The Story
Hi. I'm Pranay.
I used to be a philosophy professor. I became a philosophy professor because I loved philosophy and was convinced of its value.
My love and my conviction have only grown. The love of true wisdom, the rigorous pursuit of truth, the quest for meaning, for genuine happiness and human flourishing, the deeply practical effort to live a wiser, kinder, better life ... this is philosophy, and we have never needed it more.
But you don't actually get philosophy from the people paid to teach philosophy at universities.
"Walk around a university campus and there is an almost palpable smell of death about the place because hundreds of academics are busy killing everything they touch."
You get bureaucrats, anxiety-ridden careerists who frantically publish words they know no one will ever read, budget politicians who scrabble for position and prestige, who use the privilege of their employment to build ever more intricate structures of empty concepts and useless thoughts, the inquiries getting further and further away from the eternal human concerns that gave rise to philosophy in the first place.
The people paid to philosophise, the heirs to a sacred tradition, the guardians of traditional wisdom and ways of life - they have betrayed their vocation.
And when you leave the pleasant groves of academe, the situation isn't much better. Because what you get there are the purveyors of glittering banalities and financially convenient truths - the influencers and the charlatans, the spirituality bros and the wellness gurus, Gwyneth Paltrow and Russell Brand.
One group is indifferent to human suffering, the other exploits it.
Philosophy deserves better and human beings deserve better.
For many years, I complained and whinged and was angry. Eventually, I came to feel: look, complain all you want, but if you really care, what you need to do is give people a viable alternative.
So that's what I'm doing.
I'm building philosophy that's alive, that's urgent, that speaks to existential concerns, that meets people where they are.
I'm building a space where true human connection can happen, a space for philosophical dialogue and for I-Thou encounters.
I'm building a new place to do philosophy and a new way of doing philosophy.
I'm building The New Philosophy.