Beyond the Myth of Uselessness

"Philosophy is that thing with which, and without which, everything remains the same." This famous quip, circulated for centuries, has for too long been the hallmark of a fundamental misunderstanding. Yet, within this supposed futility lies, on the contrary, the beating heart of our identity. If it's true that the universe is destined to end, precisely for this reason it becomes essential to understand, in the time we have, what exists, what we know, and what we can do. Philosophy is not a frill, but a pragmatic and intellectual resource for navigating the present.

1. The Fundamental Triad: Ontology, Epistemology, Technology

Philosophy is divided into three directions which are not watertight compartments, but tools for inhabiting reality:

• Ontology (The Doctrine of Being): The attempt to investigate what exists beyond appearances. From ancient philosophers who sought primordial elements to modern science, ontology seeks the essence behind phenomena.
• Epistemology (The Doctrine of Knowledge): Fundamental in a post-truth era, it does not limit itself to debunking individual fake news , but investigates the social and technological structures that make the illusion of a subjective truth possible.
• Technology (The Cinderella of Thought): Too often overlooked, it is actually the dimension in which thought becomes practice. If ontology tells us that the world exists, technology allows us to manipulate and inhabit it.

2. Man, the Technical Animal: From Hands to "Stick"

The link between philosophy and technology is written in the myth and history of human reflection:

• The Oedipus Riddle: The solution to the Sphinx's riddle lies in self-knowledge. Humanity exists because it integrates a technical apparatus into its being: the staff. Without technology, humanity is an incomplete being.
• Anaxagoras vs. Aristotle: The dispute over the origin of human intelligence—whether it depends on the hands (Anaxagoras) or whether the hand is the instrument of an already wise mind (Aristotle)—underscores a key point: technology is the path through which the spirit externalizes itself.
• The mind as technology: Plato, while wary of external writing, recognizes that the soul itself functions as a "tablet" on which thoughts are engraved. For Descartes, Hegel, and Heidegger, too, the hand is not a simple prehensile organ, but the embodiment of thinking ( Hand-Werk ). The monkey doesn't have a telephone not because it lacks language, but because it lacks hands: only those who manipulate the world can truly think about it.

3. Truth as "Doing": From Writing to the Web

Truth is not a static and private possession, but a public testimony. As Augustine intuited, "making the truth" requires a social and technical dimension: it must be sought, written, disseminated, and preserved. This awareness continues in Vico , who inverts the Cartesian primacy: we are not intelligent