Three Objections To Philosophy And Reply

 

Three Objections To Philosophy And Reply

Objection 1: Philosophy is impractical. What is meant by impracticality? It means one that philosophy has no relevance for our daily life and two it is devoid of practical significance i.e. it is theoretical and lacks practical application.

Reply: First the charge of irrelevance. The objection presupposes that the only thing meaningful in life is something that is tangible or can be measured or in other words has a price. We act in order to achieve our goals and select appropriate means for that purpose. Philosophy too says that its goal is wisdom but of what use is wisdom. Does it solve our problems regarding food, clothing and shelter? Does it help to solve our problems when people in authority oppress us? To this my reply is first life is not a profit and loss statement; basic necessities are important but there are more valuable things in life than that like friendship, relationships — love a parent has for his child or a child’s concern for his parents, love two people have for each other either as friends or as husband and wife, concern we have for a neighbor or an unknown person when we feel that we should help someone in trouble even though it does not lead to any tangible benefit or on the contrary may cause us harm. Also the appreciation of art and beauty — the feeling we have when we see a beautiful scenery a blessing of nature and the feeling of being overwhelmed by such a sight. The feeling of empathy — suffering in suffering of another. And such instances can be multiplied. The importance of food, clothing and shelter lies in its being basic but while you need to begin with basics it would be tragic that you end with them alone. Like relationships and art philosophy too is a need of human beings. Philosophy is the contemplation of the entirety of the world or as a whole and an attempt to understand our world and our place within it. Human beings have this gift that we seek to understand — to try and grasp why something is the way it is; hence Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder and this intellectual need just like the physical one demands fulfillment too.

Now a philosopher in seeking the truth may not be seeking a practical benefit from philosophy this does not mean that philosophy does not have practical benefits though they are not the aim of the philosopher. Hegel said that even though philosophy leads to edification it should not be practiced for edification. To understand this point think why food, clothing and shelter are such big problems in our world? Why do few people in authority manage to torment a large number of people? The answer is that we are conditioned to believe that life has to be this way. So many children die of hunger while others have far more than they need. And yet people in power manipulate us to believe that this is how life is and that somehow those who suffer due to the system are really suffering due to their own mistakes. Within the tangible system of numbers, systems and institutions we fail to grasp the intangible web of thoughts that afflict us. We fail to see beyond the immediate cause and we fear an immediate danger more than a danger lurking far behind. We never question our way of life and never seek to explore whether it could have been better and whether it is really necessary that things have to be the way they are. Besides our mutual discord allows more smarter people to keep us divided and afraid of one another while they themselves can benefit. Moreover ideologies divide us because we want to save the world our way and because we act under the compulsion of dogmas or prescriptions rather than an intelligent assessment of the situation at hand and our own sense of right and wrong. Philosophy is the means of breaking this social conditioning and seeking a way out of our misery.

Objection 2: Philosophy is very opaque. Some philosophers make it poetic while others make it analytical involving a lot of hair splitting. What is philosophy really about? Is it poetry or science?

Reply: Philosophy is the search for the source or the reason of the world which tells us why something is the way it is and which may or may not be God. This search is carried out in a reflective mode. By this I mean the suspension of the practical or the existential mode which is the mode we live in. We live our life blindly which is to say we live at the level of skills or practice but we do not understand what makes this practice possible or successful. We follow rules blindly but when we turn the torchlight within to understand what we are doing and why then we have switched to a reflective mode. It has the effect of stopping a machine in order to understand its functioning. As for the method one needs to understand that this will vary from philosopher to philosopher. A precise definition of philosophy would be counter-productive and would needlessly put too many restrictions on practice of philosophy; hence the wisdom of working with a vague one. As for the charge of hair-splitting since philosophy is concerned with reasons the endeavor to find one demands subtlety and analytical precision. It is better to err in this direction than not to make the attempt at all. But philosophy is more than a skill and hence requires a judgement as well. I would call it a rational insight — the ability to see the whole while simultaneously to be in possession of the parts or the details. An ideal philosopher has a rational insight. This means that philosophy is a self-conscious endeavor — the philosopher has to choose an appropriate goal and an appropriate method for himself while in every other science a goal and a method are pre-ordained. There are however no methods to choose a goal or a method on the pain of infinite regress. Hence a philosopher needs a judgement or a rational insight to be able to select one. Thus in a way philosophy is both poetic and scientific or is neither.

Objection 3: Is philosophy subordinate to religion or science? Philosophy being intellectual is unable to grasp the ultimate truth and this ultimate truth is knowable either to religion or to a mystic or else to science. So philosophy even if it has a role has a subordinate one.

Reply: Religion and science have limits but philosophy has none because its concern is with the whole. If you see the works of philosophers who were also theologians you will see that they substantiated religious dogmas through reason i.e. their work in philosophy was extended in the domain of religion or theology even though they believed that revealed truths may not be known through reason. However this application of philosophy to religion was questioned by dogmatists of their age and these philosophers cum theologians had to justify this extension as involving no loss to religion but rather a substantial gain. The religiously minded need not be antithetical to philosophy or religion and many such figures were people at the forefront of breakthroughs in philosophy and science because they believed that they were seeking to understand the creation of God and indirectly God himself irrespective of whether they gave priority to religion or philosophy. St Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus are examples of the former and Leibniz, Hegel are examples of the latter (i.e. those who believed in primacy of philosophy over religion). See also the works of Moses Maimonides, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Shankara, Kumarila, Udayana etc.

Coming to the relation of philosophy and science; science without philosophy is blind or simply a skill to conduct experiments and to make successful predictions. But if we believe science is concerned with explanation then you shall see that it presupposes a conceptual repertoire (like cause and effect) whose understanding or the explanation of explanation is sought after by philosophy. Science is after facts but philosophy seeks to understand those facts and to grasp the implications of the facts in light of the whole. Just as facts can illuminate the whole; the whole can also illuminate the facts and thus there is a reciprocal relationship between the two. Philosophy is thus neither subordinate nor antithetical to science while science without philosophy is incomplete. Scientists like Einstein, Heisenberg, David Bohm etc. were people who took philosophy seriously. The relation between the two is a complimentary one and it is only an incorrect understanding of science and philosophy that causes a friction between the two. Maimon expressed the idea well:

“The relation of philosophy to all other sciences is comparable to that of the godhead to the world. It is a relation of subordination, not of coordination. Just as the godhead permeates the world so philosophy pervades the sciences. Without godhead the world is incomplete, and without a world one could not attain cognition of godhead. Likewise, without philosophy science is incomplete, and without science philosophic knowledge cannot be attained.”

In the works of a philosopher and historian of science — Alexandre Koyre you can see how the practice of science is not free of philosophical presuppositions. In light of this isn’t it better that one be aware of those presuppositions? In the past scientists were aware of these presuppositions but today we see a strange bias against reason in both philosophers and scientists. If this is the state of such eminent people what to say of the common masses! Isn’t this then the most irrational of all ages?

I believe Husserl expressed it very well when he called philosophy — honesty of the intellect. I would end with these two quotes below:

….. Stop chatter and take to learning. This duty to keep in one’s talk can be named an essential condition of all culture and all learning; one must begin by becoming capable of taking up the thoughts of others and of renouncing one’s own fancies. It is usually said that the understanding is developed by questions, objections, answer etc.; in effect however it is not thus formed, but externally made. Man’s inwardness is what is won and widened in true culture; he grows not poorer in thoughts or in quickness of mind by silently containing himself. He learns rather thereby ability to take up and acquires perception of the worthlessness of his own conceits and objections and as the perception of the worthlessness of such conceits grows he breaks himself of the having of them.

— — — — Hegel

The whole art of loving consists in retaining this high point of vision as a perspective and remaining under its spell. A life of love is a life spent in the knowledge of what is best worth knowing, a life of participation in the highest that is in man.

— — — Niccolai Hartmann