PHILO SOPHIA…PART II

As ‘lovers and seekers of wisdom’ [Philosophers], we seek ‘meaning’ and ‘understanding.’  We want to know that the little things are little, and the big things big, before we run amok and become obsessed with the ‘little.’  We want to understand our own ‘life’s purpose’ and we want to live a life of ‘meaning’ so that we can learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even when the coachman we call ‘death’ arrives [see Socrates’ ‘Apology’].  We seek to live a life of ‘wholeness.’  As Thoreau noted: ‘To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of magnanimity and trust.’

Given ‘PHILO SOPHIA…PART I’ and given what I just wrote it might well happen that some ‘ungentle reader’ will check me (or is it us?) here by informing me that philosophy is as useless as a three legged chair and is as obscure as ignorance.  As the great Roman, Cicero wrote: ‘There is nothing so absurd but it may be found in the books of the philosophers.’  I have attempted to read some philosophers who seemed to me to have had all sorts of un-understandable wisdom but little common sense; and there have been philosophic flights that have been supported by the power of hot air.  This does raise a question: Has philosophy become stagnant?  Science and technology always seem to advance. . .but what about philosophy?  It appears to me that philosophy continues to fall behind, to lose ground, to become less and less a ‘big thing.’

Consider, gentle reader, that philosophy is about the ‘big things.’  Philosophy embraces its ‘call’ and thus accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science and technology – problems, paradoxes, and dilemmas like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice, order and freedom, life and death.

Consider that philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics) or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth.  Science is the captured territory; and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge (and, some say art) builds our imperfect and marvelous world.

Philosophy appears to stand still, perplexed; but only because she leaves the fruits of her toil to her daughter, science and her son, technology.  Philosophy, herself, passes on, contentedly discontent, to the uncertain and unexplored.

Consider that science and technology are analytical descriptions, philosophy is synthetic interpretation.  Science and technology seek to resolve the whole into parts; philosophy seeks to synthesize parts into a paradoxical whole (life AND death, good AND evil, etc.).  The philosopher is not content to describe the ‘fact’; he/she wishes to ascertain its relation to experience and hence to seek out its ‘meaning’ and its ‘worth.’  The philosopher seeks a wholeness that is better than before.  As the great historian, Will Durant, noted: Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom – desire coordinated in the light of all experience – can tell us when to heal and when to kill.

Consider that science without philosophy (life is seeking ‘wholeness’ – often a balance between…AND we are missing a balance between science/technology and philosophy), facts without perspective and value cannot, and will not, save us from havoc, despair and destruction.  Science and technology can give us knowledge…philosophy can give us wisdom AND we need them to be balanced.  We live in a ‘both-and’ world of interdependence; yet too often we deny that we do so and when we deny this reality we move toward dis-ease and death (physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual).