Philosophy As A Science

 Philosophy at its inception was considered to be a science — a paramount science, with a distinctive method and a criterion of validation of its own. Philosophy can be regarded as a science if it has its own subject matter and method. What then is the subject matter of philosophy? Aristotle in his Metaphysics says it is being qua being. Other sciences study a particular segment of reality but philosophy seeks to study reality as a whole. But it may be objected that there is no such thing as reality as a whole, there only particular segments of reality so to say and the total number of sciences covering these potentially infinite segments will inform us about what reality is in its totality. To this Aristotle could reply the science studying one part of being would not be able to say anything about another part of being, how can physics for instance which according to him studies physical objects so far as they are movable inform us about mathematical objects that are not changeable? Our knowledge would be frittered away in isolated fragments without any understanding of how they relate to the whole. But there is more to it, it is not the case that by simply piling up information about particular sciences we could arrive at a picture of reality as a whole — the question is what meaning does the phrase ‘reality as whole’ have. If we say that reality is simply the sum total of facts and ‘Being’ or reality is nothing over and above the sum total of individual beings and these individual units have nothing in common that could justify the treatment of the whole as a distinctive subject matter of science, then we have a world of structureless facts where each distinct fact is a distinct world and where order is something we impose on them through our thinking. The implication is that this undercuts the very possibility of science itself because science involves thinking and finding the order or the law or in Aristotle’s language causes and principles — that explains its subject matter. However, if the subject matter is so to say lawless then no scientific study of it is possible because knowledge is always about the essence of the thing. Not only then philosophy as a science but even particular sciences would become impossible if no rational cognition is possible.

There are other considerations as well. When we analyse the structure of an individual object, we find that it is composite or conditioned because it does not contain within itself the reason for its own existence. Hence it is dependent on another for its existence, so it refers to something beyond itself. Take for instance a horse, the white colour, the texture of its skin, its bodily frame — everything that we can say constitutes the matter of the horse is not something unique to the horse. Other living beings can have similar colours or textures, the matter of the horse does not determine the identity of the horse because the same material constituents could have been used to constitute a different object. It is the Form of the horse that determines the identity of the particular horse, that allows us to distinguish the horse from other animals and that also allows us to re-identify the same horse over a length of time when it may have gained and lost some of its material characteristics. It is the Form that is the cause of something’s ‘being one’ thing — it determines the possibility of that thing being referred to as something. The Form then grounds the possibility of making true and false judgements about the horse because it is that factor that makes the horse intelligible to the intellect. What is the Form? It is the logos or the definition of a thing that determines its essence. It is the particular way of ordering certain material parts that explains how these discrete elements can be treated as one single nature. A house for instance is that which fulfils the function of house-dwelling which function informs us how certain material parts have to be gathered together in order to fulfil the function or the purpose of the house and different types of material constituents can be used to perform the same function. So, what it is to be a house is determined by the Form not the matter. The matter of the house may be a peculiar arrangement of parts but the Form determines the manner in which parts can be combined to determine one single whole. Or when we say for instance that ‘Socrates is human’, to be human means to be a rational animal. Socrates’s humanity is unique to Socrates yet the property of being human is not unique to Socrates and other beings like Plato, Aristotle etc. are capable of possessing the same property. Since it is the Form that determines something to be the one thing it is and the Form is separate from matter — the reason why something is the way it is lies outside that entity. So ‘Form’ is defined by Platonists as the paradigmatic cause of an entity because it is the paradigm or the model after which a sensible image of it is constructed in accord with Reason. What determines for instance that a picture of Socrates is of Socrates is not the colour of the paint but the order and arrangement of the colours and the contour being in accordance with the paradigmatic or the original Socrates.

The Form is considered to be the object of a Divine Intellect because the Form does not exist outside the Intellect nor can it be reduced to the activity of thinking. This should be clear when we discuss the nature of thought. In ordinary parlance we take thinking to be a kind of internal monologue or as empirics we see thinking to consist of nothing but representations which like imagination is dependent like a parasite for its material on sensory contents, which then it can combine in the format of representations that are not tethered to their sensory origin because they can simply be imagined even when they are not present to us. When seen in relation to the senses thought is at its minimum and then gains some freedom from the senses when it becomes representational because the word ‘fire’ for instance does not have to be used only when we see fire. The representation has a life of its own. Concepts are then nothing but those representations that allow us to correctly identify a sensory content. If this is the end of the story about human cognition then human beings are nothing more than animals — the difference being a difference in degree rather than kind and no science, no mathematics, no morality and no religion is possible. It is because we are rational that we can think propositions that are universally and necessarily true and seek the reason ‘why’. Even in our ordinary ways of thinking we believe that by thinking a thing through we arrive at the inner kernel or its truth or in other words its essence. We are not satisfied with appearances but seek their inner truth. When we ask what are animals, we do not merely want a list of animals but we seek the reason for listing them the way we do or the rationale behind it. In other words, we seek the ‘Form’ that unifies the manifold into one and cognition then is seeking that one over the many. This is the basis of scientific thinking where we search for the principle that unites distinct appearances together and explains why it has certain essential properties. This is also the basis of religion that seeks the unity behind the plurality of the world or the One that is the ground of the many.

When thinking has freed itself from the limitations of both senses and the representational thinking that too is enmeshed with the senses then it becomes pure thought. In the phenomena of self-consciousness we can notice that we have awareness of an object and in the self-reflexive awareness of being aware of something these two states are not different from one another because the subject of thinking is the same. In a materialistic world-view self-consciousness is impossible because matter is nothing but parts outside parts or pure externality lacking an inner core. This self-reflexive awareness is what distinguishes me from material objects that absolutely lack consciousness. More importantly for our purposes within self-consciousness I am aware of an object that is distinct from me and yet not outside my consciousness. If it was external then there would be no object of consciousness and if it is identical to my consciousness then there is no consciousness of consciousness. So, self-consciousness is also a gathering together of the consciousness of an object and the object into one single consciousness. The case of Divine Intellect and the Form is similar, the only difference being that in pure thought no image or representation of an object is needed because Forms are immaterial, so there is no form-matter distinction and they are directly present to consciousness. Forms are neither outside the Intellect nor identical to it, there is both identity and difference.

The Divine Intellect also explains the possibility of eternal truths like the necessary truths of mathematics and contingent truths that nevertheless depend on necessary truths. For instance, when we say that ‘fire is hot’, the validity of this statement depends on the Form of Fire and the Form of Hotness. Each Form is both what it is and in relation to another. The interconnectedness between Forms explains why their instances down below are interconnected. It is the intellect’s activity of thinking the Forms that relates the two and explains why down here wherever we find fire we also find heat. The sensible fire and the sensible heat are instances of Form like images of an original archetype. In Platonic parlance, Socrates is human because he participates in the Form of humanity; it is what it is owing to participation in a Form. Socrates’s humanity then is the sensible image of the Form of Humanity. The relation between the Form and its instances is analogous to the relation of a paradigm and its instantiation in a sensible medium like the original Socrates and his painting.

Now, according to Platonists the paramount objects of thought — the Forms as separated from matter are the objects of a divine intellect that contains within itself all that is thinkable. Human beings in their embodied state are not capable of pure thought and always require an image or a symbol to think. Even though the representations are human constructs certain constructions can be regarded as valid because they represent the Forms and so they are in accord with Reason. This is made possible because human thinking is a sensible image of the divine activity of thinking and within a human being there is an implicit awareness that allows him to combine representations in a certain way that they can be considered as imitations of eternal Forms. Plato in his dialogue ‘Meno’ has Socrates elicit truths of geometry from Meno’s slave through his incisive line of questioning, proving thereby that an implicit knowledge of these truths were innately present within him and education merely elicits what is already present within oneself. The ability to give a logos or an explanation does not constitute knowledge but rather presupposes knowledge. For Plato knowing is a kind of seeing — seeing orders or patterns within a manifold. It is considered to be an intellectual intuition because it is an immediate or direct seeing of an intellectual object as present to a subject. Sense-perception is a deficient kind of immediate seeing. The Divine Intellect intuits as it were the entire range of Forms as one whole. Here we see that Platonic conception of Reason is very different from the Enlightenment version. It is not finite human understanding or discursive, inferential reason that is primarily referred to as Reason although it is considered to be an instance of it and being an instance it presupposes the original. If every proposition is justified by referring to another then there will be an infinite regress and we will never be able to comprehend the validity of any proposition without taking an infinite number of steps. The solution of the problem is to trace the source of validity of any proposition to a first principle that is proven by itself rather than through the mediation of another. The validity of this first principle is grasped by an intellectual intuition which then is ground of our ability to provide scientific explanations. Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics says that that which is known through itself is well known than that which is known through another. Reason in this world-view is the Divine Reason which is infinite self-consciousness — the unity of thought and being or subject and object, it is the eternal paradigm or the measure of all things. In Intellectual Intuition the object is directly present to us but human temporalized discursive thought proceeds through steps from one proposition to another. But the purpose of human thinking is to imitate divine thinking by bringing greater order, coherence and unity within representations and the ability to do so depends on an similar ability within human beings to notice the Form that unites disparate representations together. This Intellectual Intuition is referred to as knowledge because knowledge is infallible. It is infallible because the object is directly present to one without the mediation of representations and because this knowing is non-propositional. Wrong cognition consists in predicating some property of a subject that the subject does not actually possess. Since, there is no subject-predicate structure concerning Forms there is no possibility of mis-predication. Also, the entity that explains must be different from the explanandum or else the explanandum will be taken to be its own explanation. The explanandum is a compose entity composed of the enmattered form which is an image of the transcendent Form and matter. Forms can explain these composites because they lack the complexity found within their instances and since they lack such a complex structure, they are better known than the composite. In Aristotle’s terminology Forms are prior in the order of knowledge but sensibles are prior in the order of familiarity. Also, since Forms are prior in the order of explanation, they also have ontological priority over composites. The existence of sensible composites is derivative while Forms exist independent of the composites. This is to say that the existence of composite objects depends on intelligible entities but not visa-versa. Knowledge has immaterial Forms as their objects and beliefs have sensibles as their objects. Sensible objects contain an image of the transcendent Form and these enmattered forms are the basis of definition and explanation. In a similar manner — God — the First principle of all is both transcendent and immanent in his creation. Sensible objects because they contain matter are not intelligible to us without their relation to the pure intelligibles or the Forms which are the reason composite sensible objects can be the objects of true belief. All beliefs are however defeasible and contingently true. The Form down below can be understood to be the rule or the ratio for combining matter in a certain way so that it can be considered as one whole and so it can function as one single entity. Whenever within our experience we see that two or more numerically distinct objects share a common nature we can hypothesize the existence of a Form through an abductive inference. This is the dialectical method. Forms are the ontological foundation of the judgement of sameness and difference. Here both ‘unity’ and ‘difference’ should be equally emphasized, a unity without difference is indeterminate and inarticulate. Through analytical understanding this initial unity has to be broken up into distinct parts. The discursive understanding is the principle of difference. It allows us to define and classify an object into appropriate categories. However analytical understanding cannot grasp the unity that allows us to see many things as grounded in one and it cannot supply us with more than a list of things. For instance, in empirical view of knowledge we posit unstructured facts on which form is imposed externally or violently as it were. Our concrete composite objects of everyday life are broken into discrete atoms consisting of visual, tactile, olfactory sensations etc. At this stage the original object — the table or the chair or even natural objects like a tree and the cow are analysed away. Since what is real about these objects is the atomic sensations — each a discrete individual, the macro-objects can be said to exist only in opinion not in reality. The unity exhibited by these objects then is a mechanical unity which is forged by stitching together discrete parts where each part is nevertheless a distinct whole. At the third stage we retrieve the true unity of an object or its inner essence which is an object of rational cognition. It is a unity in difference where the mutual differences of the individual units is subordinated to the whole and the whole articulates itself through the parts. Consider again the example of a house, the unity of house is the purpose of home dwelling and we see the discrete parts of the house are arranged in a certain way where their mutual differences are subordinated to serve a single purpose. Since human understanding is the principle of difference it separates two things that in reality exist in unity despite their mutual differences like a single tree that is articulated in the differences of its branch, root, stem, flowers, etc. The essence is something that is knowable only through the intellect because it is the Form which makes a thing what it is or gives it its identity. The senses are restricted to material content which has no principle corresponding to it that can explain the identity of the thing.

The distinction between intelligible and the sensible is the cornerstone of Platonism. So according to Platonism if philosophy as a science is possible, it is possible only if it has intelligible or in more modern terms if thinking has an a-priori content. Note that a-priori can refer both to thinking as such which is pure thought and it can refer to the object of pure thought. The distinguishing mark of a-priori concept is that we have these concepts solely because of our ability to think as these concepts belong to pure thought that do not depend on sensory content. The intelligibility of sensory content is derivate and it depends on intelligible content while the latter is intelligible in-itself. Plato understood the relation of Intelligible to Sensible in terms of the relation of a Paradigm to its copy but it is not the only way to understand this relation.

A comparison with mathematics will be helpful here. The arithmetic truth ‘2+2=4’ is not true because it represents a sensible object. Sensible objects are intelligible to us through mathematics and mathematical truths are applicable indifferently to all kind of objects which is why they are universally and necessarily true. They allow us to group different sensible objects together to serve our interests and purposes. We cannot prove the validity of mathematical truths by counting, on the contrary that we can count correctly presupposes the validity of mathematical truths. Mathematics does not take its law from experience but rather gives its laws to experience. The validity of mathematical truths is proved within mathematics which has its own method and criteria of validation distinct from empirical sciences. The case of philosophy is similar, it deals with a-priori concepts that are universally and necessarily truth, that are the objects of pure thought, that are applicable to all possible forms of thinking and all objects of thought alike and the method and criteria of validation is determined by Reason itself because philosophy is Reason turned inwards in order to measure itself or to trace it back to its original source. These a-priori concepts or Forms are present within any mode of thinking and philosophy only makes explicit what is implicitly present within us by virtue of being rational beings. Intelligible content is not however easily retrievable because reflective human understanding is dependent on signs and symbols and as we saw it is analytical and incapable without the intervention of a higher faculty to grasp the unity in difference of an object. Also, just as we distinguish between pure mathematics and applied mathematics, we can distinguish between first philosophy which deals with intelligible objects and second philosophy which is the application of these a-priori concepts to other subjects.

Further, metaphysics was defined by Aristotle as the science of being qua being. The object of a-priori thinking being or reality as such. Note, that we are not talking about individual real objects but reality as such — which refers to Forms. What is real and intelligible in sensible composite objects is due to the Forms and hence Forms can be said to be the cause of the Being of the thing or what makes something real. In this capacity they are objects of study of first philosophy — the science of being qua being. On one interpretation Aristotle in his ‘Categories’ divides the genera of Being into: Substance, Quality, Quantity, Relation, Place, Time, Situation, Condition, Action and Passion These are called Categories and they are divisions of the Form or the Genus of Being. The view of the Nyaya-Vaisesika school of thought in Indian Philosophy is similar. The object of study according to the latter is Being or Tattva — so called because it is something capable of being referred to as ‘that’ (tat). This school divides Being into seven categories or padarthas (word-meanings): Substance, Quality, Activity, Universals, Particulars, Inherence, Non-Existence. According to this philosophy the logical analysis of cognition or judgements will yield primitive concepts that cannot be analysed into further concepts and so these concepts can be called logical atoms. They are the basic building blocks of thought since they determine the logical form of a judgement or the basic constituents of a judgement and rules for combining them in such a way that they would constitute a single thought. The primitive concepts that we extract are ultimate categories revealing the structure of reality because anything that exists must belong to one of these categories. Philosophy is not concerned with particular real objects but with the structure of reality as a whole. While Nyaya believes that philosophy has Being as its subject matter there are other kinds of philosophy which do not believe that philosophy has a distinct subject matter but which still retain the method of conceptual analysis. Philosophy then can be treated as the handmaiden of theology where scripture is believed to be the source of knowledge about God and the task of philosophy is to give a conceptual analysis of concepts that will be helpful to decipher and elucidate the meaning of scriptures while also refuting rival interpretations. Alternatively, philosophy can be made the handmaid of science and philosophy through conceptual analysis adds order or structure to the basic assumptions and clearly defines concepts within a science or else assists in interdisciplinary studies. In all these cases the subject matter is not peculiar to philosophy but given to it. This is the way analytical philosophy functions in current times. Analytical philosophers generally use first-order predicate logic and modal logic in conceptual analysis. The former is the logic of propositional functions like ‘and’, ‘or’, if-then’, ‘not’ i.e. conjunction, disjunction, implication and negation together with existential and universal quantifiers. Modal logic deals with concepts of necessity, possibility and actuality.

Platonists are however adamant that philosophy should not be reduced to logic and the dialectical method should not be confused with the above-mentioned logical method which may or may not come with a distinctive subject matter for philosophy. The reason is first, philosophy is concerned with the ontological foundations of logic and semantics so studying the latter to draw conclusions about ontology is to get things backward. Second, logic and semantics are the products of reflective understanding that do not inform us about the ontological structure of reality but only the way we represent them in language and in discursive thought. Third, ordinary judgements are about sensible beings and ways of classifying sensible being — they ignore the priority of the intelligible to the sensible treating the latter as intelligible in itself. Further we could use Immanuel Kant’s suggestion that the categories of thought must not itself be just a list but must be deduced from the first principle — thereby we could claim that these concepts are truly a-priori untinged with sensible matter and we can explain why anything that exists must belong to one of these categories. Aristotle, too agrees with these ideas since in his Metaphysics he sets aside the individual substance which comes first in his list of Categories because it is the primary being on which other predicates depend and he shows that the metaphysical composition of sensible substances in terms of Form and Matter. Plotinus in his Enneads uses the five Great Kinds listed in Plato’s Sophist as the Platonic Trans-Categories — Being, Sameness, Difference, Rest and Motion. Ontological discussion can be understood through the following example — fire is the cause of smoke. The inference of fire from smoke cannot be justified through sense-perception since that would demand that we verify all instances of fire and smoke to confirm that they are found together in each and every case. Thought however is able to grasp their rational structure in terms of cause and effect and these concepts can be used to justify the inference of fire from smoke. So how we understand the concepts of cause and effect will not depend on sense-perception but on reason. Are cause and effect two distinct being or is it the case that the existence of the effect is nothing over and above the existence of the cause? Appealing to experience alone will not help to resolve the issue. We may count curd and milk as two because their name and form are distinct but from an ontological point of view it may be the case that the same entity exists in a different shape and the difference of name and form does not imply that a new independent entity has been born. Further, are cause and effect two primitive categories or can they be reduced to more basic categories of thought? What is the rational connection between cause and effect? How can cause be said to necessitate the existence of the effect if cause and effect are two independent entities? Is it possible that there can be an effect without a cause? Should cause be understood in terms of a temporal antecedent condition or has time nothing to do with causation? To resolve such disputes, one needs an a-priori methodology that studies Reason and becomes a knowing about knowing. Philosophy is the self-conscious rather than the blind use of Reason.

This brings us to the final strand of Platonist view of philosophy as a science — the unity of the science of being qua being with theology. As noted, before in order to have a distinctive subject matter there must be a unified subject matter — in this case ‘Being’ as something over and above the sum total of beings. Whether we say with Plato that there is a Form of Being or with Aristotle that Being is used equivocally presupposing a primary referent — what we can certainly say is that Being is a one over many, a complex entity which is the unity of all Forms and it would not be a unified whole without the unifying activity of God (this latter word I use indifferent for Plato the One and Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover). So, there would be no science of being qua being if there was no unified single subject matter — Being as such and it is the unifying activity of the Divine Intellect that allows us to treat Being as a single complex whole which makes the scientific study of being possible. The Divine Intellect is the source of all intelligibility in the world. God is the paradigm of the world because it is Being in the primary sense whereas the being of others is derivative. Just as the architect is the cause of the building through the use of the blueprint of the building similarly God is the cause of Being through the instrumentality of Forms. So, First Philosophy has God as its object because this science studies the cause and principle of Being. In the capacity of being the highest cause and principle of Being, God makes possible the study of being qua being. Hence God is the subject matter of metaphysics. Anyone who denies the possibility of metaphysics also denies that Being is one single whole and is forced to accept that there are only different perspectives and no reality as whole, no objective measure over our pretensions.

Something is finite because it is conditioned which is to say that the reason for its existence is outside itself and within another and so on and so forth. This series of explanations cannot go on forever because the entire series would consist of conditioned entities and we would have no explanation for the series. Second, the entity that explains must be a different type of entity from the entity in need of explanation or else the same entity or the same kind of entity is being appealed to for giving an explanation which would not explain anything. So, what is conditioned must be explained by what is unconditioned. What is unconditioned or the first principle is that which has no composition of existence and essence within it or whose essence is to exist and so it itself is in no need of an explanation. Here, Aristotle and Plato differ in that the former believes that the Divine Intellect fulfils the condition of absolute simplicity because it lacks matter thereby it lacks potentiality and so it is pure actuality. Plato believes that within the Divine Intellect there is a minimum of complexity between thinking and the object of thought and hence the First Principle is beyond the Divine Intellect — the Ineffable One also referred to as the Good. It is so referred to because it is the efficient cause of all existence and also the Final Cause. All beings strive to return to their original source and the human desire for happiness has as its end the highest metaphysical principle — the One. This One is absolutely simple and there is nothing outside it. Since ‘Being’ is derived from the First Principle, the science of being qua being has as its object the First Cause or the Highest Principle of Being and so is called Theology.

Before turning to ethics and philosophy of religion of Platonism, I will briefly discuss other methods of philosophy which I will treat in greater detail in the future. We came across what I called the logical method where philosophy is logical or conceptual analysis that may or may not be accompanied with a distinctive subject matter. The third is what I call the intuitive method that we find in Rationalism of Descartes et al. These philosophers believe that intellectual intuition is humanly possible and through clear and distinct cognition we arrive at simple concepts about which, because of the self-certainty of consciousness, we cannot be mistaken. Leibniz in Platonic vein argues against this that primitive concepts are found within a rational structure where they are positioned in accordance with how they can be deduced from the first principle of knowledge like the law of non-contradiction. The certainty of consciousness does not guarantee the simplicity of the concept. This method however paves the way for critical philosophy. The point of departure of critical philosophy is that before we can make pronouncements about reality, we must investigate the instrument by which we measure reality. This means that human nature becomes an object of investigation and what see seek to know is whether human beings are capable of comprehending reality. Critical philosophy can be divided into two — the empirical method and the transcendental method. In the former there is an empirical psychological investigation of the mode of human cognition. This is really antithetical to philosophy as a science because the essence of the latter view is that thinking cannot be reduced to material conditions or be understood in terms of empirical laws. The laws of logic are not descriptive but normative — they do not describe how we reason but prescribe how we ought to reason. Critical philosophy in order to justify itself has to assume that concepts get their meaning from subjective consciousness and the content of concepts does not contain anything more than what is thought within it. Transcendental Method can be divided into two — Kant’s transcendental deduction and Husserl’s Phenomenological Method. These latter two are not opposed to philosophy as a science even though they do not believe that philosophy has Being as its subject matter. They nevertheless believe that a-priori cognition is possible where the object of cognition is cognition itself.

Kant defines a-priori cognition as that which is independent of experience and whose defining characteristic is universality and necessity. His method is the method of transcendental deduction. Deduction is a proof that establishes right or legal entitlement but the proof of entitlement is different from the proof of the fact of entitlement and the latter presupposes the former. Kant calls the former kind of proof quid juris and the latter quid facti. My citizenship may be proved by producing certain relevant documents but that assumes that there is a criterion for determining citizenship and the document merely proves the fact of citizenship and all the rights that come with it, informing us what a citizen will be entitled to. So, the question of who should be counted as a citizen is different from the question whether or not I am a citizen. The latter question depends on the application of a criteria and so the proof of the criteria cannot be settled by fact of application. Before giving a proof, we need to inquire into what constitutes a proof. In answer to the question who should be counted a citizen one cannot answer anyone who has a certificate of citizenship because the question is who should be issued such a certificate in the first place. So, the question of objectivity of truth or of moral values can be settled not by practical use but by establishing which fact would count as a relevant fact on an objective basis. Kant however does not believe that we have any access to mind-independent reality because we can access only our subjective representations and the meaning of these representations is tethered to the subject of knowledge. The distribution of meaning is however not arbitrary but obeys laws of cognition which are a-priori not empirical and as explained through the through the transcendental method. The method begins by assuming the truth of a cognition and then looks into what conditions determine the possibility of such a cognition. Thereby we learn the limits of human cognition and what can and cannot be proved through it.

Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology relativizes the content of thought not to the empirical self but to the transcendental self which is not limited by any particular ego. What is an object for the transcendental consciousness is universal and necessarily applicable to all particular selves and hence is a-priori. To arrive at the standpoint of the transcendental ego one has to perform an epoche or abstraction from all content and bracket the question of being in order to focus on an object of consciousness only not as it is in reality but only as it appears to this transcendental ego. Using this method Husserl explains how different forms of cognition arise due to the contribution of consciousness in constituting its object.

Finally, there is the dialectical method of Hegel. His dialectical method differs from the Platonic method in that the method of dialectics is not external to the Form but determines the content of the Form itself. In Platonism every Form has a nature of its own while also being internally related to other Forms. Hegel makes this relation to the other a part of the identity or the content of the Form and the process of thought is the negation of other-being or the negation of negation. Hegel’s Science of Logic is till date the most sophisticated treatment of intelligible concepts. Hegel should be counted as a Platonist because he believes that philosophy is a science that is capable of revealing the nature of reality.

Further, philosophy should be distinguished from anti-philosophy. The characteristic feature of the latter is that it uses philosophy to undermine philosophy. Pyrrhonian Sceptics for example use the equipollence strategy to show that for every valid conclusion established by reasoning its contrary can be shown to be equally plausible. These sceptics reject the possibility of knowledge and suspend all beliefs. Academic scepticism on the other hand is a weaker form of scepticism which holds that we are missing is a criterion of truth to establish knowledge claims. Both reject Plato’s theory of infallible knowledge. Critical philosophy as we have seen uses psychologism to undermine philosophy — tracing the origin of our metaphysical ideas to human nature expounded by empirical laws of psychology. Similarly, anthropology can be used to undermine philosophical claims. From Platonic point of view such views are bound to be circular i.e. they must assume the very thing they seek to explain away by the use of psychology or anthropology. Moreover, within the sensible realm there can be no essences, its intelligibility as said before is derivative. The matter that, say is informed by the Form of horse could also instantiate its contrary; hence no explanation of identity and predication is possible at the sensible level. It should be noted at this stage that the intelligible concepts are found in all forms of thinking and they can be correctly or incorrectly applied. To become conscious of these intelligible concepts also enables us to develop a skill in thinking. The choice is not between philosophy or no philosophy but between good philosophy and bad philosophy.

Further, there is the existential phenomenology of Heidegger, the hermeneutical method of Gadamer and the Deconstructive method of Derrida. The common point of these diverse views is their effort to undermine reason. These modern views are very self-consciously the reversal of Platonism. In a series entitled ‘Philosophy of Philosophy’, I will address all objections to the possibility of philosophy as a science and at the very least I want to prove that there is a substantial case to be made in favour of Platonism.

Next, we turn to practical philosophy and the relation of philosophy to religion. The practical goal of philosophy is the cultivation of virtue which Plato calls assimilation to God. The basic difference between modern ethics and ancient ethics is that the former believes that you cannot be ethical till you are free while the latter believes you cannot be free till you are ethical. According to Platonism human existence in nature is alienated from itself. Its true nature is its higher self but this higher self is present within us as an endowment not as an achievement. Through practice of virtue, we become who we are. Virtue is possible through identification with the higher self which brings about a unity within the individual who otherwise would be chasing different sensible impulses. Virtue is order and in order there is freedom. In his Philebus Plato says that the One is the Good and the Good should be understood as the combination of truth, commensurability and beauty. Since Forms gather together discrete elements to make one nature, they are the source of commensurability in the world. Truth is transparency to an intellect — that which allows us to think and make valid judgements about an object. Beauty is proper symmetry of the parts to constitute a whole. God is referred to as the Good because he is the reason we are given a nature and allowed to exist. God’s Goodness consists in allowing something different from Himself to exist while it is also true that nothing outside God has any existence. We can relate this possession of an essential nature with that feature that determines our own well-being. In his Function Argument Aristotle tells us that to fulfil one’s own nature constitutes the good of man and since human beings are rational beings or atleast reason is that part of us which is closest to the Divine, to act in accordance with Reason is what is ultimately good for man. This acting in accord with Reason in its theoretical aspect is the cognition of God and in its practical aspect the cultivation of virtue. When it is said in Platonism that God is the paradigm of the world what it means is that when a Form is instantiated in a sensible composite it also constitutes an instantiation of God’s Goodness because the latter is the source of the former and just as there are multiple Forms there are multiple ways for God to instantiate himself in the world — by bestowing an essential nature on an object and the fulfilment of this nature constitutes its own good. So, the essence is the best possible way a thing could have been and to act in accordance with one’s own nature is the best for an individual. Opposed to this view is primitivism according to which man’s existence in nature constitutes his moral goodness and it is through education and civilization that man loses his original innocence and becomes corrupted. Against, this Platonism would hold that man is alienated from himself within nature and if we see the mode of living of people closest to nature, we find not that they are innocent but rather brutal and barbaric. Morality comes through knowledge and education. If man’s existence in nature is what constituted his essential nature, then no practice of virtue would be possible. Human predicament is that he has one foot within the sensible world and another in the intelligible world, the more one acts in accord with Reason and extricates himself from sensible impulses the closer he is to God. This does not imply becoming an ascetic because both appetitive desire and rational desire converge in the same object — God and God works through persuasion not force or suppression. The lower self has to be convinced that its happiness is in the higher nature that limits the lower nature but does not destroy it or invalidate it completely. Also, Platonists distinguish between political virtue and philosophical virtue. The former is a weaker form of virtue because its source is belief and opinion while the latter’s source is knowledge. Since knowledge as we saw is infallible no deviation from this virtuous state is possible while virtue founded on belief may be lost when our beliefs change. However, this is the stage of the sage who is not the lover or wisdom but the wise. Anyways, we can say that a philosophical life is life lived in accordance with reason. It should be emphasized over here that categories of practical reason like rational agency, moral responsibility, free will cannot be explained in a materialistic world view because they demand the priority of the intelligible world over the sensible world as their foundation. Ancient Ethics is based on the unity of theory and practice. It is knowledge that corresponds to the freedom of the will — the ability to act in accordance with what has validity in and for itself. We find this even in Indian Philosophy where classics like Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Vashista are based on a line of inquiry that knowledge is opposed to practical engagement with the world and demands the abandonment of the world. The philosophy taught in these sacred texts then shows how to reconcile knowledge and will. We see the unity of theory and practice for instance in Bhagavad Gita when Shri Krishna tells Arjuna that birth and death are the constant affairs of life and consequently there is no reason to lament them. What further needs to be shown is that not only does a state of affairs obtain and that we should resign ourselves to our fate but that it is the best that they should obtain and it is reason that gives us this knowledge. This in essence is also the teaching of Plato’s Republic — the reconciliation of theory and practice, philosophy and poetry or as we would say in Indian Philosophy jnana-karma samuccayya, the unity of knowledge and action. Also, in Plato’s Euthyphro we find the question is raised whether something is Good because the Gods like it or is it that God’s like it because it is Good. In the former case it is the whims and fancies of God that have to be regarded as good while in the latter case the Good is not the object of God’s Will but of God’s Knowledge and God’s Will is subordinated to his Knolwedge. It is because of this reason that Platonists emphasize that Forms are objects of Divine Thought but cannot be reduced to Divine Thinking. They are what connect human cognition with Divine cognition — it is because human thinking is an image of Divine thinking that we can access Forms and it is because enmattered Forms are the images of immaterial Forms that we have an object of thought similar to the object of Divine thought. This is what makes science, morality, aesthetics and religion possible.

Coming, to philosophy’s relation to Religion — both philosophy and religion have the same content. Where they differ is in the mode of knowledge. Religion accesses this content through symbolic thinking and myths while philosophy seeks to access this content in the form of truth which is only possible for pure thought. Plotinus points out that myths and discursive thinking are alike since they both present their content which is eternal in temporal terms and where every symbol is externally related to one another. So, we need Reason to convert these representations to the form of pure thought — to grasp their internal connection. If one takes these myths very seriously then one makes the content of religion to be contingent depending on miracles and historical occurrences whereas according to philosophy one’s own soul must testify to the content of religion. Platonism does not believe in the humility where God is out there and we are over here free to do as we like within our own sphere. Even though Plato’s Ineffable One is beyond cognition, He is known indirectly through his effects and the Demiurge or the Divine Intellect is the paradigm of human thinking. In order to be closer to the One, there should be assimilation to the Divine Intellect and no assimilation is possible if one does not know God. The knowledge of God is the source of virtues. Platonic philosophy is theophany — that is to say the world is the revelation of God. According to Plato and Aristotle, God is not jealous and so he communicates his God-Self to us but his mode of operation is persuasive rather than violent. God’s nature is the most well-known though last in the order of familiarity. A jealous God is a God who hides his inner self from others but according to Platonism an unmanifest God is a contradiction and what does not express itself is as it were non-existent. So, God must manifest himself or God will not be God. Within Indian Philosophy, Bhartrhari’s Shabda Brahman, Ramanuja’s Vishistha-Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism come closest to this point of view.

Some may object that religion is concerned with feeling and Platonism can agree with it because philosophy is not opposed to feeling. What it does oppose is seeing feeling to be the source of justification of religious and moral truth. It may also be pointed out that in the Bhakti schools of Vedanta or those dedicated to the devotion of God, Bhakti as Upaya is considered as different from Bhakti proper. The former is a means to an end — the end being knowledge of God and true Bhakti only begins when there is knowledge of God. Feeling is one way to access content whose ultimate justification lies with pure thought. If feeling is taken to be the measure, then we cannot discriminate between a saint and the sinner because both can act in conformity with what they feel is true. Only by considering the object of their actions can we distinguish the worth of their actions. The sameness of content and difference in the mode of knowledge reconciles philosophy with poetry. The poetry however which takes its feelings and mythical stories to be factual and views philosophy as its enemy because it converts poetry of its world to prose — has gone astray along with the reflective understanding which is the principle of Enlightenment which makes poetry its enemy. Both regard God as unknowable and hold onto the finite human nature over and against the infinite and in antithesis to it. The true religious consciousness is however seen in the knowledge that everything is conditioned and nothing except God has unconditioned existence. The finite has no existence of its own, its existence is derived from its ground. Poetry encloses us within our feelings and subjective representations and makes us hold on to them in the belief that otherwise all meaning would be lost. This is a form of self-love and it is the natural human condition. It also leads to a conceit where one’s own customs and traditions or mode of existence is seen as superior to others and others are seen as a threat to oneself. It is the worship of religion at the cost of worship of God because God can only be the Universal. In the name of religion, it gives full sway to one’s whims and fancies with no objective measure because it is suspicious of any sense of measure or its measure comes only from within itself. Reflective thinking is correct to try to break through this narrow sectarian world-view to bring to human consciousness the knowledge of the universal. Till one does not shed one’s particularity there is no possibility of dwelling in the universal — that which has existence on its own account. But in the process reflective understanding leads us to another error. This is the human predicament — we think that when we do the opposite of what we know is wrong we will be set on the right path but unbeknown to us we reach the same destination through another route. Reflective understanding refuses to see the truth in poetry and entrenches itself against poetic thinking in the cause of the victory of prose. In the process all meaning is lost because the particular and its interests and feelings are invalidated and reason becomes mechanical — the relation of external parts lacking an inner core. The true Universal however retrieves the particular and justifies it — not in its natural mode of existence but in allowing it redemption. The universal of reflective understanding however sees the particular as sinful and seeks its destruction. It sees no meaning in custom and tradition, in the ordinary practical way of life. There is no good and evil, no truth and falsehood. Reflective understanding is then reason turned against itself. The human being under the sway of reflective understanding loses all interest and its purpose in the world and so seeks repose within itself and sees another as its prison. The practical everyday life of human being is seen as the locus of untruth and vices whose only redemption lies in negation of self. Poetry is right to insist against this reflective understanding that its reflections are finite and in a one-sided way it has given more importance to prose than to poetry thereby thwarting the individual. But just as self-love is harmful, so also the absolute denial of self is unhealthy. Philosophy gives us a third option avoiding the excesses of the two. In this respect it can be seen as of fundamental importance in today’s world where we need the reconciliation of the individual with the universal and the accommodation of the individual by the universal so that human beings can be at home with themselves.