Relation to truth· Belief and knowledge
Understanding the world
Axis: The point of philosophy — What is philosophy for?
Philosophy fulfills its vocation by understanding: grasping the order of things, making the real intelligible, is the highest activity we are capable of, and it need serve nothing beyond itself. Knowledge here is not a means but the end: thought comes to embrace what is, as the owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk.
Movements 1
German Idealismexplicit
For German Idealism, philosophy is neither an exercise of life nor a critique of language: it is the knowledge that within a system. Against the limit Kant imposed on reason, it claims to know the absolute itself, no longer beyond appearances but as the whole of what unfolds. gives it its famous image: thought comes to understand its age only once that age is complete.
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Preface) · Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
Philosophers 3
Hegelexplicit
Philosophy does not prescribe to the world what it ought to be: it always comes too late for that, when a shape of life has already grown old and can only be understood. It grasps its own time in thought, it does not run ahead of it. Hence its reserve toward reformers who set against the real the wish of an ought-to-be. And "what is rational is actual" does not bless the given: actual (wirklich) does not mean everything that exists, but what fulfills its concept.
Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Preface · Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §6 Remark (the sense of "actual")
Aristotleexplicit
First science is born of wonder and is pursued for its own sake, not for its usefulness: like the free man, it is its own end. And the theoretical life, the activity of what is most divine in us, is the highest happiness. Yet Aristotle keeps a place for the practical aim: we do not study ethics to know what virtue is, but to become good.
Metaphysics, I.1-2 · Nicomachean Ethics, X.7-8 · Nicomachean Ethics, II.2 (1103b)
Schopenhauerexplicit
Philosophy does not transform the world and issues no rules: it interprets and deciphers given existence, repeating in abstract concepts the riddle the world poses. Contemplation first, then; but this understanding opens onto the one thing that truly matters, the question of deliverance, which tinges it with self-transformation.
The World as Will and Representation, §53
Argument
- Every other activity aims at an end beyond itself: one heals for the sake of health, one governs for the sake of the city. But each time one can ask 'and that, for the sake of what?'; the chain must stop at what is wanted for its own sake.
- Now understanding, grasping why things are as they are, is desired for itself alone: 'all men by nature desire to know', and the knowledge that serves nothing else is the one entirely free.
- It is also the most continuous and most self-sufficient activity, the one that exercises what is highest in us, thought, upon what is highest to be known.
Therefore So philosophy fulfills its vocation by understanding: its theoria is not an escape but the end to which the rest is a means, the in us.
See the pageObjectionAttacks the position
- Contemplation claims to be disinterested, above the parties: to understand the order of the world without claiming to change it.
- But all thought arises from a situation and a balance of forces: to describe the existing order as 'rational' or 'natural' is already to legitimize it; to call oneself neutral is to take the side of what is.
- The owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk: contemplation always comes too late, when a form of life is already over. To understand without acting is to leave the world as it is, hence to consent to its injustices.
Therefore So contemplation fails its own claim: to stand above the parties is already to take a side, and the 'pure' gaze upon the world silently consents to what is.
See the pageObjectionAttacks the position
- Philosophy began as the whole of knowledge: nature, the soul, the city all fell to it. Yet every time one of its questions found a method of empirical inquiry, it became a science and left its fold: physics in the seventeenth century, then chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology.
- The movement continues before our eyes: the mind, once questioned by metaphysics, passes to neuroscience and cognitive science; human nature, to anthropology and evolutionary biology; morality itself becomes a matter of empirical inquiry. The 'great questions' are carved up into problems that laboratories investigate.
- What remains to philosophy are the questions that have no method yet, or never will: less a domain than a remainder. Philosophy is dead, a contemporary physicist rules; the phrase is polemical, but the observation it leans on is simple: philosophy has allegedly not kept up with modern developments in science, and on knowledge of the world, the torch has changed hands.
Therefore So, for the explanation of the world, whoever wants to understand does science, or reads it: the history of philosophy's claim to knowledge would be one of a long dispossession, and to cling to it would be to mistake a discipline for its past.
See the pageThe wonder logExerciseInspired by Aristotle
It is owing to wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize, writes in the : philosophy begins in wonder, when we stop finding things obvious. This exercise keeps that beginning alive: recording what puzzles you, and regularly following one of those questions for the sole pleasure of understanding.
- Keep a page, on paper or on your phone, for your moments of wonder: a question of no immediate use that crossed your mind (why does the moon not fall? where does that word come from? why is this custom practiced?). Write it down as it is, without judging it.
- Once a week, pick one and give it thirty minutes: read, dig, reformulate, until you understand a little better, with no further aim.
- End by noting what the answer changed for you: often nothing useful, and that is no failure, it is the share of understanding for its own sake.
- PrescriptiveExistentialWhat is the point?
Is philosophy's uselessness its very dignity, the one free knowledge pursued for nothing beyond itself, or a real defect next to the sciences and to action, like Thales falling into a well while watching the stars, to the laughter of the Thracian servant girl?
the activity of philosophizing - PrescriptivePolitical & legalUnderstanding or transforming
Can philosophy content itself with understanding, or is all contemplation already complicit, arriving too late like the owl of Minerva, when every thought in fact takes sides for or against an order?
thought and the world - PrescriptiveExistentialDiscourse or a way of life
Is philosophy a body of doctrines, or first of all a way of life made of exercises that transform the one who practices them, since reduced to mere theory?
philosophy itself - DescriptiveDoes philosophy make progress?
After centuries, philosophy has no settled results like the sciences and the same questions keep returning: a failure to dissolve pseudo-problems, or the mark of questions not meant to be settled once and for all?
the discipline itself - DescriptivePhilosophy and the sciences
Is philosophy a proto-science that the sciences dethrone as they mature, or does it ask questions, about values, meaning, its own presuppositions, that no science can settle?
philosophy and the sciences