Philosophy Now Forum

Philosophy as a craft of the commoner and a method to convey wisdom to people continuously throughout their lives by talented, experienced and/or insightful people, and no longer as a special history of the past or a special review of historical personalities and their works. That's what philosophy should be.

Whether it's the talented businessman, the experienced statesman, the insightful bureaucrat, or perhaps the talented engineer, the experienced lawyer and the insightful spectator.

The Voice of Time wrote:Philosophy as a craft of the commoner and a method to convey wisdom to people continuously throughout their lives by talented, experienced and/or insightful people, and no longer as a special history of the past or a special review of historical personalities and their works. That's what philosophy should be.

Whether it's the talented businessman, the experienced statesman, the insightful bureaucrat, or perhaps the talented engineer, the experienced lawyer and the insightful spectator.

Isn't philosophy more than a method? Does not philosophy contain substantive truths, what Gilson calls "philosophical constants"?

The short answer would be "no".

The slightly longer answer would be: we're just humans expressing at our best efforts what we are able to see of what's good and what's bad in the wide sense of those words. We're not Gods (indeed nothing is) to make up truths that are supposedly timeless and absolute. All things end, and we are just the engineers and manufacturers of the present trying to make tomorrow better, as such, our grasp on truth is a matter of what we can work with for the present and how well those things we utilize do their expected job.

My original statement would have it as such: we all see different things, and learn different perspectives that are especially well tailored towards those things we have experienced, as such, we should all be philosophers to our extent and capacity, such that we may benefit from each others perspectives and dialectically merge parts with parts to create new and better perspectives or new perspectives for new situations. In writing and media as well as play or other arts we can convey our perspectives and see them grow within each other's minds to build a society philosophically competent about its present challenges, as all people become the source of some knowledge that gives some answers and some challenge to understanding the best possible.

The short answer would be "yes."

If philosophy is what its tradition makes of it, it's a search for wisdom, a.k.a. a search for the right way to live in light of the Truth about the way things are, in regards to our beliefs, our morals, our lifestyles and our ultimate aims.

If it is not, then it is merely a set of delusions cultivated to serve whatever personal urges clever individuals happen to have, whatever aims power-group X or Y happens to approve, or whatever pleasant fantasies we may decide to create in order to stave off the creeping horror at the ultimate meaninglessness and absurdity of our lives and our inevitable deaths. Of course we don't "make up" truths -- how could we, since we are such contingent beings -- but neither do we invent them out of thin air. We glean them, as much as we can manage, from the way things really are, "given" as they say, by the world which we did not invent but in which we live. However imperfectly we may do that, there's no way for us to avoid trying.

We can see the impossibility of a philosophy unrelated to truth very easily. No one does any kind of philosophy at all without employing value-laden terms, like "preferable," "better," "desirable," "right," and "just," or on the other hand, "unpleasant," "worse," "wrong," "unjust" and "evil." All such terms are implicitly teleological: something is not just "better," but "better for"; not just "wrong" but "wrong because." Every such term has buried in it a claim about the true nature of reality and the right aims of life. Relativists among us may not *like* that it is so, but there's not a thing they can do to change it, because even they are forced by the desire to advocate to say their view is "better" or "more just" than alternatives. There's just no way to avoid philosophy's romance with the Truth.

Look at the header. Even the question of what philosophy "should" be is value laden. If there were no truth, on what basis could we ever take issue with the way things happen to be and say that philosophy needs to be better or wiser or more open in some way? Would that be "true"? There would be no way to make such a judgement unless we believe there's a disparity between the way things are and the way, in truth, they ought to be.

In fact, I would suggest that philosophy that has no reference to reality, no humility in the face of Truth, is no philosophy (which is literally, "love of wisdom") at all, but rather "love of imagination," or worse, "love of power" "love of preening" and "love of self." All these things human beings have long had, with no help from philosophy needed.

Immanuel Can wrote: it is merely a set of delusions cultivated to serve whatever personal urges clever individuals happen to have, whatever aims power-group X or Y happens to approve

That is precisely what is wrong in the tradition of philosophy. To Plato it was 'a set of delusions cultivated' to serve his personal deeply conservative urges. For example:
The myth of Er is the template for religious fantasies that have poisoned western minds ever since.
People still believe that Atlantis was a real place.
People are not made of gold, silver and bronze.
The universe is not a bloated animal that eats its own crap.
Things above the air are not perfect.
etc
etc

All attempts to arrive at axiomatic truths, in the Euclidean style, can be challenged. Even 'I think, therefore I am.' has it's problems. The only thing that can be said without any fear of contradiction is, as Parmenides said, there isn't nothing. Perhaps the most valuable function that philosophy has served and continues to serve is to challenge opinions that some nutters put forward as truth, especially if the capitalise it.

Immanuel Can wrote:Of course we don't "make up" truths -- how could we, since we are such contingent beings -- but neither do we invent them out of thin air. We glean them, as much as we can manage, from the way things really are, "given" as they say, by the world which we did not invent but in which we live. However imperfectly we may do that, there's no way for us to avoid trying.

That's the point; we do it imperfectly. As history shows, people who proclaim any 'Truth' about the world we live in are generally proved wrong. Hence ideas, however compelling and however much their adherents insist on their 'Truth', need to be examined and, if necessary, broken.
Perhaps tbieter, you could give an example of a philosophical constant.

IC:

In fact, I would suggest that philosophy that has no reference to reality, no humility in the face of Truth, is no philosophy (which is literally, "love of wisdom") at all, but rather "love of imagination," or worse, "love of power" "love of preening" and "love of self." All these things human beings have long had, with no help from philosophy needed.

Can you clarify what you mean by philosophy needing to have 'humility in the face of Truth'?
Also, human beings might have long had a variety of 'loves' including 'needs' to be wise which are set in reality, but also the imagination...which can be aided by, or help in philosophical enquiry.

uwot:

That's the point; we do it imperfectly. As history shows, people who proclaim any 'Truth' about the world we live in are generally proved wrong. Hence ideas, however compelling and however much their adherents insist on their 'Truth', need to be examined and, if necessary, broken.

That's it, I think.
Including self-examination, imagination, logic and an open mind.

Voice:

Philosophy as a craft of the commoner and a method to convey wisdom to people continuously throughout their lives by talented, experienced and/or insightful people, and no longer as a special history of the past or a special review of historical personalities and their works. That's what philosophy should be.

Still not with you on your apparent disregard for the relevance of history.
I'm not saying it should be 'obligatory'...but set in context can be used as 'evidence' as continuing concerns of commoners and queens.

Past, Present, Future...all important.
The Voice of 'Time' should know that !

Can you clarify what you mean by philosophy needing to have 'humility in the face of Truth'?

Sure. I just mean that we must take a fallibilist attitude to what we claim to "know." While we should not be irrationally timid -- for example, refusing to go forward out of an irrational fear of failure even though we may possess very highly probable knowledge in a particular area -- we should always remember that we are human. We make mistakes and errors of judgment, and we fall prey to pride and stubbornness all too easily. Thus we must remind ourselves constantly to remain open to new evidence and ongoing revision of our position. This means that we cannot get angry if we are shown to be wrong in some area, but must learn to be grateful for ALL improvement of our epistemic position, even that which may embarrass us personally or undermine ideas we have held dear.

On a personal level, this is a very difficult thing to achieve, I think. We human beings love our pride. We hate to be shown wrong, particularly in public. But in the end, truth wins. We're better to be humble and correctable rather than proud. Having said that, I freely admit I have found it difficult to maintain this ideal attitude at times; but if so, that's a fault in my character, not a problem with the idea of truth.

Hence ideas, however compelling and however much their adherents insist on their 'Truth', need to be examined and, if necessary, broken.

Yes, but let's be careful here: examination is fair, and so is support and defeat of propositions. We "break" delusions, and we "break" the grip a bad idea has on the public imagination, to be sure; but we do not, in the process, "break" people -- not even the people who have held the bad ideas.

I'm sure that's what you meant. Perhaps I'm being unnecessarily cautious. I have just observed how often hatred for a person's ideology spills over into hatred for the person. At a certain point, they start to look intransigent to us, perhaps; and at that moment, our worse impulses invite us to become angry at them for their refusal to see reason or their own "best interests." Then we start to bully and berate them, and maybe even feel justified in harming them, all the while convincing ourselves we are acting in the best interests of humanity.

Here again, humility helps.

marjoramblues wrote:Still not with you on your apparent disregard for the relevance of history.
I'm not saying it should be 'obligatory'...but set in context can be used as 'evidence' as continuing concerns of commoners and queens.

If I spent time thinking about what other people thought in historical circumstances, I would not be thinking about the present and its challenges and not able to use the objects of the present to deal with my problems, instead I would use the objects of the past, I would be someone who just repeated the past into the present and never solved the present from the present.

Because of this, people are on an infinite return to the past, a kind of sick nostalgia for things that are not part of them. Their lack of adherence to the present makes their minds (in metaphor) mere historical theatres for historical plays, everyone gathering around to see the "spectacularity" of the past, never asking themselves "what about the present?", instead, history is full of people who dug up old ideas and said to their present society: "you are idiots because you do not follow this... this... and this... by x-person who lived 100-2500 years ago", and you can't help if you are a human of the present to not shake your head in dismay and cry a sad tearful laughter at the incapableness of people and their sickness of nostalgia.

A human of the present would not look at the past for answers, they did not have to seek refuge in worn-down ancient castles (to be further metaphoric), but would build their own with other craftsmen of this day and from the style of this day and with the desired functionality of this day for this day's group of people. They could look at an IPhone and pick it apart in their head to a thousand pieces of belief and logic and re-arrange it into a paper in a way Slavoj Zizek might call it "The Ideology of the iPhone Mass-Consumers", or we might call "The Ethical Imperative of the Assimilation to the Technologically Enhanced People", or perhaps "The New Informationized Human Experience", or perhaps even "The Descents of Knowledge in Contemporary People: The Epistemology of the iPhone", or perhaps we might get a little creative and go wide and far talking about "The Meaning of the iPhone and the Immediate Future of Humankind".

marjoramblues wrote:Past, Present, Future...all important.
The Voice of 'Time' should know that !

You don't need to know more than half a page can provide (or less) to know all there is worth to know (for the philosopher of the present) about Immanuel Kant. Everything else would likely be philosophy of the past and just another return to a life that is not your own and has little to nothing to do with you. You don't need to know Immanuel Kant to figure the meaning of an Ethical Imperative really, for instance... the word is quite self-explanatory and whatever extensive analysis Immanuel had of it would largely be irrelevant as its your present use of it that matters: how you can utilize it (btw the "Ethical Imperative" is really a sociological term for imperative norms and a psychological term for imperative personal beliefs and should have nothing to do with the weak man who would only pollute the term).

Immanuel Can I didn't see any actual criticism there that touched me.

Whether there is value-assignments or not doesn't make for philosophical constants, because if they were constants they wouldn't be changed by the next person saying something different. Instead, we make variables and wait to change them for a time it befits us to do so, and we each work with the variable we like and which benefits our aim.

There has never been an "ultimate aim" for humankind, there are population-wise strong aims and population-wise weak aims. The strong aims would include things like living and eating and pooping and all those primary passions most of us have lots of. The weak aims would be those things we do when our primary passions are satisfied.

What is "wisdom" is yet another matter of perspective, but the best try to describe it I've ever seen was the Oxford dictionary which called it the "efficiency of knowledge", which suits any form of exemplification of wisdom because "efficiency" would just re-arrange itself according with any purpose given to the knowledge, and would be testable in all cases as to how far it aids its purpose. So a businessperson with business as among his great passions would consider philosophy for the person itself to be knowledge that made the person to do their job greater than if not, whether it's efficiency, effectiveness or even secrets that allows them to explore entire new aspects of their job. That would be wisdom for them, and they would love it for the power it gives them in their job. To only and solely love wisdom itself doesn't exist either btw, because wisdom is nothing by itself, and anything when in partnership with something else.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Can you clarify what you mean by philosophy needing to have 'humility in the face of Truth'?

Sure. I just mean that we must take a fallibilist attitude to what we claim to "know." While we should not be irrationally timid -- for example, refusing to go forward out of an irrational fear of failure even though we may possess very highly probable knowledge in a particular area -- we should always remember that we are human. We make mistakes and errors of judgment, and we fall prey to pride and stubbornness all too easily. Thus we must remind ourselves constantly to remain open to new evidence and ongoing revision of our position. This means that we cannot get angry if we are shown to be wrong in some area, but must learn to be grateful for ALL improvement of our epistemic position, even that which may embarrass us personally or undermine ideas we have held dear.

On a personal level, this is a very difficult thing to achieve, I think. We human beings love our pride. We hate to be shown wrong, particularly in public. But in the end, truth wins. We're better to be humble and correctable rather than proud. Having said that, I freely admit I have found it difficult to maintain this ideal attitude at times; but if so, that's a fault in my character, not a problem with the idea of truth.

Thank you for this clarification. Your phrase 'in the face of Truth', together with your 'Immanuel Can' (meaning 'Jesus Can?), had me interpreting this as philosophy being subservient to some religious 'Truth', perhaps of 'Jesus'.

@ Voice:
I'm not going over old ground with you; it's history. Can't remember what thread...
Enough to say that it is a matter of choice how people follow philosophy and what wisdom they can glean from the past.

marjoramblues wrote:@ Voice:
I'm not going over old ground with you; it's history. Can't remember what thread...
Enough to say that it is a matter of choice how people follow philosophy and what wisdom they can glean from the past.

Can't remember it... you posed a challenge but refuse to engage in your own challenge? That's unfair.

The Voice of Time wrote:

marjoramblues wrote:@ Voice:
I'm not going over old ground with you; it's history. Can't remember what thread...
Enough to say that it is a matter of choice how people follow philosophy and what wisdom they can glean from the past.

Can't remember it... you posed a challenge but refuse to engage in your own challenge? That's unfair.

That's tough. I'm not repeating the mistakes of history. It's a waste of time.