Philosophy

Philosophy is often said to be concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of reality, the interconnections between language, thought and the world, and our dealings with one another and relations to our past and future. The nature of philosophy itself is a philosophical issue about which there is fierce debate: throughout its history breakaway disciplines have seen themselves as replacing parts of or the whole of philosophy to the point even of speaking of the "End of Philosophy." The "endists" want to "end" philosophy as a continuous debate extending from the past and present into the future by turning it into an a critical history of philosophy, an accumulation of thought which reaches its climax with their erudition. The idea of an end of philosophy expresses the vain attempt to escape from it by taking refuge in pseudoprophetic utterances masquerading as thought. Yet at the level of their own basic assumptions, philosophical debate has always continued ever more vigorously.

Those who declare the "End of Philosophy" or offer confused conjectures about "the end of grand narratives" (the deconstructionist and postmodernist included, see the caption Endism) it may be argued are speaking about the annihilation of reflection. The end of philosophical self-reflection is to break the thread that links philosophy and politics. Rather than being the prerequisite of political action, philosophy is disconnected from political reality and turned into an interpretation of ideas, an exercise of language games, an elitist cornment on some academic texts. " Philosophy is a central element of the Cultural West's project of individual and social autonomy, the end of philosophy would mean no more and no less than the end of freedom. Practicing philosophy is the synonym of participating in the social historical public space in which there are no authorities, no revelation, no possessors of truth, no few and chosen. It should not be surprising that those who represent these tendencies have prove incapable of producing anything other than commentaries on the writings of the past and studiously avoid any mention of the questions science, society, history, and politics actually are raising today.

Philosophy is practiced less and less, and that which bears its name is more and more interpretive and characterized by the current vogue of hermeneutics. A concern is that hermeneutics is becoming a substitute for original critical thinking and genuine thought. In this respect interpretive, as opposed to creative philosophy, is characteristic of the impoverished condition of the Cultural West.

The pseudo-intellectuals of the Cultural West are infrequently occopied with critique and appear no longer able to create. They collect the works of the past, trying to decipher their “true” meaning, attempting to ensure that their manuscripts are properly edited and “correct," etc. It is not just that “intellectuals” prattle on interminably about Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud; more and more they talk about interpretations of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud; they write about what X wrote in refuting Y's interpretation of Nietzsche. It appears that there are some dead whom you must go on killing forever.

Indeed, the approved gatekeeping vocation among pseudo-intellectuals is one which seeks to demonstrate or to prove the death of Western philosophy. So philosophy is killed again and again, and deconstructed, and denounced for its universalism and its logocentrism, and it seems that the job is never properly done. We are left with the definite impression that this may be due to the incapacity of these pseudo-intellectuals to find something more substantive or creative to bring forth. Might it be that the creation of great works in a society presupposes that there are meanings in this society which are very positively and strongly cathected, invested by the people living in the society in question.

There can be no creation of authentic meaning and new significations cum social institutions without critique. It is the insipidity of the legislated intellectuality that now dominates the Cultural West’s inability to exert any influence over non-Western world, to contribute to the erosion of the grip of stultifying fundamentalisms.

The sterility of "endism" is not an individual phenomenon. It expresses, as a matter of fact, the social-historical situation. Deconstructionist pronouncements notwithstanding, this critique is being conducted in reductionist fashion. It effectively reduces the entire history of Western thought to "the closure of metaphysics" and to "logo-centrism." It thereby conjures away a host of infinitely fecund germs contained in the history of the Cultural West. On the other hand, a critique that is incapable of positing other principles than those it criticizes is condemns itself to remain within the circle defined by the objects it criticizes. In this way, the whole critique of "rationalism" that is being conducted today ends up simply with an irrationalism that is only its obverse and a philosophical position as old as rationalist metaphysics itself. To disengage oneself from inherited thinking presupposes the conquest of a new point of view, which is what this tendency has proved itself incapable of producing. For, if all "narratives" are of equal worth, in the name of what would one condemn the Hitlerite "narrative" and everything it implies? Moreover, how is it that the proclamation of "the end of grand narratives" is not itself a narrative? The clearest image of this situation is provided by the "theories of postmodernism", which are a cynical expression of the refusal (or the inability) to call the present-day situation into question. Pointedly, the inability of what passes for philosophy to create new points of view, new philosophical ideas, expresses, in this particular field, the inability of the Cultural West to create new social significations and to call itself into question by its own means.

Logic, in its traditional sense, is concerned not only with our patterns of reasoning (formal logic), but also with questions about the nature of truth and the relationship between language and the world, and about how our mental processes and human activities imbue the elements of language with meaning (philosophical logic). Inextricably linked with both philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, this whole area has seen intensive activity in recent years. Questions such as the following are addressed: How do we represent the world to ourselves? To what extent does thought require linguistic ability? What is consciousness? Could a computer be conscious?

Epistemology and metaphysics are concerned with how we know the world, and what the world is really like. How can we be sure that our various ideas are not illusory? This question was famously asked in the 17th century by Descartes, often regarded as the founder of modern philosophy; and there are many fundamental questions asked by past philosophers, going right back to the ancient Greeks, that still occupy philosophers today. The history of philosophy is an important part of the discipline, and the investigation of many philosophical problems proceeds by engaging with the views and insights of some of the great philosophers of the past.

A materialist philosophy takes the idea of `substance' as fundamental. It is a philosophy that attempts to explain how life and mind arise from lifeless and mindless matter. A functionalist philosophy tackles the same problems but takes `facts' or logical propositions as fundamental.

Practical philosophy, involving moral, social and political philosophy, focuses on our relationships with one another and with our wider environment. What right, for example, does one person or group of people have to impose their will on another? How should society be organized? What are good and evil? How do ethical, aesthetic and religious attitudes differ? Are we really free to choose, say, to study philosophy?