What Is Philosophy, Part 10

How many times have I asked this question?

Too many.

The truth is that during classes I would always attempt to emphasize to students that this question is not only preliminary and necessary, but one that takes years to answer. It may also be inconceivable to answer satisfactorily. It is possible that because we expect easy, pre-packaged answers to things, that, in this case, it just isn't going to be possible.

I've spent my entire career attempting a clear, concise answer and I have, for the most part, failed. Now remember, most of my degrees are in art; but I trained for 30 years in the discipline of philosophy. Let's be clear: when I attempt to write a literary story it comes out haphazard and misguided. The high-brow programs that passed me over (and there were a couple) probably got it right. One school even promised me admission and then, when the day came, as is often the case, the squirrely admin professors (in charge of the closed-door admissions witchcraft) found a way to tell me I was one student away from getting in. At the time I was surprise. Looking back I have to say that I agree with them.

I'm saying this because when I lecture you on the definition of philosophy it comes from reading just about everything there is to read. I'm not trying to toot my own horn. The extent of my failure reaches almost to every discpline available to man. But talking to me about Western Philosophy or a Harvard professor of philosophy isn't going to be that much different.

So, when I tell you that there is no easy answer, you should probably believe it.

I've tried every tactic in the book in coming to a clear, concise answer. I've told students that they had to come to the answer for themselves. I tried a little Socrates-istry on them. But I knew it wasn't true. As a life-long opposer of reflexive subjectivism I have to say that nothing felt more wrong than leaving it up to those ungrateful pirates.

I've told them that the definition was both subjective and objective and that the closest answer, the most truthful answer, was when both of those things coincided. That didn't work either. It was less than an answer and really just sent us back to the subjectivist corner.

I've said that Nietzsche was right. That if you want the answer, just read him and use his stylistic elements to compose the answer. Part irony and part art and part fascism. I wanted him to be dialectical and ironic to the point that he played two truths effectively against each other. But when you read him honestly, it's not easy to get that. He believed what later Existentialists believed (because in no small part he invented it). That life is difficult; that truth itself is the final arbiter; that individual life, and a stoic commitment to our basic philosophical material (as it is) and no more, are the only options. Nietzsche makes it clear that people live for themselves and they have no time for fantasy and that on the level of real thought, they all move downward (or upward) and gain power for themselves and celebrate a self-focused, productive, temporal existence. I felt like using Nietzsche wasn't that different than saying to students: Philosophy is just Existentialism.

Don't get me wrong, I think Existentialism is the closest thing to a working philosophy. And I don't truly get Rand's cynical attack on it. I wanted to get it, but couldn't. However, the pessimism inherent in Existentialism can too easily be turned into an optimism about a simple, recurring stoic dream. In truth, they believe that once you align yourself with temporality and the inescapable nature of anxiety about deeper truths, life becomes "better." For me, I don't see that. That perpesctive to me, though perhaps the best, really boils down to "live life on its terms; know the limits: accept temporality and the lack of mystery." And as long as that means be non-religious, I see the value. What I don't see however is a definition of philosophy.

Okay, so I'll say it: Existentialism is a complete definition of how one deals with the psychology of death. And that's it. But that's not philosophy. It is necessary but not sufficient. This is also true of so many things. It is true of politics and ethics and many different areas of the discipine.

It does not help that so many people are antagonist toward philosophy. We have discussed many times about how they are antagonist regarding the last three hundred years of what I call HC philosophy. That of course is not the whole thing. And it definitely is not a definition of it. HC is a subset of modern skeptical Empiricism that sprung from Science and then distorted how science can be seen in the context of philosophy and vice versa.

We have critiqued all the mawkish chapters in textbooks that ramble about the open-mindedness of the core of the definition. They ramble about how knowing more means knowing less, and on and on. This is of course true and interesting but it really doesn't capture what we are looking for in an answer. And, for the most part, they always end without and anwer. Then they might claim that ending without an answer is the definition. It is all so post-modern.

I have mulled over the idea that philosophy is merely teaching. It is the art of teaching how to think. By using stories, or dialogues, in the best examples, philosophy teaches us how to best use our brain (the natural brain, as it is, a thing-in-itself) to the best of our ability. I have made it clear that I believe one of the most important elements of this process is differentiation. Making proper distinction. The first one is the difference between rote and process thinking. To be clear that rote thinking is herd-thinking and that it is MERELY memorization, is key. To then be able to consider the complexity of process thought puts us on the mission, in the teaching environment, of progress.

This problem (of defining it) is so great that I have had mentors that made absurd comments about it. One even said that philosophy's ultimate goal is entertainment. And one's subjective interpretation of the entertainment is all that can be said. Look up absurd and it is his face saying something this backwards.

But can it only be teaching? Does it serve no other purpose? Sometimes this is what I believe. And it really doesn't diminish the discipline to some esoteric academic offices scattered around the first-world. To teach, if you could teach broadly and effectively and to a massive audience, would change the world. If there was a way to accomplish what I have accomplished in the classroom in broader realms, I believe society would look different. This is a big statement. There is not other effort that makes this much of a potential difference. Therapy, for example, which is designed to what .. manage life skills and subjective happiness, fails and certainly cannot sweep broadly. Science of course makes no attempt to really change how people think (other than, I suppose, to make them understand definitions of evidence).

Is the ultimate goal to teach and, with this goal, the ultimate definition of it contains teaching and mere practice. Was Socrates making a wider statement about, say, God, with the Euthyphro, or was its end only as a literary teaching tool? I can see it as the latter. And the effect that something like that dialogue has on students (to see both that skepticism is necessary and almost complete AND that God is a contradictory idea) is one mainly of didactism. They don't change any beliefs about their cultural God, but they DO see truth itself as more complex. The former is what we might expect and the latter is really the point of my story. Teaching is the only real outcome of the art of thinking: it is an end-goal in itself.

But is this true? I don't know. I see the value of teaching and I wonder if it is the only real profession, but I also know that there are truths that transcend practice and academia. These truths, if they could be passed on, would alter worldviews in the way science did (say, ideas about gravity).

Certainly this question also depends on what element of philosophy you are discussing. Are you asking about truth (metaphysics and epistemology) or about more surface discussions like politics or ethics? Truth might be rooted in teaching and academics, but perhaps the other two have a more applied nature. And certainly they are treated that way. Maybe they deserve their own fields in a fundamental way. Political Science certainly attempts this, but it seems banal with philosophy. And ethics does not.

Some mentors and certainly some historic writers have believed that all to what philosophy really amounts is ethics.

I will hazard a last "guess" also. It is my believe that as we are constrained by history (as it is) we are necessitated by it to make philosophy first and foremost an attack on religion. I mean religion as such, as it is incarninate in belief and language, wholesale. One cannot attack Christianity, for example, without tackling the rote strategies of belief in it and all of its counterparts. To understand and critique a notion of god is to understand rote thinking as it is historically and currently. Nietzsche, as we have said, serves us as the best example. His best and clearest work is the Genealogy. It is an attack, primarily, on "modern" religious thinking and on faith and on ethics that spring from them. It is nothing if not practical.

It is required to tackle the biggest problem; to fix the largest bleeding before dealing with broken bones. It is a triage position on the historical effort of our intellectual world. Religion must be clarified and then destroyed before real philosophy can begin. This is why, in class, probably to the dismay of many of the gray, sullen, tenured skeletons, I deal with this issue first. They say don't talk about religion or politics. This is true. If you want to stay the same and fix nothing, this is a good strategy. I talk about religion first and I let them see (I'm not very open-minded though I pretend to be) how ridiculous and anti-human it really is. If you want to blame one thing for the mass-failure of humanity - there you go.

So that is my attempt. I will continue of course and I'm aware that this is painfully just a discussion and not an answer. I just hope it can't be viewed as pure entertainment.