Phi Lo Why

7/31/2019 Phi Lo Why

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the importance of philosophythinkers


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W ud u bg binterested in philosophy? Isntphilosophy t for fools only, or isntit a merely academic triing andhairsplitting in search of unobtainableknowledge? Or isnt philosophymostly a set of false illusions from thepast - sophistries designed to comfortones desires by wishful thinkingd u - dv b d b d?

W p- -


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1. a u bg v ud dabout what reality is like, that they believe explaintheir experiences, and ideas about what realityand human beings should be like, that they useto guide their behaviour. The rst of these kindsof ideas is a metaphysical theory, the second an .

2. hu bg d

d d bu b winstincts that determine for them what they shouldthink and want, and are born with the capacities u w d d qu belief they have or meet.

3. It is evident that most of the ideas in history thatpeople have used to explain human experienceshave been false or unfounded in many respects,and it is also evident that most of the ideas in d u bvu v bharmful to other human beings or to themselves.

4. On the other hand, it is also evident thatwhatever adequate understanding people have ofthemselves, of others, and of their environmentsand possibilities, is based on the asking andanswering of the type of general questions thatare philosophical and scientic, and that thereseems to be no way of being human without trying d w u qu.

5. All ideas about philosophy or science, including du d science, are themselves philosophical ideas, and

such as declare all philosophy useless, triing, orimpossible are little better than a refusal to do anyserious philosophical or scientic reasoning.

6. The ideas people live and die for, go to warfor and kill each other for, or let themselves beinspired to the making of great art or science, are d.

Much of the history of the 20th century - The Century of Total War, in Raymond Arons apt phrase, which isthe title of one of his books - is the more or less direct product of a small number of philosophical ideas and thephilosophers who made them up: Marxism ruled the lives of more than a 1000 million people; Fascism destroyedthe lives of millions of people and caused a World War; both Marxism and Fascism were opposed by men in the

name of Liberalism, Democracy, Catholicism, Protestantism, or Science, each of which are themselves either specicphilosophies or derived from more comprehensive philosophical systems.

While men like Marx and Nietzsche in their own lives may be regarded as unsuccessful, their ideas and values, orrather what was made of these by their self-proclaimed followers, have in the 20th century created and destroyedcivilizations and the lives of millions of human beings.

reasoning


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philosohicaloble

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More specically, philosophy isd w u b d b:

logic: what are the foundationsand principles of sound reasoning

science: what are the foundationsof our scientic and technological

wdg

gug: w d gugv d w u ug

g: w g dw d w ud g g b

ethics: what are the foundationsof the judgments that acts or the menwho commit them are good or bad,

and in what sense are such judgmentstrue or different from mere matters of.

aesthetics: what makes beautifulthings appear beautiful or ugly, andwhat is the use of having an aesthetical

self: whether there is a self,and if so, what it is and what is itsfoundation, or, if not, what is thereason for this popular delusion.

free will: whether humanbeings are in any sense free to act asthey please and responsible for theconsequences, or only determined tofalsely believe they are free to believe .

d: w d ddis nal, what is the point of fearingsomething one will never experience,d w g

self-contradiction in the belief in a lifeor a judgment after death.

happiness: what is happiness;how does one nd it; and why shouldone look for it, especially if everyoneseems naturally to know what feelsgood and what does not feel good.

the good life: what a humanindividual should and should not do,believe and desire to lead a good life.

gd : w bw u dvdu buto the good life.

Thatmanyoft

hequestionsproperlyraisedwith

inphilosophyso-calledinearlier

daysarenowr

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redbyspecialsciencesis

true-andchangesnothingaboutthefactthath

umanbeingsaresuchastolead

themselvesbygeneralideasand

values,andthatoneofthe

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ofearlierphilosophicalquestion

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frealityandhumanity


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Ideology, religiond

Philosophy, or more precisely, philosophyseveryday appearance, which is a political orreligious ideology, guides and misguides the livesof human beings, and every human being meetsdaily with many philosophical ideas, and makes oravoids many of his daily choices by appealing tod g d.

Literally millions of people have been murderedin this century and other millions of people havebeen sent to concentration camps for what were,in the end, crude philosophical ideas (of theMarxist or Fascist variety, often).

All supposedly practical men, whether they did

the killing in the name of a philosophy or were thevictims of men acting out a philosophy or stood at d gwg w dg useless or nonsense, were as philosophical - inthe sense of being moved by general argumentsbu w wd d ud b d whuman beings should behave - as any man, exceptthat these supposedly practical men were lessconscious of that fact.

In any case, it is an illusion to believe thatphilosophy only pertains to the goods of the mind

or only is of importance to a few intellectuallygifted and curious individuals:

wv d wvu bg u d d d d others and for themselves is based on generald d vu v gphilosophical, and this has been so since humanbg d .And part of the reason is that all men need toanswer the questions what there really is, whatthey should and should not do, and why theybv w g. t qu

be answered by any special science, and must bew wd b u bg.

Also, it is important to recognize that thephilosophies that inuenced much of the history ofthe 20th Century, Socialism and Fascism, were - atleast in practice - dangerous delusions, and thatindeed the same holds for religions, that tend tobe beliefs that are held in irrational and fanaticalways, and tend to be very dangerous for thoseof a different belief. (This last fact should givepeople pause who believe in an all powerful and

bv d. i believer in God is entitled to claim, within reason,if this is possible, is that he believes in somethingthat is totally beyond human understanding.)

id-

gy, re-gd

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The study of philosophy

In general terms, philosophy aims at a way of life, namely one based on bd u d wdg.

The value of philosophy is the scope and clarity of mind it provides,

especially as regards the fundamental general questions every humanbeing somehow must answer, if only by tacit and blind consent to previousanswers. (Likewise, the value of any specic science is the scope andclarity of mind it provides as regards the special questions the scienceaims to answer.)

Although the foundation of all things human is the individual human mind,human beings live, develop and die in cultures and civilizations: thehuman mind is the coordinated product of the ideas human minds haveproduced in the past, and many of the questions no human individual canreasonably hope to solve himself can be solved by the efforts of manyindividuals through the course of time.

My case for philosophical contemplation is simply that it aims atanswering the questions that lie at the foundation of all societies and allhuman communication and interaction, and that all human beings mustanswer in some fashion, if only by unthinkingly following someone elsesphilosophy of life.

If all men and women must philosophize, simply because they are humanbeings, who need to make up their own minds on all manner of questionsof belief, desire and action simpler animals have instincts for, should oneud d d u?

I would not recommend its academic study to anyone (other than as an

adjunct to a serious scientic study) for by and large academic philosophy d u: dprofessionals are to real love.

Real philosophers have rarely been of the type of a modern academic,and doing real philosophy is difcult and normally unrewarding:philosophers are apt to nd fault in many human endeavors, and to getinto trouble with others for that reason.

Indeed, many of the persons known to later times as great philosophers,were, in their own time, persecuted, discriminated, killed, or removed fromsociety. This applies i.a. to Heraclite, Buddha, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicure,

Lucretius, Abelard, Bacon, Ockham, Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume,Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Peirce and Russell, to name some.

The great philosophers have been the creators of the ideas and valuesmany people oriented their lives around, but during their own lives theywere generally silent or in trouble, for they dared to say what theircontemporaries did not want to hear, to discuss what they did not want toface, and to study and write what very few took interest in or understood.


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The study ofp


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