The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
We’re getting to the heart of Kanye’s metaphysics here, and it bears an astonishing connection to that of the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato.
Responding to Kanye, Plato would say concepts aren’t dependent on anyone believing in them to exist. But he did say in his dialogue, The Symposium, that it’s through love that we come to understand concepts. Part of what it is to love something is to be curious about it, to want to understand it.
Perhaps it is through love of our enemies that the universe will assist us in understanding what they truly are?
Kanye says: “Stop playing chess with life. Make decisions based on love not fear.”
One of the prominent themes running through the early aphorisms of Kanye’s book is a tension between fear and love.
The philosophy of emotions is a vibrant sub-branch of philosophy, aiming to articulate the nature and value of emotions: what are emotions? What can they do? When can they help or hinder us? Emotions are a hot topic, and Kanye is bang on trend philosophically here.
Now, there exists a persistent cultural script that reason and emotion are at odds with each other – that emotions are fundamentally irrational or counter to reason. We can see this reflected in some of Kanye’s work, for example…
“Don’t follow crowds. Follow the innate feelings inside of you. Do what you feel not what you think. Thoughts have been placed in our heads to make everyone assimilate. Follow what you feel.”
However, the emotion vs. reason script is by now pretty much established as a false dichotomy in philosophy. Why? Because there’s a difference between something being a-rational and it being irrational.
My fear can certainly be irrational: for example, when I’m afraid for no good reason, or more afraid of an object than it is worth. But that’s not because fear is an emotion. Rather, it’s because, as R.A. Duff argues, “our rational grasp of the world is so often… fallible; after all, our beliefs can also be irrational, when they are not properly grounded in or proportional to the relevant evidence”.
We can therefore understand emotions to be perfectly rational when they are appropriately grounded in reality: when the beliefs that form part of the emotion are true.
Kanye says: “Everything means nothing until you make it something. You are your validator.”
No other tweet aphorism better demonstrates the existentialism at the core of Kanye’s book. Existentialist philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir championed the view that we ourselves give meaning and purpose to our life in the very act of living it. We craft our own existence, by living authentically.
We can identify Kanye’s existentialism reflected in his theme of authenticity. Our purpose – or validation, as Kanye calls it – comes only from this self-creative act of making ourselves through our lives and projects.
Much overlooked in the early reception of Kanye’s philosophical debut was what appeared on the surface to be a rather blunt announcement that these tweets are, in fact, his anticipated book.
“Oh by the way this is my book that I’m writing in real time.”
An existentialist interpretation reveals this as a call to authenticity. Perhaps Kanye’s message to his followers is that this is how we should all be living, with the Kanyean existentialist motto: Oh by the way this is my life that I’m writing in real time.
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Mark Savage is BBC Music reporter
