Philosophy or Philognosis?

[eyesinthedark]

Science, among other things, is the institutional, professional, rigorous and systematic pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, Philosophy is the institutional, professional, rigorous and systematic pursuit of knowledge for the sake of some other good. Ergo Science's chief love is knowledge, Philosophy's chief love is wisdom.

Knowledge is to make a mental note of the comings and goings of one's own mind and body, or the comings and goings of other minds and bodies. Knowledge is the representation of internal and external phenomena, which itself is thought to be representative of things in themselves, something immutable in the mutability or in other words, the apprehension of noumena,, or in still other words, knowledge is when and where minds discover and uncover consistencies, patterns exhibited in our memories of phenomena, art in the darkness, order in chaos, music in the noise. It then comes to expect sorts of effects from sorts of causes and sorts of causes from sorts of effects, to project recurrences from the past onto present and future comings and goings.

Wisdom is all this and more, wisdom is knowledge that can easily and readily aid us in our quest to preserve, possess and create other goods... practical knowledge, practical wisdom is tautological. Both knowledge and wisdom are two kinds of goods or values (I think good and value can be used more/less interchangeably). Good is something we want to preserve, possess or create, for its own sake, as an end and not a merely a means. There are many kinds of goods and each institution/profession, from art, literature, music and theater, to politics and economics, from philosophy, religion, science and sorcery, to shepherding and farming, are dedicated to one or more of them, usually one good in particular. Institutions/professions also differ in their means to their respective ends. Some may have the same means and different ends, others may have different means and the same ends. Virtually all of them differ in either their means, their ends or both. For example, art, literature, music and theatre are forms of expression, expression is their chief good, politics' is power, economics' is wealth, philosophy, religion, science and sorcery's is knowledge and wisdom, shepherding and farming is meat and vegetables, or to put it more broadly, pleasure/nourishment.

Ponder, why does philosophy concern itself with epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, and science to a large extent, does not? Each of these three disciplines or subjects is preoccupied with attaining some good, in the case of the former, knowledge, in the case of the middle, justice, righteousness or virtue, in the case of the latter, beauty. Science doesn't intend to aid to us in attaining a good, it merely seeks to offer us an account of the world (particularly the natural world), how it was, is, and might be, where as in addition to describing the world via metaphysics and other disciplines and subjects, philosophy prescribes, philosophy offers us an account of how the world ought to be, of the chief goods, among them knowledge, justice, righteousness, virtue and beauty, and, through applied epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, to aid us in our acquisition of them, and in protecting them. One who never or rarely preoccupies themselves with epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, especially in their application, could hardly be said to be practicing philosophy at all, merely a more individualistic and rationalistic science as opposed to an empirical science - philognosis, if I may.

Why these three goods though, why knowledge, justice and beauty? Are there not many goods besides these three? What about happiness and pleasure? It seems happiness and pleasure fell under the umbrella of ethics for many philosophers. However, these philosophers equated happiness and pleasure with justice, or reduced justice to the "correct" distribution of some pleasure and some happiness. Why shouldn't pleasure and happiness be subjects worthy of philosophical devotion in their own right, apart from ethics, the way knowledge and beauty are?

I've defined wisdom as useful knowledge, knowledge that can easily and readily be put to use in the acquisition of some other good. My point is twofold, one, to define wisdom, and to demonstrate the inexorable link between philosophy and wisdom, a link science doesn't share, and two, to indicate that there's many kinds of goods besides epistemological, ethical and aesthetic, there's all kinds, from wealth and power, to safety and security, from originality, authenticity, expression and articulation, to achievement, admiration, adoration and adulation. From peace and love, to action and adventure.

As much as I enjoy epistemology and metaphysics, and believe me when I say I do, for some of us, some more than others, maybe philosophy could head in different direction. It could begin by giving an account of the goods (there's clearly more than one, although perhaps in typical philosophical fashion (oversimplification) they could be reduced to one, however absurd or fanciful such an undertaking would be), then ranking them least to greatest, then attempting to figure out how to maximize them out in the world, whilst minimizing the bad (their respective opposites). Additionally, some goods might be associated with some types of individuals or societies more than others. Additionally, some philosophers could devout themselves to maximizing a particular goods, say safety and security, survival wisdom, largely bypassing ethics, aesthetics altogether, insofar as the others had no direct bearing on survival, or whatever exclusive good it may be. The more rigorous and systematic ones would devout themselves to maximizing all of them. Such a philosophy wouldn't be without descriptions, just that it would only attempt to describe things insofar as they may have a critical and direct bearing on the pursuit of the goods, more or less bypassing metaphysics, and to a lesser extent, bypassing logic and epistemology, they'd be partly supplanted. Philosophy would be restored to its Socratic genesis, rooted in wisdom rather than knowledge.

There needn't be any limitations, for example, one could incorporate the value of novelty into his or her list of goods. One could even assign novelty primacy, if one had sufficient logical and objective grounds for so doing. Hell, one could even rank the strange and unusual as the highest good for rhetorical and subjective reasons. I don't see why philosophy has to be so... depersonalized. Objectivity is something we strive for... but universality? Why not impose one's values on others, attempt to partly remake the world in his or her own image? Whenever and wherever you're dealing with value, odds are you're going to wind up with something a little more self-serving and subjective than say, if you're dealing with rocks, trees and dirt, even unintentionally.

There you have it, a new direction for iphilosophy!

[Bill Wiltrack]

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I like this idea.


What goods would you associate with yourself?







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