Philosophy without life - I, robot
Who would follow the advices of an old man that tells countless beautiful stories about a marvelous land, if the world finds out that he has never been there and everything was just an invention of his mind? Whoever would try to follow his advices is bound to be lost in nothingness. - Armand
Lately I’ve been listening and reading lots of philosophical and psychological materials on the most various themes. It has proven to be time well spent as I’ve assimilated quickly and learned a lot. But… I felt that there was something inside me that wasn’t evolving. And knowledge should be evolution.
My understanding and perception of life increased in general, but, as a paradox, I was feeling smaller inside, as if this knowledge I was absorbing created a black hole inside of me.
The first solution I went for was to read and listen to even more materials and speeches, believing that my uneasy feeling was the result of a big “hunger for knowledge”. It didn’t work and the uneasy feeling grew even bigger. Seeing that this wasn’t determined by me, I then thought that this must be something that is determined by the actual information I was taking in.
So I started analyzing…
There was a time when philosophy truly reflected on man and his life. Then the myth of Narcis contaminated this beautiful science, which fell in the trap of watching her own image in the mirror and started taking care of herself. Her speculations became abstract and useless for the life of man, and the breach between life and knowledge became larger.
Intellectualism is a sort of chronic disease of the European philosophy from after Descartes. For this, the life and the person insist upon having a rational fundament, received from philosophy. But a philosophy torn apart from her roots, even if it contains a credible world populated by ghosts and seductive dreams, is a reality that’s lacking life, because it creates an equation between to think = to be = to live.
A knowledge that doesn’t enrich life isn’t knowledge.
It is just a rational projection, an idealist fixation without vital content. You can’t call “knowledge” something that doesn’t create a connection between you and the life that it reveals to you.
A knowledge that doesn’t unite you with the real life is not knowledge.
True knowledge is a wisdom of the wit.
The term “philosophy” suggests love of wisdom. From a religious perspective, wisdom is the ability to differentiate good from evil.
But you can’t define wisdom as a simple art of living, neither as ethics. The love of wisdom is first of all the art of knowing the truth, the existent, the things that don’t deceive and can’t be mistaken as appearances.
The old Dersu Uzala from Kurosawa’s movie is the wise-man, the one who talks to everything because it discovers life everywhere and everything is speaking to him about life. Dersu speaks with the fire, with the wind, with the trees… he calls them “you”. He is a wise-man and that’s why he’s in-love with life.
According to the Hebraic tradition, wisdom consists in knowing true life, in being able to tell from where it comes and where it is headed. Fear of the Almighty is understood as the beginning of all wisdom.
What good is a scientific philosophy?
A philosophical thinking that isn’t filled with real life can be an amazing conceptual structure, but it isn’t philosophical, it isn’t sapiential. What good is a scientific philosophy if it isn’t philosophy? This situation expresses the full picture of the decomposition and the lack of organic knowledge.
Both of the fundamental concepts of philosophy - love of truth and life - have been lost in the moment that philosophy lost it’s anchorage in life. A philosophy that no longer loves the person, a philosophy that doesn’t manage to free herself from the interdiction of working in the field of religiousness (religiousness that is understood as a total acknowledgement of the other person), is a philosophy that sooner or later talks about nothing and argues us into believing that it is still philosophy and it still helps us.
The philosopher isolates himself from life, he closes himself in his systems and methodologies. This happens because he is disconnected from life, he is fragile and uncertain, and feels the need of acceptance for the disciplines that now govern a civilisation in which life, truth and person aren’t considered true values anymore (even if this isn’t in a formal way).
The modern psychology and philosophy have lost their human factor.
We have more knowledge, but less judgement; more experts, but more problems.
I was recently tagged by John Allison with the “edge meme”, and I think that this post, apart from reflecting my view points on the modern thinking patterns, fits that profile.
Write a post about your “learning edge” and what you’re into these days. Feel free to mention any books you’re reading, classes you’re taking, people you’re learning from or collaborating with, etc. Tell us about the gems you’re picking up, the fun you’re having, etc., especially if they’re shifting the way you look at what you do.
As a conclusion, the best thing I can tell you is to never take any knowledge for granted. The whole world knows that perfection doesn’t exist in this universe, and if some sciences look perfect on the outside, the flaws are somewhere deep inside.
Here’s for a better you,
Armand
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Well-structured post. A lot of good information was presented, and I’d like to thank you for sharing it. I, too, have dealt with the problem of whether or not I’m chasing phantoms. One tool has been an effective, if crude, way of helping to clear some of the smoke. Simply checking whether or not it works will go a long way. I ask myself “Does it work for me?” If the answer is no, I value the learning experience, and move on. If the answer is yes, then I proceed along those lines. This is a “quick and dirty” method, and it does have its flaws, but I’ve found it to be very useful.
John, thank you for sharing your “quick and dirty” method with us.
It’s a very basic method that has very good results.
Hey. I read this, but while i agree in a way with the spirit of what you are saying, i cannot agree with some of the things you said.
This, to start;
“There was a time when philosophy truly reflected on man and his life. Then the myth of Narcis contaminated this beautiful science, which fell in the trap of watching her own image in the mirror and started taking care of herself. Her speculations became abstract and useless for the life of man, and the breach between life and knowledge became larger.
Intellectualism is a sort of chronic disease of the European philosophy from after Descartes.”
This seems to me incredibly wrongheaded. Philosophy before Descartes was almost nothing -but- abstractions. The two most respected philosophers of the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle, barely came into touch with reality -at any point-. Look at plato,
student of the greatest philosopher the world has ever known (socrates), and he spends his live mooning after ineffable and pointless concepts “beyond”, his “Forms”, his “eternal truths”, which were -aways- other-worldly. Nothing was perfect but that it was distant from this world, and better, distant from -the present-. Just look at his little fascist fantasy of a “republic” (hah). Desperate fear of change (reality) led him to try to formulate the “perfect” state, one that would never change. (Or as close to perfect as humans could manage. He believed the perfect state could only have existed -before- the fall of man, and human history was one of denigration, descent). His highest concepts were those of eternity, perfection, timelesness - all as far from the real world as possible.
Aristotle knew this, but was never strong enough to step far from his teachers shadow, though you can still pick it up on occasion. The greatest of the lot, the first non-religious martyr. The first -reasonable- martyr, Socrates. -He- knew what the real world was. When told that he was filled with every kind of vice, he merely replied, “you know me, sir”. And even then, Socrates flirted with the metaphysic - his “reason” is a distance from the world. But we are human and to live as the pig is not more “real” than living as a thinking being.
I could have perhaps accepted what you said about Adonis, but then you said that -Descartes- was the start of “chronic intellectualism”! Descartes was the first to deal with -facts-, with what he -could- know, before having the temerity to plunge into eternal truths and half-baked pleasantries. He was god-addled and went wrong in the end of course, like his great (greater) successor, Kant.
This is where i have trouble with the rest of your post. “what good is a scientific philosophy?”, you ask. I ask, what is the good of 1+1=2? It is a tool, which you use. Of itself it is nothing. There is no objective value. With Kant we reach the first -science- in philosophy. Someone who asked “how far can we go?” and his answer was - “not too far”. Wittgenstein later said the same thing, in a similar way, but picked language and developed a bandwagon.
Scientific philosophy can point to its benefits. How far can the kind of humanistic “philosophies of life” you seem to be admiring here be said to have helped? They are merely theology without a god. Things that make you tingle and in the end are no better than either the ten commandments or black nihilism.
You later said
“The philosopher isolates himself from life, he closes himself in his systems and methodologies. ”
Which is true, but what you said after does not follow. Also, there is the same fallacy here that pervades racism and any kind of group judgement - that of thinking of “the type”. Nietzsche isolated himself from life. Socrates walked the streets of Athens every day. The “type” depends on the man, not his profession.
Anyway, after you said;
“The modern psychology and philosophy have lost their human factor.”
Which is patently untrue. For a start, the kind of philosophy you yourself espouse doesnt seem to have lost the “human factor”, and in fact many of the major movements in philosophy have been intensely for-mankind. For the self. I shall just point towards existentialism and hope this shows the way.
As for psychology, im not sure how widespread knowledge of this is, but there is something called the “anti-psychology movement” (which is not against psychology but against the mechanisation of humans when treated by the psychological system. Psychologists like R.D Laing, Lacan, and Jung are all part of this.
In truth we are still recovering from the scientism of the 18th century, when all knowledge was spread before (western white) mankind, ready to be catalogued, if only we knew the index, the systems.
You have some good points there, and altough I could motivate some of the things you disagree with, I won’t, because it’s obvious that our backgrounds and beliefs are very different from each other.
However, there are a few points that I want to touch.
“Scientific philosophy can point to its benefits. How far can the kind of humanistic “philosophies of life” you seem to be admiring here be said to have helped? They are merely theology without a god. Things that make you tingle and in the end are no better than either the ten commandments or black nihilism.”
I think the “philosophies of life” have equal (if not stronger) benefits when compared to the scientific philosophies. I won’t argue about the existence/non-existence of a God, but theology believes in it. And belief is what influences the next steps in scientific research.
We -believe- that our comfort is more important than an invisible life form - so we focus our energy into what we believe. Science gave humans the tools to build the pyramids, but belief made them want to do it, made them not toss away their towels when they’d been at it for twenty years and had hardly finished ten feet of height, not to mention determined the size and array of the structure. Science build the first bread slicer, but everyone’s belief in it’s utility is what kept it around - and their disbelief in the previous precedent, home-baked bread.
About my idea that “The modern psychology and philosophy have lost their human factor.” - I don’t mean that in a philosophical existential way; it’s just that I (personally) find it harder to relate and connect to them… to me, they’re starting to talk about nothing…
The good thing is that you somehow agree to my general idea.
“As for psychology, im not sure how widespread knowledge of this is, but there is something called the “anti-psychology movement” (which is not against psychology but against the mechanisation of humans when treated by the psychological system. Psychologists like R.D Laing, Lacan, and Jung are all part of this.
In truth we are still recovering from the scientism of the 18th century, when all knowledge was spread before (western white) mankind, ready to be catalogued, if only we knew the index, the systems.”