Why should I care? or why punks are correct and old wise philosophers are wrong

Summary

Last week I learned that Robert Paul Wolff, the philosopher who got interested in anarchism and marxism, died and I wanted to write something dedicated to him — this was the first reason I started writing this. The second one, was to finally finish an essay that I have in my /temp folder for at least 10 years, which my 20-year-old self titled “Why should I care?”. This essay, which came about as a regular attempt to say “Fuck authority!” remained unfinished, as I didn’t feel I was prepared to arrive at the necessary conclusions. Now, I realize why — my thoughts were in strong conflict with most all philosophy ever published, notably the moral philosophy of Kant. And the position of a 20-year-old who is saying everyone else are wrong, is too anti-intellectualistic me to take. But now I know that I do have some allies, like the aforementioned Robert Paul Wolff, who tackles the same issues in his paper/blog post THE COMPLETION OF KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE TENETS OF THE RECHTSLEHRE. And that guy from Plato’s Republic (more on him later). So, I will attempt to finally express my thoughts of whether we are obliged to participate in society, and to treat all people, and their problems, in a way that society wants us to treat. As an experiment, I decided to leave what I wrote before unchanged and unedited, and then continue with my current thoughts. So here we go: Introduction (by my 20-year-old-self) In loving memory of Robert Paul Wolff 1933 – 2025 Amidst protests [2013 protests against the Oresharski], I decided to write something about the political situation in Bulgaria. I thought I had something to say on the topic. But how do you write a political article that doesn’t waste the time of those who read it? I mean, what new can be said on the subject? And what is worth saying? These questions tormented me greatly, but the more I tried to reflect on them, the more I actually drifted away from them and began pondering another question: Why should I care? This might s...