I want to say very quickly how I recognize a philosopher in his activity. One can only confront these activities as a function of what they create and of their mode of creation. One must ask, what does a woodworker create? What does a musician create? For me, a philosopher is someone who creates concepts. This implies many things: that the concept is something to be created, that the concept is the product of a creation.
I see no possibility of defining science if one does not indicate something that is created by and in science. And, it happens that what is created by and in science, I'm not completely sure what it is, but not concepts properly speaking. The concept of creation has been much more linked to art than to science or to philosophy. What does a painter create? He creates lines and colors. That suggests that lines and colors are not givens, but are the product of a creation. What is given, quite possibly, one could always call a flow. It's flows that are given, and creation consists in dividing , organizing, connecting flows in such a way that a creation is drawn or made around certain singularities extracted from flows.
A concept is not at all something that is a given. Moreover, a concept is not the same thing as thought: one can very well think without concepts, and everyone who does not do philosophy still thinks, I believe, but does not think through concepts. If you accept the idea of a concept as the product of an activity or an original creation.
I would say that the concept is a system of singularities appropriated from a thought flow. A philosopher is someone who invents concepts. Is he an intellectual? No, in my opinion. For a concept as system of singularities appropriated from a thought flow... Imagine the universal thought flow as a kind of interior monologue, the interior monologue of everyone who thinks. Philosophy arises with the action that consists of creating concepts. For me, there are as many creations in the invention of a concept as in the creation by a great painter or musician. One can also conceive of a continuous acoustic flow (perhaps that is only an idea, but it matters little if this idea is justified) that traverses the world and that even encompasses silence. A musician is someone who appropriates something from this flow: notes? Aggregates of notes? No? What will we call the new sound from a musician? You sense then that it is not simply a question of the system of notes. It's the same thing for a philosopher, it is simply a question of creating concepts rather than sounds. It is not a question of defining philosophy by some sort of search for the truth, for a very simple reason: this is that truth is always subordinate to the system of concepts at one's disposal. What is the importance of philosophers for non-philosophers? It is that although non-philosophers don't know it, or pretend not to be interested, whether they like it or not they think through concepts which have proper names.
