purpose well above and beyond their ostensible object.

In other words, when we do a thing, it is not about the thing in and of itself. I have given examples. The activity of the bigamist is the attempt to create the perfect wife or husband by accessing the best characteristics of two or more people. Remember I gave the example from the television Star Trek Voyager, when Tuvak, the black Vulcan and the ship's cook, a being called Neelix had a "transporter" accident and fused into one being.

Something like this, we said, is the impossible, infinite the result the bigamist is reaching for and which he would bring about if he could. This is what I mean when I say that the bigamist is groping - unethically to be sure - for the infinite.

I also gave the example of the bodybuilder. Why do people do this? Why do they spend many, many hours everyday working out, targeting specific muscle groups at specific times, in specific ways, with specific routine, and hold to a specific diet, in order to be able to expand their bodies to four times the average human density and definition of musculature?

We said that they do this in order to try to tap into a universal sense of being able to exercise complete control over one's own body, to be able to sculpt one's body with the mastery of... well, a sculptor. In this way the bodybuilder gropes for the infinite. If not for this deeper intrinsic journey the activity of bodybuilding absurd, meaningless.

Now, not only is it rather incumbent upon all of us to be philosophers - especially during times of crisis like these we are living through - to analyze and deconstruct old assumptions governing our everyday lives, as well as those of our political, economic, and social arrangements.

But all of us are, in one way or another, philosophers - either theoretical or applied - in that all that we do gropes for the infinite. At very least we all manifest ideology (which I will also use synonymously with the idea of philosophy) everyday. This brings us to the matter of toilets.

But first let me say the following: speculative is not as speculative as speculative thinks it is; and practical is not as practical as practical thinks it is. The speculative and the practical need each other. The practical needs the speculative to save it from ridiculousness. The speculative needs the practical in order to save it from triviality and irrelevance.

Ultimately the speculative must have objective ends that have a bearing on the lives of everyday people. Philosophy must be available to and, indeed, is embedded within the truck driver, waitress, cab driver, plumber, and the like as well as the Harvard intellectual.

We'll talk about toilets next time.

wingedcentaur