Philosophy 101 #1 – Philosophy is Not Doctrinal

We cannot learn philosophy;  for where is it, who is in possession of it, and how shall we recognize it? We can only learn to philosophize.

– Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781), A838/B866

I thought it would be a good idea to run a series of posts entitled ‘Philosophy 101′ – posts which are short and snappy, and will help you curious readers to learn (or be reminded of) the basics in philosophy. Or at least my take on what the basics of philosophy are.

The first basic lesson is that there are no basic lessons. Sheer profundity, I know!

If you were a physics student you would be required to learn certain basics. Force = Mass x Acceleration, E=MC2. If you were a medicine student you would be required to learn certain basics about the human body, surgery and pharmaceuticals. If you were even an English literature or social work student you would learn certain basics about grammar, composition, literary methods and psychological theories. These basic theories than become cemented in these disciplines as doctrines – groups of beliefs which you don’t really question if you want to get by in that discipline.

But here in philosophy 101, there are no basic lessons. Philosophy, more than any other discipline I can think of, is not a doctrinal enterprise. If you were to tell a philosopher: Plato believes such-and-such, or, it is a feature of our world that blah-blah, or, humans beings are essentially rah-rah-rah, than philosophers would unanimously reply: really?

This is a significant first lesson because it is very easy to approach philosophy with this orientation, that is, to find out what ethical theories people subscribe to, or what doctrines great philosophers like Hegel or Wittgenstein held to. Now whilst it is pretty important to get a few of these essentials under your belt, and it is certainly appropriate to deploy labels to get a handle on complex theories, these kinds of questions should never be pursued as if they were the main game in philosophy.

This first lesson also throws light on the tension between theology and philosophy. Theology wants to insist on doctrines in the strongest sense of the word, and so carving out a helpful relationship with another discipline that is always questioning and always being suspicious of doctrine asserting activities is going to be hard work.

p.s. The irony is not lost on me that in making this point I am adopting quite a doctrinaire and parochial tone. Perhaps philosophy is not that free of doctrines after all.

What I Love About Rorty

William James and Nietzsche did for the word “true” what John Stuart Mill had done for the word “right.” Just as Mill says that there is no ethical motive apart from the desire for the happiness of human beings, so James and Nietzsche say that there is no will to truth distinct from the will to happiness. All three philosophers think that the terms “true” and “right” gain their meaning from their use in evaluating the relative success of efforts to achieve happiness.

– Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV (2007), p.28

Richard Rorty is one of my favourite philosophers. While I completely disagree with many things he says (especially about religion!) I consistently look forward to reading his writings. I think the main reason for this is because Rorty has two abilities which many philosophers whom I have had to read lack. Put simply, these are the abilities to read and write. At his best, Rorty is a brilliantly concise and punchy writer who is able to sum up complicated theories in fresh ways and to distill the heart of the matter in a few words, which often then forces you into re-thinking the entire question.

More than a talented writer, I think Rorty is a talented reader. Despite blatantly caricaturing and ignoring some pretty important figures (e.g. Plato, C. S. Peirce, Edmund Husserl, Christian writers) Rorty always writes with one eye on the history of philosophy; deliberately trying to remind his readers of the significance of those who have written before him and to suggest ways in which they can be understood today. I think I find this so refreshing because many Analytic philosophers ignore the history of philosophy and write as though philosophy began with Quine (ca. 1950s) or, if they are especially adventurous, Frege (ca. 1880s).

The above quote is an example of this kind of writing. In a few sentences Rorty brings together the ethical thought of British philosopher John Stuart Mill with the metaphysical and epistemological thought of German Post-Kantian Friedrich Nietzsche and American Pragmatist William James. He does so effortlessly and the comparison that he draws is quite illuminating.

Further, it implicitly suggests a way of understanding all of Nineteenth-Century philosophy, since he has chosen (arguably) the three most significant philosophers from (arguably) the three most important countries which produce and listen to philosophers. This is not only a handy way of getting handle on what were important philosophical developments of that time, but also dares the reader to try to think through how far philosophy has come since then, and to think through the notorious split between analytic and continental philosophy: ‘If Nietzsche and Mill were sort of talking about the same thing, then perhaps Derrida and Davidson are sort of talking about the same thing?’, ‘If James and Nietzsche came up with a strong perspectival conception of truth some 100 years ago, what have we come up with lately?’

As as synthesizer, an agitator, and a tour-guide of the history of philosophy, Richard Rorty is superb!

If you’re looking for some summer reading, check out Rorty’s popular Philosophy and Social Hope. Though I disagree with much in it, I think it is a great example of what philosophy can be.

William James on Faith

Faith is belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible. Since doubt is theoretically possible with respect to any belief, we cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith.

– William James, ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’ (1879), p. 79

Christians believe that faith is one of the most significant dimensions of human life. We think that faith ought to colour a person’s whole outlook, such that they can say that they walk by faith and not by sight. We think that faith is more significant than being a good person, since a person is in the end justified by faith alone. We think that faith will actually lead to a person living a loving, selfless and courageous life, since faith without good works isn’t really what we’re talking about. Perhaps most importantly, we think that our faith picks out and latches onto a very specific object – the risen Lord Jesus.

The above quote from Nineteenth-Century American philosopher William James (a founder of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism, brother of Henry James the novelist, and one of the few philosophers that the great Ludwig Wittgenstein actually read) catches nothing of the richness of the Christian conception of faith, and nothing of its quite specific orientation. But it is a helpful quote since the very idea of ‘living by faith’ is a confusing and laughable notion to many people today. James suggests that every human life has movements of faith running through it.

Christianity doesn’t ask people to give up certainty, to give up questioning, in the name of blind faith. It asks them to have faith in a certain way, and particularly, to have faith in a certain person. It asks people to have faith differently to how they have faith now.

New Horizons Conference

A paper of mine has been accepted for a conference! Admittedly, I do know the conference organizers and the conference is being held at Sydney University, but cause to blog nonetheless I think. You can check out my abstract here (scroll down towards the bottom) if you are interested. The conference in called New Horizons in Political Philosophy and will be held at Sydney University on 26-27 November, 2009.

In Praise of Fence-Sitting

There is no place for ‘isms’ in philosophy. The alleged party issues are never the important philosophic questions, and to be affiliated to a recognizable party is to be the slave of a non-philosophic prejudice in favour of a (usually non-philosophic) article of belief. To be a ’so-and-so ist’ is to be philosophically frail.

– Gilbert Ryle, ‘Taking Sides in Philosophy’ (1937)

What is Philosophy? The Open Question

Someone who has different views about the subject matter of a particular science is simply not engaged in that particular field. And although there is methodological debate during scientific revolutions, someone with radically deviant methods, who for example totally disregards observation and experiment in favour of aesthetic considerations, simply ceases to be a scientist. In contrast, disparate intellectual activities, tackling different problems by incompatible methods and with different aims are still called philosophy. There are, for example, philosophers who would maintain that philosophy should strive neither for knowledge nor cogency or argument but for beauty and spiritual inspiration.

– Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy? (2008), p.7

Long time readers of this blog will no doubt be aware that I’m intrigued by the question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ A brief glance over to the subject list will show that the ‘metaphilosophy’ cloud looms large over its little portion of the sidebar. I think the reason why this question is so interesting to me is that if we are going to delineate philosophy from theology and then have a theory about why the former is of value (a project I am quite interested in), then we ought to have some kind of conception of what philosophy is.

The remark above from Glock is the right first step to take. The question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ is an open one, because philosophy seems to have the unique characteristic of academic disciplines in having surprisingly large and porous borders – there is much more activity which passes for philosophy, then there is which passes for astronomy or medical research. Philosophy, somehow, is able to traverse an enormous ground of subject matter (mind, matter, medicine, morals, meaning, just to mention the ‘m’’s) and deploy extremely different conceptual instruments to get its work done.

 

Philosophy 101

Part of the reason for my starting this blog was to attempt to make philosophy interesting, accessible, useful, and non-threatening to people who may not have studied philosophy at university or read many philosophy books. It occurs to me that I have probably been getting sidetracked from this goal. In order to correct this, I’ll be starting a new series of posts called: Philosophy 101. In each post I’ll explain basic philosophical ideas and questions, specifically focusing on foundational and basic concepts, and trying to make them interesting, relevant and useful. Stay tuned!

Handy Hermeneutical Hints

A central part of philosophy is the reading of books, and the attempt to understand these books. This can be tricky business. Often philosophical books are old, vague, odd, complicated, hung-up on by-gone issues, or not directly speaking to the question you are concerned with. In the work of contemporary philosopher Robert Brandom I have recently come across a handy two-fold method for understanding philosophical books and concepts: Brandom calls this the de dicto/ de re method. This method is basically two different sets of questions you can ask a text in an effort to understand it. I think this method could be helpful because it distinguishes two different questions which often get entangled with one another, but need not.

1. De Dicto (Latin: Of the word). We understand what a concept in a particular text means by seeing how it is used by an author, what moves it licenses and what it prescribes, and how it would be understood and deployed in the community at the time. When investigating this dimension of texts/concepts, ask questions like, ‘What did the author think he was illuminating by talking this way?’, ‘What does the author thinks follows from this?’, ‘How was this used in the practices of communities of the time?’ This is essentially a task of trying to understand the book as a whole and within its immediate landscape.
2. De Re (Latin: Of the thing). We try to understand how an original concept could be used in a later context, such as ours, being concerned with what really does follow from the author’s premises (according to our lights), not what the author took to follow from them. This method focuses on what the concept is about, and what the author must be committed to now, given what we now know or what logical resources we now have. When investigating this dimension of texts/concepts, ask questions like, ‘What do we now know about this concept?’ ‘Is this additional body of knowledge something which detracts from or supports the author’s original intentions?’ This is essentially trying to understand how any ideas could be extracted from the way the author thought she was using them and the way the community whom she wrote for deployed them.

Christians, being people of the book, have the dual concern of textual fidelity and textual relevance – of wanting to understand the Bible thoroughly and accurately, and of wanting to allow it to speak to contemporary people and issues. Could this two-fold method from Brandom be handy in reading and applying Scripture?

A Little Pessimism For a Rainy Day

Philosophy, having no agreed methodology and hardly any incontrovertible triumphs, is peculiarly subject to schisms and sectarianism.

– Michael Dummett, The Origins of Analytic Philosophy (1993), p. xi

Sigh.

My New Favourite Song

My wonderful girlfriend bought me an Iron and Wine CD for my birthday, which finishes with this amazing song. Check it out. I’d love to hear what you think about the lyrics in which the singer seems to be thinking through Christian ideas about heaven and hell. Lots of songs contain references to Christian ideas of eternity and judgment etc., but for some reason I’ve found this song especially thought-provoking.