The Tree of Philosophy

(Enlarged fourth edition with Glossary and eight new

lectures)
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Note: The full text, excluding diagrams, of the (now outdated) third
edition is also still available on this site. The most important of the many
differences between the two editions is briefly summarized in the Preface
to this fourth edition.

List of Lectures
Preface - viii
List of Figures

PART ONE: THE ROOTS

METAPHYSICS AND THE RECOGNITION OF
IGNORANCE
Week I. Insight: Preparing for Life
Lecture 1. What is Philosophy? - 2
Lecture 2. Some Guidelines for Writing Insight Papers - 8
Lecture 3. Philosophy as Myth - 13

Week II. Philosophy's Origins

Lecture 4. Philosophy as Metaphysical Demythologizing - 21
Lecture 5. Philosophy as Rational Dialogue - 26
Lecture 6. Philosophy as Teleological Science - 33

Week III. The Modern Legacy

Lecture 7. Philosophy as Meditative Doubt - 40
Lecture 8. Philosophy as Transcendental Critique - 47
Lecture 9. Philosophy after Critique - 55

PART TWO: THE TRUNK

LOGIC AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF WORDS
Week IV. From Metaphysics to Logic
Lecture 10. What is Logic? - 64
Lecture 11. Two Kinds of Logic - 70
Lecture 12. Synthetic Logic - 78

Week V. The Geometry of Logic

 Lecture 13. Mapping Analytic Relations - 87
Lecture 14. Mapping Synthetic Relations - 96
Lecture 15. Mapping Insights onto New Perspectives - 102

Week VI. Philosophies of Language

Lecture 16. Analytic Philosophy: Positivism and Ordinary
Language - 110
Lecture 17. Synthetic Philosophy: Existentialism and God Talk -
118
Lecture 18. Hermeneutic Philosophy: Insight and the Return to
Myth - 125

PART THREE: THE BRANCHES

SCIENCE AND THE LOVE OF WISDOM
Week VII. Philosophy of Science
Lecture 19. What is Wisdom? - 134
Lecture 20. Science and the Anatomy of Wisdom - 141
Lecture 21. Causality and the Boundary of Science - 150

Week VIII. Philosophy of Morals

Lecture 22. Freedom and the Boundary of Morals - 161
Lecture 23. Transvaluation: A Moral Breakthrough? - 169
Lecture 24. Perspectivism: Reconstructing the Boundaries - 177

Week IX. Philosophy of Politics

Lecture 25. Power and the Boundary of Politics - 186
Lecture 26. Theocracy: The Ultimate Breakthrough - 195
Lecture 27. Wisdom on the Boundary: Ideas vs. Ideology - 203

PART FOUR: THE LEAVES

ONTOLOGY AND THE WONDER OF SILENCE
Week X. Diverse Experience: Feeling United
Lecture 28. What is Silence? - 212
Lecture 29. Finality and the Paradox of Beauty - 220
Lecture 30. Reunion and the Mystery of Love - 229

Week XI. Symbolic Wonder: Being Religious

Lecture 31. The Numinous and its Symbols - 239
Lecture 32. Evil and the Paradox of Grace - 247
Lecture 33. Community and the Mystery of Worship - 255

Week XII. Meaning: Preparing for Death

Lecture 34. Angst and the Paradox of Courage - 263
Lecture 35. Death and the Mystery of Life - 271
Lecture 36. What is Philosophy? - 278
 By Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

I.1: Four Branches of Philosophy ...................................................5

I.2: Three Types of Philosophy ......................................................6
I.3: The Four Goals of Doing Philosophy .......................................7
I.4: The Truth Value of a Myth ....................................................10
I.5: The Cycle of History in Ancient Greece...................................11
I.6: Four Thought Forms in Ancient Greece ..................................12
I.7: A Map of the Four Human Thought Forms .............................13
II.1: The Development of the Individual .........................................15
II.2: The Four Powers of the Mind ................................................16
II.3: Four Aims of Human Thinking ..............................................17
II.4: The Four Elements in Ancient Greece ....................................18
II.5: The Three Great Greek Philosophers ......................................20
II.6: The Method of Dialogue ........................................................22
II.7: Plato's Cave .........................................................................23
II.8: The Three Powers of the Soul ................................................25
II.9: Aristotle's Four Life (Soul) Forms .........................................37
II.10: The Prime Mover as Final Cause ............................................38

III.1: Descartes' Tree of Philosophy ................................................33

III.2: Descartes' Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem........................35
III.3: Four Key Philosophical Methods ............................................37
III.4: Kant's Critiques and Their Standpoints ..................................40
III.5: Kant's Transcendental Boundary ............................................41
III.6: Kant's Four Philosophical Questions .......................................41
III.7: Descartes vs. Kant on Plato and Aristotle ................................42
III.8: Kant's Copernican Revolution ................................................43
III.9: Kant's Twelvefold Division of Categories ...............................44
III.10:The Problem of Kantian "Ideas" ............................................45
IV.1: Two Truth Tables ................................................................55
IV.2: Two Methods of Argumentation .............................................58
IV.3: Analytic and Synthetic Propositions .......................................59
IV.4: Four Perspectives on Knowledge ...........................................60
IV.5: The Four Fundamental Laws of Logic ...................................62
IV.6: The Analytic and Synthetic Domains .......................................65
IV.7: Hegel's Dialectical Method .....................................................66
IV.8: Three Types of Analytic-Synthetic Distinction .........................67
V.1: The Point as a Map of an Identical Relation .............................69
V.2: Two Ways of Mapping a 1LAR ..............................................70
V.3: Two Ways of Mapping a 2LAR ..............................................71
V.4: Two Examples of 2LARs, Mapped onto the Cross ....................73
V.5: A Map of the 6LAR in the I Ching .........................................75
V.6: The 2LAR Implicit in the Tai Chi .........................................78
V.7: The Triangle as a Map of a 1LSR ...........................................78
V.8: The Star of David as a 6CR ...................................................80
V.9: The Circle as a Map for a 12CR .............................................80
VI.1: Wittgenstein's "Ladder" ........................................................87
VI.2: The Primary Existential Distinction ........................................93
VI.3: Hermes as Messenger of the Gods .........................................126
VI.4: The Hermeneutic Spiral .......................................................127
VI.5: Analysis and Synthesis as Complementary Functions ................97
VII.1: The Three Stages in Jonathan's Life .....................................105
VII.2: Wisdom As Returning to the Boundary ................................105
VII.3: The Tree of Philosophy .....................................................110
VII.4: The Four Cognitive States ..................................................112
VII.5: The Uncertainty of Inductive Knowledge .............................118
VIII.1: Two Perceptual Perspectives-A Goblet or Two Faces? .......125
VIII.2: The Theoretical and Practical Standpoints ...........................129
VIII.3: The Contrast between Subjective and Objective Ends ...........133
VIII.4: Nietzsche's Transvaluation of Values .................................135
VIII.5: Nietzsche's Tight-Rope .....................................................137
IX.1: Four Forms of Republican Political System ...........................145
IX.2: Aristotle's Six Forms of Political System ...............................146
IX.3: Aristotle's Framework as a 6CR ...........................................147
IX.4: God's Transvaluation of Values ............................................152
IX.5: Four Forms of Monarchical Political System .........................153
IX.6: Eight Basic Types of Political System ...................................154
X.1: The Two Kinds of Breakthrough ..........................................163
X.2: Feeling as Kant's Bridge between Knowing and Willing ..........176
X.3: Kant's Four Forms of Aesthetic Judgment .............................177
X.4: The Four Moments in a Judgment of Beauty ..........................179
X.5: Tillich's Ontology of Love ...................................................184
X.6: The Four Basic Types of Love .............................................185
X.7: The Mystery and Paradox of Love and Beauty .......................188
XI.1: The Numinous Breakthrough and the Idea of the Holy ............169
XI.2: The Logic of Signs and Symbols ...........................................171
XI.3: The Four Stages in Kant's System of Religion ........................249
XI.4: The Archetypal Characteristics of the Invisible Church ...........257
XI.5: The Twelve Steps in Kant's Religious System .........................260
XII.1: Inappropriate Responses to Two Kinds of Fear ....................191
XII.2: Kierkegaard's Three Life Stages and Two Leaps ...................192
XII.3: The Ontological Origins of Angst and Sin ............................192
XII.4: Courage in the Face of Non-Being .......................................196
XII.5: Four Basic Ways of Conceiving Life After Death .................199
XII.6: Two Views of Life and Death.............................................201
7 10 10 8 9 5 5 5 6 7 5 6 = 83 diagrams
A Note to the
Student-on the Fourth Edition
By Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

The Tree of Philosophy (1992, 1993, 1995, 2000) is based on the lectures
delivered for the Introduction to Philosophy classes I have taught 31 times at
Hong Kong Baptist University from 1987 to 2000. It is the second in a series of
three texts on "philopsychy". (This term, meaning "soul-loving", refers to any
creative and disciplined application of scholarly learning-especially in philosophy
and psychology-that encourages self-awareness.) The second book in the series
consists of lectures for a class I teach on dream interpretation for personal growth,
entitled Dreams of Wholeness (1997). The projected third volume is tentatively
entitled Elements of Love. Each book stands alone, but taken together they will
constitute a three-part course in philopsychy.

This fourth edition has been revised much more thoroughly than either of
the previous new editions. Besides adding eight new diagrams and redrawing all
76 of the old ones, I have added eight new lectures and made substantial
improvements to the 28 old ones. The topics (and numbers) of the new lectures
are: insight papers(2), post-Kantian metaphysics (9), how geometrical maps can
stimulate insights (15), hermeneutic philosophy (18), the superiority of
perspectivism over relativism and deconstructionism (24), how ideas are
perverted into ideologies (27), and Kant's view of what it means to be religious
(32 and 33). I have also reorganized the format (see the List of Lectures),
conforming it to the more systematic arrangement used for Dreams. Previously
consisting of seven short lectures, each of the four main Parts is now divided into
three "Weeks", with three lectures each. Publishing this fourth edition at the outset
of a new century (and a new millennium) has also provided a much-needed
opportunity to update the time references throughout the text and to reassess the
current state of philosophy in general.

As with Dreams and the planned second sequel, The Tree is written
primarily as a textbook. With the self-motivated student in mind, I have included
an updated set of eight "Recommended Readings" per week, as well as a set of
eight "Questions for Further Thought/Dialogue". The readings normally include
texts quoted and/or discussed in the foregoing chapter, supplemented with other
useful works that can be consulted by students who have a special interest in that
week's lecture topics. The questions are grouped into four sets of "A" and "B"
pairs. This is to enable teachers, if deemed appropriate, to assign one set (e.g., all
the "A" questions) for individual reflection and the other set (e.g., all the "B"
questions) for small group discussion/debate (i.e., "dialogue").

As students in my philosophy classes find out by the end of our first week,
the most important challenge of this course is to learn to recall, express, and
criticize one's own "insights". Students must keep a record of their insights and
submit "insight papers" throughout the semester. Learning the insightful theories
of past philosophers, as described in the book, should provide plenty of examples
of how this can be done. In this fourth edition, I have incorporated into the main
text some advice regarding how to have and write about insights. Students are
advised to pay close attention to Lecture 2 in this regard, and to the list (on p.8)
indicating sections of other relevant lectures that discuss the nature of insight in
more depth. Sample insight papers will often be read during class sessions to
illustrate various points being considered that week. Ideally, these paper should
not be graded, except on a "pass-fail" basis, thus allowing maximum freedom of
expression to the students-though this may not be possible in some educational
settings.

All students, especially those using this book in a class not taught by the
author, should keep in mind that no textbook should be used as a substitute for
developing your own perspective on philosophical issues or your own critical
appraisals of past philosophers-two clues to being a good philosopher that work
best in combination. The "myth of the tree" that you will learn in this course is
intended to assist you in both these areas (especially the former), but only in the
early stages of your philosophical development. Your examination of past
philosophers in particular ought to be supplemented by reading a good anthology,
such as Wolff's Ten Great Works of Philosophy or any of a host of others, and by
consulting the recommended readings as frequently as possible.

Suggestions for the Non-Student Reader

Anyone reading The Tree without the guidance of a teacher should keep in
mind that the book is meant to be read slowly, to be "mulled over", roughly one
chapter (i.e., three lectures) per week. Those who imagine their reading to be part
of a real 12-week course, requiring concentrated periods of individual reflection
and critical writing each week, are much more likely to benefit from the emphasis
on insight than those who simply read the book through as quickly as possible.
The point is not that this book cannot be read quickly, but that it will not have its
maximum effect unless the ideas and theories it describes are gradually put into
practice in the reader's own philosophical thinking and writing.

In addition to reading roughly three lectures per week, those who opt for
this more challenging approach should also try to do some of the recommended
readings each week. A good way to compensate for not having a teacher is to read
the book concurrently with a friend or family member, or as part of a small group
of people who can share their progress with each other in an atmosphere of
trust.Spend an hour or two each week thinking about and/or discussing the
questions/topics provided for that purpose. These suggestions may seem silly; but
following them is the best way to infuse the reading of this book with the power
to promote significant philosophical development. Taking this slower, 12-week
approach will give the reader's insights a chance to mature and deepen in
interaction with the topics discussed in the text. Reading ahead or rushing through
the book too quickly is sure to limit the reader's ability to learn the skill of having
and criticizing insights.

A Note on References

The Bibliography (pp.285-287) provides full details of the works quoted in

these lectures, specifying an abbreviation for each. References in the text
normally use only the abbreviation, followed by the page number (unless
otherwise specified in the bibliographical entry). Consecutive references to the
same work give only the page number, without the abbreviation. Most quotations
refer to one of the eight works listed in the "Recommended Readings" section at
the end of each week's text.

Acknowledgments

I would like to offer special thanks to my grandparents, Herman and

Margaret, for frequently sharing their insights during childhood visits, and to Tom
Soule, for introducing me with his example to an open-minded way of doing
philosophy. Thanks also to the countless students who have read and commented
on the text over the past ten years, many providing helpful suggestions for
improvements. Of these, the most substantial contributions have come from Man
Sui On and Christopher Firestone. Deepest thanks go to my wife, Dorothy, who-
despite losing interest in philosophy soon after attracting me with her insightful
reflections-thoroughly scrutinized an earlier version of the manuscript and kindly
drew the cover sketch according to my painstaking specifications.

3 July 2000
Student D.

1.What is Philosophy?

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

What is philosophy? I want to begin this course by asking you to attempt to

answer this question.

"That's silly", you're probably thinking, "we are taking this course because
we don't know what philosophy is, so how do you expect us to answer such a
fundamental question at the very beginning of the first day?"

Trust me. Taking just ten or fifteen minutes here at the outset to attempt to
answer this question will give us a very good start on understanding what
philosophy is. Now, if your mind is blank, try thinking about what we are doing
right now. What is it about what we are doing right now that is different from
what is done in other academic subjects?

Students. "Hmm."
 Come on, who wants to be first? Don't be shy.... You know, the first time I
ever taught this course, the first person who tried to answer this question ended up
earning an "A"! Now, who would like to be first?

Student A. "Thinking. We are thinking. Is philosophy about thinking?"

Yes. This is indeed a central part of the philosopher's task. By the way, the
second time I taught this course, the first person who tried to answer this question
ended up with a "D"-so don't expect an easy "A"! A problem with your answer is
that we often think in ways that could not really be called "philosophical". So,
how does philosophical thinking differ from other types of thinking?

Student B. "It is abstract. There are no definite answers. Everyone has their
own idea about philosophical issues, and nobody can claim to have the absolute
truth."

This is a very common idea. Many philosophical arguments are indeed

abstract, but isn't it also true that philosophy is sometimes very concrete and
practical as well? Actually, I prefer to say there are too many definite answers to
most philosophical questions. But however we choose to express ourselves, you
have hit upon a characteristic of philosophical issues which makes them different
from most other intellectual pursuits. No matter how many times a question is
answered, it seems like there is always something that remains mysterious. This
makes philosophy, at first sight anyway, quite different from science.

But let's continue observing what we are doing right now, and try to get
more clues as to the nature of philosophy. Some philosophers have said that in
philosophy, as in life itself, "we are building the boat in which we are floating."
So, what then are we -- yes?

Student C. "Questions and answers. Does philosophy have something to do

with questions and answers?"

Certainly. In fact, we can distinguish between different branches of

philosophy, and even between different schools of philosophy, by observing the
different types of questions asked by each. But, once again, all academic
disciplines inevitably involve questions and answers. So what makes
philosophical questions different from other types? What am I trying to do right
now by asking you to think about the question "What is philosophy?" and why
wasn't I satisfied with a simple answer, like "philosophy is thinking"?

"Because you're trying to get us to see beneath the surface of things.

Everyone knows that philosophers think a lot, but you are trying to encourage us
to see a deeper meaning."

Exactly. The questions asked in most other academic disciplines can be

given definite answers because non-philosophical answers are usually concerned
only with the surface of a thing. Philosophers, good philosophers, at least, are not
satisfied until they have explored the furthest depths of the question they are
asking themselves. Sometimes, in fact, philosophical ideas are difficult to
understand not because they are too abstract, too far removed from our everyday
life, but because they are too concrete! Sometimes philosophy touches so deeply
on familiar things that we fail to understand because the subject is too close to
home. Have you ever tried to look at your right eye with your left eye?

Student E. "Could you give us an example of a philosophical question?"

 I'll do better than that. I will give you four examples of questions that good
philosophers ask. At the same time this will introduce you to what I believe to be
the four main divisions in the field of philosophy. The first two divisions are both
theoretical. The first is metaphysics, and the question that defines the task of
metaphysics is "What is ultimate reality?" Examining various answers to this
question will be our task in Part One of this course. Part Two deals with the
second division, logic, whose defining question could be expressed as "How do
we understand the meaning of words?"

The last two divisions are both practical. The third could be called "applied
philosophy". Now the application of meaningful words should lead to knowledge,
and the English word "science" comes from the Latin word sciens, which means
"knowing"; so we can call this third division science, provided we remember that
we are not using this word in the same way it is normally used in everyday
language. The question of this philosophical sort of science is "Where is the
proper boundary line between knowledge and ignorance?". The fourth division,
ontology, asks question such as "What does it mean to exist?" By asking and
answering ontological questions, philosophers hope to improve our understanding
of the essential characteristics of distinct types of things (e.g., animals, human
beings, or God), or of types of experiences (e.g., beauty, love, or death).

In this course we will have the opportunity to consider each of these

questions in turn, so it might be helpful to see their relationship to each other as a
whole. One of my favorite teaching aids, as you will soon discover, is to use
diagrams-especially crosses, triangles, and circles-to express the ideas we are
discussing in a simplified but systematic form. In Week V we will see that each
diagram is constructed according to a specific logical pattern. But for now we can
just treat them as an easy way of seeing the relationships between sets of terms.
Let's use a cross as a kind of "map" for our course by plotting the four branches of
philosophy onto its four end points, as shown below:
Figure I.1: Four Branches of Philosophy

We will, of course, ask many other philosophical questions during this course, but
these four deserve to be regarded as fundamental.

Student F. "At several points today you have referred to 'good

philosophers'. This sounds rather presumptuous. Do you mean to imply that there
are some 'bad philosophers'? What gives you the right to judge whether or not
another person's ideas are good or bad? After all, everyone has a right to their
own opinion!"
 True. But the difference between good and bad philosophers has nothing to
do with "opinion". It has to do with reasons. Reason gives all of us the ability to
distinguish between good and bad, although making this distinction need not
involve an attitude of condemnation. So I would say: yes, there are some bad
philosophers. In fact, it seems all too often as if the bad ones unfortunately
outnumber the good ones! So don't be surprised if you hear me using such
expressions throughout this course. But again, I hope you won't take offense. The
words "bad" and "good" here are not intended as moral judgments. Instead, for me
these terms refer to philosophers who see the task of philosophy in a balanced
way as opposed to those who believe philosophy has either a very narrow or a
very broad scope of proper interest. Let me explain more fully what I mean by
this distinction.

The task of doing philosophy can be understood in three ways. The first
views philosophy as the process of using logical thinking to solve difficult
problems by clarifying our concepts. In twentieth century western philosophy, the
school of "analytic philosophy", which in one form or another dominated the
English speaking world for most of that century, typically adopted this notion as
its hallmark. Analytic philosophers tend to regard philosophy as a specialized kind
of scientific profession, sometimes explicitly rejecting the notion that it should be
closely related to our daily life.

The second type of philosophy takes the opposite approach, by viewing

philosophy as a way of life, so that the philosophic task focuses on understanding
the nature and purpose of human existence in all its complexity. In twentieth
century western philosophy, the school of "existentialism", which in one form or
another dominated the non-English speaking world for most of that century,
typically adopted this notion as its hallmark. Existentialist philosophers tend to
regard philosophy as a general discipline including almost anything that can help
us live a truer, or more "authentic" life; but in the process their accounts of what
such a life involves are often so obscure that the average reader has considerable
difficulty understanding what it's all about.
 The third type of philosopher recognizes that both of the above two notions
are necessary for a proper conception of the philosophic task. A good philosopher
follows this third way, by insisting that the goal of clarifying concepts is to point
toward a certain way of life, and that the account of this way of life must be
expressed clearly and must avoid the many obscurities into which such accounts
often fall. For a philosophy that is not viewed as a way of life begins to look more
like a technical science. And a philosophy that does not require a rigorous attempt
to clarify concepts begins to look more like a mystical religion. But philosophy, at
least good philosophy, is neither a science nor a religion, but a unique discipline
that synthesizes aspects of both. As such, it exists, as it were, on the boundary line
between the two. Hence we can picture the relationships between these three
types of philosophy by mapping them onto a simple triangle, as follows:

Figure I.2: Three Types of Philosophy

 By the way, there are probably just as many (or few!) "good" analytic
philosophers as there are "good" existential philosophers. A good analytic
philosopher is one who can clarify language without losing sight of the ultimate
aim of learning to live a better life. By contrast, a good existentialist philosopher
is one who can direct our attention to this ultimate aim without merely obscuring
the truth by using unclear or misleading language. My point is that the best
approach is to see philosophy as not rooted primarily in either of these two tasks
on its own, but as necessarily holding both in balance.

The first hour is drawing to a close now, but we have time for one more
suggestion as to how we can answer our main question. I wonder if anyone has a
different sort of answer from the ones we have been considering so far. For
philosophy is many things, and we have really only scratched the surface of
possible answers.

Student G. "I've always thought philosophy has something to do with

wonder."

What sort of wonder? Do you mean just looking up at the sky and
daydreaming? Or do you have in mind transporting yourself into a purely
imaginary world, as in the story, Alice in Wonderland?

Student G. "I'm not sure. I was just thinking of wondering as a way of

being curious about the truth. Aren't philosophers interested in trying to find out
why things are the way they are?"
 Indeed they are! In fact, the word "philosophy" itself comes from two
Greek words that mean "love" (phileo) and "wisdom" (sophia). So philosophy
refers quite literally to a passionate search for the truth and for its proper
application to our lives. Just as you have suggested, this search must be fueled by
the fire of "wonder". I was not joking, by the way, when I referred to Alice; her
story is full of interesting philosophical ideas!

Well, we have obviously not yet finished answering our question. Indeed,
the question "What is philosophy?" should be kept at the back of our minds
throughout the entirety of this course. If we were able to answer it completely
today, then we could all quit here and the remaining thirty-five lectures would be
redundant. But this is far from being the case. Instead, I want to suggest to you
that by the end of this course you will (hopefully) know less about philosophy
than you did before you came to class today!

I say that because, as we shall see, philosophy actually begins with the
recognition of ignorance. The reason for beginning an introductory course by
studying metaphysics is precisely that metaphysics can teach us the difference
between what we can and cannot know. Only when we have learned this will we
be prepared to learn from logic how we go about gaining an understanding of
words. In particular, logic should teach us the difference between what words
mean when they refer to something we can know about, and what they mean
when they refer to something of which we are necessarily ignorant. Once we have
this theoretical foundation to build on, we can apply our new understanding in
practical ways. We do this by reaching out for truth and knowledge that is
relevant to human life, and this search for a true "science" is properly called the
love of wisdom. By loving wisdom we can enter into the fourth stage of the
philosophical task without being "lost in wonderland", so to speak. For the final
task is to learn truly to appreciate the wonder of silence. In a sense, all philosophy
begins with silent wonder. Yet, as we shall see in Part Four of this course, it ends
in silent wonder as well.
 This gives us plenty to think about for the first lesson. I'll conclude simply
by adding that the four tasks I've just described correspond exactly to the four
"branches" of philosophy listed in Figure I.1 , and can be mapped onto the same
cross, as follows:

Figure I.3: The Four Goals of Doing Philosophy

Each of these is best regarded as a never-ending task, rather than as a requirement

that must be completely met before going on to the next stage. For this reason, we
can think of them as the complementary goals we should set for ourselves at each
stage of doing philosophy.

2.Some Guidelines for Writing Insight Papers

 Insight is the foundation stone of all philosophical ideas. Without insights
people would be devoid of creativity, always remaining more or less the same, in
a relatively thoughtless world not unlike that of the animals. Where animals have
instinct, human beings have the potential for insight. Hence one of the most
important lessons to learn in any study of philosophy is what an insight is and
how to develop the ability to have insights for oneself. We will discuss the nature
of insight at several points during this course. The most important of these appear
in Lectures 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, and 28 (pp. 81-82, 102-108, 131, 142, 183, 217-
219) and ought to be read before you begin writing your first paper. But the skill
of having insights can arise only through practice. For this reason, your
responsibility as a student in this course centers primarily on the task of writing a
series of "insight papers". Whether you are reading this book as an assignment for
your philosophy class or simply for your own interest, I hope you will take
seriously the importance of responding to what you read by writing something for
yourself. This will give you the opportunity to practice doing philosophy by
recording the results of your own reflections on a given philosophical question or
issue. The guidelines I shall suggest in today's lecture are intended to assist you in
choosing an appropriate topic and writing good insight papers.

At the end of each chapter or "week" (i.e., after each set of three lectures
recorded in this book), I provide four pairs of "Questions for Further
Thought/Dialogue", with some blank space in case you want to jot down a few
notes as you think about each question. You may wish to use these as topics for
some of your insight papers, though any topic is acceptable, provided you treat it
in a philosophical way. In either case you should not search through this book for
a "set" solution to the problem you choose to reflect and write about. Insight
papers are a record of your own insights, not mine-though of course, you might
find it helpful to use the contents of my lectures as a springboard for developing
your own unique way of thinking.
 Insight papers are by far the most important aspect of this course, because
they complement the lectures and readings with a real, personal experience of
philosophizing. Where relevant, students' insight papers are therefore used as the
basis for class discussions. The task of discussing the implications of the issues
raised in various papers is often interesting enough to occupy most of any given
class hour. The remaining time is devoted to a discussion of questions arising out
of the textbook and other readings assigned for that day. This means that from the
second class session onwards every student is expected to read the relevant lecture
in this book before the class hour to which it corresponds. It would also be helpful
for you to read at least some of the texts listed in the "Recommended Readings"
sections each week. These are usually arranged in order, starting with shorter or
more specific texts that were mentioned in the lectures, and ending with more
lengthy and/or general texts that will assist you in exploring more deeply the
implications of the topics discussed in that week's lectures. These readings should
also serve to stimulate insights and can often provide good topics for insight
papers.

Keeping in mind the following guidelines should help you read more
insightfully:

1. Don't worry if you do not understand every word and every sentence.

2. Instead, focus on locating and trying to understand the main points.

3. Underline the main points, and try to catch the general flow of the argument.
4. Excessive underlining will defeat the purpose and make review too difficult.

5. For short definitions of key terms, refer to the Glossary at the end of this text.

6. Interact with the text. If you disagree, write your reasons in the margin; if you
agree, write something like "yes!" If it reminds you of something else, make a
note of this; if you're confused, write "?", then ask for clarification in class.

7. When you find an interesting passage in the textbook, spend more time on it,
then seek out Recommended Readings or ask the lecturer for further references.

8. If a passage is boring you, try to read faster or just skim until you reach a more
interesting part. You can form a quick idea of the content by reading the first few
and last few paragraphs and the first sentence of every paragraph in between. (Use
this for extra, Recommended Readings, not for the textbook!)

9. Most importantly, be confident in your own ability to understand. Adopt the

Enlightenment's motto as your own: Have courage to use your own reason!

Philosophy must be learned freely and with a minimum of external compulsion,

so this course does not absolutely require extensive reading in the classical texts.
However, the lectures below often refer to many of these texts, so it is assumed
that anyone who is, or comes to be, motivated from within to do philosophy will
make an effort to become familiar with as many of these additional readings as
possible.
 Here now are brief answers to the most basic questions students typically
ask as they seek to understand the nature and purpose of writing down their
insights:

What? An insight paper is a short record of your own thoughts, ideas, and rea‐
soning on any topic, provided you can treat it in a philosophical way. Preparing
and writing such papers is one of the most important aspects of this class. You
should therefore write an insight paper after having one or more periods of at
least fifteen minutes of concentrated thinking or meditating (pondering) on some‐
thing philosophical. In addition to the questions given at the end of each week,
here are a few examples of the kinds of subject you might choose to ponder: any
question or issue raised in these lectures or discussed in class; a question about the
meaning or nature of something; a theory or argument put forward by some
philosopher you have read about; an object or idea which you think is beautiful or
unusual; an experience you regard as philosophically profound; etc.

How? Be concise! Don't think that longer papers will always get better results.
This is not true. Sometimes several sentences might be enough to demonstrate
that you have a significant philosophical insight. Anything that is not directly
related to the insight itself should be summarized or omitted. Your paper should
devote as little space as possible to describing background information, such as
other people's ideas. Most of the space should be devoted to your own reflections,
criticisms, analysis, ideas for possible answers, etc. As a general rule, you should
think in terms of one side of a standard sheet of paper as being long enough. If
you need to use two pages, please help to preserve trees by writing on both sides
(front and back) of one sheet of paper.
How many? Write as many insight papers as you can! If you are using this book
as a textbook for a class, consult the syllabus for details on the number of required
insight papers, their due dates, and other more specific guidelines.

Why? The purpose of the insight papers is for you to practice the skill of doing
philosophy, by allowing you to explore philosophical ideas in depth. So you
should write them with this in mind. Ask questions that drive your thinking below
the surface, such as "why?", "what does it mean?", "how do I know?", "what is
it?", etc. Do not simply repeat someone else's ideas. You can mention other
people's ideas (e.g. the theories of some philosopher you have studied), but try to
do this as briefly as possible. Most of the paper should be devoted to an
explanation and analysis of your own ideas. Both creativity and careful
argumentation will be highly valued, as well as clarity and orderliness. The mere
statement of your own opinion, with no reasons given for support, is not
satisfactory. Opinions can be mentioned as a starting point for further inquiry, but
genuine insights are more than just undefended opinions.

What next? The insight papers should be used as the basis for discussions, both
inside and outside of class. The former will require some papers to be read
(anonymously) in front of the whole class. (If you ever write something you
would not want to be read in class, you should write somewhere on your paper
"Please do not read this in class, because..." and explain the reason.) Normally, the
papers will be returned at the end of the next class session; the key points will be
underlined, and some relevant questions or comments will be written on your
paper. These do not necessarily reflect the lecturer's own point of view, but are
intended to help you think more deeply about the issues raised.
 The question that is probably on the mind of most student readers at this
point is: how are insight papers going to be graded? (Non-student readers may
wish to skip this and the following paragraph.) Of course, different teachers will
inevitably have different criteria for judging the relative merits of such
assignments. My own practise is to look for a balance between creativity, clarity,
and critical rigor (i.e., examining the pros and cons of a variety of possible
viewpoints). A rough grading scale can be based directly on these three criteria, as
follows. An "A" paper will be one that is strong in all three areas. A "B" paper
should be either strong in two areas, but rather weak in the third area, or strong in
one area and mediocre in the other two. Likewise, a "C" paper could be either
strong in one area and weak in the other two, or mediocre in all three areas. A "D"
paper will not be strong in any of the three areas and will be significantly lacking
in one or two areas. And a paper will fail if it is weak in all three areas; this
usually means most or all of the paper has been merely copied from some other
source, or that the paper consists of nothing but the description of a story, event,
etc., with no attempt whatsoever to reflect on its implications.

Sometimes when I teach Introduction to Philosophy I use a "pass-fail"

method to grade the insight papers: papers receive a tick if they contain enough
philosophical content to have earned at least a "C" and a minus if they are below
that level. (In this case, I also give a plus to reward papers that are of an
exceptionally high standard.) The advantage of this method of assessment is that,
by decreasing the pressure some might feel to write something just in order to
impress the teacher, it tends to give students a greater sense of freedom to select
topics that genuinely interest them. The disadvantage, of course, is that some stu‐
dents may not put as much effort into the exercise as a result of knowing that a
mediocre paper will receive the same grade as an excellent one.

On the assumption that most readers will be interested in learning to write

better insight papers, regardless of whether (or how) they are graded, I shall
devote the rest of today's lecture to a series of suggestions for improving your
skill in this area. The first is that you should not choose a topic for your paper
until you have the experience of insight when reflecting on a given topic. If you
have not had the experience, then devote more time to your reflections:
developing a receptivity to insight is a discipline that takes time! My point here is
that you should resist the temptation to treat insight papers merely as essays, by
selecting a topic randomly and then trying to concoct an "insight" just to make
your paper look good. If your mind is consistently open and reflecting on issues
of your concern, then eventually insights will come; selecting one of these for the
topic of your paper will ensure that you have a topic that interests you more than
if you simply choose a random philosophical question or issue that you happened
to stumble across by accident.

Once you have had an insight and chosen a topic on that basis, you should
do more than just state what your insight is. That is, you should not be satisfied
merely to ask a question and then give the "right" answer. Instead, you should
analyze the validity of your insight by considering objections other people might
make and providing reasons to support your position. Such an approach will
prevent your insight from looking like nothing but an expression of your opinion.
For the same reason, you should consider a variety of possible positions-perhaps
even all possible positions, if you can. That is, you should consider the issue from
as many different perspectives as possible.

This term, "perspective", will turn out to be one of the most important
technical terms in this entire course. A perspective is a way of looking at
something, or a general context for interpreting an issue, and determines to a large
extent what kind of answer will be given. An important lesson to learn as early as
possible in your philosophical education is that the same question can have
different right answers, if a different perspective is being assumed. Much more
will be said about this as we proceed through the course.
 The comments I write on student insight papers are usually intended to
assist in this process of seeing the issue from a variety of perspectives. As a result,
what I write does not necessarily represent my own view; more often I merely ask
a question that I think the paper has neglected and should therefore be taken into
consideration if/when any further reflection is done on that topic. If you are not
reading this book as part of a class, then I suggest you find a philosophically-
minded friend with whom you can exchange insight papers. Read and comment
on each other's papers regularly, with the aim of assisting each other in thinking
more deeply about the issues in question.

I focus so much attention on gaining awareness of different perspectives

because of all philosophical skills, this is the one I believe is most significant in
preparing us for living a good life. Socrates' famous claim that "an unexamined
life is not worth living" (see Lecture 5) is true only if a person has an effective
way of examining his or her life. Such self-examination has two distinct aspects,
relating to the conscious and unconscious aspects of nature. This course deals
only with insights and perspectives relating to the former. I offer a separate course
on dream interpretation and personal growth that deals primarily with the latter
(see DW). In the present course as well as its sequel, awareness of perspectives is
the key to an effective method of self-examination. Without it, our insights will
never be anything more for us than a set of biased preconceptions that we believe
without knowing why we really believe them, or what the options are. But with
such an awareness, we can even learn to accept certain preconceptions as
legitimate, when the perspective they support can be seen to be superior to other
options. This issue of preconceptions is, in fact, of fundamental importance to
understanding the nature and function of philosophy. I shall therefore devote all of
the next lecture to examining that topic in more detail.

3.Philosophy as Myth
 Once there was a tree, and her name was "Philosophy"....

Throughout this entire course I would like us all to treat this little one-line
story as if it holds the key to the nature of philosophy. We can express the same
idea in the more philosophical form of an analogy by saying "philosophy is like a
tree". In either case, we are assuming as a given-an unquestionable starting point
for all our inquiries-that the nature and constituent parts of trees give us clues as
to the nature and constituent parts of philosophy. Like any genuine
presupposition, there is no way of defending this starting point with
incontrovertible proofs; the best we can do is to believe in its truth and value, and
then explore its various implications. If the final result is less than satisfactory, we
can always discard the presupposition and start again with some new hypothesis.
But in the meantime, I shall return to this analogy on repeated occasions during
this course in hopes of gaining deeper and clearer insights into the discipline we
call "philosophy".

This means the assumption that there was once a tree called "Philosophy"
will serve as the myth that guides and holds together the various ideas we will be
discussing. The word "myth", when used in this way, does not mean "a false story
or belief", as it ordinarily does in its everyday English usage. Rather, I am using it
here in the special way some anthropologists use it in their descriptions of the
primitive origins of religion. Today I want to explore this new sense of the word
"myth", not only so that we can understand more clearly what it means to say the
"tree of philosophy" will serve as our myth, but also because, as we shall see, the
origins of philosophy itself are to a large extent rooted in this special type of
mythological thinking.
 In the first chapter of Myth and Reality, Mircea Eliade, one of the past
century's most influential scholars in the scientific study of religion, provides a
good explanation of the way myths function in primitive societies. Since the
meaning he assigns to the word "myth" is quite similar to the one I want us to
assume, I would like to highlight several of the important points he makes. First,
he defines a myth as an old story about the origin of the world or the things in the
world, which in some way explains why human existence is the way it is, or why
one's own cultural norms have developed the way they have. The myth of
Prometheus, for example, tells us, among other things, about the origin of fire. A
society's customs relating to sexuality, family relationships, and death are among
the most common subjects of its myths.

The actors in these myths are usually gods, other supernatural beings, or
heroes with superhuman powers. Unfortunately, this tends to obscure for the
modern reader the fact that these stories functioned primarily as models for
human behavior. Nevertheless, during the twentieth century there were numerous
attempts to show that ancient myths tell the story, so to speak of Everyman. The
psychologist Sigmund Freud, for example, argued that the myth of Oedipus, the
man whose fate it was to kill his father and marry his mother, tells the story of the
childhood experience of every little boy, not just those who lived in ancient
Greece. (See Lecture 8 of Dreams for further details.) Likewise, whenever we
read an ancient myth, it is helpful to regard all the characters as, in one sense or
another, telling the story of who we are. If I read a myth as a story of myself, then
what once seemed aloof and irrelevant suddenly takes on a new meaning.

According to Eliade, primitive tribesmen regard their myths as the truest of

all true stories. Their truth is demonstrated repeatedly by the fact that reenacting
the myths in the form of rituals gives the people power over nature. At the same
time, the ritual repetition of the story keeps the myth alive in the hearts and minds
of the people. Indeed, the people seem to have two distinct types of stories: those
relating events that took place in the ordinary lives of the people and those
relating events that took place in a special "mythical time" (sometimes referred to
as "dream time"). The German language distinguishes between these two types of
stories by using the word historie to describe ordinary stories and the word
geschichte to describe stories with special, deeper meanings. The word
heilsgeschichte refers to a special "sacred history" that exists, as it were, on a
different plane from ordinary history.

Although Eliade's account is quite accurate as a description of the myths

found in primitive cultures, I would like to suggest that, with some rather slight
revisions, we can recognize a mythological element in any and every human
culture, including our own. First, instead of limiting myths to old stories, I suggest
that we regard as a myth any belief, story, or proposition that functions in the
same way the old stories function for primitive peoples. In other words, anything
we use to explain why things are the way they are, or anything we use as a model
for our behavior, might be regarded as a myth. This eliminates the requirement
that the characters in a myth be so far removed from us that the story is
intrinsically unbelievable to modern scientific ears.

Of course, not every explanation of reality is a mythical one, so it is

important to recall Eliade's criterion concerning the truth value of a myth.
However, I think we should reject his claim that a myth represents the truest of all
true truths. Instead, I believe the defining feature of a mythical belief, as far as its
truth value is concerned, is that its meaning makes it beyond question. That is, for
the person who is "living in a myth", the question as to whether the story or belief
or idea is true or false is irrelevant. The myth just is. In other words, it is accepted
at such a deep level that the person never even thinks about questioning it. (This
revised view of the truth value of a myth is depicted by the diagram shown in
Figure I.4.) This does not mean that people who live in a myth are unable to ask
any questions about the meaning of their myth. On the contrary, discussion of
such questions usually plays an important role in societies governed by a
particular myth. The only question that never arises is the basic question of
whether or not the myth itself is true.
Figure I.4: The Truth Value of a Myth

People who live in a myth typically respond with confused amazement

when someone questions their belief. Eliade's claim that a myth is believed to be
the "truest" of all true stories rests on a misunderstanding of this response. For as
the primitive tribesman instinctively knows, the notion of "truth" is not really
appropriate when referring to myths. To ask a person about the "truth" of their
myth is to misunderstand what it means to say it is a myth. Claims such as
Eliade's result more from anthropologists reading their own preconceived ideas
into their data than from the actual intentions of the primitive peoples. For our
purposes, therefore, the term "myth" will refer to any belief whose meaning is so
intimately connected with a person's way of life that the person never considers
asking the question "Is it true or false?"
 I hope you now understand more clearly what I mean when I say the story
of the tree named "Philosophy" will be the myth that guides this course. I mean
that I want you to accept the analogy, "philosophy is like a tree", as being true
without question. Moreover, I want the picture of the tree of philosophy to serve
as a model to guide your reflections on what philosophy is. For in so doing, you
will find you have a power to understand philosophical insights that is beyond
what most beginners would experience. But before we begin exploring some of
these insights, I want to say something about the mythical origins of philosophy
itself.

The histories of most cultures look back to an original "golden age" when
human life was significantly different from the way it is now. And the longing for
a return to this golden age (often closely related to the "dream time" or "mythical
time" mentioned earlier) is the impetus for much cultural change. For the early
Hebrews, the golden age was the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve "walked
with God in the cool of the evening". For the Chinese people in the age of
Confucius (551-479 B.C.), the golden age was the period of the "sage kings",
when China was ruled with wisdom and benevolence. Since western philosophy,
which will be the primary focus of this course, began in ancient Greece, it is most
significant for us to note that the Greeks also believed in a golden age. Let us
therefore look briefly at the history of ancient Greece in order to gain some
understanding of how philosophy was born from myth.

Some scholars believe the dream of the golden age in ancient Greece
referred back to the Minoan-Mycenaean culture, which had ended by the time of
the Trojan War (circa 1200 B.C.). This age was the inspiration for the making of
the Greek myths (see MM 87-89 and BM 213-215,278). The next major
development in Greek history was "the creation of the Homeric epics [c.900
B.C.], which derived their material from this complex of myths" (MM 88, BM
464). These epics converted the unorganized mass of myths into a poetic form,
rendering their meaning more apparent (BM 256f). But human consciousness had
not yet developed into the form we know it today. According to Jaynes, our
modern "subjective conscious mind" replaced a more primitive way of thinking
"in the sixth century B.C." (259-260,285-286)-that is, at about the same time as
the appearance of the first philosopher in ancient Greece, named Thales (c.624-
c.546 B.C.). There then followed three centuries of intense philosophical activity
in Greece, culminating in the work of a philosopher named Aristotle (384-322
B.C.). Aristotle's work was significant because, as we shall see in Lecture 6, he
was the first major Greek philosopher to develop something like a "scientific"
point of view, in the modern sense of that term. If we place these major
developments on a time line, this rough sketch of ancient Greek history looks like
this:

Figure I.5: The Cycle of History in Ancient Greece

The three hundred year gaps between each of the major changes
represented in this diagram are, of course, only approximations of the dates when
these changes actually occurred. Nevertheless, it is significant that history itself
suggests to us such a regular pattern of development. The pattern is, in fact,
reminiscent of the face of a clock, consisting as it does of twelve parts
(hours/centuries) grouped into four quarters. (In Week V we will examine the
logical structure of this pattern, which also provides the basis for the systematic
organization of the chapters in this book.) Interestingly, this whole period of
ancient Greek civilization is itself regarded by some as a "golden age"-a fact
suggesting that this pattern is one that repeats itself indefinitely. If so, then a good
way to picture the relationships between these four developments would be to
map them onto a clock-face (i.e., a circle divided into four quadrants).

If we now recall the fact that our modern (A.D.) calendar starts at the point
where Figure I.5 leaves off (namely, at the birth of Jesus, albeit, not in Greece),
then we can see that the best way to map this time line onto a circle is to proceed
backwards (putting the 9:00 term in the 3:00 position and vice versa), just as our
reckoning of B.C. dates goes in the reverse order of our reckoning of A.D. dates.
This gives us the map of four interrelated human thought forms shown in Figure
I.6.

I want to end today's

session by suggesting a more
general way of understanding
how these four ideas-myth,
poetry, philosophy, and science-
relate to each other. For it would
be a mistake to think their rela‐
tionship is nothing but an
accident of history. There is
actually a logical basis for their
relationship, as depicted by the
diagram shown in Figure I.7. Figure I.6: Four Thought Forms in Ancient
Living in a myth Greece

is like living inside a circle without knowing anything about the existence of the
circle itself. This is because mythological thinking is ignorant of all boundary
lines. Poets withdraw themselves from the circle of myth just enough to recognize
the existence of the boundary line. Poetry attempts to express the myth in such a
way as to enable its meaning to be understood by those who live completely
outside the boundary. Hence the poet lives on the boundary. Philosophers, by
contrast, step completely beyond the boundary line; yet they remain close enough
to the "circle" of myth to recognize the reality and significance of the "hidden
meaning" contained in the myth's poetic expression. The philosopher attempts to
explain that meaning in a more literal or objective way: whereas the poet

Figure I.7: A Map of the Four Human Thought Forms

can write poetry without explicitly questioning the myth, the philosopher must
question the myth. That, indeed, is one of the main tasks of philosophy. Scientists
differ from philosophers by withdrawing themselves so far from the realm of
myth that they are no longer able to see the presence of any hidden meaning
whatsoever. Whereas the philosopher questions the truth value of the myth (i.e.,
remains open to the possibility of seeing truth revealed in it), the scientist rejects
the myth as nothing but a "false story" (see Figure I.4). Scientists live so far away
from the myth that, if they see the circle of myth at all, it appears to be only a
point way off in the distance, with no meaningful content.
 Obviously, the everyday use of the term "myth" derives its meaning from
our modern culture's tendency to put absolute trust in science. Yet ironically, our
way of using this key term reveals that science itself shares some of the same
characteristics as myths, such as ignorance of the boundary lines. And this raises
the question as to whether or not the four basic thought forms might function as a
cycle, whereby science itself, when taken to an extreme, becomes another form of
myth. With this in mind, one of our main tasks in this course, if we are to become
good philosophers in the present climate, will be to call into question the
exclusive rights of the scientific world view over our minds. Next week we will
therefore begin by examining the cyclical nature of these four human thought
forms in more detail. We will then pay special attention to the developments in
ancient Greece, where two of the most influential systems of philosophy were
produced, systems that typify the two main ways of doing philosophy (cf. Figure
I.2) so effectively that they continue to bear the fruit of insight to this day.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. What is philosophy?

B. How is philosophy like a tree?

2. A. What is a question, and why are they important in philosophy?

B. How is philosophical self-examination different from other types?

3. A. Is having philosophical ideas enough to make you a philosopher?

 B. What is insight?

4. A. Could humans have been conscious before philosophy existed?

B. What are some of our modern myths?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).

2. Gary E. Kessler, Voices of Wisdom3 (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Publishing

Company, 1998[1992]), Ch. 1, "What Is Philosophy?", pp.1-11.

3. Richard Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners (New York: Writers and Readers
Publishing, Inc., 1992).

4. Robert Paul Wolff, About Philosophy5 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
1992[1976]), Ch. 1, "What Is Philosophy?", and Appendix, "How to Write a
Philosophy Paper", pp.1-37, 452-472.

5. Roger L. Dominowski and Pamela Dallob, "Insight and Problem Solving", Ch.
2 in R.J. Sternberg and J.E. Davidson (ed.), The Nature of Insight (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp.33-62.
6. Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964), Ch.
One, "The Structure of Myths", pp.1-20.

7. Richard A. Underwood, "Living by Myth: Joseph Campbell, C.G. Jung, and the
Religious Life-Journey", Ch. 2 in D.C. Noel (ed.), Paths to the Power of Myth
(New York: Crossroad, 1990), pp.13-28.

8. Julian Jaynes, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral

Mind, Chs. I.3 and II.3, "The Mind of Iliad" and "The Causes of Consciousness"
(BM 67-83, 205-222).

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Dialogue

4. PhilosophyasMetaphysicalDemythologizing

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Having seen in Week I that philosophy is born out of myth, we must now
acknowledge that myth as such is not philosophy. On the contrary, the path that
leads from myth to science, through poetry and philosophy, could be called the
path of "demythologizing". This term refers to the process of taking the "myth"
(in the modern sense of "false beliefs") out of myth-i.e., questioning our
unquestioned beliefs in hopes of transforming them into a more reliable
expression of the truth. Thus, for example, when I suggested in the previous
lecture that we all regard "the tree of philosophy" as the myth for this course, I
was not really doing philosophy. Rather, I was preparing the ground in which the
tree itself will be planted. After you finish this course, I hope you will take the
time to question seriously not only the myth, but also the (poetic) analogy that
"philosophy is like a tree". But if you question this presupposition here at the
beginning, you may find that the ground of your mind will be too hard to receive
the insights this myth can inspire.

One such insight is that, just as a tree is an organic whole consisting of four main
parts (the roots, the trunk, the branches, and the leaves), so also many, if not most,
sets of philosophical ideas are organized according to such a pattern. We have
already seen several such patterns in the first two sessions. But before we look at
some examples of how demythologization worked in ancient Greece, I would like
to point out several other interesting fourfold patterns.
If the "myth, poetry, philosophy, science" pattern is regarded as a description of
the way human thinking develops on a macrocosmic scale (i.e., in human
cultures), then we should not be surprised to find a similar pattern operating on a
microcosmic scale (i.e., in human individuals). One of the most common ways of
describing the stages of an individual's development is to refer to a person's birth,
youth, maturity, and old age. By correlating each of these with a progressively
higher level of consciousness, the pattern shown in Figure II.1 emerges. Just as
the progression from birth to youth coincides with the awakening of a child's
unconscious mind, so also the progression from youth to maturity requires the
gradual sharpening of consciousness, until a distinct awareness of one's own self
arises. And the self-conscious person whose natural development is not
interrupted eventually enters into a new stage which, for want of a better term, we
can call super-consciousness. The elderly

Figure II.1: The Development

of the Individual

"golden age" that many cultures look back to (see Lecture 3). Yet the latter
corresponds not to old age but to the pre-natal experiences of the baby in its
mother's womb. Mapping these relations onto a circle appropriately suggests the
cyclical character of the development we are here considering: super-
consciousness may well involve a recapturing of something a person loses at
birth-an idea we will see Plato defending in

Lecture 5.

Each
of these four stages can also be
correlated with a particular
"faculty", or power, of the
human mind, as shown in Figure
II.2. Imagination is the power
governing the earliest years of
our life, just as myth governs the
thinking of those who live in
primitive cultures. As everyone
knows, the difference between
fantasy and reality is not distinct
in the mind of a true child. In
youth, how-

Figure II.2:

The Four Powers of the Mind

ever, this power is overcome by passion: as the physical body changes in puberty,
so also the mind changes the way it adapts to the world. The poet is driven by this
passion to express in words what for the child is only a dream. Philosophers, by
contrast, are not usually known for their passion. This is because the power
corresponding to mature self-consciousness is the power of understanding. This
power, when developed to its fullest extent, is transformed into the power of
judgment. The task of scientists is to transcend their own point of view in order to
judge how the world really is. Likewise, the people who truly deserve to be called
"old" are those whose minds are governed primarily by this power of judgment.

Determining what each of these powers aims to express will give us a more
complete understanding of the interrelationships between these ideas. Myth uses
imagination to express beliefs. Poetry uses passion to express beauty. Philosophy
uses understanding to express truth. And science uses judgment to express
knowledge. We can represent these ultimate goals by mapping them onto a square
that encompasses the circle presented in Figure II.2, as shown below:

Figure II.3: Four Aims of Human Thinking

I have taken the time to show you these patterns not only because I think they are
intrinsically interesting, but also because they should help you see philosophy in
its proper context. And the better your understanding of that context, the stronger
will be the roots of your own philosophical "tree". The diagrams in Figures II.1-3
depict logical patterns, so many of their implications will not become clear until
we study logic in the second part of this course (especially Week V).
Nevertheless, it might be helpful at this point to take a brief look at the origins of
logic itself, since the proper employment of logic is necessary in order for
demythologization to take place.

The English word "logic" comes from the Greek word logos, meaning "word"-
including the spoken word ("speech"), the written word ("book"), and the thought
word ("reason"). But in Ancient Greece logos was also sometimes used to refer to
what we can call the hidden meaning in a myth. In this sense, the logos of a thing
is its final purpose or ultimate nature. This is how the Bible uses the word when,
for example, St. John's Gospel begins by exclaiming: "In the beginning was the
logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God." The person who lives
in a myth experiences this logos firsthand, and so has no need to explain it. The
poet is the first to recognize the need to use words to express the passion with
which an experience of the logos fills a person. The philosopher tries to
understand the logos in such a way as to separate truth from fiction. And the
scientist forgets the logos altogether in search of concrete facts that can be
manipulated. This "forgetting" is the source of the modern problem of
meaninglessness or "alienation" and will occupy our attention at several points
later on (see e.g., Lecture 18).

The process of moving from an intimate experience of the logos to a state wherein
its presence is forgotten is the process of demythologization. Forgetting the logos
is in a sense a catastrophe for mankind, and yet in another sense, as we shall see
in Lecture 9, such forgetting (or at least, ignoring) is a necessary requirement in
order for knowledge to arise. Science requires us to forget the hidden logos
because factual knowledge admits only what is openly revealed. Indeed, the
difficulties we all have in thinking in terms of this logos arise as a direct result of
the fact that we live in an age dominated by the scientific world view, which finds
no proper place for the logos. Yet it is always possible for a person to recapture
the meaning of myth, even after forgetting it in the process of attaining
knowledge. Nurturing the tree of philosophy within ourselves is one of the best
ways to revive the memory of that forgotten reality.

The earliest demythologizers in ancient Greece were the philosophers who lived
during the period of time from Thales to Aristotle (see Figure I.5). With two
important exceptions (to be discussed in the next lecture), these philosophers are
referred to as "presocratic" philosophers, because they lived before a very
influential philosopher named Socrates. One of the main concerns of the
presocratics was to describe the nature of "ultimate reality". And this, as I
mentioned in Lecture 1, is the main task of the branch of philosophy we now call
"metaphysics". Several of these early demythologizers regarded one of the four
traditional "elements" (or something like it) as constituting ultimate reality. Thales
himself argued that everything can ultimately be reduced to water. Anaximenes
(c.585-c.528) disagreed, claiming the most basic element is actually air. Not long
afterwards, Heraclitus (fl.500-480), who had some interesting ideas about the
logic of opposites (see Lecture 12), suggested that fire is the best candidate for a
basic metaphysical building-block. Democritus (c.460-c.371) then defended the
earliest form of "atomism", viewing the fundamental element as "being", or
simply what is. By this he meant something similar to what we mean by "matter",
thus suggesting at least a rough correspondence to the earth element, since the
latter clearly refers not merely to soil, but to all solid matter. These four early
metaphysical positions can be mapped onto a cross, as follows:

Figure II.4: The Four Elements in Ancient Greece

As the diagram suggests, the best of the early answers to the question of ultimate
reality was given by Anaximander (c.610-c.546), who argued that none of the four
elements is properly regarded as basic, since they necessarily stand in opposition
to each other (like wet and dry, hot and cold). If one element were "boundless",
then it would destroy all the others. He stood, as it were, at the center of the cross,
recognizing the need for all four elements to be held together in a creative tension.
Empedocles (c.495-435) further developed this view, regarding all four elements
as basic realities, explaining the tensions as being held together by the opposing
forces of "love" (philia) and "strife" (neikos).
Regardless of which answer to this question you think is best, we must beware of
regarding any of them as attempting to explain the nature of the physical world.
For the word "metaphysics" means "after" or "beyond" physics (i.e., "nature"). So
we must be careful not to think these philosophers were arguing that everything
on the earth is quite literally made out of (for example) fire. That is obviously not
true, otherwise we would have all burned up long ago! Moreover, such
explanations are the task of science, not philosophy. Instead, we should regard
these philosophers' theories as the earliest attempts to discover a single,
irreducible truth that lies behind the diverse appearances of our everyday
experience. In other words, they were trying to grasp the hidden meaning of their
own mythical heritage from a position outside the myth itself. The result was what
we might today call "symbolic" explanations for how we can solve the problem of
metaphysics. (The nature of symbolism will be discussed in Lecture 31.)
However, as we shall see in our next session, all these solutions were bound to
fail.

5. Philosophy as Rational Dialogue

The great dividing line in ancient Greek philosophy, distinguishing philosophers

whose ideas seem remote and unfamiliar from those whose ideas seem to be more
clearly relevant to contemporary philosophical concerns, comes in the form of a
single philosopher who, as far as we know, never wrote a book. That philosopher,
Socrates (470-399), gave a completely new interpretation of the philosophical
task, the full implications of which took over two thousand years to unfold. We
know about Socrates' life and ideas primarily through the writings of one of his
close followers, Plato (427-347). Together with Plato's star pupil, Aristotle (384-
322), these men form the core of the ancient Greek philosophical tradition.
Although there is no need to remember their exact dates, it is important to know
what order they lived in. Thus, the following time line reminds us that Socrates
was rather old when he influenced the young Plato, and that he died before
Aristotle was born:
Figure II.5: The Three Great Greek Philosophers

Little is known of Socrates' life, and some scholars even question whether such a
person ever really lived; but for our purposes we can ignore such debates. For
even if his character was merely an invention of Plato and his contemporaries, the
fact is that it soon came to serve as a "myth" that has guided the development of
western philosophy for more than two millennia. Socrates was a highly original
thinker who practiced what he preached. Although he was a member in good
standing of the political elite in Athens, he willingly gave up his position
sometime in mid-life in order to live a life of "extreme poverty" as a philosopher
(PA 23b). During this time he spent his days going around engaging people in
conversations on various issues. He often clashed with the Sophists, the popular
professional philosophers who would dispense their "wisdom" (typically, hair-
splitting distinctions without any universal applications) for a fee. Although
Socrates insisted he was not a teacher (33a), a group of young men (one of whom
was Plato) soon gathered around him, interested in learning the art of doing
philosophy in this new way.

The most significant part of Socrates' career, as recorded by Plato in his Apology,
began when his lifelong friend, Chaerephon, asked the Delphic oracle whether
there was anyone wiser than Socrates. When Socrates heard that the priestess had
answered "no", he felt he had been presented with a riddle to solve, since he
believed he did not deserve to be called wise. So he went around interviewing all
those who had the reputation of being wise, such as politicians, poets, and
artisans, in hopes of learning from them what wisdom really is. But in each case,
their attempt to explain their own "wisdom" was frustrated by Socrates' persistent
questioning. Not only were they unable to explain in what their "wisdom"
consisted, but Socrates publicly attempted to "prove" to such men that they were
not, in fact, wise. Naturally, by questioning all of the traditional myths held by the
wealthy and powerful members of his society, he made plenty of enemies! But for
Socrates this was not important, since in so doing he was able to discover "that
the people with the greatest reputations [for wisdom] were almost entirely
deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better
qualified in practical intelligence" (PA 22a).

Socrates' final conclusion (PA 23a-b) was that the oracle did contain a riddle, but
its solution is a bitter pill to swallow for those whose role in society requires them
to defend the glories of human wisdom:

[Some people have described] me as a professor of wisdom.... But the truth of the
matter ... is pretty certainly this, that real wisdom is the property of God, and this
oracle is his way of telling us that human wisdom has little or no value. It seems
to me that he is not referring literally to Socrates, but has merely taken my name
as an example, as if he would say to us, The wisest of you men is he who has
realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

Understanding the implications of this insight is of utmost importance if we are to

understand the development of philosophy, and especially of metaphysics, in the
succeeding two thousand years. For in this statement Socrates clearly states the
first criterion for being a good philosopher: we must recognize our ignorance!

The price Socrates paid for this insight was his life. For the powerful citizens of
Athens took him to court, accusing him "of corrupting the minds of the young,
and of believing in deities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by
the state" (PA 24b). During his trial, he defended himself not by pleading for
mercy or promising to behave in a more civilized way, but by speaking openly
and harshly to his accusers. He explained how the philosophic life is a life that is
worth dying for. The philosopher is the person who obeys the imperative of the
inscription on the temple at Delphi, "Know thyself". The person who fails to
accept this challenge is in a sad situation, for "life without this sort of examination
is not worth living" (38a). Indeed, Socrates clearly regarded the life of self-
examination as one lived in service to God: although he intentionally cast doubt
on the proliferation of gods in the Greek tradition, Socrates himself regarded
philosophy as a divinely inspired vocation. Only by living such a life can a person
be virtuous, and so help to usher in a just society:

For I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to
make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions,
but for the highest welfare of your souls ... Wealth does not bring goodness [i.e.,
virtue], but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the
individual and to the state. (30a-b)

Such statements, of course, must have seemed like a slap in the face to those he
was speaking to, many of whom would have regarded Socrates as a friend, since
he had himself been a member of that very court at one time. So it is hardly
surprising that when the votes were counted, Socrates was condemned to death
(albeit, by the surprisingly narrow margin of 281 to 220). But instead of being
outraged by this decision, Socrates accepted it with calm integrity, predicting that
the number of those who are willing to question the status quo-i.e., the number of
philosophers-will increase, rather than decrease, as a result of his death (PA 39c)!
Rather than shrinking back in fear of death, he boldly described how his task as a
philosopher had been the task of learning how to die. Thus Plato's Apology ends
(42a) with Socrates exclaiming: "Now it is time that we were going, I to die and
you to live, but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but
God."

Socrates' prediction concerning the growth of philosophy turned out to be

accurate. For in the wake of Socrates' death, Plato's writings preserved many of
Socrates' key insights. Unfortunately, "postsocratic" philosophers have all too
often not been so willing to question those who wield the power in society. This is
partly because the relationship between philosophers and the "city" has changed
radically since Socrates' time. Philosophy now tends to be accepted as part of the
status quo, a subject among other subjects to be studied in pursuit of a "whole
person" education. And this change began, rather ironically, with Plato himself.

Plato presented his philosophical ideas in the form of Dialogues. These books
transform Socrates' habit of persistent questioning into a specific philosophical
method. On one level, a is simply a book that records a conversation between a main speaker-
usually Socrates in Plato's Dialogues-and one or more secondary characters. In the course of
this conversation the main character acts as a
"midwife" for the potential insights waiting to be "born" in the minds of the secondary
characters. (Socrates' mother, incidentally, was a midwife by profession.) In other words, just
as a good midwife coaches the pregnant mother so that the mother can give birth to her baby
(rather than the midwife having to take the baby out by force), so also Socrates asks questions
and offers suggestions in order, as it were, to "coach" the secondary characters into discovering
the desired conclusion without having to be told what it is. But on a deeper level, the
significance of this new method lies in its appeal to a higher authority, reason, as the proper
arbitrator of all disputes. As depicted in Figure II.6,

the dialogue is carried out under the assumption that this higher authority, to which all
participants have equal access, is capable of imparting a deeper understanding of ultimate reali-
ty, or truth.Plato used the method of dialogue to construct, on the basis of his understanding of
Socrates' ideas (though undoubt-edly going beyond them in certain respects), the first
thoroughgoing system of metaphysics with a modern ring. His philosophy, which provides the
archetype of all "idealist" metaphysical systems, is far too complex to study in any depth in an
introductory course. However, looking briefly into his theories of knowledge and of human
nature should provide us with a good sampling of how his idealism works.
The branch of philosophy concerned with answering questions about the nature and origin of
human knowledge is called "Epistemology" (from the Greek words
epistemos, meaning "knowledge", and logos, here best taken to mean "the study of").
Metaphysics and epistemology are always intimately related to each other, because a
philosopher's understanding of what reality ultimately is will inevitably influence his or her
account of how we know what is real, and vice versa. So for
the remainder of our study of metaphysics, I shall include in my account of each major
philosopher a description of his epistemology.
Plato's epistemology is based on the metaphysical assumption that "universals"
(or what he sometimes calls "forms" or "ideas") are the only true reality, whereas
"particulars" (i.e., "matter" or "things") are only appearances of this reality. In
much of our everyday experience we therefore suffer from the illusion that the
things and objects around us in the physical world constitute the ultimate reality.
But the actual situation for human beings, according to Plato, is that our ideas
reveal to us not merely subjective inner states, but the true nature of reality itself.
The philosopher's ultimate task, therefore, is to look beyond the mere appearances
of things in order to come to know these ideas.

In Book VII of his greatest dialogue, Republic, Plato portrays Socrates as

comparing the human situation to a group of people who have

Figure II.7: Plato's Cave

been prisoners inside a cave since their childhood. Their necks and legs are
chained in such a way that they are unable to look toward the opening of the cave.
There is a wall behind them, and on the other side of the wall other people carry
objects of different sorts that stick up over the wall. Behind them all is the light
from a great fire, later identified as the sun. The prisoners are able to see only the
shadows these objects cast on the back of the cave. Having never known anything
other than these shapes and images, they mistakenly treat the shadows as the real
objects.

The analogy, at least in this simplified form, is quite straightforward. The cave
represents the world we live in and the prisoners in chains represent those who
have not yet learned to philosophize. The shadows are the material objects
("appearances") we normally treat as real. And the objects casting the shadows are
the true "forms" of these appearances, whose nature can be revealed to us through
philosophical reflection. The philosopher's task, therefore, is to become aware of
these true forms by breaking the chains that bind us to the illusory reality of the
material world; this is done by reflecting upon our ideas, and learning to treat
them as the ultimate reality. This is Plato's version of the recognition of ignorance:
our ignorance remains only as long as we continue to make the mistake of treating
the material world as ultimately real. For this happens whenever we turn our
backs on the sun, which represents the highest of all ideas in Plato's system, the
idea of "the good". Goodness is the reality from which the light of reason and
truth shines forth, thus enabling us to see all the other eternal forms.

Plato constructed a hierarchical system of ideas, ranging from those that are more
closely connected to the material world (e.g., ideas relating to human desires) to
those that can take us virtually all the way out of the cave. Of the latter, truth and
beauty join goodness to constitute the three highest ideas. Although we sometimes
find approximations to them in the material world, these ideas can never in
themselves be perfectly manifested in the world of appearances. We can never
point to something in the world and say "there it is; that is the thing we call truth".
This is because truth is an eternally existing form that never changes or passes
away. Plato advised young philosophers to begin by coming to know the lower
forms, working their way up to a universal vision of ultimate reality, which (like
the "super-conscious" state discussed in Lecture 4) is likely to occur only rather
late in life. The form of knowledge that serves as the most reliable guide along the
way, he argued, is mathematics, and within mathematics, geometry. Perhaps this
is one good reason why the use of diagrams can be helpful in understanding
difficult philosophical ideas.

Those who succeed in attaining the goal of a universal vision, Plato believed, are
the best qualified to govern the ideal state (the "republic"). The policies Plato
thought such "philosopher-kings" should enforce have often been harshly
criticized for various reasons. We will look more closely at political philosophy in
Week IX. At this point it will suffice to point out that Plato's theory of the
philosopher-king deserves to be seriously considered: for who is more capable of
ruling in a just and benevolent way, a person who is hungry to possess power and
authority, or one who has seen and understood the ideas of power and authority as
they truly are?

In working out his theory of forms Plato, like most great philosophers, regarded
the question of the ultimate reality of mankind as one of the most significant
aspects of his metaphysical theory. So let's conclude our discussion of Plato's
idealism by looking briefly at its implications for human nature. If the material
world is an illusion, then the human body is obviously not the defining reality of
human nature. On the contrary, the body, according to Plato, is what chains us to
the cave, limiting our vision to the shadows of reality. Our true reality lies in the
idea, or form, of "humanness" and is best expressed in terms of the idea of a
"soul" (psyche). The soul is the eternal reality that is, as it

Figure II.8: The Three Powers of the Soul

existed in its eternal form in the realm of ideas, to which it will return after we
die. In this realm the soul has easy access to all knowledge, because the eternal
forms are not obscured by the darkness and limitations of the cave. The
experience of birth causes us to forget what we used to know. Hence, Plato's
metaphysics provides the basis for his solution to one of the most difficult
questions in epistemology: "How do we come to know what we do not already
know?" The answer offered by Plato's idealism is, quite simply, that all learning
on this earth is actually remembering what we knew before we were born.

Today I have had time only to skim the surface of the ideas put forward by Plato
(and Socrates). We could spend the rest of this course examining the intricacies of
his idealism, and even then we would have just begun to understand the depths of
his thought. Plato himself believed his system of eternal forms was capable of
transforming philosophy into a science, a body of well-established knowledge-a
goal shared by many philosophers ever since. And yet, how this is to be
accomplished has been a matter of continuous controversy. Indeed, in the next
lecture we will examine the ideas of a pupil of Plato's who believed a scientific
philosophy can be established only by following a radically different path.

6.Philosophy as Teleological Science

In the previous lecture we looked at the ideas of Socrates and his follower, Plato.
Socrates' appeal to universal reason and Plato's use of dialogue to construct a
system of idealism, based on Socrates' teachings, revolutionized the development
of philosophy in ancient Greece. I concluded by mentioning Plato's notion that
idealism can lead to the construction of a universal science. The fact that virtually
no scientists today would look back to Plato's ideas as the source of modern
science suggests that Plato failed in this task (at least, given modern notions of
what science is). However, as we shall see today, the very different system
proposed by Plato's most influential pupil was to succeed in this goal in a way his
teacher's ideas never would.

Having studied at the famous school Plato had founded, called the "Academy",
Aristotle taught there until after Plato's death. During those twenty years he
obviously must have become thoroughly familiar with Plato's ideas. He then left
the Academy, however, and served for about three years as the private tutor for
Alexander the Great. Upon his return to Athens, he set up his own school, where
he developed and taught a system of philosophy that many regard as being
diametrically opposed to Plato's. Unfortunately, all that survives of Aristotle's
writings are his lecture notes and textbooks intended for use by his students. As a
result much of his writing is dry and considerably less entertaining than Plato's
lively Dialogues. Whereas Plato's writing style sometimes obscures his meaning
by being too loose, Aristotle's meaning is often obscured by his rigidity.
Something in between would, no doubt, make for a more suitable style for
presenting philosophical insights.

Aristotle based his system on a metaphysics that virtually stands Plato's idealism
on its head by arguing that particulars, not universals, are ultimately real. He
connected particulars with a special term, "ousia", which itself means "reality",
though it is usually translated as "substance". The basic question in his "first
philosophy" (as he referred to metaphysics) is therefore "What is substance?" He
answered this question by defining a substance as an individual, existing thing
(see AC 1b-4b). Such a "thing" is not merely a form, nor is it a hunk of matter.
Instead, it must always combine matter and form within itself. Substance
combines form and matter in such a way that the matter fulfills a necessary
function, rather than being just an accident or an illusion. For the material of a
substance gives it its "distinctive mark", which is that, "while remaining
numerically one and the same, it is capable of admitting contrary qualities"
through a material change. For example, the chalk I am now holding in my hand
would still be an example of the substance "chalk" even if it changed from having
the quality of white chalk into having the quality of red chalk. This way of
looking at the nature of reality is typically called "realism".

Aristotle further developed his realism by distinguishing between "primary" and

"secondary" substances. Whereas "primary substances ... are the entities which
underlie everything else", secondary substances are the characteristics that can be
"predicated" of that individual thing, especially if they are part of the definition of
what it is (AC 2a-b). Strictly speaking, the latter should be limited to the "genus"
and "species" to which the individual thing belongs. For instance, I as an
individual human being am a primary substance. The fact that I am a man
(species) and an animal (genus) are therefore secondary substances, describing
what kind of substance I am. In a looser sense, however, anything that is "either
predicated of [primary substances] or present in them" can be regarded as a
secondary substance. Thus, primary substances usually appear in the subject of
sentences, whereas secondary substances usually appear in the predicate.

Aristotle developed his theory of substance at the beginning of his book,

Categories, where "category" is defined as a "most general kind of thing". The
word "form" can itself be regarded as meaning "of such a kind", so a category is a
very generalized form. In Categories Aristotle collected a list of the ten most
general kinds of form, the first being substance itself (i.e., the kind of form that is
made real by participating in matter). The other nine are characteristics that help
us understand what a particular substance is like. There is no need for us to go
into detail here about the nature and function of these categories. It will be enough
simply to list the other nine in the order Aristotle presented them: quantity,
quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection (AC 1b). Much
of Aristotle's discussion of these categories concerned the way we use such terms
in language (thus foreshadowing today's emphasis on linguistic analysis, to be
discussed further in Lecture 16). But he also clearly regarded them as providing
an orderly and systematic way of understanding reality itself (i.e., substances).

In applying his realism to particular cases Aristotle used a teleological method.

That is, he argued that a thing's form can best be discovered by inquiring about its
purpose. The Greek word telos ("purpose") also refers to the end or goal of a
thing or event. Why does it exist? What is it used for? Such questions can help us
explain why a specific piece of matter has the particular form it does. Aristotle
used his teleological method as an integral part of his task of classifying numerous
natural and intellectual objects. For his philosophical method had a dual emphasis
on logical (linguistic) classification and teleological (empirical) observation. This
dual emphasis has had a profound influence on those who have since followed
what is often called the "empiricist" tradition.

Modern science is, of course, one of the fruits of the empiricist tradition. So it
should come as no surprise to find that many of the names we now give to the
different branches of the sciences, as well as other academic disciples, were first
established as such by Aristotle's teleological classifications. Many of his books
were devoted to naming and providing a basic grounding for disciplines such as
"psychology", "zoology", and even "metaphysics" itself. Thus, for instance, he
distinguished between mathematics, physics, and theology by saying they deal
with formal, material, and divine causes, respectively (AM 1026a). Moreover, he
established many distinctions we now take for granted, not only in philosophy
(such as essence-existence and cause-effect), but also in empirical science (such
as genus-species and plant-animal-human). This certainly justifies the view that
Aristotle was a "grandfather" of modern science, even though his own teleological
methodology is now discredited by most scientists. (Most, but not all. The
Anthropic Cosmological Principle is a significant example of a recent book
written by scientists who do recognize the value of the teleological method.)

Let me explain the epistemological difference between Aristotle's realism and

Plato's idealism by using this piece of chalk as an example. How do we know this
piece of chalk is a piece of chalk? What makes it what it is? Plato would say the
idea of chalk, its "chalkness", gives this object its reality. For even if we were to
go on a crusade all around the world destroying each particular piece of chalk that
now exists, we would not in so doing change the reality of "chalkness" in the
least. Even if we systematically erased all written references to chalk in all the
world's literature, and waited for the death of every person who had ever seen or
used chalk, its idea would still be just as real as it is today: it would still be an
eternally existing form, waiting to be remembered by some future generation.
This piece of matter we call chalk is real only because it participates in a real
idea, the idea of chalkness.

Aristotle, by contrast, would say the reality of this particular substance I am

holding in my hand, called "chalk", is dependent not only on its participation in
the form of "chalkness", but also on the ability of some collection of matter to
instantiate (i.e., serve as a real example of) that form in the world we experience.
This means the matter must be able to fulfill the purpose of chalk. What purpose
does chalkness bestow on a lump of matter? What is chalk used for? Obviously,
when it appears in a classroom, at least, chalk is used to write things on the
blackboard. So if I drop this piece of chalk on the ground and then crush it-like
this (don't tell the cleaners I did that!)-then Aristotle would say I have destroyed
the substance, the reality of the chalk. In this case the matter is still there, but its
form no longer exists as chalk.

For both Plato and Aristotle, then, a thing's form is a necessary factor in
determining its reality. But for Plato the form alone is sufficient, while for
Aristotle a definite link with matter is also required. Their views can be
summarized quite simply in the following way:

Plato's Idealism Aristotle's Realism

form = reality form + matter =

matter = illusion substance (reality)

This summary only scratches the surface of Aristotle's account of the nature of
substance, but it will suffice for our introductory purposes.

What about Aristotle's view of human nature? How did his new metaphysical
standpoint, his realism, influence the way he understood the reality of being
human? He agreed with Plato that the soul (psyche) is the form of the body. As
such, its main functions are described in terms of "the nutritive, the appetitive, the
sensory, the locomotive [powers], and the power of thinking" (DA 414a). The
body itself is now regarded not just as an accident or an illusion to be overcome,
but as a necessary constituent of the human substance, through which these
powers are realized. This view probably feels far more natural to most of you than
Plato's idealist view; yet some of its consequences may be less than desirable. For
if the body is a necessary element in being human, then when the body dies, so
does the reality of the individual existing person. A soul alone would have no
more reality than the mere idea of chalkness and would be of no more use than the
pile of chalk dust here on the floor is for writing on the chalkboard. And this
negative implication of Aristotle's realism, for anyone who believes in life after
death, begins to make Plato's idealism look not so bad after all! (Another way
around this problem would be to believe the body itself is somehow brought back
to life, albeit in some transformed state, after we die. We will discuss this
possibility further in Lecture 35.)

Aristotle himself may have been trying to make up for this potentially undesirable
consequence of his realism when he argued that the human soul has a distinctive
purpose that makes us different from all other earthly substances. Plant souls are
characterized by nutritive and appetitive powers. Animal souls share these
characteristics, but add sensation and locomotion (i.e., the power to move).
Human souls share all the ends, or purposes, that define plant and animal souls,
but rise above these through the power of rationality (nous). Viewing God as a
purely rational being, Aristotle thought this aspect of human nature reveals a
"spark of the divine" in each of us. Accordingly, he described the human soul as
being that of a "rational animal"-a notion that has become one of the most widely
accepted ways of defining human nature. By treating rationality as itself a
characteristic of the divine soul, we can map Aristotle's distinction onto a cross, as
shown in Figure II.9.

This view of the soul provided Aristotle with a way of allowing for a type of
survival after death. In DA 430a he stated that, when the soul "is set free from its
present conditions" (i.e., when a person's body dies), the remaining core of
rationality "is immortal and eternal". This implies that the "spark" of rationality in
an individual's soul will eventually return to the "fire" of God from which it came.
Although this still does not allow for survival of the individual, it does at least
provide a universal goal to keep us going and to make life worth living. If the
purpose of life is to expand and develop rationality to its maximum extent, then
obviously philosophy is the most meaningful vocation a person can pursue. For in
Aristotle's view, the universal and philosophical
Figure II.9: Aristotle's Four Life (Soul) Forms

part of you, and that part alone, will survive your death.

Many other aspects of Aristotle's philosophy would be interesting for us to

discuss here if we had more time. I'll conclude by simply mentioning his idea that
all movement in the world originates in a "prime mover" that is itself "unmoved".
This Being is also the "final cause" (i.e., the ultimate purpose) of all movement.
In other words, all changes in the world around us are driving toward a final point
of rest, where they will return to their source in the unmoved mover, as depicted
in Figure II.10.

A similar idea was developed in considerable

detail by the twentieth-century paleontologist,
Jesuit priest, and mystical philosopher, Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who argued
that the entire cosmos is moving toward the
goal of ultimate unity-in-diversity, called "the
omega point"-"omega" being the last letter of
the Greek alphabet and a symbol of eternal
destiny. And this is just one of many examples
of how subsequent philosophers, especially
after the appearance of Christianity, have
developed Aristotelian ideas into interesting
 accounts of how the universe might be related
to the Being we normally call God.

Figure II.10: The Prime Mover as

Final Cause

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Which of the four elements do you think is most basic, and why?

B. Why are there only four basic elements?

2. A. Can a myth ever be completely demythologized?

B. Could an "eternal form" change?

3. A. Is matter an illusion?
 B. Why is it so difficult for philosophy to establish itself as a science?

4. A. What is purpose?

B. Does irrationality have a purpose?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Hans Peter Duerr, Dreamtime: Concerning the boundary between wilderness

and civilization, tr. Felicitas Goodman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).

2. Frank N. Magill (ed.), Masterpieces of World Philosophy (New York: Harper

Collins, 1990), "Anaximander" and "Heraclitus", pp.1-5, 12-16.

3. Reginald E. Allen (ed.), Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle (New York: The
Free Press, 1966), "Presocratic Philosophy", pp.25-54.

4. Plato, Apology (PA) and Book VII of Republic (PR) (CDP 3-26, 747-772).

5. Aristotle, Categoriae (AC), Book III of De Anima (DA), and Book V of

Metaphysica (AM) (BWA 3-37, 581-603, 752-777).

6. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1987), "From Socrates' Apology to Heidegger's Rektoratsrede", pp.243-
312.
7. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), Ch. Two, "Design Arguments", pp.27-122.

8. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, tr. Bernard Wall

(London: Collins, 1959[1955]), Book Four, Ch. Two, "Beyond the Collective: The
Hyper-Personal", pp.254-272.

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(1)
7.Philosophy as Meditative Doubt

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Imagine a tree. Perhaps the drawing I've made here (see Figure III.1) will
help you to do so (although it will also demonstrate that you don't have to be an
artist in order to be a philosopher!). Just how is it that philosophy is like a tree?
There are, in fact, many different possible ways of applying this analogy. One
interesting way is suggested by the philosopher whose ideas we shall be
discussing today. He worked out his own version of the myth that guides this
course, by claiming philosophy is like a tree that has metaphysics as its roots,
physics as its trunk, and the other sciences as its branches. In such a case, which
may well have been an accurate reflection of how philosophy functioned in the
seventeenth century, the leaves of the tree would probably best be correlated to
knowledge, though the philosopher in question did not carry his analogy this far.
For our purposes here in Part One of this course, we can at least agree that
metaphysics certainly does have a function similar to the roots of a tree. By the
time we have completed the first nine lectures, I hope the reasons for this will be
clear enough. Later on, however, I shall suggest revisions of some of the other
aspects of this version of the myth, in order to bring it up to date (see Figure
VII.1).

Ren? Descartes (1596-1650) is a name some of you will already be familiar

with, because of the contribution he made to the field of mathematics. Not only
did he contribute to the further development of algebra, but he invented the
system of coordinate geometry that we all learned in school. When he turned his
attention toward philosophy, he recognized an inherent problem in the tradition.
 For two thousand years the systems of Plato and Aristotle, in one form or
another, had dominated virtually all philosophical thinking in the west. When
Christianity came on the scene, most of the early church Fathers adopted some
version of Platonic idealism as the basis for their theology. This trend culminated
in the philosophical and theological system constructed by St. Augustine (354-
430), whose influence remained so dominant for most of the so-called Dark Ages
that Aristotle was virtually forgotten in Europe. Fortunately, various Arabic
scholars kept Aristotle's writings alive during that period, using them as the basis
for constructing various forms of Islamic philosophy and theology. Eventually,
Aristotle's realism returned to Europe, mainly through the work of St. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274), whose massive theological system remains the most
influential source of Catholic theology to this day. By the time Descartes came on
the scene, no significant alternative had been offered to the idealist (Platonic-
Augustinian) and realist (Aristotelian-Thomist) schools. Was there something
wrong with these two systems that hindered other philosophers from making
progress in philosophy?Descartes believed both traditions suffered from a
common flaw. The impasse was created by the lack of any completely certain
truth that
Figure III.1: Descartes' Tree of Philosophy

could serve as an indisputable starting point for constructing a genuine system of

knowledge (i.e., a science). This insight raised a new question in Descartes' mind:
how could such absolute certainty be established? Neither Plato's method of
dialogue nor Aristotle's teleological method on their own had been able to
produce a solid foundation for a truly rigorous science. How then could such a
foundation be discovered? In reflecting on this question, Descartes hit upon an
idea for a new philosophical method that would enable us to establish certainty
once and for all. Replacing dialogue with solitary meditation, his new method was
to doubt. By systematically doubting everything we think we know about our
world and our selves, he hoped he might come across something that would be
impossible to doubt. This could then serve as an absolutely certain starting point
for building a positive philosophical system.

What then can we doubt? How about our senses? Can you trust your
senses? One day, not long after moving to Hong Kong, I went shopping with my
family in a local mall. It was getting quite late, so we started looking for a place to
eat. As we walked into a supermarket that had food stalls all along the front, I
noticed at a distance a very nice display of Japanese food on sale. I was quite
hungry, so my mouth began watering immediately. We agreed to try eating at this
place, though it was rather crowded. As we came closer I was really impressed by
the apparently high quality of the meals they had on display. Only when we
reached the counter itself did I realize that the food on display was not food at all,
but plastic! My senses had been utterly fooled by the ingenuity of some marketing
agent. And by your laughter I can tell that many of you have made similar
mistakes.

In the first of the six "meditations" described in Meditations on First

Philosophy, Descartes began his quest for certainty by using the virtually
universal experience of being fooled in this way to cast doubt on the reliability of
our senses. If we were fooled in that one instance, how do we know we have not
been fooled more often? Indeed, if any given impression our senses are now
giving to us might be a false impression, then there seems to be no possibility of
discovering anything certain in our senses. This discredits Aristotelian realism,
since it is based on the assumption that substances, as perceived primarily through
our senses, are ultimately real.

What about our ideas? Perhaps Plato was right after all, and our ideas are
the proper foundation for all knowledge. But Descartes found it just as easy to
cast doubt in this realm as well. Even ideas that seem to us to be certain, ideas
most people would never think of doubting, can be doubted if we try. For
example, there would be many ways of casting doubt on the spatial and temporal
character of our everyday experience. Most of us have had dreams that violate
spatial laws such as gravity (e.g., when we fly in our dreams) or dreams in which
time seems to go slower or faster than when we are awake. How do we know our
everyday experience is not just a dream, from which we will wake up any minute
now? Perhaps there is an evil demon who is deceiving us all into mistaking this
long dream for our real world. Even if there is no such demon, we have all had the
experience of suddenly realizing that some idea we have held to be true for a long
time is actually false. Any single idea might turn out to be an illusion of this kind,
so there is nothing to prevent all our ideas from being illusory. Hence, Plato's
idealism is of no more use than Aristotle's realism in our search for something
absolutely certain.

How about mathematics? Descartes himself was a mathematician and

certainly believed mathematics to be true. Indeed, many philosophers in his day
used a mathematical method in their philosophizing. Is it possible to doubt that,
for example, 2+2=4? I'll let you think this one through on your own, as an
encouragement to read Descartes' book for yourself. But suffice it to say that
Descartes believed even mathematics cannot provide an absolutely certain
foundation for knowledge.

Is there anything that is impossible to doubt? As Descartes lay on his bed in

a dark room doing this prolonged thought experiment, he suddenly hit upon the
answer he had been searching for. He found he could not doubt that at that
moment he was doubting. For this would be possible only under the absurd
conditions that a doubt could exist without anyone doing the doubting! Doubt is a
form of thinking, Descartes reasoned in his second meditation, so thinking must
be the basis upon which the certainty of his own existence could be proved.
Hence he came up with the now famous maxim, "I think, therefore I am" (in
Latin, Cogito ergo sum). The existence of this "thinking being" is the absolutely
certain foundation for all knowledge. This "I" or "ego" stands outside of history
and culture as a basic metaphysical given, It does not depend on any kind of faith,
since its nonexistence is impossible as long as I know I am thinking.
 No sooner did Descartes reach this conclusion than he realized that it
presents a new problem that requires some solution. Descartes himself refused to
side with Plato by treating the body as an illusion, for as a scientist he believed the
body is just as real as the mind. Instead he adopted a metaphysical viewpoint
known as "dualism", whereby the mind and body are both regarded as equally
real. Just as the former is a "thinking substance" (res cogitans), the latter is an
"extended substance" (res extensa). Yet he had now demonstrated that our
knowledge of our bodies, together with the whole of extended nature, can never
be as certain as our knowledge of our thinking nature. So on what can we base our
confidence in the reality of the body? And just how is it that the mind and body
are related?

In his third meditation Descartes answered the first question by appealing to

God. He began by constructing what is now referred to as an "ontological
argument" for the existence of God (i.e., an argument appealing only to the proper
understanding of the concept "God"). His proof goes something like this: we all
have within us an idea of "perfection"; no human being is perfect, so the perfect
Being is not the "I" of whose existence I am certain; yet this perfect Being must
actually exist, for otherwise it would be less than perfect. That is, if our concept of
a most perfect Being refers to a Being who does not really exist, then that Being
would not be as perfect as a perfect Being who does exist. Descartes then argues
that, since we can in this way be certain that a perfect Being ("God") exists, and
since such a Being must be good in order to be perfect, we can also be confident
that such a Being would not deceive us. In response to critics who claimed such
an argument is circular (i.e., that it already assumes what it tries to prove),
Descartes appealed to the notion of "innate ideas" (ideas that are present in our
mind at birth, and are therefore self-authenticating), claiming that "God" is an
innate idea just as much as is the idea of my own "ego".

Even if we accept Descartes' theological explanation for why we can have

confidence in the reality of the external world, the question remains as to how our
minds actually relate to our bodies, if indeed they are two ultimately distinct
substances. Descartes' solution to this problem never met with much approval
from his fellow philosophers. He surmised that a small gland at the base of the
brain, called the "pineal gland", is responsible for ensuring a causal connection
between the mind and body. In Descartes' day the prevailing idea of the human
body was that it is a living machine, so that any time one part moves, it must have
been caused to move by a mechanical process whereby some other part, as it
were, "bumped" into it. So Descartes claimed that, when the mind wants the body
to do something, it somehow influences the pineal gland, where it sets off a chain
reaction that ends in the desired action being performed. So if my mind tells me to
throw this piece of chalk up in the air, that idea spins round and round in my mind
until it gathers enough force to make a significant impact, then it bangs into my
pineal gland, sending a series of movements through my neck and down my arm,
until my arm actually obeys the command, like this!

Having explained Descartes' two main ways of defending his metaphysical

dualism, we can now summarize his theory as follows:

Figure III.2:

Descartes' Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem

Descartes' dualism has several important consequences. For one thing, it replaces
Aristotle's definition of the human person as a "rational animal" with the notion of
a mind imbedded in a fleshly machine. In the field of natural science this had the
significant effect of providing scientists with a world view that enabled them to
attain (or at least, to believe they could attain) a totally objective perspective on
the external world, totally eliminating any influence the observer's own mind
might have on what we come to know. In this sense, Descartes' dualism can be
regarded as paving the way for Newtonian science. The view that the human ego
controls the material world, though now called into question by many modern
thinkers (see e.g., Lecture 18), is what enabled technology to develop so rapidly
over the past three hundred years.

As far as metaphysics is concerned, the most significant consequence of

Descartes' dualism was that it sparked off a new controversy, commonly known as
"the mind-body problem". Descartes' own position seems highly implausible; but
is there any better way to explain the influence the mind and body appear to have
on each other? The debate over the proper answer to this question began almost
immediately, and is, in fact, still alive in some philosophical circles today. For
example, one of the most influential books written by an analytic philosopher in
the twentieth century, Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind, begins by arguing that
Descartes' dualism is based on a "category mistake" and that a proper
understanding of the way we use words like "mind" and "body" can resolve the
whole mind-body problem once and for all.

The mind-body controversy was at its height in the century immediately

after the publication of Descartes' Meditations. We have no time for an exhaustive
analysis of the many arguments that were put forward. However, it might be
helpful to give a brief overview of five of the most notable alternatives to
Descartes' position, as represented in each case by its most influential proponent.
They are as follows:

Materialism: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) argued that only matter truly exists.
The mind is just a special configuration of brain matter. Therefore there is no
problem of interaction, because the whole system is physical. This view is similar,
though by no means identical, to Aristotle's realism.
 (2) Immaterialism: George Berkeley (1685-1753) argued that only
perceptions truly exist. There is no reason to believe matter has any independent
existence outside of the perceiving mind. Therefore there is no problem of
interaction, because the whole system is spiritual. This view is similar, though by
no means identical, to Plato's idealism.

(3) Parallelism: Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) argued that the mind

and body are indeed separate substances, but they do not actually interact. They
seem to interact whenever a mind's thoughts and a body's actions happen to run
parallel to each other; but in such cases the correspondence is governed directly
by God.

(4) Double Aspect theory: Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677) argued that

the mind and body (like all spirit and matter) are two aspects of one underlying
reality, which can be called either "God" or "Nature", depending on how the
subject views it. Reality is like a coin with two quite different faces, both being
equally true as a description of the coin.

(5) Epiphenomenalism: David Hume (1711-1776) argued that the mind is

nothing but a bundle of perceptions arising out of the body. Later philosophers
refined this idea, arguing that the body (in particular, the brain) is the primary
reality, but it creates or gives birth to the mind. Some argue that once the mind
arises, it has a reality of its own.

I'd like to conclude today's lecture by suggesting one very significant

difference between Descartes' metaphysics and that of Plato and Aristotle. For
Plato and Aristotle, and for most philosophers over the next two millennia, the
answer to the basic question of epistemology ("What can I know?") was
dependent upon a foregoing answer to the basic question of metaphysics ("What
is ultimately real?"). For Descartes, however, the opposite was true. As we have
seen, he began his enquiries by asking what we can know for certain, and only on
the basis of the answer to this question did he construct his metaphysical dualism.
 As we shall see in the following lecture, the next metaphysician whose
ideas we will consider also gave priority to epistemology. Anticipating that lecture
just slightly, we can therefore use the cross as a map of the relationship between
the methods employed by the four metaphysicians considered here in Part One:

Figure III.3: Four Key Philosophical Methods

One of the chief dangers for beginning students of philosophy is that they
may be overwhelmed by the great diversity of viewpoints and arguments that
have been expressed on a given subject, such as metaphysics. Although maps like
the one above inevitably over-simplify the complex relationships between such
philosophers, they nevertheless can help us to get a handle on their basic
similarities and differences, as well as suggesting further insights of various sorts.
For example, this diagram suggests that the development of western philosophy
can be regarded as a process of slowly working backwards from, as it were, the
highest and most aloof insights, to the deepest groundings of human reasoning.
We shall see in the next two lectures the extent to which this suggestion gives us
an accurate description of the contribution Kant made to the roots of our
philosophical tree.
8. Philosophy as Transcendental Critique

The last philosopher whose ideas on metaphysics we will consider in detail

here in Part One of this course is a man whose influence on the last two hundred
years of philosophy, both in the west and in the east, can hardly be
underestimated. He is almost universally recognized as being the greatest
philosopher since Aristotle: a thinker whose ideas one must either accept or
refute, but who cannot be ignored. Indeed, some have claimed, with justification,
that philosophy in the past two hundred years has been like a series of footnotes to
this man's writings! Others have observed that his philosophical system is to the
modern world what Aristotle's was for the Scholastics: a virtual intellectual
reference system. (The Scholastics were medieval theologians who used
philosophy to interpret Christianity, even speculating on issues such as how many
angels can fit on the head of a pin. Scholasticism reached its peak in Thomas
Aquinas' work, but had far less influence after Descartes.) Like Aristotle, this
giant of the mind wrote on nearly every philosophical subject and had an
immediate and lasting effect on the way people think-philosophers and non-
philosophers. Although today we will be looking only at those aspects of his
philosophy related most closely to metaphysics, we will return to this thinker on
numerous occasions later in the course.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born into a working class family in the
Prussian port city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). He lived a quiet, regulated
life, never marrying and never traveling more than about thirty miles from his
birthplace during his entire life. Kant is often the subject of some rather unfair
caricatures, such as that his daily routine was so rigid that his neighbors found
they could set their clocks by his daily comings and goings! However, I prefer to
regard such stories as reflecting the integrity of a life lived in accordance with
one's own ideas. For as we shall see, Kant's idea of philosophy was that it ought to
be a systematic whole, governed by regular patterns of interrelated ideas. When
he died, the epitaph on his tomb simply said "The Philosopher"-an appropriate
title, considering that the philosophical cycle that began with Socrates reached its
fulfillment, to a large extent, with Kant.

Kant was motivated to conceive a new philosophical method for much the
same reason as Descartes: he asked himself why other sciences have progressed,
but metaphysics has not. Yet his answer to this question not only ignored the
whole mind-body problem, but also called into question another of Descartes' key
contributions: namely, his belief in the absolute objectivity of the external world.
Kant asked a new question: was Descartes (and most other philosophers) right to
assume that the objects we experience and come to know are things in
themselves? The term "thing in itself" is a technical term he used to talk about the
nature of ultimate reality; it means "the things in the world, considered apart from
the conditions that make it possible to know anything about them." Given this
definition, Kant claimed, things in themselves must be unknowable. In stark
contrast to Descartes, who required his starting point to be an absolutely certain
item of knowledge, Kant posited a philosophical faith in the reality of unknowable
things in themselves as the starting point of his system. This is just one of many
ways Descartes and Kant are diametrically opposed to each other in their
philosophical methods.

Kant called his own way of philosophizing the "Critical" method. The titles
of the three main books wherein he developed his System each begin with the
word "Critique". Each book adopts a different "standpoint"; that is, it addresses all
its questions with a particular end in view. The first Critique (of Pure Reason), the
focus of our attention today, assumes a theoretical standpoint. This means the
answers to all the questions it asks are concerned with our knowledge. The other
Critiques, as we shall see later on, sometimes answer the same questions in differ‐
ent ways, because they assume different standpoints. Recognizing the differences
between these standpoints is therefore crucial for a proper understanding of Kant's
philosophy. We can picture the interrelationships between the three parts of Kant's
System in the following way:
Figure III.4: Kant's Critiques and Their Standpoints

Comparing Figure III.4 with Figure II.6 suggests that the Critical method is
a new form of the Socratic method. Whereas Socrates' main concern was to
scrutinize himself and others in the search for wisdom, Kant's Critical method
requires the self-examination of reason. In other words, a true "critique", for Kant,
is a process whereby reason asks itself about the extent and limits of its own
powers. The purpose of such self-examination is to discover once and for all the
boundary between what

Figure III.5: Kant's Transcendental Boundary

human reason can and cannot achieve. In each case the "knowledge" we gain of
the boundary line informs us about what Kant called the "transcendental
conditions" for empirical knowledge. His Critical method thus requires
"transcendental reflection", which simply means thinking about the necessary
conditions for the possibility of experience. Something transcendental is
something that must be true, otherwise our experience itself would be impossible.
Whatever is outside the boundary, Kant called "transcendent": since we can never
have any experience of such things, called "noumena", they can never be known
by human reason. But whatever is inside the boundary line defines the things open
to discovery by ordinary, "empirical reflection". Kant called such empirically
knowable objects "phenomena". This distinction between the empirical, the tran‐
scendent, and the transcendental perspectives, as shown in Figure III.5, is one of
the most important distinctions in Kant's entire theoretical system.

In each of his three Critiques, Kant performed a distinct type of self-

examination of reason: he searched, respectively, for the boundaries

between what we can and

cannot know (theoretical),
between what we ought and
ought not to do (practical),
and between what we may
and may not hope (judicial).
He said these three concerns
can be summarized as an
attempt to understand who
"man" is; so the four
questions shown in Figure
III.6 describe

Figure III.6:

Kant's Four Philosophical Questions

the systematic relationship between the different parts of his own philosophical
project. It is important to keep in mind the relationships between these four
questions whenever we discuss Kant (especially in Lectures 22, 29, 32, and 33),
because he himself warned that in order to understand his ideas properly, the
reader must have an "idea of the whole" (CPR 37).

Kant's new method requires us to see the truth in both extremes in any
debate, to recognize how each limits the other, and as a result, to adopt a
standpoint that affirms the legitimate points from both sides. As I hope you recall
from the last lecture, this stands in stark contrast to Descartes' method: whereas
the latter assumes both Plato and Aristotle to be wrong, Kant's method assumes
both are right, as shown below:

Figure III.7: Descartes vs. Kant on Plato and Aristotle

According to Kant, Plato and Aristotle both made the mistake, like that of most
other western philosophers, of ignoring their opponent's point of view and
adopting an extreme position that ends up expressing only half the truth. If Kant's
view of things in themselves is correct, then Plato was right to say objects of
experience are mere appearances of a thing in itself; for in saying this, he was
adopting Kant's "transcendental" perspective. Likewise, Aristotle was right to say
appearances are the true objects of science (i.e., of knowledge); for in saying this,
he was adopting Kant's "empirical" perspective. In both cases their mistakes were
caused by the fact that they had not yet recognized their ignorance of the thing in
itself. This neglect is what led Plato mistakenly to believe we could attain
absolute knowledge of mere ideas and it is what led Aristotle mistakenly to
believe substances are the ultimate reality. So the Critical method encourages us
not only to synthesize Plato's idealism and Aristotle's realism, but also to explain
both the truth in each, which has kept them alive for so long, and the errors that
make them inherently unsatisfactory. Let us now investigate how Kant
accomplished this task.

In the second edition Preface to the first Critique, Kant turned to the
established sciences in hopes of finding clues to their success. Logic, he found,
could become an exact science only when its field of inquiry was clearly limited
(CPR 18). Mathematics made progress only when people began to search for the
necessary and universal characteristics we read into mathematical objects, instead
of paying attention only to their accidental characteristics (19). And natural
sciences succeed only when they proceed according to some predetermined plan
(20). Armed with these hints, Kant gained one final clue by turning to a particular
scientist, whose daring insight profoundly changed the way we view the universe.

Nicolaus Copernicas (1473-1543) was a Polish astronomer who dared to

question the long-standing assumption that the earth is a flat disk located at the
center of the universe. This assumption, he believed, had prevented anyone from
explaining why some planets appear to reverse their motion as they travel through
the sky from night to night, and then reverse again to continue traveling in the
direction of the stars. So he decided to experiment with the assumption that the
sun is actually in the center of the universe, and the earth and other planets are all
round balls that revolve around the sun. Using this new assumption, together with
the claim that the earth revolves around its own axis, he found he could explain
mathematically how all the planets in reality always move in a (nearly) circular
orbit, even though they appear to change directions from the vantage point of
earthly observers.
 Kant suggested we should try a similar experiment with metaphysics (see
Figure III.8). Not only had philosophers in the past nearly always assumed things
in themselves are knowable, but they had also assumed our knowledge must
conform itself to these objects, rather than

(a) The appearance (b) The reality

Figure III.8: Kant's Copernican Revolution

vice versa. Why not experiment with the opposite assumption? Perhaps in
metaphysics, just as in astronomy, the correct description of what appears to be
true is different from the correct description of what is true in reality. In other
words, Kant proposed that for metaphysics it may be more accurate to say objects
conform themselves to the knowledge of the subject (i.e., to the human mind)!

This new "transcendental perspective" might sound quite strange. How

could it make any sense to say, for example, that my knowledge of this piece of
chalk depends not on the chalk itself but on my own mind? According to our
ordinary (empirical) way of thinking, my knowledge that this chalk is white
obviously comes not from any invention of my mind, but from the fact, plainly
observable for all to see, that this chalk appears to be white. Kant never denied
that this is true. What he denied is that such appearances have anything to do with
the chalk's metaphysical reality; instead, they are under the domain of physics and
the other sciences. Kant's point was that there is another, equally legitimate way
of thinking about objects, revealing a deeper, transcendental reality, and that when
we think in this way, when we think about what is necessarily true about our
experience of this piece of chalk, then it will turn out that these elements in our
knowledge come from our mind, not from the object itself. The empirical and
transcendental should therefore be regarded as two sides of the same coin, two
perspectives, both providing us with true but limited ways of viewing the real
world.

What then are these transcendental conditions for the possibility of

experience, these absolutely necessary elements whose "movement", Kant
claimed, forms the boundary line between our possible knowledge and our
necessary ignorance? The first half of the Critique of Pure Reason attempts to
discover and prove the necessary validity of a set of these conditions. In the
process of fulfilling this task, Kant argued that all empirical knowledge is made
up of two elements: intuitions and concepts. An intuition is anything that is
"given" to our senses, and is the material out of which we produce our knowledge.
For our purposes, we can think of "intuition" as referring to "the way our
sensation operates". A concept is a word or thought through which we actively
organize our intuitions according to various rules of thinking.

Kant attempted to prove that space and time are the transcendental "forms
of intuition" and a special set of twelve categories are the transcendental "forms of
conception". The categories are arranged in four groups of three, under the
headings "quantity", "quality", "relation", and "modality", as shown in Figure
III.9. Today we can safely ignore the
Figure III.9: Kant's Twelvefold Division of Categories

details of this part of Kant theory, because Lecture 21 will include a closer look at
the most important category, causality. Moreover, as we will discover in Week V,
understanding the logical form of this set of categories is more important than
understanding Kant's reasons for selecting these specific twelve. The key at this
point is to understand the function of the categories, along with space and time,
their counterpart forms of intuition.

In order to avoid misunderstanding Kant's theory of the forms of intuition

and conception, we must be careful to clarify, when asking a question such as
"How is it possible for me to know anything about this piece of chalk?", whether
this is an empirical or a transcendental question. If it is the latter, then, according
to Kant, the answer is that our own minds impose upon this object a framework of
time and space, through which
weareabletoperceiveitsexistence,andaframeworkofcategories, through which we
are able to think about its nature. I think we would all agree that if this piece of
chalk did not appear to us in space and time, then we could never perceive it, and
that we require a concept ("chalk"), together with numerous general rules of
thinking, in order to gain any knowledge of this (or any other) perception.
Examining such rules of thinking will be one of our main tasks in Part Two.
 Kant's most controversial claim was that these two necessary conditions for
knowledge are impossible to explain unless we regard them as rooted in the
human mind itself. Since philosophers have argued for two hundred years about
whether or not this so-called "Copernican revolution" in philosophy really makes
sense, I'm sure we won't settle this issue here; but I hope you will think through
this question more thoroughly on your own. In the next lecture, I shall discuss
some of the metaphysical implications of the first Critique and give a brief
overview of how Kant has influenced metaphysics over the past two hundred
years. My claim will be that Kant's position represents a fully matured version of
the insights Socrates presented in the form of a seed.

9. Philosophy after Critique

Kant's epistemological legacy had an almost immediate impact on virtually

every area of philosophical inquiry, bringing to a close what is often called the
"modern era" of western philosophy and giving rise to a long series of "post-
modern" or "post-Critical" philosophies. Before sketching how Kant influenced
subsequent developments in metaphysics, I shall briefly examine the metaphysical
implications Kant himself believed his epistemology had.

Kant argued that the transcendental conditions of knowledge (i.e., space,

time, and the categories) establish an absolute boundary line that enables us to
judge what we can and cannot know about what is real. Any concept that has no
intuition corresponding to it, or any intuition that cannot be conceptualized, can
never be used to construct knowledge. Nevertheless, whenever a person obtains
some empirical knowledge, his or her reason inevitably forms certain "ideas"
about things that go beyond the boundary of what we can know. The most
important of these, Kant claimed, are the metaphysical ideas of "God, freedom,
and immortality": reason impels us to postulate each of these, yet we cannot prove
any of them to be objects we can know are real. The fact that we are necessarily

ignorant of the three most important

aspects of human life poses a
problem, as pictured in Figure III.10,
whose solution is philosophy's
primary task.

Kant himself solved this

problem by claiming we must
change the standpoint from which
we are thinking if we ever hope to
justify our belief in such ideas. In
Lectures 22 and 29 we will examine
Figure III.10: The Problem
two examples of how he suggested
we do of Kantian "Ideas"

this. For now it will suffice to say that Kant himself believed that recognizing the
limitations of knowledge is very good for metaphysics. As he confessed in CPR
29: "I have ... found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for
faith." An honest and courageous recognition of reason's limits may make
philosophy a more difficult and dangerous task, but as we shall see in Lectures 32
and 33, it is the best (if not the only) way to preserve the meaningfulness of
human life.

We can now summarize the main features of Kant's metaphysics in terms of

the following four fundamental tenets:

1. Ultimate ("transcendent") reality-i.e., reality apart from the limiting conditions

through which we learn about it-is an unknowable "thing in itself".

2. Empirical reality-i.e., the particular aspects of our knowledge-is determined by

the "appearances" we experience (cf. Aristotle).
3. Transcendental reality-i.e., the general aspects of our knowledge (especially
space and time as "forms of intuition", and twelve categories as "forms of
thought")-is determined by the knowing subject (cf. Plato).

4. Knowledge inevitably gives rise to ideas about what ultimate reality might be
like if we could know it; but attempting to prove these ideas leads reason into self-
contradiction, so they can never become items of scientific knowledge.

The implications of the philosophical System that arises out of these tenets are
manifold. At this point, let's just look at four of the most significant implications
for metaphysics.

First, if we think of Socrates as planting a "seed" in the history of western

philosophy with his idea that philosophers must begin by recognizing what they
do not know, then the tree that grew out of this seed first bore fruit with Kant.
Kant agreed that philosophy begins with the recognition of ignorance; indeed, he
even claims that the "inestimable benefit" of his first Critique is "that all
objections to morality and religion will be for ever silenced, and this in Socratic
fashion, namely, by the clearest proof of the ignorance of the objectors" (CPR 30).
But he goes much further than Socrates by demarcating, once and for all, the
precise boundary lines between the areas of "necessary ignorance" and "possible
knowledge": we may be able to think about a concept that cannot be intuited, or
feel an intuition that cannot be conceptualized; but we can know only what
appears to us in a form that lends itself to both intuition and conception.
Moreover, Kant distinguishes between two types of ignorance (605-606): our
accidental ignorance in empirical matters should motivate us to extend our
knowledge, whereas our necessary ignorance in metaphysical matters should
motivate us to look beyond knowledge to the practical purpose of doing
philosophy-namely, to live a better life. We shall come back to this in Part Three.

With Kant, therefore, metaphysics finally came of age. After two thousand
years of philosophers attempting to combat necessary ignorance with
metaphysical knowledge, Kant completed a cycle in the history of western
philosophy, and in so doing, opened up a whole new set of problems. For the next
implication of Kant's System is that we must now find a way to cope with our
necessary ignorance. How can we do philosophy without having any knowledge
of ultimate reality? The last two hundred years of philosophy has been a series of
different suggestions as to how this can best be accomplished. Kant's own
solutions, such as his "Copernican" theory that the subject reads the
transcendental conditions of knowledge onto the object, have been rejected by
most subsequent philosophers. However, I don't think we should be too quick to
reject this rather strange sounding theory. For just as Descartes' "cogito" paved the
way for Newtonian physics, I believe Kant's Copernican revolution paved the way
for relativity physics and quantum mechanics, based as they are on a very similar
notions of the observer participating in the formation of knowledge.

Because Kant defined such a clear-cut set of limits for human knowledge,
we can say philosophy becomes more complete with Kant than ever before. Kant
himself was well aware of this aspect of his System (CPR 10):

I have made completeness my chief aim, and I venture to assert that there is not a
single metaphysical problem which has not been solved, or for the solution of
which the key at least has not been supplied.

Interestingly, if you think back to our discussion of myths in Lecture 3, you might
recall that a myth is also something that is enclosed in limits. So I think it would
be right to say that with Kant western philosophy experienced such a major
"paradigm shift" that we can say Kant gave philosophy a new "myth"-the myth of
the thing in itself. Of course, as long as we treat this as an "enlightened" myth-i.e.,
as long as we always remember it is a myth, and so treat it not as an absolute
truth, but as a basic assumption, freely adopted on faith-we can avoid many of the
pitfalls that "living in a myth" otherwise tends to have.
 One final implication of Kant's philosophy is that its insistence on an area
of necessary human ignorance keeps the philosopher humble. This might seem
surprising, especially for those of you who have read some of Kant's own writing,
since Kant was certainly not ignorant about the greatness of his own achievement!
For on several occasions he proudly claimed that his System is superior to those
of all past philosophers. My point here is that, whereas most philosophers appeal
to certain speculative ideas, requiring access to some kind of special, transcendent
knowledge that is inaccessible to ordinary people, Kant's philosophy replaces
these with hypotheses, thus putting philosophers in general on an even par with
non-philosophers when it comes to their ability to gain knowledge about the most
basic metaphysical issues. Because Kant used such complicated terminology to
express his ideas, this implication of his philosophy is often overlooked, even by
those who spend years studying his writings. Yet Kant stated this "humiliating"
aspect of his Critical System clearly enough on several occasions. One of the best
examples, near the end of the first Critique (651-652), is worth quoting in full:

But, it will be said, is this all that pure reason achieves in opening up
prospects beyond the limits of experience? .... Surely the common understanding
could have achieved as much, without appealing to philosophers for counsel in
the matter.

I shall not dwell here upon the service which philosophy has done to human
reason through the laborious efforts of its criticism, granting even that in the end it
should turn out to be merely negative ... But I may at once reply: Do you really
require that a mode of knowledge which concerns all men should transcend the
common understanding, and should only be revealed to you by philosophers?
Precisely what you find fault with is the best confirmation of the correctness of
the [Critical philosophy]. For we have thereby revealed to us, what could not at
the start have been foreseen, namely, that in matters which concern all men
without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial distribution of her gifts, and
that in regard to the essential ends of human nature the highest philosophy cannot
advance further than is possible under the guidance which nature has bestowed
even upon the most ordinary understanding.
In other words, philosophy is special not because it allows us proudly to claim a
higher level of knowledge than ordinary people, but because it humbles us by
showing us the limitations of all our knowledge.

Unfortunately, many of the philosophers who came after Kant refused to

accept this important implication of his System. Instead, the history of
metaphysics over the past two hundred years has to a large extent been the history
of different attempts to avoid precisely this painful implication, that philosophers
have to be humble in order to be good philosophers. Philosophers have tried to
escape this outcome by denying, suppressing, or misinterpreting one or more of
the standpoints Kant sought to hold in a fragile balance. The remainder of today's
lecture will be a brief overview of key figures in four post-Kantian movements:
German idealism, existentialism (both pessimistic/atheistic and optimistic/ theistic
versions), linguistic analysis, and hermeneutic philosophy.

The German idealists (most notably, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Marx)
were the first and most notorious examples of post-Kantian attempts to regain for
human beings the capacity to know ultimate reality. Johann Fichte (1762-1814)
was initially thought by many to be earmarked as Kant's chosen successor;
however, he soon made an obvious break with Kant, by arguing that the
"transcendental ego" actually produces the whole natural world out of itself. The
problematic "thing in itself" could then be discarded, since there is no longer a
need for anything to exist apart from our minds. Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854)
belonged as much to the concurrent Romantic Movement as to the idealists; this
was evident in his emphasis on art, feeling, and individual diversity. His book,
System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), outlines a position much like Fichte's,
whereby the ego "posits itself" (i.e., makes itself into an object), thus creating the
external world and setting itself the task of coming to know it. Both views reject
the empirical realism Kant valued so highly.

German idealism reached its height with Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-
1831), whose major contribution was to bring history into the center stage of
metaphysics. He argued that the three-step process used by Fichte and Schelling
(itself having strong roots in Kant [see e.g., Figure III.1]) constitutes a fixed,
logical pattern that tells us just how history develops. This makes it possible for
us to gain a priori access to ultimate reality in the form of what Hegel called
"Absolute Spirit". (We shall look more closely at Hegelian logic in Lecture 12.)
Karl Marx (1818-1883) can be regarded as the concluding figure in this tradition,
not because he was an idealist, but because he constructed his entire philosophy as
a reaction against the Hegelian system. Ironically, this required him to accept
many of Hegel's underlying assumptions, including the basic myth that ultimate
reality can be made known through historical development. But because his focus
was not so much on metaphysics as on political philosophy, we shall postpone
any further discussion of Marx's ideas until Week IX.

Though not part of German idealism, the American philosophers C.S.

Peirce (1839-1914) and John Dewey (1850-1952) were also influenced by Hegel
in developing pragmatism, an approach to philosophy that emphasizes common
sense more than metaphysical theories as such. What is real is determined not so
much by philosophical reasoning as by finding out what works in the empirical
world. The issue of ultimate reality is virtually ignored. As such, pragmatism need
not be anti-Kantian; but it also does not fully adopt Kant's position (cf. Lectures
22 and 29).

Another way of reacting to Hegel's absolute denial of Kantian limits

produced existentialism-though in this case Hegel's myth of the centrality of
history was itself called into question more fundamentally. The two major figures
here are Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855),
who developed pessimistic and optimistic alternatives to Hegel, respectively.
Schopenhauer remained far more faithful to Kant than Hegel did; but he modified
Kant's System by identifying the realm of the thing in itself with an all-
encompassing unconscious "will" that relates to much more than just moral
issues, as Kant had argued (see Lecture 22). He believed the conflict between the
will and the external world creates inevitable suffering, and that this suffering
constitutes the true meaning of life. Kierkegaard also attacked Hegel by returning
to Kant, but in a more optimistic way, by regarding life's suffering as a force that
points us to God and ought therefore to be transcended. His position will be the
focus of our attention in Lecture 34.
 These pioneers strongly influenced, in turn, two philosophers who
developed existentialism more explicitly. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), deeply
influenced by Schopenhauer's dark pessimism, constructed a moral philosophy in
direct opposition to Kant, that became the seedbed for most of the atheistic
versions of existentialism that were rampant during the twentieth century. Paul
Tillich (1886-1971), influenced far more by Kierkegaard, is the philosopher-
theologian who developed the existentialist framework most completely in an
"optimistic" (i.e., theologically affirmative) direction. Nietzsche will be the focus
of our attention in Lecture 23, and Tillich in Lectures 17, 30, 31, and 34.

Opposed to existentialism for much of the twentieth century was analytic

philosophy. As we shall see in Lecture 16, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) were its two major proponents. Many in this
tradition see themselves as following directly in Kant's footsteps; however, this
claim is based on an extremely anti-metaphysical interpretation of Kant as
destroying metaphysics without putting anything better in its place. Fortunately,
more and more Anglo-American philosophers are recognizing that the old
dichotomy between existential and analytic approaches to philosophy is
illegitimate-a development I believe is best described by the single word, "good"
(cf. Figure I.2)!

A philosopher who is often regarded as an existentialist even though he

tried to disassociate himself from the movement is Martin Heidegger (1889-
1976). His approach to philosophy, to be touched on briefly in Lectures 17, 18
and 34, gave rise to one of the most influential developments in the last half of the
twentieth century: hermeneutic philosophy. Lecture 18 will examine in some
detail how Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-) developed a theory of interpretation that
remains highly influential to this day. One of the main reasons for its increasing
influence, I believe, is that it puts its focus elsewhere than on the traditional
questions of metaphysics. Indeed, at its most extreme, hermeneutic philosophy
has given rise to a movement called "deconstructionism", led by philosophers
such as Jacques Derrida (1930-), who believe that not just metaphysics, but
philosophy itself has come to an end. Since we shall be discussing these ideas
more thoroughly in Lectures 18 and 24, there is no need to summarize them here.
 If you were to take a course in metaphysics as part of a philosophy major,
your teacher would probably focus on certain basic problems that tend to occupy
the attention of contemporary metaphysicians. These are typically associated with
one of the following four aspects of "reality": (1) the nature of physical things and
our perception of them (e.g., color); (2) the nature of the mind and the proper
identification of mental objects; (3) the nature of space, time, and relations in
space-time (e.g., causality, necessity, and freedom); and (4) the nature of abstract
entities (e.g., numbers, possible worlds, and God). Such problems are not new; we
have met most of them in our discussions of classical and modern metaphysics
over the past two weeks, though sometimes under different headings: metaphysics
proper (e.g., the idealism-realism debate), human nature (e.g., the mind-body
debate), etc. The names have changed, and the tools contemporary philosophers
use to deal with such problems tend to be far more complex; but the basic issues
have remained unchanged.

What then is the future of philosophy's "roots" as we enter a new

millennium? Much of what passed for metaphysics during the twentieth century
was unfortunately little more than a regression to the kind of Scholastic
philosophy that was typically practiced in the Middle Ages. It has quite literally
meant nothing to anyone outside the walls of academia. I believe the only way to
avoid this tragic outcome is to learn the lesson Kant was trying to teach us in his
first Critique. His goal in developing what is still regarded by many philosophers
as the most complete and well defended epistemology was to put metaphysics "on
the sure path of a science" (CPR 21). What he meant is that recognizing our
ignorance of ultimate reality is the sole purpose for studying metaphysics. Once
that is accomplished, we must resist the temptation to continue looking for
answers in the wrong place, lest we either uproot the tree (thus killing it) or bury
our own heads in the soil (thus killing our potential for any further insight).
Instead, the only way to obtain something like "knowledge" of how life's most
meaningful questions are to be answered is to admit that the answers are not to be
found in metaphysics, but lie elsewhere on the tree of philosophy. Understanding
how this is possible will be one of our primary concerns in Part Two and
throughout this course.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Are you certain of anything?

B. Is it possible to doubt that 2+2=4?

2. A. Is it possible to know anything about ultimate reality?

B. Is it proper for a philosopher to appeal to faith?

3. A. What was the old myth that Kant's philosophy replaced?

B. Do minds actually impose anything onto objects we experience?

4. A. What would be the ideal philosophical method?

B. What is humility, and is it ever possible to be completely humble?

RECOMMENDED READINGS
1. Ren?Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy2, tr. Laurence J. Lafleur (New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960[1951]).

2. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1949), Ch. I,
"Descartes' Myth", pp.13-25.

3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, "Preface" (both editions) (CPR 7-

37).

4. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, tr. Lewis White

Beck (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1950).

5. Stephen Palmquist, Kant's System of Perspectives: An architectonic

interpretation of the Critical philosophy (Lanham: University Press of America,
1993), Chs. IV-VI, pp.107-193.

6. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The lives and opinions of the greater
philosophers3 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982[1928]).

7. John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy2 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,

1966[1957]).

8. Michael Jubien, Contemporary Metaphysics: An introduction (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997).
border=0 height=62 width=88>
10.

What is Logic?

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Today we begin the second of the four main parts of this course. In Part
One the roots of the tree of philosophy provided us with an important insight
about metaphysics, initially discovered by Socrates, but expressed in a far more
complete form by Kant. Just as the roots of a tree are almost entirely buried in the
soil so that we cannot see them as they are (at least, not without uprooting the
tree), so also the metaphysical underpinnings of our knowledge consist of
something essentially unknowable to the human mind. Armed with this insight,
we can now extract ourselves from the murky depths of metaphysics and ascend
to a part of the philosophical tree that allows itself to be seen more readily.

As we saw in Lecture 1, the trunk is to a tree as "logic" is to philosophy.

But what is logic? In a moment, I would like you to share your answers to this
question. My guess is that before you started this course most of you had more
ideas about the nature of logic than about the nature of philosophy in general. So I
hope this discussion question will be a bit easier than the one we had in the first
lecture. Who would like to make the first suggestion? What is logic?

Student H. "I think logic is like science: it's supposed to teach us about the
facts in the world, so we don't have to rely only on our own opinion."
 Logic certainly does have something to do with helping us see beyond our
own opinion. But I'm afraid I can't agree with you when you relate logic so
closely to scientific facts. Nevertheless, I'm glad you spoke up, because this is a
mistaken idea about logic that many beginning philosophy students have. Logic
actually has nothing to do with teaching us new facts! In fact, it's more like
metaphysics than physics when it comes to the issue of teaching us new facts.
Metaphysics, at least for Kant, does not extend knowledge at all, but prevents
errors, just as the roots of a tree do not bear fruit, yet need to be cared for in order
to insure the fruit will be healthy. And the same is true for the trunk, logic. The
reason for studying metaphysics and logic is not so we can know more, but rather
so we can learn to express more clearly and accurately the knowledge we gain
from other sources. Otherwise we might find ourselves cultivating insights that
look good on the outside, but are rotten when we "bite into" them. So what is
logic?

Student I. "Logic is step by step thinking, like the kind scientists always
use."

I think you're right to suggest that scientific thinking must be logical. And
"step by step" thinking, assuming the steps follow according to some definite
order, is certainly one of the main characteristics of anything logical. The word
"order" implies a definite relationship exists between the different steps we follow
in our thinking. I assume that's what you mean by saying "step by step". But your
answer shows that you have misunderstood my question. Can anyone see how? If
a beginning history student asks me "What is history?", would it be adequate for
me to answer him by saying "History is something important about the past"? Can
any of you who are studying history right now tell me whether or not this
accurately describes what you are learning about?

Student J. "We do learn a lot about significant events that happened in the
past."
 But is that all you learn about? Surely students in all subjects learn
important things about the past without actually studying history. For example, in
the last few lectures we've been learning about metaphysics by studying the ideas
of past philosophers; but taking an historical approach does not mean we were
studying history as such. What else have you been learning about in your history
classes?

Student J. "Some teachers have presented different theories about how

historical change actually takes place, such as the debates over whether history is
like a line or a circle. Also, we are supposed to be learning not just facts about the
past, but why they were significant, and how we can interpret them in the best
way."

Very good! Now, just as all academic disciplines teach something about the
past without necessarily teaching history, so also all academic disciplines are-or at
least, should be-logical, yet do not teach logic. Not just science subjects, but
history, economics, politics, religion, even music and art, are also normally taught
in an orderly, logical way (though there are, of course, different types of order).
So what I am asking you now is to tell me what makes logic itself different as an
academic discipline? As we turn our attention to logic, what is it that we will be
studying?

Student K. "The principles of orderly thinking?"

Yes! This could even be used as the basis for a general definition of logic.
Logic as an academic discipline is distinguished from other disciplines by the fact
that logicians do not simply use orderly thinking; they think in an orderly way
about orderly thinking. Probably the most common definition for logic is to
regard it as "the science of the laws of thinking".

This definition reminds me of a special term Kant had for describing the
patterns built in to human reason. He compared good philosophers to architects
who construct systems (conceptual "buildings") according to a predetermined
plan. Reason's own "architectonic" structure provides a set of ready-made patterns
that Kant believed philosophers should use as tools for presenting their
philosophical ideas in a more orderly way. Kant himself never spent much time
explaining just what these patterns are; but here in Part Two, quite a lot of our
attention will be devoted to this task. As we shall see, it is through logic that we
can best recognize an idea and an ordering of its parts, which Kant regarded as a
prerequisite for understanding a philosophical system.

Of course, giving a simple definition of logic is not the only way of

answering our question. Who else has an idea about what logic is?

Student L. "I remember in one of the first lectures you talked about the
Greek word logos. Does that have anything to do with what we're supposed to be
learning for the next few weeks?"

You probably also remember that, when I mentioned logos in the third
lecture, I was trying to shed some light on the significance of myths for
philosophy. The term logos can sometimes refer to the myth itself, or to some
unknown, hidden meaning. However, I think it is best to interpret it as referring to
the first attempt to express this meaning in words. Since "logos" means "word",
we could say that in this sense the term "logical" refers to a use of words whereby
the words carry some meaning. As we shall see in this week's lectures, there are
two types of logic: one type virtually ignores any hidden (i.e., mythical)
meanings, while the other type focuses almost entirely on bringing just such
meanings out into the light.

Words generally carry a meaning when used in combination with other

words. The special term used in logic to denote a sentence that puts forward a
meaningful relation between two or more words is the term "proposition". For
example, our discovery in Lecture 5 that for Aristotle "substance is form plus
matter" could be regarded as a simple proposition, showing a definite relationship
between three concepts: "substance", "form", and "matter". In the next lecture I
shall introduce some special terms that will enable us to refer to the most
important types of propositional relations by name.

Why is it important to learn how words get their meaning? If we know what
a word means, why do we need to go further and learn the laws that determine
how that meaning arises? This should be an easy question to answer, since I've
already mentioned the reason at the beginning of today's session.

Student M. "If we don't know the rules, we might make errors without
knowing it. Learning the rules will help us think and speak truthfully. A logical
person can avoid saying anything that is false."

Avoiding errors is indeed the answer I was thinking of. But once again, we
have to be careful not to think something we say is always true just because it is
logical. It might surprise you to find out that logic is not really concerned about
the truth of the words we use, but only about their truth value. As we shall see, it
is possible to say something that is utterly false, yet to express it in a logically
correct (or "valid") way, or to say something that is very true, but to state that
truth in a logically incorrect way. The kind of errors logic helps us to avoid are
not called "falsehoods", but "fallacies".

A fallacy is a mistake in the structure of the argument we use to draw a

conclusion based on some evidence. The most important fallacy for you to learn is
closely related to what can be called the problem of self-reference. Because I so
frequently find students committing this fallacy in their insight papers, I'll warn
you about its dangers here at the outset of our study of logic. The term "self-
reference" refers to any proposition that refers to itself. Most such proposition
entail no logical problem. For example, if the word "this" in the sentence "This
sentence is true" refers to itself (i.e., to the sentence in quotes), we have no
difficulty is understanding how it could be true. However, if we change the
sentence just slightly, to read "This sentence is false", then a huge problem arises
once we assume the word "this" refers to that sentence. The problem is that if the
proposition has a positive truth value (i.e., if we want to claim it is true), then this
requires us to believe the sentence is false, because that's what the sentence says
about itself. Yet if we accept that the proposition is false, then (according to what
the sentence tells us to believe) it must be false to say the sentence is false. That
is, if it's true, it's false, and if it's false, it's true! This creates what is sometimes
called a "vicious circle"-i.e., a never-ending cycle of implications that makes it
impossible to determine the proposition's meaning.

In student insight papers this problem appears in a wide variety of

disguises. One of the most common is in papers on topics such as "What is truth?"
or "How do I know what is right and wrong to do?" or "What is the standard of
beauty?" Typically, students will take note of the fact that different cultures (and
sometimes even different people within the same culture) have different views on
such questions. They will then conclude: "there are no definite answers". But
drawing such a conclusion is fallacious, because it fails the test of self-reference.
This becomes clear once we recognize that this proposition is being used to
provide a definite answer to the question at hand-i.e., an answer that will end the
discussion (as all genuinely definite answers do) by insisting that the search for a
definite answer is a dead-end search. Since "there are no definite answers" is
itself a definite answer, the sentence itself provides a counter-example of what it is
claiming to be true: if it is definitely true to say "there are no definite answers",
then the same proposition must be false, because it illustrates that there must be at
least one definite answer!

This fallacy can be corrected in two ways. First, we can recognize that the
proposition in question is an exception to the rule. In this case, we are essentially
admitting the presence of a myth. That is, a person can say: "The only definite
answer to this question is that there are no definite answers (other than this one)."
To do so is to affirm a myth; but the problem of self-reference illustrates that we
can never do away completely with all myths. Sometimes it is better simply to
become aware of our myths (our indefensible presuppositions), rather than to
pretend that we have none at all. A second option would be to express the
conclusion in a more accurate and meaningful way, such as: "there are too many
definite answers". This fits the kind of evidence typically provided in such insight
papers, where the preceding argument has compared several competing definite
answers to whatever question is being considered. Indeed, most (if not all)
philosophical questions have this important characteristic. They are not questions
that have no answer, otherwise it would be pointless to discuss them. Rather, they
are questions whose multitude of potentially good answers leaves us unable to say
for certain which answer is best. Of course, this second option is not independent
of the first, because we are actually saying: "The best answer is that there are
many good answers, but no best answer (other than this one)."

Learning to identify this and the many other types of fallacies can be a very
useful skill, though you needn't bother to learn the fancy Latin names they are
often given. Some common fallacies to watch out for when writing your insight
papers are: arguing ad hoc (from a single example), ad antiquitatem (from
tradition), ad novitatem (from newness), ad baculum (by appealing to force), or
ad hominem (appealing to a personal weakness of the opponent or of others who
accept the same conclusion); shifting the "burden of proof" (i.e., claiming your
view is justified as long as nobody proves it is wrong); equivocation (i.e., using a
word in two different ways without pointing out the difference); arguing against a
"straw man" (i.e., a weak, easily refuted version of the opponent's view); "begging
the question" by assuming what you want to prove-and the list goes on almost
without an end. However, some philosophers are so fond of labeling any and
every type of logical error as a fallacy that their search for fallacies becomes a
fallacy of its own. This happens whenever a person assumes that locating a fallacy
in an argument is a sufficient reason to treat the argument's conclusion as either
false or meaningless, and therefore refuses to consider it any further. To treat
fallacies in this way is to commit what I call (intentionally playing around with a
bit of self-reference) the "fallacy fallacy"! That is, it is a fallacy to infer from the
fact that an argument contains a fallacy that its conclusion must be untrue.

Let me illustrate this point with a simple example. If I say "History and
philosophy have nothing in common with each other; you are an historian and I
am a philosopher; therefore we have no common interests", then my argument is
fallacious. Even if the first two statements (called "premises") are both true, they
do not necessarily imply the third statement, because you and I might have
something in common that has nothing to do with history or philosophy. On the
other hand, even if one or both premises were false, the conclusion might be true:
history and philosophy might be closely related in certain respects, or you might
be studying chemistry, not history; but we might have no common interests. Logic
on its own is incapable of telling us whether or not either of these two scenarios is
factually true; all it can do is tell us under what conditions the truth of a specific
claim can be demonstrated to be true. It would therefore be a fallacy to assume
that because my argument contains a fallacy, it's conclusion is necessarily untrue.

Logicians sometimes make this point by saying logic is concerned with

"formal truth" rather than "material truth". The material truth of a proposition is
the particular external fact that makes the proposition true or false. Thus, if we
want to demonstrate the material truth of the statement, "This chalk is white", the
best way is for me simply to hold it up like this, so you can all see that it is white.
The proposition is true if it turns out that the chalk in my hand really is white. The
formal truth of a proposition, by contrast, is the general internal way it is
expressed. By "internal" I mean that, without going outside of the proposition
itself, we can determine its formal truth value. As an example let's take the com‐
plex proposition, "If this chalk is completely white, then it is not blue." In this
case, we can say that, without looking at the chalk at all, we know that if the first
part of the proposition is true, then so is the second.

A proposition's formal truth does not depend at all on the specific meanings
of the words used within the proposition. All that matters is that we know the
truth value of each of its parts. For that reason, logicians often find it is helpful to
substitute the words in a proposition with symbols. Because the symbols represent
only the general or formal properties of each word, they make it easier to look
beyond the particular content and see the proposition's underlying logical
structure. Thus, the ideal goal of some logicians is to develop a complete
symbolic logic that can function, rather ironically, as a language without words
(i.e., logic without logoi). For example, the above "If ... then ..." proposition can
be expressed by replacing "this chalk" with "a", "all white" with "w", "not" with
"-", and "blue" with "-w" (i.e., "not white"), so that the formal structure of the
proposition becomes clear: "If a is w, then a is -(-w)" is always a true proposition,
no matter what words we use to replace these symbols.

The proliferation of symbols in logic texts is, perhaps more than anything
else, what scares beginning philosophy students away from logic. But like any
new language, once we learn how to use these symbols, the initial awkwardness
and confusion goes away. In this course I shall introduce only a very small
number of logical symbols to you. But judging from your insightful suggestions
regarding the nature of logic, I am hopeful that some of you will be interested
enough to do further reading on your own in the area of symbolic logic. My main
interest in the next eight lectures will be to help you deepen your insight into what
logic itself actually is.

11. Two Kinds of Logic

I shall begin this lecture by looking at a typical example of how logic can
help us see the formal relations between words and the truth value of the
proposition they compose. A proposition's truth value, as I explained in the last
session, is quite distinct from its actual, material truth. It refers to the truth or
falsity a proposition would have under any given set of conditions. Thus, we can
find the truth value of a proposition without knowing anything at all about its
actual content, provided we know what kind of proposition it is. One way of
doing this is to construct what is called a "truth table" for the proposition. Let's
take as an example the proposition: "If you read the textbook, then you will do
well on the final exam." (Actually, I would prefer not to give written exams-or
any grades, for that matter-since it is nearly impossible to judge how much real
philosophy you have learned just by administering a conventional test. The
purpose of this course is not to teach you about philosophy-that can be tested
quite easily-but to teach you to philosophize. Nevertheless, universities require
teachers to "grade" their students, so let's use logic to remind ourselves of one
good way to make that grade a high one, if you are reading this as part of a graded
course.)

The first step in constructing a truth table is to reduce the proposition in

question to its simplest logical form. In this case we can replace "you read the
textbook" with p and "you will do well on the final exam" with q, giving us the
proposition "If p, then q". This can be expressed entirely in symbols as
"p?/span>q", where the arrow means "implies" (this being logically equivalent to
"If ..., then ..."). The second step is to substitute for each variable all the possible
combinations of "T" ("is true") and "F" ("is false"), and determine for each
combination whether the resulting proposition is true or false. The appropriate
letter (T or F) is then written in the far right column, as in Figure IV.1a. If it is true
that "you do the readings", then, as the truth table tells us, the proposition will be
true only if you pass the exam. If, on the contrary, the p statement is false, then
the proposition will be logically true regardless of the truth or falsity of q. The
reason for this rather surprising result can be seen more clearly if we convert the
proposition into its equivalent "Either ..., or ..." proposition. If p really does imply
q, then either q is true or p is false. Since p's truth implies q's truth, the falsity of q
would imply the falsity of p. That means "p ?q" is equivalent to "-p ⁄ q" (i.e.,
"Either -p, or q"). Constructing a new truth table, as in

(a) "If ..., then ..." (b) "Either ..., or ..."

Figure IV.1: Two Truth Tables

Figure IV.1b, we now find that the second row is the only one in which both
choices are false; each of the other three propositions has at least one true option,
so that the overall proposition can be judged to be true. (Note that the first column
in Figure IV.1a contains the opposite values as those in Figure IV.1b, because the
former is a function of p, while the latter is a function of -p.)

Being aware of the truth value of various types of proposition can help us
avoid being fooled by arguments that attempt to prove something by presupposing
a false p. Since the whole proposition is formally true regardless of the truth or
falsity of q, we can use such an argument to "prove" the truth of something that is
actually false. For example, if I want to make myself appear to be your favorite
teacher, I could argue: "If you are the Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR, then I
am your favorite teacher!" Since the premise is false (because none of you is the
Chief Executive), this proposition is true whether or not I am actually your
favorite teacher! For it is the same as saying "Either you are not the Chief
Executive of Hong Kong SAR, or I am your favorite teacher." So when faced with
a proposition that has a false p, always be sure to remember that it is a fallacy to
conclude from the truth value of the whole proposition that the q is actually true.

Now let's imagine that you do the recommended readings for this class, but
you end up failing the exam anyway. If the proposition whose form is analyzed in
Figure IV.1a were actually true, then you could come and argue from logic alone
that you should pass the class. For example, you could remind me that the
proposition I stated at the beginning of today's class is equivalent to another
proposition: "Either you did not do the readings, or you passed the exam." The
truth value of this proposition, as shown in Figure IV.1b, requires that in order for
it to be true, at least one of its two parts must be true. So if p ("you did not do the
readings") is false, and if my original proposition is true, then as the truth table
shows, q ("you passed the exam") must be true. So don't ever say logic is too
abstract to have any practical value!

Such tables can, in principle, be constructed for any proposition, though

they would become quite cumbersome for propositions with many discrete
components. For our purposes, these simple examples will suffice. In the next few
lectures we will meet some patterns that are rather similar to those used in such
truth tables. But for the rest of this lecture I want to focus on what I believe is the
single most important distinction in logic: namely, the distinction between
"analysis" and "synthesis". Rather than giving a universal definition of these two
terms, I shall explain how they can be applied to make three key distinctions:
namely, distinctions between methods of argumentation, types of proposition, and
kinds of logic.

The distinction between analytic and synthetic methods of argumentation is

more commonly known as the distinction between "deduction" and "induction". A
deduction is an argument that starts by positing two or more propositions, called
"premises", presupposing them to be true. A conclusion is then drawn that is
supposed to follow necessarily from the premises. The archetypes of all
deductions are those with three steps, called "syllogisms". And the most common
one of all is the "categorical" syllogism. The standard example of this type of
syllogism is the one Socrates used to persuade his friends not to worry about his
impending death, inasmuch as death is inevitable. It looks like this:

All human beings are mortal.

Socrates is a human being.

\ Socrates is mortal. (The symbol "\" stands for "therefore".)

In this case the first proposition (or "major premise") puts forward a universal
assumption; the second proposition (or "minor premise") puts forward a particular
test case; and the third proposition, of course, draws a necessary ("categorical")
conclusion, also called the "inference". The only way the conclusion could prove
to be false would be if one of the two premises is false, unless of course the
formal relations between the terms in these propositions are in some way
fallacious.
 A good way to test whether or not the terms in a deduction contain a fallacy
is to convert the propositions into a set of corresponding logical symbols. In the
example given above, commonly known as "universal implication" (because of
the use of the word "all"), the words are typically converted into symbols such as
the following:

All h's are m.

S is an h.

\ S is m.

As far as formal logic is concerned, the validity of this syllogism remains exactly
the same, whether "h" refers to humans or horses, whether "m" refers to being
mortal or to being moral, and whether "S" refers to Socrates or Santa Claus! But
remember: proving an argument to be valid still leaves open the question of
whether the premises are actually true. (The other words, "all", "are", etc., can
also be converted into symbols-but I don't want to scare you away from logic at
this early stage!)

Another important aid for anyone who wishes to explore the formal
structure of any deductive argument was provided more than two thousand years
ago, by Aristotle, the founder of formal logic. He developed a virtually complete
system of all the possible forms of deductive argument. Until the beginning of the
twentieth century, virtually all philosophers regarded this system as giving an
unsurpassable account of all the basic propositions of formal logic. This, without
a doubt, gives Aristotle the honor of introducing the single most universally
recognized and longest-lasting contribution ever made to philosophy. However,
for our purposes it is not necessary to learn all the details of Aristotle's system,
especially since his ideas were superseded in numerous respects during the past
one hundred years.
 What is more significant here is that deduction is not the only respectable
form of philosophical argument. For this analytic method is complemented by an
equally significant synthetic method. This method, called induction, requires us to
begin by appealing to various material facts which, taken together, point to the
desired conclusion. That is, in contrast to the necessity governing a valid
deduction, induction always involves some guesswork. Or, to borrow from Kant's
terminology (see Lecture 7), we could say deduction remains entirely within the
realm of concepts, while induction requires an appeal to intuitions as well.
Perhaps an example will help to illuminate this difference.

Let's say we want to prove that the proposition "The sun always rises in the
east" is true. In order to deduce the truth of this statement, we would need to find
at least two true assumptions which, taken together, necessitate such a conclusion.
For example, we might choose the following:

All planets revolve around a star in such a way that the star always appears
to rise on the planet's eastern horizon.

The earth is a planet and the sun is a star.

\ The sun always rises in the east.

In order to arrive at this same conclusion by induction, on the other hand, we

would need to argue in something like the following way:

My father says the first day he saw the sun rise, it rose in the east.

My mother says the sun rose in the east on the day I was born.

The first day I remember seeing the sun rise, it rose in the east.

Last week I woke up early and saw the sun rising in the east.
Yesterday I did the same thing.

I have never heard anyone say they have seen the sun rise in the north, south,
or west.

\ The sun always rises in the east.

In Lecture 21 we shall raise the question whether we are ever capable of reaching
a necessary truth by induction. But for now I am only trying to illustrate the
difference between it and deduction.

The terms "analysis" and "synthesis", as labels for distinguishing deductive

and inductive methods of argumentation, are at least as old as Euclid. In his
Elements, Euclid made it abundantly clear that these two methods should not be
seen as mutually exclusive, but as complementary. His method was to
demonstrate the correctness of each of his geometrical theorems by first using an
analytic (deductive) method of argumentation, and then supporting its conclusion
with synthetic (inductive) reasoning. Following his lead, we can picture the
opposing "directions" entailed by these two methods as arrows pointing opposite
ways:

(a) Deduction (b) Induction

Figure IV.2: Two Methods of Argumentation

Whereas the actual process of constructing a deduction (as opposed to its written
form) starts by formulating a conclusion, then proves it by searching for two or
more true assumptions that can serve as its basis, the process of induction starts
by collecting innumerable bits of evidence, then using them as the basis to draw a
conclusion.

As I mentioned earlier, the terms "analytic" and "synthetic" have been used
in several quite different ways by philosophers. For a long time Euclid's way of
using the terms, to refer to two methods of argumentation, was the commonly
accepted usage. But Kant developed a new way of using the same terms, whereby
they refer to two distinct types of proposition. According to Kant, a proposition is
analytic if the subject is "contained in" the predicate, whereas it is synthetic if the
subject goes "outside" the predicate. Thus, for example, "Red is a color" is
analytic, because the concept "red" is already included as one of the constituents
of the concept "color". Likewise, "This chalk is white" is synthetic, because you
would not know that this thing I'm holding in my hand is chalk if I merely told
you it is white. Using these two examples, we can picture Kant's initial
description of this distinction in terms of the two maps shown in Figure IV.3.

Kant also gave several other, more rigorous, guidelines for determining
whether a proposition is analytic or synthetic. The truth of an
(a) "Yellow is a color." (b) "This chalk is white."

Figure IV.3: Analytic and Synthetic Propositions

analytic proposition can always be known through logic alone; so, if the meanings
of the words are already known, the proposition is not informative. An analytic
proposition is self-explanatory. All I have to do is say "white" and any of you who
understand the meaning of this word will already know I'm talking about a color.
So, like the conclusion of a good deduction, the truth of an analytic proposition is
purely conceptual, and therefore, necessary. The truth of a synthetic proposition,
by contrast, requires an appeal to something more than mere concepts. Like an
inductive argument, an appeal will be made to some intuition-i.e., to some factual
state of affairs. As a result, synthetic propositions are always informative, and the
truth of their conclusions is contingent on a given state of affairs continuing to
exist. When I tell you this piece of chalk hidden in the palm of my hand is white,
the truth of my statement depends on whether or not I have somehow fooled you
by slipping it into my pocket, or by replacing it with a blue piece of chalk, etc.

I hope you will try out a few of your own sample propositions to test your
grasp of this distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. Some
philosophers nowadays think so many propositions are difficult to pin down as
either analytic or synthetic that the whole distinction is worthless. However, I
believe such "gray areas" cause problems only when we forget to look at the
context of a proposition, or when we forget to apply each of Kant's guidelines
with sufficient care. In any case, this is not an issue we can resolve in an
introductory course such as this.

Instead, I'll just mention here that Kant combined this distinction between
analytic and synthetic propositions (or "judgments", as he also referred to them)
with another distinction, between "a priori" and "a posteriori" kinds of knowledge.
"A priori" refers to something that can be known to be true without appealing to
experience; by contrast, something is "a posteriori" if a demonstration of its truth
requires an appeal to experience. This gives rise to four possible kinds of
knowledge, two of which are non-controversial: analytic a priori knowledge is
simply logical knowledge, and synthetic a posteriori knowledge is simply
empirical knowledge. Kant believed there is no analytic a posteriori knowledge; I
contend, however, that this term actually defines a very important, though often
neglected, epistemological category. I've defended this contention at length
elsewhere (see APK and KSP 129-140), so here I'll simply assert that classifying
our hypothetical beliefs about the world in this way can do the crucial work of
saving the appearances, both from being proudly mistaken for ultimate reality
and from being discarded as mere appearances. The synthetic a priori class of
knowledge occupied most of Kant's attention; for he argued that all
transcendental knowledge is of this type. This is why he said the question "How
are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" is the central question of all Critical
philosophy. Although we won't have time to discuss the intricacies of these
different logical classifications, you should make an effort to learn their
interrelationships, as shown in the following map:

Figure IV.4: Four Perspectives on Knowledge

 I would like to end today by introducing a third way of using the terms
"analytic" and "synthetic". You won't find this use of these terms in any logic
textbook, as far as I know. But it makes a useful addition to the way they have
been used in the past. I find it very helpful to use these terms to distinguish
between two distinct kinds of logic. "Analytic logic" is the entire body of logic
based on the principles of reasoning set forth by Aristotle. The most basic of all
these principles is what is often called the "law of contradiction". However, for
reasons that will become clear later, I suggest we call it the "law of
noncontradiction", especially since this principle tells us how we can avoid
contradicting ourselves. Aristotle states this law in Categories by saying a thing
cannot both be and not be in the same respect at the same time. In other words, it
is impossible for a thing to be both black and white, both "A" and "-A", etc. The
simplest symbolic expression of this law is:

"A is not -A" or "A≠-A"

It would be difficult to overstate the profound influence this law has had on the
past two thousand three hundred years of philosophy. For upon it is based nearly
all of the arguments western philosophers have put forward. Moreover, we would
not be able to communicate with each other without assuming that when we use a
word, we want those who hear us to think of the thing that word refers to, and not
its opposite!

Deduction and analytic propositions are two aspects of analytic logic. In

both cases, as we have seen, they are paired with complementary, synthetic
functions: induction and synthetic propositions. This raises a very important
question: Is there also a complementary form of logic itself, equal and opposite to
analytic logic, out of which these (and other) non-analytic logical functions arise?
And if so, is there a law governing this alternative logic? I'd like you all to think
through these two questions on your own between now and the next time we
meet. Then I shall begin the next lecture by offering an answer to these questions.
12. Synthetic Logic

At the end of the previous lecture I asked you to go away and think about
two questions: What should we call the opposite of traditional, "analytic" logic?
and On what law would such logic be based? Any of you who have read the
lecture outline for this course (see above, p.vii) will have easily guessed that the
term I think best describes the kind of logic governing functions like induction
and synthetic propositions is "synthetic logic". But you may have had a bit more
trouble thinking of a law to set alongside Aristotle's "law of noncontradiction". So
let's begin today by determining what such a law would be.

Finding the basic law of synthetic logic need not be a difficult task.
Analytic and synthetic logic always function in opposite ways, so all we have to
do is determine the opposite of Aristotle's famous "A≠-A". There are two ways of
doing this. We can either change the "≠" to "=" or change the "-A" to "A". In this
way, we derive the following two laws:

"A=-A" and "A≠A"

I suggest we call the first new law the "law of contradiction", since it shows us
the inherently contradictory form followed by anything that functions in a
"synthetic" way. The second is actually the opposite of a rather boring law of
analytic logic, usually called the "law of identity" (A=A); so we can refer to
"A≠A" as the "law of nonidentity". This gives us a complete set of four basic laws
of logic:
Figure IV.5: The Four Fundamental Laws of Logic

Obviously, the laws of synthetic logic require some explanation. For how
could contradiction or even nonidentity be the basis for constructing any
meaningful proposition? A computer, for example, could never work if it were
programmed using synthetic logic rather than analytic logic. To attempt this
would be like trying to operate the computer while it is submerged in water: the
whole thing would short-circuit! What then is the point of talking about synthetic
logic at all? What sense could it ever make to say, for instance, "Black is not
black"? Fortunately, in spite of the tremendous advances we saw in computer
technology during the 1990s, human thinking still surpasses that of the best
computer. For, although even a small computer can out-think the most highly
developed human brain in analytic operations, computers are incapable of
performing genuinely synthetic operations. In order to see how synthetic logic can
have meaningful applications, let's look at some examples.

Next to Confucius, one of the most influential ancient Chinese philosophers

was Chuang Tzu (c.369-c.286 B.C.). As far as we know, he didn't write much; but
what he did write is well preserved in a collection of thirty-three short essays. One
of the most interesting of these utilizes synthetic logic on virtually every page.
Even the title, "Discussion on Making All Things Equal", suggests that one of
Chuang Tzu's main goals was to encourage us to break out of our ordinary, "black
and white" way of thinking, by giving us a glimpse of what the world looks like if
we learn to synthesize ("make equal") all such opposites. One passage in
particular is worth quoting at length:

Everything has its "that", everything has its "this". From the point of view of
"that" you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say,
"that" comes out of "this" and "this" depends on "that"-which is to say that "this"
and "that" give birth to each other. But where there is birth there must be death;
where there is death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there must
be unacceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be recognition
of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right.
(CTBW 34-35)

So far, Chuang Tzu has merely pointed out the universal need of human
beings to think analytically. He notes, quite rightly, that in such cases, the
opposites actually depend on each other for their existence. But he then
continues:

Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light
of heaven. He too recognizes a "this", but a "this" which is also a "that", a "that"
which is also a "this". His "that" has both a right and a wrong in it; his "this" too
has both a right and a wrong in it. So, in fact, does he still have a "this" and a
"that"? Or does he in fact no longer have a "this" and a "that"? A state in which
"this" and "that" no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way [i.e.,
of the Tao]. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its
right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So I
say, the best thing to use is clarity. (CTBW 35)
Here Chuang Tzu explains that the way of the sage is to follow the Tao (the
"Way" of heaven), and that this Way can be expressed in words only by using the
contradictory language of synthesized opposites: "this" and "that" (Chuang Tzu's
equivalent of "A" and "-A") must be identified with each other; moreover, each
must be regarded as itself containing what we would normally regard as a
contradiction: e.g., both right and wrong; both birth and death, etc.

Do you think Chuang Tzu was being serious when he wrote this, or did he
intend it all to be a joke? Why did he end this rather confusing paragraph by
stressing the need for clarity? Later (CTBW 37-38) he says: "The torch of chaos
and doubt ... is what the sage steers by.... This is what it means to use clarity." He
then announces he will "make a statement" that "fits into some category", though
he's not sure which. What follows is a series of blatant contradictions, such as:
"There is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount
T'ai is little. No one has lived longer than a dead child, and P'eng-tsu [the Chinese
Methuselah] died young." Could he really have been aiming at clarity when he
made such odd statements?

I don't think Chuang Tzu was joking at all-though the truth can often be
funny. He reveals his intentions more fully when he says:

The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken; Great
Benevolence is not benevolent; Great Modesty is not humble; Great Daring does
not attack. If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. If discriminations are put
into words, they do not suffice.... (CTBW 39-40)

This suggests that the purpose of speaking in an intentionally unclear (or

paradoxical) way is to point our hearts and minds beyond the realm of ordinary
distinctions, where analytic logic suffices, to a deeper and far more important
realm-to a reality that cannot be spoken about clearly and truthfully at the same
time. In other words, Chuang Tzu taught that the obscurity of synthetic logic is
the clearest way of expressing ourselves if we must use words to describe the
indescribable. Life, real life, does not actually come in the neat little boxes that
our minds create. Hence, an authentic life is one that sees beyond these artificial
boundaries:

Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly
from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it
would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument.
Forget the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your
home! (CTBW 44)

Trying to force Chuang Tzu into the straight-jacket of analytic logic would
leave us little choice but to declare him insane. However, once we recognize that
his goal was to give us a glimpse of something beyond the boundaries of analytic
logic, his words begin to take on a new kind of meaning. The "clarity" he
recommended is not the clarity of thought (i.e., thinking about what we know),
but the clarity of vision (i.e., seeing what remains mysterious). The irony is that he
used words to point us to this vision. In so doing, he recognized that he was, in a
sense, falsifying the true Way-at least, for anyone who focuses on his words as a
literal description of his meaning, instead of focusing on what his words point to.
And what we discover when we examine his words is that the tool he used most
frequently to do the pointing is intentional contradiction. "Right is not right."
What better example could there be of the law of nonidentity (A≠A) at work?
"'This' is 'that'." What better example could there be of the law of contradiction
(A=-A) at work?

Whereas analytic logic offers us the clarity of eyesight (i.e., thorough

knowledge), synthetic logic offers us the clarity of insight (i.e., depth of
understanding). When used properly, these two kinds of logic need not be viewed
as competitors, but ought to be regarded as complementing each other, just as
deduction and induction can be used effectively as complementary methods of
argumentation. One of the best ways to picture their complementary relationship
is to relate them to the distinction we learned from Kant, between the areas of
possible knowledge and necessary ignorance, as in Figure IV.6. Analytic logic can
be used to produce knowledge any time we are describing something that falls
within the transcendental boundary (e.g., anything we can see). But once we use
words to describe what lies beyond this boundary, analytic logic not only loses its
explanatory power, but can actually mislead us into making false conclusions.
Instead, as Chuang Tzu has shown us in describing the Tao, when dealing with
issues that leave us necessarily ignorant, we can discover what to believe only by
using synthetic logic to gain the insight needed to support such beliefs.

Figure IV.6: The Analytic and Synthetic Domains

It is no accident that Chuang Tzu regarded a "leap into the boundless" as

the best way of understanding the truths of synthetic logic. This leap, sometimes
called the "leap of faith", is essentially the leap from mere thinking about ultimate
reality (as in academic metaphysics) to actually experiencing it. But "experience"
here refers not to empirical knowledge, but to what Kant calls "intuition". For
Kant, our power of intuition is a power of "receptivity", as opposed to
"conception", which is a power of "spontaneity" (see CPR 92). So also, Chuang
Tzu's "leap" is actually a leap into the Tao, into the intentional passivity of
silence. This aspect of the "boundless" will be the focus of our attention in Part
Four of this course. For now, it is enough to point out that analytic and synthetic
logic provide us with two complementary perspectives: using the former, we
actively impose onto the world strict conceptual divisions; using the latter, we
passively receive from the world the power of its intuitive unity. Since this unity
cannot be expressed literally in words, synthetic logic can be talked about only by
viewing it as a parasite on analytic logic, based on the negation of the analytic
laws. What other way would there be to express the inexpressible than to negate
the laws of correct expression? In the absence of any alternative, synthetic logic
could not completely destroy analytic logic without destroying itself! This is why
good philosophers recognize both kinds of logic as legitimate philosophical
perspectives and attempt to develop both as integral aspects of their philosophy.

The western tradition has relatively few good examples of how synthetic
logic can be employed to help us cope with our ignorance of ultimate reality. One
ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, touched upon synthetic logic with his
insightful principle that "Opposites are the same" (i.e., "A=-A"). However, the
little that remains of his writing does not provide much help as to how to apply
this principle. Others have developed forms of synthetic logic into much more
elaborate systems. The best example, undoubtedly, is Hegel (1770-1831), who
constructed his entire "dialectical" philosophy on the principle that historical
development

takes place according to the synthetic

pattern of "thesis", "antithesis", and
"synthesis" (see Figure IV.7). This
version of synthetic logic has had its
greatest influence in this century in the
form of "dialectical materialism"-the
political ideology of Karl Marx (1818-
1883), who, as we shall see in Week
IX, turned Hegel's synthetic pattern
upside down.

Another interesting example

comes fromThe Mystical Theology of a
fourth century monk who used

Figure IV.7: Hegel's

Dialectical Method
the pseudonym "Dionysius the Areopagite". Showing the futility of any attempt to
describe ultimate reality (referred to as "It") he concludes:

Once more, ascending yet higher, we maintain that It is not soul or mind, or
endowed with the faculty of imagination, conjecture, reason, or understanding;
nor is It any act of reason or understanding; nor can It be described by the reason
or perceived by the understanding, since It is not number or order or greatness or
littleness or equality or inequality, and since It is not immovable nor in motion or
at rest and has no power and is not power or light and does not live and is not life;
nor is It personal essence or eternity or time; nor can It be grasped by the
understanding, since It is not knowledge or truth; nor is It kingship or wisdom;
nor is It one, nor is It unity, nor is It Godhead or Goodness...; nor is It any other
thing such as we or any other being can have knowledge of; nor does It belong to
the category of nonexistence or to that of existence; nor do existent beings know
It as it actually is, nor does It know them as they actually are; nor can the reason
attain to It to name It or to know It; nor is It darkness, nor is It light or error or
truth; nor can any affirmation or negation apply to It ..., inasmuch as It transcends
all affirmation by being the perfect and unique Cause of all things, and transcends
all negation by the preeminence of Its simple and absolute nature-free from every
limitation and beyond them all. (MT V)

This quotation reveals a profound awareness, long before Kant, of the fact that we
can know virtually nothing about ultimate reality. Yet if we insist on interpreting
these words according to the laws of analytic logic, then much of it appears to be
nonsense! How, for example, can something be "not immovable nor in motion or
at rest"? Such claims must be rejected as blatant contradictions, until we realize
they are to be interpreted in terms of synthetic logic; for in so doing the same
contradictions can point us toward deeper insights about the Being whom we
normally call "God".
 Although it is rare to find even a hint of the existence of synthetic logic in
most logic textbooks, there have been a few scholars in this century who have
recognized its significance and attempted to describe the way it works. No one to
my knowledge has thoroughly explored to what extent it constitutes an entirely
distinct kind of logic; yet some have openly acknowledged the possibility of using
alternative laws as the basis for the way we use words. For instance, some
anthropologists, in their study of how people in primitive societies think, have
concluded that their minds operate according to what they sometimes call the
"law of participation" (which means they see concepts as participating in their
opposites). Other scholars have suggested still other names for what I have called
the "law of contradiction", such as the "law of paradox". This name has the
advantage of making it clear that the true purpose of synthetic logic is not to utter
meaningless contradictions, but to drive our imagination to the point where it
discovers new perspectives, from which the apparent contradictions can be
resolved.

What we call this alternative kind of logic and its basic laws is not nearly as
important as knowing how to use it. With this in mind, I'll discuss in Week V
some very practical ways of using synthetic logic to gain insights. For today, let's
conclude by reviewing what we have learned so far about logic, using the table
given in Figure IV.8.

There are fundamentally two different types of logic: analytic logic arises
out of the laws of identity and noncontradiction; synthetic
FigureIV.8:ThreeTypesofAnalytic-SyntheticDistinction

logic arises out of the opposite laws of nonidentity and contradiction. The former
is properly used to describe anything that is possible for us to know; the latter is
properly used to describe what, by its very nature, we can never know. Analytic
propositions are an expression of analytic logic, because they identify two
concepts that are already known to be, in some sense, identical; synthetic
propositions are an expression of synthetic logic, because they identify two
essentially nonidentical things-namely, a concept and an intuition. Finally,
analytic logic is most appropriately manifested in the form of a deductive
argument, where the conclusion follows from the premises as a matter of
mathematical (i.e., noncontradictory) certainty; synthetic logic is most
appropriately manifested in the form of an inductive argument, where the
conclusion always depends on some degree of guesswork (i.e., on the paradoxical
affirmation of what we do not know).

Having now introduced to you three of the most basic distinctions in logic, I
shall devote next week's lectures to the task of explaining the logical basis of the
various diagrams I have been using throughout this course. We will then conclude
Part Two by looking at two examples from the twentieth century of philosophical
schools that tended to over-emphasize analytic and synthetic logic, respectively,
following by a third school that can be regarded as attempting to synthesize key
aspects of the first two.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Is truth always true?

B. Is logic always logical?

2. A. Could there be an argument that is both analytic and synthetic?

B. Could there be a proposition that is neither analytic nor synthetic?

3. A. What could it mean to say that an existing thing "does not exist"?

B. How could a thing be both "all black" and "all white"?

4. A. Could someone actually make the "boundless" their home?

B. What kind of logic does God use to think? (Assume God exists.)
RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Morris Cohen, A Preface to Logic (New York: Dover Publications,

1977[1944]), Ch. One, "The Subject Matter of Formal Logic", pp.1-22.

2. Susan K. Langer, An Introduction to Symbolic Logic3 (New York: Dover

Publications, 1967[1953]).

3. T.L. Heath, Introduction to The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), ?, "Analysis and Synthesis",
pp.137-140.

4. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, "Introduction" (CPR 41-62).

5. Stephen Palmquist, "A Priori Knowledge in Perspective" (APK).

6. Chuang Tzu, Basic Writings, Ch.2, "Discussion on Making All Things Equal"
(CTBW 31-44).

7. Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology (MT).

8. G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977), Preface, "On Scientific Cognition", pp.1-45.
border=0 height=62 width=88>
D1

13. Mapping Analytic Relations

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

In the first lecture on logic we learned that logic-analytic logic, that is-
abstracts from the concrete truth of a proposition, and focuses attention first and
foremost on its bare (essentially mathematical) form, its truth value. This week I
want to explore some ways of converting this bare form into a richer, pictorial
form.

Philosophers since Aristotle, and even before that, have almost universally
recognized that logic and mathematics are closely related disciplines. Until the
middle of the nineteenth century, most philosophers would have said this
relationship is confined primarily to arithmetic, where functions such as addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division have clear analogies to logical operators
such as "and", "not", etc. But then a scholar named George Boole (1815-1864)
wrote a book defending what he called the "Algebra of Logic". He demonstrated
that algebraic relations are also closely related in many ways to logical relations.

Although Boole's ideas are far too complex to examine in an

intro?/span>ductory course, I have mentioned his discovery because I believe a
similar discovery awaits us in the area of geometry. For this reason I have already
been using, throughout these lectures, several simple diagrams in a way that
conforms to what I call the "Geometry of Logic". This week I shall explain in
detail just how these and other diagrams actually function as precise "maps" of
logical relations. The first two lectures will examine ways of constructing maps
that correspond to analytic and synthetic relations, respectively. Lecture 15 will
then provide numerous examples of how we can use such maps to encourage and
deepen our insight.

A thoroughgoing analogy can be constructed between the structure of many

simple geometrical figures and the most fundamental kinds of logical distinctions,
though this has rarely, if ever, been fully acknowledged in the past. The starting
point of this analogy is the analytic law of identity (A=A); it posits that a thing "is
what it is". To choose a diagram that can accurately represent this simplest of all
logical laws, all we need to do is think of the simplest of all geometrical figures: a
point. Techni-

cally, a point exists merely as a single position,

with no real extension in any direction, though of
course, the black spot representing a point in Figure •A
V.1 must have some extension in order for us to see
its position.

Figure V.1: The Point as a

Map of an Identical Relation

The function of the law of noncontradiction is to contrast the solitary "A" of

the law of identity with its opposite, "-A". The geometrical figure that extends a
point beyond itself in a single direction is called a line. There are, of course, two
kinds of line: straight and curved. So also, there are two good ways of depicting
the logical opposition between "A" and "-A" in the form of a geometrical figure:
by using the two ends of a line segment, or by using the inside and outside of a
circle, as shown in Figure V.2:
(a) The Circle (b) The Line

Figure V.2: Two Ways of Mapping a 1LAR

Note that I have labeled these figures with a mere "+" and "-". These symbols are
derived directly from the law of noncontradiction, simply by dropping the "A"
from both sides of the "+A≠-A" equation. The "A" is a formal representation for
"some content", so dropping this symbol implies, quite rightly, that in the
Geometry of Logic we are concerned with nothing but the bare logical form of the
sets of concepts we use. Since this simple distinction arises out of the laws of
analytic logic, I refer to it as a "first-level analytic relation" (or "1LAR"). As we
shall see, representing this law with the simpler equation, "+ ≠ -" (i.e., positivity is
not negativity), makes it much easier to work with more complex, higher levels of
logical opposition.

The circle and line segment can be used as maps of virtually any distinction
between two opposite terms. Such distinctions, as we learned from Chuang Tzu
last week, are a commonplace in our ordinary ways of thinking about the world.
We naturally divide things into pairs of opposites: male and female, day and night,
hot and cold, etc. In most cases I believe the line segment offers the most
appropriate way of representing such distinctions. Since the circle marks out a
boundary between "outside" and "inside", we should employ this figure only
when there is an imbalance between the two terms in question-as, for example,
when one acts as a limitation on the other, but not vice versa.

Now if we were to stop here, the Geometry of Logic would not be a very
interesting subject. No one has any trouble seeing the logical relationship between
a pair of opposite terms, to say nothing of a single term in its relation to itself.
Using points, line segments, or circles in such a way is helpful only when the
terms in question do not define an obvious opposition. This is especially true of
the circle. For example, using a circle to represent Kant's distinction between our
necessary ignorance and our possible knowledge, as we did in Lecture 7 (see
Figures III.5 and III.10), helped us fix in our minds the proper relationship
between these two, with the former limiting the extent of the latter.

In any case, one of the most interesting and useful tools in the Geometry of
Logic arises out of the simple application of the law of noncontradiction to itself.
By this I am referring to cases involving each side of a pair of opposed concepts
being itself broken down into a further pair of two opposing concepts. As an
example, let's consider the familiar concept "one day". We all know how to
perform the simple analytic process whereby we divide "one day" into two more
or less equal and opposite halves, called "daytime" and "nighttime" (i.e., "not
daytime"). This is a good example of a typical 1LAR. However, as with most
1LARs, if we try to apply this strict division to every moment in a day, we find
there are certain times during the day when we hesitate to say whether it is
"daytime" or "nighttime"; and as a result, we make a further analytic division,
between "dusk" and "dawn".

In order to translate this into the form of our logical apparatus, using "+"
and "-" combinations to replace the actual content of our distinctions, all we need
to do is add another "+" and "-" term, in turn, to each of the original terms from
the simple 1LAR. This gives rise to the following four "components" (i.e.,
combinations of one or more +/- terms) of a "second-level analytic relation" (or
"2LAR"):
 -- +- -+ ++

I call the first and last components (i.e., "--" and "++") pure, because both terms
are the same, whereas I call the middle two components (i.e., "+-" and "-+")
mixed, because they both combine one "+" and one "-".

If one pair of opposites is represented by a single line segment, then two

can best be represented by a combination of two line segments. As we have seen
on numerous occasions already, the four end points of a cross can serve as a
simple and balanced way of representing such a four-fold relation. But the same
2LAR can also be represented by the four corners of a square (cf. Figure II.3). I
map the four components onto the cross and the square in the following ways:

(a) The Cross (b) The Square

Figure V.3: Two Ways of Mapping a 2LAR

The position of the four components and the direction of the arrows on each of
these maps is, in a sense, arbitrary. In other words, the same components could be
arranged in a number of different ways and still represent a 2LAR just as
accurately. However, after experimenting with all the different ways of
constructing such maps, I have come to the conclusion that these two examples
represent the most common and appropriate patterns. Moreover, the above maps
both follow a fixed set of rules that can help us avoid confusion and inconsistency
in constructing our maps-though they may not be any better than some alternative
set of rules. The rules I have chosen are, quite simply: (1) a "+" component is
placed above and/or to the left of a "-" component whenever possible, giving
priority to the term(s) that come first in each component; (2) an arrow between
two components with the same term in the first position points away from the
pure component; (3) an arrow between two components with different terms in
the first position points toward the pure component; and (4) an arrow between two
components that each contain only one term (i.e., the simple opposites "+" and "-
") should be double-headed, to depict the tension or balance between them.

The components are mapped onto the cross in Figure V.3a according to
their complementary opposites. That means the two components located at
opposite ends of each line segment will share one common term. For example, the
first term in both components might be a "+", while the second term will be a "+"
on one side and a "-" on the other. By contrast, the components mapped onto the
square in Figure V.3b are organized according to contradictory opposites. That
means the component at any given corner of the square does not overlap at all
with the component at the opposite corner. For example, if the component at one
corner has a "+" in the first position, the component at the opposite corner must
have a "-" in that position; and likewise for the second position.

The square is, in fact, the one geometrical figure that can be found fairly
consistently in most logic textbooks. For it is the formal basis of what is
commonly referred to as "the square of opposition". This square has proved to be
very helpful in clarifying for logicians the formal relations between propositions
that are opposed to each other in different ways (namely, as "contradictions" or as
"contraries"). However, I do not wish to dwell on that well-known application
here. Instead, since I've already used the cross as a map on numerous occasions in
these lectures, let's look more closely at how it can represent the relationships
between complementary opposites.

The cross enables us to visualize four distinct types of "first-level" logical

relationships (i.e., simple +/- oppositions) between such sets of four opposing
concepts. The first two can be called "primary" types. The first is represented by
the first term in each component; as we can see in Figure V.3a, it is the same on
both ends of each axis of the cross. So the first term in each component actually
labels the axis itself: the vertical axis can therefore be called the "+" axis, and the
horizontal axis can be called the "-" axis. The second type is represented by the
second term in each component, and denotes the opposition between the two ends
of any given axis. So the second term in each component mapped onto the 2LAR
cross represents a "polar" (i.e., complementary) opposition-an opposition between
two concepts that also share something in common. The common factor is
represented by the first term of both components on a given axis of the cross: +
for the vertical and - for the horizontal.

The third and fourth types of first-level relationships visible on the cross
can be called "subordinate" types, because they are not as evident as the two
"primary" types. Hence, when we want to call attention to them, it is helpful to
draw a diagonal line through the center of the cross, either from the top right to
the bottom left, or from the top left to the bottom right. The former diagonal line,
as shown in Figures I.1, III.3, and IV.5, calls our attention to the secondary
complementary relationship existing between the components with different first
terms, but the same second term (i.e., between "--" and "+-", and between "-+"
and "++"). The latter diagonal line highlights the fourth type of first-level
relationship, between pairs of contradictory opposites (i.e., between the two pure
components, "++" and "--", and between the two mixed components, "+-" and "-
+"). I have not included this type of diagonal line in the maps used so far, but it
would be appropriate to add it to the cross any time we want to call special
attention to the two pairs of concepts that are diametrically opposed in a given
2LAR.

Understanding the complex web of logical relationships that exists within

any set of concepts composing a 2LAR helps us see that the cross cannot properly
be used to map the relationship between any randomly chosen set of four
concepts. Or at least, if we use it in this way, we may not be using the cross to
represent the logical form of a 2LAR. In that case the cross will only be, at best, a
nice picture, and at worst, a misleading over-simplification. For only sets of
concepts that can be shown to exhibit the set of interrelationships defined above,
and representable by the four +/- components of a 2LAR, ought to be mapped
onto the cross.

Having given this warning, I can now add that there is actually quite a
simple method of testing any set of four concepts that we think might be related
according to the form of a 2LAR. All we need to do is find two yes-or-no
questions whose answers, when put together, give rise to simple descriptions of
the four concepts we have before us. Thus, for example, in order to prove that the
four concepts mentioned above, "daytime", "nighttime", "dusk", and "dawn",
compose a 2LAR, all we need to do is posit the two questions: (1) Is it obviously
either daytime or nighttime (as opposed to being a transition period)? and (2) Is it
lighter now than at the opposite time of day? This gives rise to four possible
situations, corresponding to the four components of a 2LAR as follows:

++ Yes, it is obvious, and yes, it is lighter (= "daytime")

+- Yes, it is obvious, but no, it is not lighter (= "nighttime")

-+ No, it is not obvious, but yes, it is lighter (= "dawn")

-- No, it is not obvious, and no, it is not lighter (= "dusk")

This demonstrates that the four terms in question can be mapped properly onto the
2LAR cross, as shown in Figure V.4a.

Perhaps I should also mention that we cannot produce a proper 2LAR by

combining any randomly chosen pair of two questions. Or at least, we must be
prepared for the possibility that in attempting to construct a 2LAR, one or more of
the possible combinations of answers might end up describing a self-contradictory
concept, or an impossible situation. For this reason, I use the term "perfect" to
refer to a 2LAR (or any other logical relation) in which all the logically possible
components also represent real possibilities. For example, consider the two
questions: (1) Is it raining? and (2) Is the sun shining? At first, only three of the

(a) Four Parts of a Day (b) Four Weather Conditions

Figure V.4: Two Examples Mapped onto the 2LAR Cross

four combinations of answers to these questions appear to depict real possibilities.

If we answer "Yes" to both questions, then it might seem that we have discovered
an impossible combination, since (at least here on earth) it is cloudy, not sunny,
whenever it rains. If this were the case, then these two questions would compose
an imperfect 2LAR. However, if we think further about this fourth option, we will
realize that it does represent a real possibility. (As we shall see throughout this
week, such surprises often pop up when we use the Geometry of Logic as an aid
to our reflection.) For the sun does sometimes shine while it is raining: this is
what is happening whenever we see a rainbow! Hence even this example, as
shown in Figure V.4b, represents a perfect 2LAR, while at the same time
illustrating how such maps can help us gain new insights. (Incidentally, if the
second question were "Is it cloudy?", then this would be an imperfect 2LAR, since
a "No" answer could not be combined with a "Yes" answer to the first question.)
 Remember the map of the four elements I gave in Lecture 4 (see Figure
II.4)? Now that we have analyzed the formal structure of distinctions mapped
onto the cross, we can actually test that traditional set of concepts to see if it
represents a perfect 2LAR. If fire is "++" and water is "--", then we would expect
these to be contradictory opposites. And they are. Water puts out fire, and fire
changes water into vapor. Likewise, if earth is "-+" and air is "+-", we would
expect earth and air to be similarly resistant. And they are. Earth and air do not
mix! What about the complementary opposites? Here we find equally appropriate
results: fire needs air and earth (i.e., fuel) in order to continue burning; water can
mix with air (as in soda) and with earth (as in mud). So even though the ancient
Greeks had not developed the Geometry of Logic, they were intuitively able to
choose, as their four basic elements, materials that correspond in real life to the
form of a perfect 2LAR.

Of course, there are actually more than four physical "elements" in the
universe; likewise, a day can be divided into more than just four parts, and the
weather has far more than just four variations! In the same way, the process of
analytic division can and does go on and on, forming increasingly complex
patterns of relations between groups of concepts. In this course we have no time
to examine the complex relations created by these "higher levels" of analytic
division. However, I would like to mention one final example. But first I should
point out that, no matter how far we go in making analytic divisions, the patterns
will always follow this very simple formula:

C = 2t

where "C" refers to the total number of different components possible and "t"
refers to the number of +/- terms in each component. The latter, incidentally, is
always identical to the number of the level. Thus, as we have seen, the number of
divisions required to construct a 2LAR is two, the number of terms in each
resulting component is also two, and the total number of components is four (22 =
4). Likewise, the number of divisions required to construct a 3LAR is three, the
number of terms in each resulting component is three, and the total number of
components is eight (23 = 8).

The higher the level of analytic relation, the more complex is the map that
has to be constructed to give an accurate picture of all the logical relations
involved. One good example of such a complex system can be found in the
ancient Chinese book of wisdom, the I Ching. This book describes a set of 64
"hexagrams" (i.e., six-part pictures), each representing some kind of life situation.
The book was originally used primarily for predicting future events: in some
arbitrary way, such as throwing dice, a person selects two of the 64 hexagrams,
and the transformation from one to the other is then used as the basis for
answering a question, usually about how some present situation will change in the
future. (Thus it is also called The Book of Changes.) For our purposes, of course,
the predictive power of the I Ching is not its main attraction; rather, its logical
form is what interests us. For the 64 hexagrams actually function as six-term
components of a 6LAR. The traditional way of representing this system of logical
possibilities is to use sets of six solid or broken lines to define each hexagram. By
simply replacing the solid lines with a "+" and the broken lines with a "-", we can
translate this system directly into the one developed above. If we arrange the
components according to their contradictory opposites (as is normally done in
using the I Ching), then the intricate relationships between these hexagrams can
be mapped onto a sphere, which, when projected onto a plane surface so that the
opposite poles of the sphere are represented as the center and the circumference of
a circle, looks like this:
Figure V.5: A Map of the 6LAR in the I Ching

Don't worry if this map confuses you. It is intended to present the logical
form of a highly complex system of concepts at a glance. If you are not familiar
with the system, the map is not likely to be very meaningful. Nevertheless, I
would like to end this lecture simply by pointing out that this map bears a striking
resemblance to the symmetrical pictures used in some eastern religions (called
"mandalas"). Such mandalas are constructed not in order to clarify the logical
structure of a set of concepts, but rather, in order to stimulate new insights (and
eventually, "enlightenment") in those who use them as tools for meditation (see
DW 157-159). As we shall see in the next lecture, the Geometry of Logic itself is
also not limited to such analytic applications, but can actually touch upon the way
we live our life.
14. Mapping Synthetic Relations

In the last lecture, we saw the orderly way logical patterns are constructed
when we use analytic logic in our thinking. This kind of pattern, we found, can be
directly related to the patterns exhibited by some simple geometrical figures. This
fact should not surprise us. For in both cases such patterns originate in the mind.
Recognizing these orderly patterns, Kant suggested that reason itself contains a
fixed, architectonic structure. And his promotion of what he called reason's
"architectonic unity" is an inseparable aspect of his a priori approach. For his
assertion that there are certain necessary conditions for the possibility of any
human experience (see Lecture 8) assumes human reason operates according to a
fixed order. Because reason fixes this order-this architectonic -for us,
philosophers ought to do their best to understand and follow it whenever they
adopt an a priori perspective in their philosophizing (i.e., whenever they ask what
the mind imposes upon experience, rather than what it draws out of experience).
Kant believed philosophers ought to allow these patterns to serve as an a priori
"plan" for the construction of a philosophical system, much as a building
contractor uses the architect's blueprints as the plan for constructing a building. It
is no wonder, then, that Kant regarded Pythagoras (c.569-c.475 B.C.), not Thales,
as the first genuine philosopher (see OST 392); for Pythagoras focused not on
metaphysical issues, but on mathematics and number mysticism.

Logic is one kind of a priori perspective (see Figure IV.4), so we should not
be surprised to find such numerical patterns playing an important role in this
branch of philosophy. However, logical patterns do not relate only to our a priori
ways of thinking. As Pythagoras recognized, they also relate very closely to the
way we live our lives. That is one reason I ended the previous lecture with an
example from Chinese philosophy. In ancient China, the I Ching was never
regarded merely as a logical table of a priori thought-forms. Most-perhaps even
all-who used it were not even aware of its neat, logical structure, as a perfect
6LAR. Rather, they used it intuitively, as a reflection of the ever-present changes
in their daily life situations. In the real world, things do not remain eternally
opposed to each other, as our concepts might lead us to believe. Instead, opposites
gradually fade into each other by passing through an infinite series of degrees.
Once we recognize this fact, we might wish to view the line in Figure V.2b no
longer as representing an absolute separation, requiring a choice between two
discrete kinds, but as representing a continuum, containing infinitely many
degrees.

There is, in fact, another symbol from the Chinese tradition that performs
this same, synthetic function, even though it can also serve as a map of an analytic
relation. I am thinking here of the famous "Tai Chi" symbol, depicting the
opposition between the forces of yin (dark) and yang (light). As shown in Figure
V.6, this symbol can be regarded as simply another way of mapping a 2LAR.
However, in the Chinese tradition its primary symbolic value was quite different,
for it was regarded

as a pictorial expression of the fact that in

real life opposite concepts, experiences,
forces, etc., not only depend on each other
for their own existence, but actually merge
into each other through the passage of time.
This is why the two halves are shaped in the
form of teardrops, connoting movement.
Moreover, at the very center of the large part
of each "teardrop" we find the opposite
force. This, like the arrow on each axis of
the 2LAR cross, represents

Figure V.6: The 2LAR Implicit in

the Tai Chi

the way opposites converge upon each other.

 We saw in Lecture 12 that this tendency of opposites to be "the same", as
Heraclitus put it, is actually the proper subject of synthetic, not analytic, logic. So
I would now like to explore how to use the Geometry of Logic to construct
accurate pictures of logically synthetic relations. Like analytic logic, synthetic
logic also starts from a point, but the point is now regarded as already containing
within itself a pair of opposites. Why? Because synthetic logic is based not on the
laws of identity and non?/i>contradiction, but on the laws of nonidentity (A≠A)
and contradiction (A=-A). Hence, in order to picture its extension, we must draw
a line not in one direction, (from A to -A), but in two (from x to A and -A simul‐
taneously). Thus the geometrical figure best representing this "simple" or "first-
level" synthetic relation (abbreviated "1LSR") is a triangle. This threefold process
can refer either to the original synthetic division of a nonidentical point into two
opposites or to the synthetic integration of two opposites into a new whole (cf.
Figures I.4 and I.2), as shown in Figure V.7. Ordinarily, whenever we are working
with only a single triangle, it is best to use an "x" sign to represent the third term
in a synthetic relation. For this third term is in a sense an "unknown" that arises
out of the two "known" terms, "+" and "-", preserving what is essential in each,
yet going beyond them both. However, when these two

(a) The Original Synthesis (b) The Final Synthesis

Figure V.7: The Triangle as a Map of a 1LSR

types of synthetic triangle are pictured together (cf. Figures III.2 and V.7), the
best way to depict the overall logical form is to label the original synthetic term
with a "0", to represent its function as the common source of the two opposites,
while labeling the concluding synthetic term with a "1", to represent its function
as the final reunification of the two estranged opposites.

Another way of mapping a 1LSR is to use the circle given in Figure V.2a,
labeling the circumference with an "x". This is appropriate because the boundary
participates in both the outside and the inside of the circle, just as "x" participates
in both "+" and "-". Whenever we use a circle as a logical map, the concept
labeling the circumference ought therefore to fulfill a synthetic function in relation
to the two opposite concepts it separates. However, synthetic logic, like analytic
logic, also has higher levels of relations; and the triangle has a more natural
application to these higher relations than the circle, so I'll treat the former as the
standard 1LSR map.

The second level of synthetic relation (2SLR) can be constructed by

regarding each of the three terms, "+", "-", and "x", as generating its own
synthetic relation. This gives rise to the nine components of a 2SLR:

++ -+ x+

+- -- x-

+x -x xx

A good map for a 2SLR is a nine-pointed star, composed of a set of three

intersecting triangles, though there are other possibilities as well. For our present
purposes, we need not go into the details of these higher-level synthetic relations.
Instead, it will be enough merely to point out that the formula governing the
patterns that will appear on each level is:
 C = 3t

where "C" refers once again to the total number of different components possible
and "t" refers both to the number of different terms and to the number of the level.
I hope you will experiment with some of these higher levels on your own.

Mapping the regularity of higher-level logical relations, as illustrated in

Figure V.5, is more appropriate to analytic relations than to synthetic relations.
This is because analytic relations are produced by dividing wholes into discreet
parts, whereas synthetic relations are produced by integrating parts to produce
larger wholes. Because these new wholes combine opposites together in typically
mysterious ways, the higher-levels tend to produce complex networks of relations
that appear to be chaotic. Instead of mapping an example of such a higher-level
synthetic relation here, I shall therefore discuss how synthetic logic can shed new
light on one of the most interesting developments in science during the last
quarter of the twentieth century. "Chaos Theory", also called "non-linear
dynamics", is a rather surprising new area of mathematical physics that has great
potential to explain some of the most mysterious aspects of human life. The theory
claims, in a nutshell, that order comes out of chaos: when we observe whole
systems, the parts seem to have haphazard relations with each other, yet on lower
levels, the same system can exhibit a high degree of order. The typical illustration
of the long-range effect chaos can have on the world is the claim that "the
flapping of a butterfly's wings in New York may cause the weather to change in
Hong Kong". How can this be true, when there is no observable cause-and-effect
relation between the two? I believe the answer lies in regarding chaos as a
higher-level synthetic relation. In this case, the "cause" being referred to here
must not be interpreted as an ordinary cause of the sort that can be understood
through analytic logic. Rather, it is like the mutual interaction between a huge
collection of interwoven 1LSR triangles, whose combined syntheses are not
subject to precise analysis.
 A good reason for not spending more time examining higher-level synthetic
relations is that the 1LSR has another application that is easier to map and so
also, more useful to philosophy. For, just as we saw in Lecture 11 that analysis
and synthesis are best regarded as complementary functions, so also analytic and
synthetic logic have their most profound applications in the Geometry of Logic
when they are joined together in a single map. The simplest way of doing this is to
combine a 1LAR with a 1LSR, by putting together two intersecting triangles to
form

a "star of David". The six components

(2x3 = 6) of the resulting "sixfold
compound relation" (or "6CR") can be
placed on such a map in the manner
shown in Figure V.8, with the first term in
each component representing the analytic
opposition between the two triangles. This
figure can be constructed by sliding
together the two triangles in Figure V.7,
then rotating the entire figure counter-
clockwise by 30? The 0 and 1 vertices
become the -x and +x, respectively.

Figure V.8: The Star

of David as a 6CR

This map can be used to explore the logical relationships between any two
sets of three concepts we believe might be related in this way. For example, one of
my students once came up with the idea of comparing the famous philosophical
triad, "truth, goodness, and beauty" with the famous religious triad, "faith, hope,
and love". The way to test whether or not these six concepts make up a legitimate
6CR is to find a way of mapping them onto the diagram in Figure V.8, such that
the concepts placed in opposition to each other really do have characteristics that
make them complementary opposites. We could begin this task by associating the
"-" triangle with the philosophical concepts and the "+" triangle with the
religious concepts, thus defining the basic 1LAR. But once again, I prefer to let
you experiment for yourself with the other details, or with other examples of your
own making.

Another way of integrating analytic and synthetic relations is to combine

the simple 1LSR with a 2LAR. The twelve components (3x4 = 12) of the resulting
"twelvefold compound relation" (or "12CR") can, of course, be mapped onto a
twelve-pointed star; but I think a better way is simply to map them onto a circle,
especially since the map then resembles the familiar figure of the face of a clock.
In addition, by using a circle, we can leave the center open, to be filled in with
whatever figure represents the specific set of logical relations we wish to highlight
among the many that exist between the twelve components. For example, in
Figure V.9, I have placed a cross inside the circle, thus dividing it into its four

main (2LAR) quadrants. However, we

could also use a line, a triangle, a square,
or combinations of these, to highlight
other logical relations implicit within this
map.

What use is a complex map like

this? One obvious point is that Figure V.9
coincides exactly with the traditional
signs of the zodiac, which are divided into
four groups of three in exactly the same
way. But even apart from the light it might
shed on the rational origin of such ancient
"wisdom", generally scoffed at by

Figure V.9: The Circle

as a Map for a 12CR

philosophers nowadays, we can find 12CRs operating in many diverse areas of

human life and thought. Why, for instance, do we divide the year into twelve
months (four seasons, each with three months)? Or the day into twelve hours? It's
easy to pass off such facts as merely arbitrary conventions. But perhaps they have
their origin in the very structure of rational thinking! This was Kant's conviction;
for, as we saw in Lecture 8, his list of twelve categories fits the same pattern of
four sets of three (see Figure III.9). Furthermore, as I have argued in Kant's
System of Perspectives, Kant also used the same twelvefold pattern in
constructing the arguments that compose his Critical systems-indeed, this pattern
is the basic form of his "architectonic plan".

Other academic disciplines have no shortage of twelvefold distinctions with

exactly the same structure. A famous scientist named Maxwell, for example,
discovered in the nineteenth century that there are twelve distinct forms of
electromagnetic forces, and that they can be grouped into four sets of three types.
More recently, quantum physicists have discovered exactly twelve different types
of "quarks", the basic building block of matter. Numerous examples like these
could be cited. But a detailed explanation of how such applications of the 12CR
actually operate is beyond the scope of this introductory course. Instead, we shall
turn our attention in the next lecture back to synthetic logic itself, in order to gain
a better understanding of how it operates and of how the Geometry of Logic
facilitates the process of having new insights by providing visual representations
of the new perspectives synthetic logic provides.

15. Mapping Insights onto New Perspectives

The main function of synthetic logic is to shock us into seeing new

perspectives. Once we realize this, it becomes easier to understand how it is
possible for a proposition to be meaningful even though it breaks the law of
noncontradiction. The explanation is that such propositions do not actually break
Aristotle's law in its strictest sense. Aristotle himself recognized that "A" could be
identical with "-A" if the "A" in question is being viewed from two different
perspectives. That is why in defining this law he added "at the same time, in the
same respect" to the words "A thing cannot both be and not be". Things change in
time, and they can be described differently when looked at in different ways, so in
these cases the A≠-A law does not hold. But most of us find it quite difficult to
look at a familiar subject in a new way. What synthetic logic does is to bring us
face to face with an exceptional way of thinking about or looking at a familiar
subject; and in so doing, it fires our imagination with insight.

This is where synthetic logic and the Geometry of Logic share a common
function. For both are instrumental in providing us with the means to develop our
capacity to see old issues in new ways, and in so doing, to deepen our insight into
whatever is perplexing us. Indeed, taken together, these two logical tools probably
constitute philosophy's most useful practical application. For as we shall see, a
clear understanding of these tools can assist you in thinking and writing more
clearly and more insightfully in virtually any area, not just when dealing with
philosophical issues. Let us therefore look first at synthetic logic on its own, and
then move from there into a discussion of how geometrical maps can be used in a
similar way to promote clarity and insight.

Synthetic logic has, in fact, already been used by some philosophers to

show how new insights come about. For instance, the perplexing contradictions of
Chuang Tzu and the string of negations proposed by Pseudo-Dionysius (see
Lecture 12) can be regarded as a way of prodding the reader to discover new
insights about "the Way" or about "God", respectively. Likewise, this is the most
fruitful way of interpreting Hegel's famous "dialectical" logic (see Figure IV.7):
his idea that changes occur in human history whenever two opposite forces clash
and give rise to a new reality, called the "synthesis", is best regarded as a
description of the process whereby human perspectives change. And whenever
our perspective changes, a new insight normally accompanies the change. But
unfortunately, Hegel's language is so complex, and his arguments so difficult to
follow, that many people end up with more confusion than insight after reading
one of his books. So a better approach for our purposes will be to look at a
contemporary scholar who has developed some ways of applying synthetic logic
on a very down-to-earth level.
 Edward de Bono (1933-) is not so much a professional philosopher as an
educator par excellence. Nevertheless, some of the principles he discusses in his
many books are closely related to various philosophical concerns, especially in
the area of logic. For his main concern is to teach people how to think creatively.
In the process of doing so, he demonstrates that the laws of synthetic logic are not
just abstract principles that are difficult or impossible to apply, but are effective
tools that can be used to help us solve many different sorts of real-life problems.
In his book, The Use of Lateral Thinking, for example, de Bono uses geometrical
terms to distinguish between our ordinary, "horizontal" way of thinking and the
"lateral" thinking that always seeks to look at old situations from new
perspectives. (Obviously, the former corresponds to analytic logic and the latter
to synthetic logic, though de Bono does not use these terms.) He suggests that
whenever we have the feeling we are "stuck" with a problem we cannot solve, the
reason is not that there is no solution in sight, but that our perspective is too
narrow. That is why it often helps in such situations to take a short break from our
efforts: when we return, we are more likely to feel free to change the way we are
looking at the problem; and often we discover that the solution was right under
our nose all along!

Let me illustrate lateral thinking with a personal story. When I was a boy I
used to have a great deal of trouble eating chicken with a fork and knife. I always
preferred to use my fingers. When I noticed one day how easily my grandfather
ate chicken with a fork and knife, I asked him how he performed this difficult task
with such ease. His answer was simple: "You are trying to remove the chicken
from the bone; what you need to do is to remove the bone from the chicken." This
is lateral thinking! And it worked: all along the bones had been disturbing my
enjoyment of one of my favorite foods; but when I changed the way I thought
about my task, the disturbance virtually vanished! It is also an example of using
synthetic logic, because my grandfather's suggestion enabled me to pass beyond
what seemed before like an absolute opposition between "It is easy to get the
chicken off the bone when I use my fingers" and "It is difficult to get the chicken
off the bone when I use a fork and knife". The new perspective, "remove the bone
from the chicken" enabled me to synthesize the "It is easy" of the first proposition
with the "use a fork and knife" of the second proposition. Lateral thinking always
cuts across our former way of thinking in just this way, much as the vertical axis
of a cross cuts across the horizontal axis.
 In another book, called Po: Beyond Yes and No, de Bono suggests another
tool for making new discoveries. As the very title reveals, this new tool is rooted
in synthetic logic even more obviously than lateral thinking. In this book de Bono
coins a new word, "po", as a way of responding to questions whose proper answer
is neither "yes" nor "no" (or both "yes" and "no"). The letters "P-O", he POints
out, are found together in many words that play an imPOrtant role in creative
thinking, such as "hyPOthesis", "POetry", "POssibility", "POtential", "POsitive
thinking", and "supPOse". "PO" can also be regarded as an acronym, an
abbreviation of the phrase "Presuppose the Opposite". In order to show how this
new word can actually help us develop our ability to gain new insights-i.e., to see
new POssibilities, new opPOrtunities, just over the horizon of our present
perspective-de Bono suggests we experiment with various "po situations". To
perform such an experiment, we must use "po" as an adjective, modifying a word
we wish to think about creatively; but our description of the characteristics of that
word must then presuppose the opposite of whatever we normally think about the
objects, activities, or situations related to the word. If we think about how things
would be different if this po situation were really the case, de Bono assures us that
gaining new insights will become much easier.

Let's give this kind of experiment a try. Imagine I am dissatisfied with my

teaching method, and I want to think of some new, creative way of teaching my
classes. In order to treat this as a po situation, I must say to myself "Po teachers
are ...", and complete the sentence with something that is usually not true about
real life teachers. What shall we say? How about: "Po teachers know less than
their students." This is just a random choice of one among many of the
characteristics of the student-teacher relationship. But we do normally assume
that teachers know more than their students, so the above statement, by
intentionally contradicting this common assumption, can serve as a good example
of a po situation. What would happen if students really did know more than their
students? Well, for one thing, if I were assigned the task of teaching in such a
situation, I would approach my task with humility (if not with fear and
trembling!), knowing that I would probably be learning much more than my
students. As a result I would certainly need to respect my students, and the
common expectation that students ought to look up to me as their teacher would
not be so obviously justified. Moreover, I would try to encourage students
themselves to talk more, either by asking them questions in class, by having them
ask me questions, or by dividing them into groups and having them talk with each
other. For, since po students know best what the subject is all about, a po teacher
would be very foolish not to give them ample opportunity to share what they know.

If I now step back from this po situation, and re-enter the "real world", I
find I have stumbled upon several new ideas about how I can improve my
teaching: I should be humble enough to learn from my students, respect them as
equals in the adventure of learning, not be upset if they show some disrespect
toward me, encourage them to ask and answer questions, and give them
opportunities to discuss issues among themselves. The first time I gave this
lecture, I had not prepared these insights beforehand: they just came to me as I
was experimenting with de Bono's method in front of the class. Yet I think these
are really very good insights, don't you? If so, it is important to remember that
they did not come to me because I am especially clever; they came because I used
po to think laterally, thus leading me to adopt a surprising new perspective on a
familiar subject. You can prove this for yourself simply by using the same method
to reflect on any area you wish to improve or any topic you need to view with
fresh insight. Just remember: po thinking stimulates insights because it causes us
intentionally to adopt a perspective we know is contradictory to the real situation-
a practical application of synthetic logic if ever there was one!

I hope the foregoing examples have helped you see the great value -indeed,
the necessity-of using synthetic logic. I'm confident that they have, because over
the years I've noticed that beginning philosophy students often find it easier to
grasp synthetic logic than do professional philosophers! This, no doubt, is partly
because western philosophers are often taught to have a prejudice in favor of the
exclusive validity of analytic logic. In some traditions logic is defined as
"analysis"; so of course, anyone who tries to propose a nonanalytic logic is
regarded as speaking nonsense! Nevertheless, as we have seen, synthetic logic
exhibits patterns just as much as analytic logic; so if we define logic as "patterns
of words", then synthetic and analytic logic clearly ought to have an equal right
to be called "logic". (Philosophers trained in eastern ways of thinking,
incidentally, sometimes develop a prejudice in favor of synthetic logic; in the end
this is no better than the western prejudice. A "good" philosopher will be able to
appreciate the value of using both.) Perhaps another reason beginners can accept
synthetic logic so easily is that it actually requires less formal training to use
synthetic logic than analytic logic: whereas analytic logic is the logic of
knowledge (especially thinking), synthetic logic is the logic of experience
(especially intuiting). In this sense, we can call synthetic logic the logic of life.

If you are reading this as a student, your life is likely to be focused largely
on studying, writing papers, and taking tests. With this in mind, I shall devote the
rest of this lecture to suggesting how an awareness of perspectives can be an aid
to improving your writing skills-a topic that should interest all readers, especially
those writing insight papers. We have already seen that insights tend to arise
when we learn to shift our perspective (as in lateral and po thinking) and that
synthetic logic is the logic that governs such changes; we shall now proceed to
examine how an ability to map our perspectives according to the principles of the
Geometry of Logic can improve our receptivity to insight still further.

First, let me warn you that before you actually use a logical map in a paper
or essay, you should carefully assess whether the reader(s) will be receptive to
thinking in pictures. Some people have a natural preference for this type of
thinking, while others seem to be virtually incapable of understanding it. My own
doctoral dissertation at Oxford was initially rejected because one of my
examiners had an allergic reaction to my use of diagrams. He claimed my thesis
contained "publishable material", but not as long as it was filled with diagrams
based on the Geometry of Logic. Ironically, the chapter where I defended my use
of diagrams (Chapter III of KSP) had at that time already been accepted for
publication in a very reputable professional journal! Nevertheless, I had to
rewrite my dissertation, removing the diagrams, before it was deemed acceptable
by that examiner. This illustrates that a person's response to a diagram may have
more to do with his or her bias (e.g., an unquestioned myth about what an
academic thesis should look like) than with any rationally justifiable objection to
pictorial thinking. If you think your reader(s) might have such a bias, you can still
use diagrams to help organize your thinking and stimulate insights; but it would
be wise not to include your diagrams in the final version of your essay. But if your
teacher likes using diagrams or at least has an open mind about such things,
including the actual diagram can be an impressive way of making a good essay
even better.
 The most basic use for a logical map is in outlining the overall flow of your
essay, just as I did for this book in Figure I.1. What you may not have noticed is
that the 2LAR map provides a pattern that can serve as a universal guide for
constructing a clear and complete argument. In its simplest application, as shown
in Figure V.10, the pure components (-- and ++) stand for the Introductory and
Concluding parts

Figure V.10: The Four Parts of an Organized Essay

of your essay. In a well-organized essay these will not be mere "before and after"
summaries of what is contained in the other parts. Rather, a good introduction
sketches out the basic limiting conditions on the topic, just as "recognition of
ignorance" did for this course. Likewise, a good conclusion leaves the reader with
clear and interesting practical applications and/or ideas for future research. As
we shall see in Part Four, the "wonder of silence" will do just that for our study of
philosophy. The impure components (+- and -+), by contrast, will present two
opposite perspectives on the topic at hand. In our case, thinking (logic) and doing
(wisdom) are the two opposites that occupy our attention in Parts Two and Three.
Viewing these opposites as two perspectives can lead to an especially insightful
essay in cases where the views examined in these two parts tend to be regarded as
competing theories or approaches. If you can effectively demonstrate how the two
are actually compatible and/or give a clear account of why certain
incompatibilities are unavoidable, you will be well on your way to writing an
impressive piece.

Having a predetermined plan for the format of what you intend to write may
seem at first like an illegitimate procedure: since the real world is not so neatly
divided, how can we know in advance whether the topic will actually fit into such
a neat, logical pattern? Kant would reply that such a question ignores the fact
that reason itself has an essentially architectonic nature. That is, our thinking is
(or ought to be!) orderly and patterned, so in any essay that involves rational
thinking, that order ought not to be left to chance. Of course, the content of any
essay cannot be predetermined in this way. But if the essay is one that can benefit
by being written in a clear and orderly way, then selecting a pattern as common
as the 2LAR will virtually guarantee an increase in its level of clarity and
persuasiveness. Some essays may be so detailed that they will require a more
complex pattern, such as the 12CR used in organizing this course (and its sequel,
DW, as well as KSP and KCR). The alternative approach, adopted by most
writers even of highly abstract philosophical essays, is simply to divide the essay
into a haphazard number of sections without following any rule. Yet this leaves
the reader totally clueless as to why the essay is divided up in just this way, and
not some other.

By far the greatest benefit that comes from using the Geometry of Logic to
pre-plan a piece of writing is that doing so calls attention to gaps and previously
undetected connections between the various themes being considered. In the first
two lectures this week, I gave several examples of how geometrical maps can be
used to help promote insights. (Remember the rainbow?) The potential for giving
other such examples is so great that I could easily fill a whole book with them!
But for our purposes it will be enough to provide one more example to illustrate
how a map can assist us in deepening our insight by discovering a new
perspective on an old, familiar topic.

When I was preparing the present edition of this book, I had taught
Introduction to Philosophy more than thirty times, always using something like
Figures I.1 and I.3 on the first day as a preview of what students could expect.
Then one day after a Philosophy Cafe meeting here in Hong Kong, I was
discussing the nature of silence with one of the participants. Suddenly as I spoke I
realized that Parts Two and Four of this course can be described as the two ways
human beings experience meaning. The word "meaning" can therefore label the
vertical pole on Figure I.3. As I went home that night, this image of the labeled
vertical pole caused me to wonder: How, then, should the horizontal pole be
labeled? Had I not organized this course using the Geometry of Logic, this
question would surely never have arisen. But it now became so obvious that I was
amazed I had never in 13 years thought of this issue! For several weeks I reflected
on this matter without coming up with an answer. Then, in a conversation with a
former student, I finally sat down and drew the diagram. Seeing the horizontal
pole with "ignorance" on one end and "knowledge" on the other stimulated me all
in a flash to think of two good answers: Parts One and Three both deal with
reality, but from two different perspectives (ultimate and non-ultimate); but a
more natural way of contrasting this with "meaning" is to refer to it as
"existence". My new insight was now complete: the overall aim of this course is to
share a vision of what it means to exist.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. How would you map a compound relation higher than a 12CR?

B. Could there be a half-level of analytic division (e.g., a 11/2LAR)?

2. A. Could a cross be used to map a synthetic relation?

B. Could a triangle be used to map an analytic relation?

3. A. Could "x" and "+" (or "x" and "-") be synthesized?

 B. Are there really any magic numbers?

4. A. What would po lateral thinking be like?

B. Is it possible to have an insight that could never be mapped?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded

the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities (London: Dover
Publications, 1854).

2. Stephen Palmquist, Kant's System of Perspectives, Ch. III, "The Architectonic

Form of Kant's Copernican System" (KSP 67-103).

3. Stephen Palmquist, The Geometry of Logic (unpublished; working draft

available at http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/gl/toc.html).

4. Underwood Dudley, Numerology: Or, what Pythagoras wrought (Washington

D.C.: The Mathematical Association of America, 1997), Ch.2, "Pythagoras",
pp.5-16.

5. Robert Lawlor, Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and practice (London: Thames

and Hudson, 1982).
6. Edward de Bono, The Use of Lateral Thinking (Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin Books, 1967).

7. Edward de Bono, Po: Beyond yes and no (Harmondsworth, Middlesex:

Penguin Books, 1972).

8. Jonathan W. Schooler, Marte Fallshore, and Stephen M. Fiore, "Putting Insight

into Perspective", Epilogue in R.J. Sternberg and J.E. Davidson (ed.), The Nature
of Insight (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp.559-587.

Send comments to the author: [email protected]

Back to the Table of Contents for this book.

Back to the listing of Steve Palmquist's published books.

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16.
Analytic Philosophy:

Positivism and Ordinary Language

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Having now examined three ways of applying the logical distinction

between "analysis" and "synthesis", and having explored in some detail its
application to the Geometry of Logic, our remaining task here in Part Two is to
consider how an over-emphasis on either analysis or synthesis has shaped the way
some philosophers have developed their ideas. Back in Lecture 1 I contrasted two
opposing movements that have dominated western philosophy during most of the
twentieth century: linguistic analysis and existentialism (see Figure 1.2). Most
versions of the former have emphasized the importance of analysis, and most
versions of the latter, synthesis, so much as to neglect or even explicitly reject the
significance of the opposing trend. Yet as we have come to expect, given the
complementary relationship between analysis and synthesis, the continued
existence of each trend depends on that of the other, for they are complementary
poles of a single movement. Hence it should come as no surprise to find that,
toward the end of the century, both trends began passing away together, and being
replaced gradually by other ways of thinking, the most important being
hermeneutic philosophy. Interestingly, these three major approaches to philosophy
all emphasize a common theme: the centrality of language to the philosopher's
quest. So this week we shall devote one lecture to each.

Today we shall discuss the main elements of the philosophical movement

that dominated English-speaking philosophy throughout the past century, known
as "linguistic analysis". The same way of philosophizing also goes by such names
as "analytic philosophy", "linguistic philosophy", or "philosophy of language",
depending on the preference of the philosopher in question. But in general we can
characterize this approach as one that regards the analysis of language as the
philosopher's fundamental task. The precise way language ought to be analyzed,
the exact definition of what analysis is, and even the proper delimitation of what
counts as language, are all issues of open debate among members of this school.
But amidst all their differences, linguistic analysts are united by their common
belief that philosophical issues must be approached, first and foremost (if not
exclusively) from the point of view of their roots in human language. Some
believe that in upholding this belief they are the true heirs of Kant's great
limitation of human knowledge-to the extent that the notion of a "transcendental
turn" in philosophizing is thought by many philosophers today to be identical to a
"linguistic turn".

The roots of linguistic analysis are planted in ground prepared by a

mathematician named Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). Frege instituted a revolution in
(analytic) logic, the implications of which are still in the process of being worked
out by contemporary philosophers. He regarded logic as virtually reducible to
mathematics, and believed proofs should always be exhibited in the form of
clearly expressed, deductive steps. More importantly, he believed logic could
perform tasks far beyond anything envisioned by Aristotle, provided logicians
could develop ways of expressing linguistic meaning entirely in terms of logical
symbols. One of his most influential ideas was to distinguish between the "sense"
of a proposition and its "reference", arguing that a proposition has "meaning" only
if it has both a sense and a reference. (This idea bears a striking resemblance,
incidentally, to Kant's claim that knowledge arises only out of the synthesis of
concepts and intuitions.) Frege also developed a new notation enabling
"quantifiers" (words such as "all", "some", etc.) to be expressed in terms of
symbols. He hoped philosophers could use this notation to perfect the logical
form of their arguments, thus making it possible to come far closer than ever
before to the ideal of making philosophy into a rigorous science.

One of the first philosophers to recognize the profound importance of

Frege's new discoveries in logic was Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)-probably the
best known English philosopher in this century. Russell, together with A.N.
Whitehead, applied many of Frege's insights in writing what must be one of the
most important, yet least read, philosophy books written during the twentieth
century, Principia Mathematica. Russell developed many interesting and
influential ideas on a vast array of subjects during his long career. Unfortunately,
on a number of occasions he changed his views, arguing in one text against a
position he himself had defended in previous writings. Since he never developed a
single, consistent system of philosophy, it would be too difficult to examine his
vast array of ideas here. However, the case is quite different for a younger
contemporary of Russell's, who began his career in philosophy as one of Russell's
students. After studying engineering for several years in Manchester, this
German-speaking philosopher sent an essay to Russell in Cambridge, telling him
he wanted to study philosophy under Russell's guidance-either that, or he would
pursue further studies in the field of aeronautics. Fortunately for the philosophical
world, Russell invited this young man to become his student in Cambridge.

If Frege can be viewed as the "father" of linguistic analysis, then its greatest
"son" was, undoubtedly, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Not long after coming
to Cambridge, Wittgenstein launched out on his own, to become one of this
century's two or three most influential philosophers. The bulk of his influence
came through his lectures and tutorials, and through the students and other
philosophers who shared in these discussions with him. For Wittgenstein himself
published only one book during his lifetime, written while he was still a young
man. When he died, however, he left the manuscript for a second book, eventually
published two years after his death. Each of these books laid the foundation for a
major new version of linguistic analysis. For the remainder of today's lecture, let's
take a look at these two trends in turn.

Wittgenstein's book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), came to be

treated as a manifesto for one of the earliest versions of linguistic analysis:
"logical positivism". It begins by defining the limits of the linguistic world in
terms of the following set of foundational propositions:

1 The world is all that is the case.

1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not things.

1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.

1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever
is not the case.

1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.

1.2 The world divides into facts.

1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else
remains the same.

Throughout the book Wittgenstein follows the same rigorous, mathematical form
used in this introductory passage, numbering each successive paragraph in
hierarchical order. This logical form reflects the overall aim of the book: to
construct a set of analytic propositions that can be used as a framework for
understanding all "facts" (i.e., meaningful propositions) about the world. The
analytic focus of Wittgenstein's concern is evident when, for example, he states
that each of these facts "can be the case" (+) "or not the case" (-).

After setting up a fixed boundary line between what counts as "the world"
and what does not-i.e., between "facts" and "things"-Wittgenstein weaves an
intricate web of logical propositions in sections 2-6 of his book. These
propositions are supposed to establish a philosophical framework for
understanding any legitimate fact that the "world" (i.e., the set of all meaningful
propositions) presents to us. He then concludes with a passage that is worth
quoting at length:

6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make
themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to

say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science-i.e.
something that has nothing to do with philosophy-and then, whenever someone
else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had
failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not
be satisfying to the other person-he would not have the feeling that we were
teaching him philosophy-this method would be the only strictly correct one.

6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone

who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used
them-as steps-to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the
ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then
he will see the world aright.

7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Analytic philosophers have debated long and hard over the proper
interpretation of the enigmas in this surprise ending to Wittgenstein's Tractatus.
But if we keep in mind the distinction between analytic and synthetic logic, then
the meaning of these claims can be seen quite clearly. Relating the distinction
between "facts" and "things" to the distinction between analytic and synthetic
logic, especially as depicted in Figure IV.6, suggests the following way of
picturing the main structure of Wittgenstein's argument in the above passage:

Figure VI.1: Wittgenstein's "Ladder"

Wittgenstein's view was that any philosophy based solely on the rigorous
foundations of analytic logic must limit its scope of inquiry to questions arising
within the resulting "world of facts", even though this requires us to treat many
traditional philosophical questions as if they do not exist. He quite rightly
recognized that this metaphysical realm (i.e., the realm of "things" outside of
analytic logic) is a mystical realm. For synthetic logic has always been a favorite
tool of mystics. However, because of his firm belief in the universal and exclusive
validity of analytic logic, Wittgenstein was forced to conclude that the proper
response to this mystical realm is to remain silent. If he was correct when he said
talking about such "things" is not a proper part of the philosopher's task, then
much of the philosophy I am teaching you in this course is not actually
philosophy at all, but merely disguised nonsense.

As we shall discover in Part Four, silence is actually a very proper way of

responding to a mystical experience. Nevertheless, as word-using animals, we
humans inevitably try to describe such experiences in words. Wittgenstein was
describing this attempt when he referred to those who use analytic propositions as
a "ladder" in hopes of climbing beyond facts to a direct apprehension of things.
He was quite right if he meant to say that in such cases analytic logic turns out to
be "nonsensical"; as such, his advice, that such a person should "throw away the
ladder after he has climbed up it", is quite appropriate. He was also entirely
correct to insist that we must "transcend these propositions" in order to "see the
world aright", for mystics are interested far more in changing the way we see the
world than in changing the way we describe it. What Wittgenstein failed to take
into consideration, however, is that this realm of vision might have its own kind of
logic, whereby words that would otherwise be nonsense can make sense after all:
propositions using synthetic logic make sense because they shock us into seeing
the world in a new way!

Unfortunately, the philosophers who first followed Wittgenstein's lead were

not interested in exploring the implications of his enigmatic references to "things"
that somehow "manifest themselves". Rather, they were intrigued by his idea of
constructing an analytic foundation that would enable philosophy to become, for
the first time, truly scientific. The most influential of his followers was A.J. Ayer
(1910-1989), who, at the age of 26, wrote the book, Language, Truth, and Logic,
popularizing a positivist interpretation of Wittgenstein's ideas. Far from leaving
open a space for silent appreciation of "mystical things", Ayer argued that the
nonsensical character of mystical experiences, together with all metaphysical
ideas, should lead us to discard them as utterly useless. Thus, near the beginning
of the first chapter, called "The Elimination of Metaphysics", he writes:

For we shall maintain that no statement which refers to a "reality" transcending

the limits of all possible sense-perception can possibly have any literal
significance; from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven
to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense.
(LTL 34)

The knife Ayer used to cut away all such illusions came in the form of what
he called the "verification" principle. He described this principle in the form of a
question we are supposed to ask about any proposition put forward as a possible
"fact" about the world: "Would any observations be relevant to the determination
of its truth or falsehood?" (LTL 38). If the answer is "no", reasoned Ayer, then
there is no way to verify the truth or falsity of the proposition in question; and in
any such situation, the proposition must be literally meaningless. So, if I were
trying to defend the truth of a proposition such as "God exists", Ayer would
require me to describe some potential empirical situation that would cause me to
give up my belief in God. For example, if I said I would give up my belief in God
if my mother were to die a tragic death, then he would admit that my belief has
some meaningful content; but it is now primarily a belief about my mother, not a
belief about God. A person who claimed to have an unshakable faith would
simply be regarded as believing utter nonsense. Ayer argues along these lines in
the remainder of his book, employing the knife of verification to carve away most
of what have traditionally been regarded as the most important areas of
philosophical inquiry. Not only metaphysical propositions as such, but also most
of the nearest and dearest propositions of moral, religious, and aesthetic value are
also explained away as, at best, a mere expression of a person's emotional state
(and hence, as irrational).
 However, there is a serious problem with Ayer's program, as with any such
attempt to establish on logical grounds a set of so-called "positive" limits to
philosophical inquiry. The problem is that the very principle this whole school of
thought is based on cannot pass the test of verification. In other words, if Ayer
were here today and we asked him to point to some observation-any observation-
that would count as evidence against the principle of verification, he would be
unable to do so! Why? Because this principle is not merely a "logical tool", as
Ayer thought; it is itself a metaphysical belief every bit as much as those he tried
to discard as nonsense. This means either the principle is true, in which case the
principle itself is meaningless, or else the principle is false, in which case the very
foundation of logical positivism falls to pieces. We can express the self-
contradictory character of the verification principle in a more rigorous form as
follows (assuming "VP" stands for "verification principle" and "-v" stands for "a
proposition not verifiable by some observation"):

All -v's are meaningless. (= VP)

VP is a -v.

\ VP (if true) is meaningless.

The form of this argument should look familiar to you; it is the infamous problem
of "self-reference", exposed as a fallacy in Lecture 10.

Although logical positivism did experience a period of hopeful support

among many philosophers, mainly during the 1930s and 1940s, it was not long
before the self-contradictory nature of its basic claims became undeniably
evident. Indeed, it became so evident that Ayer himself eventually stopped trying
to defend such an extreme, positivist position. The lesson we can learn from the
relatively brief life of this philosophical experiment is that presuppositions of
some sort are essential for any philosophical endeavor, and that such
presuppositions, like the myths we encountered in Part One, always transcend the
realm of the knowledge they serve to define. Such a transcendent principle
generally must be accepted on faith, since it cannot be proved from within the
system it supports; yet without it, there would be no boundary line in the system,
and hence no knowledge at all. In other words, logical positivism may have
succeeded, in a sense, in making philosophy into a science; but the price it had to
pay was to affirm the basic incoherence that plagues so much of modern science:
the belief that knowledge can be gained without being rooted in some underlying
myth. Once we recognize the futility of such a belief, we can see that
Wittgenstein's "things" are just as important as his "facts": without the former we
could not even speak about the latter!

One of the most interesting contrasts in the history of twentieth-century

philosophy was between the first and second of Wittgenstein's two great books.
No sooner had he developed the framework for a positivist philosophy than he
began working toward quite a different way of conceiving the philosophical task.
He set out his new views in Philosophical Investigations (1953), a posthumously
published book that has come to be treated as a manifesto for another version of
linguistic analysis, called "ordinary language philosophy". The different character
of these two books is evident even in their titles: whereas his Tractatus is
rigorously logical and utterly analytic, Wittgenstein's Investigations is written in a
much looser, more synthetic, style-not unlike a detective story. The foundation-
stone of ordinary language philosophy (replacing logical positivism's verification
principle) is the principle that the meaning of a word or proposition is determined
by its use. Armed with this principle, analytic philosophers turned their attention
to the task of examining the way words are used in ordinary language, in the
belief that all metaphysical problems can ultimately be traced back to a misuse of
some of the key words involved.

In addition to the principle of use determining meaning, Wittgenstein

suggested a number of other guidelines for how ordinary language ought to be
investigated by philosophers. Two of these should be mentioned here before we
conclude our discussion of linguistic analysis. The first is that words get their
meaning by participating in a particular "language-game". Just as different games
have different rules, yet all can be called "games", so also different ways of using
language have different rules, yet meaning can arise within all of them. This
means that science, the only admissible realm of knowledge for the logical posi‐
tivist, is now regarded as just one of many possible language-games. The words
we use in non-scientific contexts, such as in moral reasoning, in forming aesthetic
judgments, and even in constructing systems of religious belief, can be regarded
as having legitimate meanings after all. In each case, though, we cannot
understand such meanings from the outside, but must participate in the game in
order to appreciate what is going on. For this reason, understanding the concept of
a "game" is crucial for ordinary language philosophers. Indeed, while I was
studying in Oxford, I once attended a series of lectures by a philosopher who had
been one of Wittgenstein's students. Believe it or not, he spent the entire term
discussing with us the question "What is a game?"-yet we never came up with a
set of defining principles that could apply to all games!

Another guideline introduced by Wittgenstein was again based on an

analogy-namely, that groups of words sometimes bear "family relationships" to
each other and to other groups of words. By tracing these relationships and
becoming aware of the intricate patterns exhibited in ordinary language, he
believed philosophers could avoid repeating many of the mistakes committed by
past philosophers. To try to use a word as if it were a member of a family it is not
related to in ordinary language is to break the rules of language-games; so it is no
wonder seemingly irresolvable problems arise as a result. Using these and other
guidelines, Wittgenstein detected numerous errors in the way philosophers tend to
treat words. Although such detective work sometimes ends with conclusions not
unlike those of the logical cogitations of Tractatus (e.g., that philosophical
problems are due to a misuse of language), its open and flexible tone is a far cry
from the rigidity of the work of his youth.

If logical positivism tried to make philosophy into a science, ordinary

language philosophy tried to make it into an art. In this way linguistic analysis in
some of its forms has actually come to appreciate more fully the importance of
synthesis-though still treating analysis, of course, as having priority. This
emphasis on analysis has had the benefit of calling to the attention of philosophers
the importance of clarifying language. One of the most serious problems with this
whole movement, however, is that in many cases analytic philosophers who claim
to be saying "we are just trying to help clarify what you are already doing when
you use language", are actually implying another, quite different claim as well.
Some analytic philosophers do philosophy with the attitude that, in fact, "we
know what was wrong with the whole tradition, and we don't need it any more!"
And this, of course, is always a dangerous thing to say, since philosophical
traditions constitute the very soil from which the metaphysical roots of our
philosophical tree draw their nourishment.

17. Synthetic Philosophy:

Existentialism and God Talk

An over-emphasis on analytic logic in philosophy often gives rise, as we

have seen, to a position that ignores all myth in the quest for a scientific system.
The extent to which philosophers allow mythical ways of thinking to play a
legitimate role in their philosophizing is likely to be directly proportional to the
extent to which they recognize some form of synthetic logic as the legitimate
complement of analytic logic. As I mentioned in Lecture 16, today's focus will be
on existentialism, a school of philosophy whose proponents tend to emphasize
synthetic logic more than analytic logic. This movement exercised a dominant
influence in so-called "Continental" (i.e., non-English European) philosophy,
especially during the first half of the twentieth century. Actually, much of the
fourth part of this course will deal with issues raised primarily by existentialist
philosophers in their attempts to apply philosophical thinking to improve our
understanding of concrete, human experiences. So today we can limit our
attention to an issue related more directly to logic-namely, the problem of how
religious language, and "God talk" in particular, gets its meaning. (Of course,
analytic philosophers have also devoted much attention to this issue; but we will
focus here on the way existentialists tend to deal with it.) This topic serves as an
appropriate contrast to linguistic analysis because language about God, far from
excluding myth, is regarded by some as the "language of myth".
 Religious language at its best, like myth, often uses synthetic logic to help
us cope with our ignorance of ultimate reality. In other words, it is essentially an
attempt to speak about the unspeakable. In most religions, this "unspeakable
reality" is referred to as "God"-hence the phrase "God talk". But many
philosophers prefer to use less presumptuous terms; a good example of such usage
is "Being". Long before existentialism came into its own as a distinct
philosophical movement, many philosophers and theologians adopted the
convention of distinguishing between humans (and all other things that exist in
our ordinary world), as "beings", and the ultimate reality that underlies all
existence, as "Being". John Macquarrie, a contemporary existentialist theologian
who was strongly influenced by Heidegger's existentialist philosophy, describes
this distinction in his book, Principles of Christian Theology (PCT 138):

... there could be no beings without the Being that lets them be; but Being is
present and manifest in the beings, and apart from the beings, Being would
become indistinguishable from nothing. Hence Being and the beings, though
neither can be assimilated to the other, cannot be separated from each other either.

This distinction between Being and beings serves as the primary starting-point for
many existentialists, though philosophers who are not so theologically-minded
often prefer to start from the even more basic distinction between Being (and/or
beings) and nothing.

The primary existentialist distinction (in whichever version we take it)

corresponds in its basic form to Kant's distinction between the realms of possible
knowledge and necessary ignorance. Although the two distinctions are not
identical, and so are often applied in vastly different ways, we can picture this
existential distinction by using the same, circular map in the now familiar way (cf.
Figures III.5 and VI.2). One advantage of using the same root word to refer to
both levels of reality is that

this suggests that-as anyone who

has ever had a religious
experience will testify-Being
reveals itself in beings. But this
raises a problem: given the
radical difference between
beings and Being, how can we
ever speak meaningfully about
this Being that manifests itself in
beings yet transcends them all?
This is the central problem of
reli-

Figure VI.2: The Primary Existential Distinction

gious language; and there have traditionally been two ways of solving it.

The first kind of solution can be called the "way of negation". Those who
take this approach insist that any words used to describe Being must be literally
true-i.e., true in the same way they would be if we applied the same words to
beings. The result is that this way of approaching language about God gives rise
either to extremely austere descriptions of ultimate reality, or to no description at
all. We have already come across several typical representatives of this approach.
The long passage quoted in Lecture 12 from Pseudo-Dionysius is one of the
earliest and best examples. As we saw, his propositions are limiting to the point of
being virtually empty if we interpret them solely in terms of analytic logic, though
they can point to deeper meanings if we interpret them in terms of synthetic logic.
Kant's theory of knowledge, outlined in Lecture 8, is also frequently interpreted as
implying a strict limitation of language to the realm of beings. And, of course,
Wittgenstein's Tractatus ends with an explicit recommendation that we remain
silent when it comes to the "mystical things" that "manifest themselves" to us,
beyond the "world of facts".
 The second approach to explaining how words can be used to construct
meaningful expressions concerning some ultimate "Being" has been called the
"way of affirmation". Interestingly, each of the above-mentioned philosophers
proposed, at some point, not only a negative "way", but also a complementary
affirmative "way"-evidence suggesting they all deserve to be called "good"
philosophers. Wittgenstein's Investigations can be regarded as his attempt to forge
an affirmative way. Kant's moral philosophy, to be examined in Lecture 22, was
purposefully constructed as an affirmative complement to the negative restrictions
established by his epistemology. And Pseudo-Dionysius himself was actually the
philosopher who first named these two "ways"; his elaboration of an affirmative
way is, in fact, surprisingly rich, given the extreme austerity of his negative
theology.

Philosophers and theologians who employ the way of affirmation often

develop such an approach by utilizing what is called the "analogy of being". This
analogy states, quite simply, that in certain cases "Being" is to "beings" as "being
x" is to "being y". Or we can express the same idea in the form of a mathematical
equation, as follows:

This analogy does not imply that every relationship between two beings is
somehow similar to the relationship between Being and all beings, but only that in
certain instances such a similarity comes to our minds as an appropriate way of
using words to explain our experience of Being. For example, Jesus experienced
the relation of Being to beings in a way that reminded him of the relation between
a father and a son, so he taught his followers to pray to their "heavenly father".
The analogy here is:
where "father" refers, of course, to the ideal of perfect fatherhood.

The analogy of being enables us to resolve an interesting paradox that arises

from the primary existential distinction between Being and beings. Paul Tillich
(1886-1971), a German existentialist who lived most of his life in the USA, has
argued that if we regard God as "being-itself" or the "ground of being"-i.e., if we
think of God as Being rather than as one of the "beings" existing around us-then it
is really not appropriate to say God "exists" at all! One of my teachers once said
such claims indicate that Tillich was really an atheist. Such an interpretation,
however, completely misses the point of Tillich's position. A better interpretation
suggests itself once we recognize that existentialists of all types are fond of
pointing out that the word "exist" originates from the Latin words ex ("out") and
sistere ("to stand"); so this means, as theologically-minded existentialists are
quick to add, that in order for a being to exist, it must stand out from the Being it
is rooted in.

We will look more closely at some of Tillich's ideas in Part Four of this
course; but for now it will suffice merely to point out that, when Tillich insists we
should not, strictly speaking, say "God exists", since God simply is the Being
from which existing beings stand out, he is adopting the "negative way". If we
look at the same problem from the more "affirmative" point of view of the
analogy of being, then we can say that God's mode of existence (or perhaps we
can say God's reality) is to our human mode of existence (or reality) as the
mountain-tops are to the valleys below, or as the sun is to the moon, or as any
other higher or primary power we know about is to its corresponding lower or
derivative power. Such comparisons do not give us knowledge of God, but they do
give us a way of using words to express our belief about how our experience of
God can best be described. In other words, the distinction between Being and
beings does not imply that God is not real, but that God's reality is of a
fundamentally different kind than that of any other beings we know about.
Whereas Tillich would say that, strictly speaking, it is not correct to say either
"God exists" or "God does not exist", I would add that, from the more flexible
point of view of synthetic logic, we are better off saying both of these
propositions are true and meaningful, each in its own way. For God is not merely
the greatest of all existing beings: we beings have existence; God is existence -or,
as Macquarrie puts it, God "lets-be" (PCT 141). This is surely the main point of
Tillich's claim that God does not literally "exist".

The analogy of being, like virtually any metaphorical use of language,

derives its meaning from synthetic logic. For whenever we use a known
relationship to describe an unknown relationship, we are drawing an equivalence
between two opposites in a way that analytic logic can never justify. If we try to
understand the proposition "God is my father" solely in terms of analytic logic,
we will be forced to conclude that the proposition is nonsensical. For a "father" is
a male individual who helps produce a child by having sexual relations with a
female individual. If God were merely a "great being", then this might be
possible; and some religious people who view God in this way do not find it
difficult to think of God as (for example) a wise old man who (in some
supernatural way) had sex with the Virgin Mary to produce the baby Jesus. But if
God transcends the limited realm of beings, then such a conception of God as a
father, interpreted with analytic rigidity, is absurd. Nevertheless, if we accept
synthetic logic as a legitimate tool for constructing meaningful propositions, then
we can recognize that the notion of the fatherhood of God is intended not as a
literal description of God, but as a way of shocking us into gaining deeper insight
with respect to our experience of God. Christians nowadays tend to forget what a
shock it must have been for the Jews who first heard Jesus exclaim "God is our
father!" Today some people try to shock traditional Christians in the same way by
exclaiming "God is our mother!" Such a suggestion is likely to offend those who
accept analytic logic alone: for how could God be both our father and our mother?
Yet synthetic logic shows how both claims could be true in their own way, each
fostering legitimate insights into the nature of Being.

Macquarrie (who was, by the way, my supervisor at Oxford) has provided a

helpful discussion of the meaningfulness of religious language in general and God
talk in particular in his book, Principles of Christian Theology. He argues that
God talk does not merely express some abstract analogy, but arises out of a
person's existential response to some kind of concrete experience of being-itself
(PCT 139). For example, if a person has an experience of feeling humbled and
struck down by reverent awe, as if in the presence of some greater or higher
power that is infinitely beyond any previously experienced power, then,
Macquarrie assures us, that person is expressing a meaningful proposition
whenever he or she refers to the mysterious source of this experience (i.e., God)
as "Most High", or as the "Highest Being". Even for people who no longer believe
God lives in a place that is literally "high up in the sky", this metaphor of
"highness" can appropriately express the response they have had (namely, a sense
of lowness) when in the presence of God.

Such God talk is often regarded not as referring merely to an individual's

private experience of Being, but as doctrine that ought to be affirmed by
everyone. This dogmatic use of religious language can also have a legitimate
meaning, provided the language reflects an existential response to a shared
experience of the disclosure of Being in a given religious community. In a passage
affirming Wittgenstein's later philosophy, Macquarrie reminds us that the meaning
of a doctrine or dogma is ultimately determined by its use in a religious
community (PCT 124-125). If the words used to express a dogma are no longer
relevant to the kind of existential response to Being experienced by the members
of a given religious community, then the dogma has lost its meaning, and ought to
be discarded or expressed in a fresh form. In other words, religious believers
should view their beliefs not as containing fixed, analytic meanings, equally
meaningful in all times and all places, but as expressions of flexible, synthetic
meaning, directly related to the ever-new and ever-changing realities of life.

Macquarrie also notes that God talk has its historical roots in the language
of myths (PCT 130-134). He describes the view of some existentialists, that myth
is a form of narrative attempting to answer a basically subjective question, "Who
am I?", in an objectified form. But he warns that myths also have a properly
objective aspect (134): "The myth talks indeed of our human existence, but it
talks of this existence in relation to Being, in so far as Being has disclosed itself."
In other words, the experience is an experience of something objective, even
though the knowledge it reveals is primarily about the situation of the person
having the experience. Although today we "live in a post-mythical age" (132),
understanding the nature of mythological language is important because of its
close relationship to religious language: both types of language depend heavily on
the use of symbols.
 In Part Four of this course, we will consider in some detail how certain
symbols function in such a way as to enable us to cope with our ignorance of
ultimate reality. So it will be helpful here to give a brief, preliminary account of
how symbols function in religious language. A symbol, according to Macquarrie,
is anything in the realm of beings that discloses and thereby points our attention
toward the realm of Being. He calls attention to the synthetic character of symbols
when he notes that they inevitably involve "paradox" (PCT 145): "Just because
symbols are symbols, that is to say, they both stand for what they symbolize and
yet fall short of it, they must be at once affirmed and denied." Macquarrie also
alludes on several occasions (e.g., 135-136) to the definition of symbols suggested
by Tillich. As we shall see in Lecture 31, Tillich defines a symbol as a sign that
participates in the reality to which it points. In other words, the symbol in once
sense is the reality itself (A), even though in another sense, as a merely empirical
object, it is not the reality (-A). Accordingly, some writers refer to the law of
contradiction as the law of "participation", governing situations where "A
participates in -A."

The difference between mythological language and religious language is

that a mythological understanding remains unaware of the symbolic nature of its
words, whereas a genuinely religious understanding recognizes a symbol as a
symbol. Macquarrie compares the former to the activity of dreaming and the latter
to the activity of interpreting a dream (PCT 134). He then goes on to discuss a
number of important characteristics of symbols. He observes, for instance, that
symbols normally operate only "within a more or less restricted group of people"
(136). As a result, there are probably "no private symbols", as well as no
"universal symbols", since the same object often has different symbolic meanings
in different cultures. Furthermore, Macquarrie claims that, "although Being is
present and therefore potentially manifest in every particular being, some
manifest it more fully than others" (143). That is, there is a "range of
participation in Being", from impersonal objects that tend to participate less, to
personal beings that participate more. The reason personal symbols are so
common in religious language, then, is that they have "the widest range of
participation in Being and so [are] best able to symbolize it." We know this is true
because personal beings "not only are, but let-be" (144). For human beings in
particular do not just exist, like the rocks; they also create. And this is one of the
primary characteristics of the religious conception of the role of being-itself.
 Before concluding this lecture, I should remind you that synthetic
philosophies, such as existentialism, are sometimes presented in a form that is just
as exclusive and one-sided as analytic philosophy typically is. In reality, both of
these schools of thought make use of both analytic and synthetic logic: just as
linguistic analysis has its logical positivists and its ordinary language
philosophers, so also existentialism has its proponents of the negative and the
affirmative "ways". Nevertheless, while analytic philosophers tend to over-
emphasize analytic logic, existentialists tend to over-emphasize synthetic logic.
The latter sometimes results in an approach that says, as it were, "Only the
subjective experience really matters; the philosophical tradition, to the extent that
it ignores this experience, can be discarded." But as I mentioned at the end of
Lecture 16, the tradition is the soil that feeds that very experience, and cannot be
discarded without rendering the experience itself inexplicable.

18. Hermeneutic Philosophy:

Insight and the Return to Myth

In ancient Greek mythology one character frequently appears who stands

out among the others as more symbolically significant than any other in helping
us understand the nature and purpose of logic. Hermes was the illegitimate son of
tryst between Zeus and Maia, the eldest of the so-called "Pleiades" (the seven
daughters of Atlas and Pleione). Maia gave birth to him while hiding in a cave;
but after growing almost immediately to the size of a small child, he snuck away
at night, stole fifty of Apollo's cattle, and hid them in another cave. To confuse
any pursuers, he covered their hoofs with shoes carved so that the tracks appeared
to be going in the opposite direction. In the cave he invented fire, then cut two
cows into twelve pieces, sacrificing each to one of the gods. Using a tortoise shell
and skin from the two cows, he made the first lyre. When Apollo finally found the
hiding-place, he was so enthralled by the sound of Hermes' lute that he gave him
the entire herd in exchange for the instrument, and the two became best friends.
To soothe himself with music while tending his cattle, Hermes made the first
shepherd's pipe and began to learn the forbidden art of divination. Zeus eventually
became so impressed with Hermes' divination skills that he appointed him
messenger of the immortal gods-one of his chief duties being to give dreams to
mortals.

Unlike most Greek gods, who were regarded as governing only one or two
aspects of life, Hermes was associated with a wide variety of attributes. Because
of his initial act, he became the god of thieves and the trickster god, with cunning
being one of his chief characteristics. But he was also honored as the god of
musicians, shepherds, traders, and craftsmen, as well as the god of love-making
and magic (especially spells to be used in attracting one's beloved). Of all his
traits, the ones that defined his role among the gods more than any other was his
job as the messenger. (Interestingly, the Greek term for "angel" also literally
means "messenger of God".) As one of the few gods who was allowed to travel
freely between the human and divine realms, Hermes can be regarded as the god
of boundaries-a title whose suitability is evident in Figure VI.3.

The third major school of philosophy in the twentieth century draws its
name, with good reason, from this mythical character. Just as

Hermes' job was to reveal hidden messages

from the gods to humans, so also
hermeneutic philosophy seeks to understand
the most basic issue in a general study of
logic or the philosophy of language: how
understanding itself takes place whenever we
interpret spoken or written messages. As
such, we can regard Hermes as a symbolic
representation of the philosopher, whose pri‐
mary task (once we recognize that, as human
beings, we are ignorant of ultimate reality) is
to interpret the meaning of words.

Figure VI.3: Hermes as

 Messenger of the Gods

Hermeneutic philosophy has deep roots in western culture. Indeed, Aristotle

himself wrote a book entitled Peri Hermeneias (On Interpretation), though it
deals more with basic questions of logic than with the issues we now associate
with hermeneutics. For Augustine, Aquinas, and the Scholastics, hermeneutics
was a significant issue primarily (if not solely) as it related to how the Bible ought
to be interpreted. The first work that attempted to lay out objectively applicable
principles of interpretation as such was Introduction to the Correct Interpretation
of Reasonable Discourses and Books (1742), by Johann Chladenius (1710-1759).
Defining hermeneutics as the art of attaining a complete understanding of
utterances (whether spoken or written), he proposed three basic principles that
must always be followed: (1) the reader must grasp the author's style or "genre";
(2) the unchangeable rules of Aristotelian logic should be used to grasp the
meaning of each sentence; and (3) the author's "perspective" or "point of view"
must be kept in mind, especially when comparing different accounts of the same
event or idea.

During the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, hermeneutics

gradually developed into a standard area of academic study, especially for
theologians, because of its significance for assisting in biblical interpretation.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) taught hermeneutics as a specific
university subject, introducing many new insights and distinctions that are still
considered important today. One of his most influential theories is that our ability
to understand a text is restricted by the "hermeneutic circle". This refers to the
reciprocal relationship that holds between the parts of a text (e.g., the meaning of
each word, phrase, etc., considered in light of the original language and its
grammar) and the entire text considered as a meaningful whole (often requiring,
e.g., an understanding of the author's cultural and psychological background). The
paradox is that we must understand the parts in order to grasp the whole; yet we
cannot hope to understand the parts without understanding the whole. In practice,
this means the interpreter's task is never finished: the more we understand the
parts, the more accurate will be our idea of

the whole, and vice versa. I think this never-

ending "circle" is even more appropriately
regarded as a spiral, with our understanding
of the text growing ever wider and wider,
with each parts-whole revolution. As
suggested by Figure VI.4, this gives us one
way of understanding how hermeneutics
combines synthesis and analysis: synthesis is
the process of combining the parts to make a
whole; analysis is the reciprocal process of
dividing the whole into its parts.

Many scholars with varying de- Figure VI.4: The Hermeneutic

Spiral

grees of interest in philosophy, such as William Dilthey (1833-1911), contributed

further insights to our understanding of hermeneutics; but our main focus this
week is on the twentieth century. Such a focus is actually quite appropriate,
because hermeneutic philosophy only really came into its own as a way of doing
philosophy (as opposed to a set of principles for biblical interpretation) through
the work of one of the century's most distinguished philosophers. Let us therefore
discuss his ideas in more detail, with a view toward gaining a further
understanding of how they constitute a synthesis of analytic philosophy and
existentialism, thereby representing what may well be the closest thing to "good"
philosophy in the twentieth century.

Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-) was formatively influenced by the

philosophies of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).
Husserl developed a philosophical method called "phenomenology", involving a
process called "transcendental epoche", whereby the philosopher attempts to
reduce phenomena to their most essential characteristics by "bracketing out"
anything that is nonessential. Focusing on speech acts, Husserl tried to explain
how words point beyond themselves to an objective reality. Heidegger, a student
of Husserl's, used his teacher's ideas as a springboard for a new philosophy that
regarded hermeneutics as the core philosophical task. In his highly influential
book, Being and Time (1927), Heidegger argued that "Dasein" (a term meaning
"being-there", but used as the name for the essential core of human nature) has
"ontological priority" over all other beings, because humanity has an in-built
"openness" toward (or "pre-understanding" of) Being. The problem, Heidegger
pointed out, is that through a process of "closure", we "forget" our intimate
connection with Being. And as long as Being remains hidden from our view, we
are "alienated" from our deepest roots. Such closure happens because most of our
speech (i.e., word usage) stems from an "inauthentic" relation to Being. The
philosopher's task, then, is to overcome this problem through a process of "self-
realization" that requires us to recognize, first and foremost, how we are limited
by our temporal nature. Unfortunately, Heidegger never wrote the second volume
of this book, wherein he had claimed he was going to interpret Being as such.

Gadamer, a student of Heidegger's, was a late bloomer. Like Kant, he was

near the age of retirement when he wrote his magnum opus., Truth and Method
(1960). This book, sometimes called the "Bible" of modern German hermeneutic
philosophy, assesses the historical contrast between the Enlightenment and
Romantic periods in philosophy. The former philosophers held the naive view that
reason can solve all human problems, provided we learn to discard all
presuppositions and view the world from the objective standpoint of universal
truth. The latter rejected this "prejudice against prejudice" (TM 240), replacing it
with a prejudice for tradition, and along with it, a new respect for myth. Thus the
Romantics viewed the world from the subjective standpoint of individual truth.
Gadamer argued that by simply saying "no" to the opposing standpoint, this
movement committed the same basic mistake as the Enlightenment: philosophers
in both traditions tended to remain unaware of their prejudices. Hermeneutic
philosophy goes beyond both movements by claiming that having some prejudices
is inevitable. A pre-judgment is bad, Gadamer claims, only when it results from
an over-hasty look at the evidence. A prejudice based on trust in a legitimate
authority is not only not bad, but is a necessary step in gaining any genuine
knowledge. The key is to recognize that "authority" comes not from a person's
position, but from a person's knowledge. People obey others willingly not when
through political force, but through a free recognition that the person knows what
he or she is talking about. Gadamer agrees that the tradition is the most frequently
reliable source of such authority; but when it conveys genuine knowledge, we
should be able to support it with reason as well. Again like Kant, he warns that
reason (i.e., logic) alone cannot always be trusted to lead us to the truth.
 The paradox of the Romantic period is that, while it awakened humanity's
historical consciousness, it failed to recognize that our finitude, as beings in time,
limits our ability to understand our own history accurately. This at the core of the
"hermeneutic problem" (TM 245): "history does not belong to us, but we belong
to it." Because the interpreter is in history, the process of interpreting any text's
meaning is a never-ending task. Understanding requires us first to overcome the
"strangeness" of the text or object under consideration, and we do this by
transforming it into something more familiar, something we already understand.
This is why prejudice is an inevitable part of the process of understanding, and
why becoming aware of our prejudices is so important to the task of interpreting
texts-or any aspect of our experience, for that matter. An awareness that the
interpreter exists within the same historical continuum as whatever is being
interpreted is what Gadamer called the "principle of effective history" (267).

One of Gadamer's central arguments in Truth and Method was that the
scientist's "naive faith in scientific method" (268) "leads one to deny one's own
historicality." Actually, any attempt to gain truth must be based on some method;
and whatever method we choose is paradoxically bound to limit our view of what
is true. This is because, as I have stressed at various points throughout this course,
we can recognize something as true only when we view it from some perspective.
(I shall examine this theme in more detail in Lecture 24.) But the scientific
method is particularly dangerous in this regard, because its most vocal proponents
tend to treat it as the one and only method of attaining truth; yet by remaining
ignorant of their own prejudices (or "myths", as we called them in Part One), such
claims end up hiding as much truth as they reveal-if not more. By contrast, a
philosophical appreciation for the principle of effective history gives us a
"consciousness of the hermeneutical situation" (268).

A "situation", according to Gadamer (TM 269), is "a standpoint that limits

the possibility of vision." The limits of our situation is called our "horizon"-a term
Gadamer borrowed from Heidegger. The importance of becoming aware of our
own personal horizon is that it gives us a sense of perspective regarding
everything we can see from our particular standpoint. Without such an awareness,
a person tends to care only about what happens to be nearest at the moment.
Hermeneutic philosophy solves this problem by providing a sense of historical
consciousness-"the horizon of the past" (271)-that enables us to broaden our
horizon until it includes within it the situation of the other person (the one whose
words we are interpreting). This fusion of horizons happens whenever we
interpret another person's words.

In what sense can we say that hermeneutic philosophy, as expressed in its

most complete and systematic form by Gadamer, actually synthesizes the earlier
movements of linguistic analysis and existentialism? One of many ways of
defending such a claim would be to consider how each movement tends to view
the task of doing philosophy. Whereas linguistic philosophers see themselves as
(ideally) scientific analyzers of objective language forms, existentialists see
themselves as prophets calling humanity to a new appreciation of the meaning (or
meaninglessness) of human experience. By regarding philosophy as essentially a
conversation to be interpreted, Gadamer combines both the analytic bias of
Wittgenstein and the synthetic bias of Heidegger (as interpreted by avowed
existentialists such as Macquarrie): philosophy is and must be both an attempt to
analyze and understand linguistic forms of expression and an attempt to
synthesize and experience the meaningful push and pull of such forms as they
evolve in historically-mediated communities. Indeed, the key lesson hermeneutic
philosophy teaches us as we enter the twenty-first century is essentially the same
as the lesson we learned in Lecture 10 when we discussed the problem of self-
reference: that truth can be "grasped" only to the extent we are willing to
recognize and acknowledge our myths.

One way of emphasizing the importance of making room for our own
prejudices is to distinguish between "exegesis" (reading the meaning out of a text)
and "eisegesis" (reading your own meaning into a text). Most scholars nowadays
still regard the former as the only valid approach to interpretation. But Gadamer's
philosophy demonstrates that analytically picking apart the meaning of a text
(exegesis) and synthetically adding our own insight to the text's possible
meanings (eisegesis) are both necessary aspects of the hermeneutic process. A
rare example of a scholar who did not share the bias against eisegesis is Kant,
who argued that all biblical interpretation that takes place in the context of a
religion ought to be given a moral interpretation, even if that is not part of the
text's literal meaning-provided it does not contradict that meaning. We shall talk
more about Kant's view of religion in Week XI. The point here is that, without
some measure of eisegesis, our understanding will be void of insight and so also,
void of any deep meaning. Before concluding today's lecture, let us therefore
explore in more detail the nature of insight in relation to the distinction between
analytic and synthetic logic.

As we conclude this second stage in our exploration of the tree of

philosophy, I want to be sure the trunk of the tree, logic, has given you some new
insights about how we understand words. In particular, I hope you now see how
important it is to recognize the complementary relationship between analysis and
synthesis in all their forms. Recall the comparison made in Lecture 12 between
this distinction and the sight-insight distinction: whereas analytic logic often
provides the best way to describe the surface of what we see and experience,
synthetic logic takes us beneath the surface, into the depths of new ideas. But new
ideas cannot stand on their own. If we have an insight and then just leave it alone,
it will produce no fruit. The synthetic discovery of a new insight must therefore
always be followed by an analytic criticism; and the latter can

be done properly only by someone who is

thoroughly immersed in the tradition. With a
few slight alterations to Figure IV.6, we can
picture this way of describing the
complementary relationship between analysis
and synthesis, sight and insight, criticism and
discovery, as shown in Figure VI.5.

Keeping this map in mind during the

third part of this course may prove to be quite
helpful in guiding our reflections concerning
the nature of wisdom. In preparation for our
next session, when we shall discuss the
question "What is wisdom?", I would like each
of you to Figure VI.5: Analysis and
Synthesis as Complementary
Functions
read the short story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Although the
word "wisdom" never appears in that story, I want you to search as you read it for
any clues it might hold as to the nature of wisdom. Bach is not a philosopher, so
his books are not ordinarily assigned as required reading for philosophy classes;
but he is a man who writes with insight, and whose writing can often fire the
embers of insight in his readers. My hope, therefore, is that discussing his popular
story of a bird who searches for wisdom will provide us with insights that can
serve as an appropriate introduction to Part Three.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Why do mathematical and natural truths so often correspond?

B. Is the meaning of a word or proposition any different from its use?

2. A. What function, if any, does synthesis have in linguistic analysis?

B. Could there ever be a language that was entirely analytic?

3. A. Why is there something rather than nothing at all?

B. Is there a middle way between the ways of negation and affirmation?

4. A. Could we ever say anything literally true about God?

B. Is exegesis or eisegesis more important for good interpretation?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus2, tr. D.F. Pears and B.F.

McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974[1961]), §§1, 6.1-3, and 7.

2. Alfred Jules Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic2, Ch. One, "The Elimination of
Metaphysics" (LTL 33-45).

3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations2, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968[1953]), §§1-25.

4. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1997[1912]), Ch.15, "The Value of Philosophy", pp.153-161.

5. John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, Chapter 6, "The Language

of Theology", (PCT 123-148).

6. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1951), especially Part II, "Being and God", pp.163-289.

7. "Hermes" (http://web.uvic.ca/grs/bowman/myth/gods/hermes_t.html),
maintained by Laurel Bowman.

8. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method2, Second Part, §II.1, "The Elevation
of the Historicality of Understanding to the Status of Hermeneutical Principle"
(TM 235-274).
D1
19. What is Wisdom?

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

For the benefit of those of you who have not yet had the opportunity to read
the book I mentioned at the end of the last lecture, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I
will begin today by giving you a brief summary of its contents. After that, I'd like
to hear how those of you who have read the story would answer the following
three questions:

(1) What does flying represent in this story?

(2) What does the story tell us about the pursuit of wisdom?

(3) Where does Jonathan go in Part Two?

Finally, I will end today's lecture by explaining how some of the lessons contained
in this story are related to the various issues we will be examining during this
third part of the course.

This little book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is a story about a rather

unusual bird-a seagull, as the title indicates. At the beginning this bird, named
Jonathan, is experimenting with different ways of flying. Whereas his fellow birds
all use their flying skill only to fulfill their main interest in life, eating, Jonathan
sees flying as a skill that ought to be pursued for its own sake. However, as he is
trying out a new method for high-speed flying, he offends the leaders of his flock,
who respond by banishing him to the "far cliffs". After living a long, lonely life,
two mysterious birds come and take him to another place. In Part Two Jonathan
learns about a new kind of flying that focuses not on wings and feathers, but on
thought and imagination. He is excelling faster than all the other birds in this new
world, when suddenly he decides he must return to his old world. So he goes back
to the far cliffs. The third and final part of the story then tells how he gathers
some outcast birds and begins teaching them how to fly and how to understand
flying. Once they have learned some basic skills, his students return with Jonathan
to the old flock, where they had been declared outcast. They hold their practice
sessions right there on the beach, and eventually some of the birds from the flock
show interest in learning how to fly. When they begin learning for themselves,
Jonathan leaves them to continue on their own.

Now, let's begin with the first question. Who has an idea as to what flying
might represent in this story? By the way, don't say "the search for wisdom",
because that's too obvious. I've already told you I want us to view the whole story
as giving us insight into the search for wisdom, so now I'd like you to be more
specific. Then, in our discussion of the second question, we can try to apply what
we learn from the symbolism of flying to the issue of the nature of loving
wisdom. So who would like to be first?

Student N. "Freedom."

Yes, I suppose that's a good place to start. Without even reading the story
we could be fairly confident that this is part of the intended symbolism, since it's
quite common to associate a bird in flight with freedom. This is probably part of
the reason the author chose to write a story about a bird, rather than, say, a fish or
a dog. The story itself confirms this by telling how Jonathan saw himself as free
from the things that trapped the other gulls into an unhappy and meaningless life,
such as the desires for food, acceptance by others, and political power. As he
learned to fly, he also learned to free himself, more and more, from such
entrapments; and in so doing he learned how to live a truly meaningful life. In
Part Two he even learned to free himself from his life-long tendency to view
literal flying (i.e., flying with his physical body) as the ultimate purpose of his
life.

But "freedom" is almost as difficult a word to understand as "wisdom". So

did anyone find in this story any clues that can help us understand what freedom
is? What did Jonathan have to do in order to gain insight into the nature of
freedom?

Student O. "To me, Jonathan seemed to be on a quest for the unknown.

And this always required him to be breaking through the limits that he or the other
birds had previously set."

Very good. I agree that the element of the unknown plays an important role
throughout the whole story. Jonathan was willing to pursue his goal even though
he never seemed to know what was around the next corner-at least, not until he
returned to the flock in Part Three. As you suggest, his quest for "perfect speed"
was really a quest for the unattainable. As a result he was, paradoxically, able to
reach his goal only when he was willing to give up all his conventional ideas
about how it could be reached, especially his assumption that it would be reached
by means of the "flight of wing and feather". Likewise, I think you've chosen
exactly the right words when you say he was always "breaking through the limits
...". In fact, one of the reasons why the flight of a bird symbolizes freedom is that
birds seem to have found the secret of breaking through the chains of the law of
gravity, which binds us human beings so firmly to the earth. Moreover, the story
itself suggests that breaking through old boundaries is one of the fundamental
keys to self-discovery. Did you notice that in Part One Jonathan actually referred
to one of his major discoveries about flying as "the breakthrough"? Then, in Part
Two, his discovery of the "flight" of the imagination was a breakthrough not only
in his level of skill, but also in his understanding. And his return to the flock in
Part Three represented yet another kind of breakthrough, which also has to do
with the symbolism of flying as it is presented in the story.

Did anyone happen to notice how Jonathan's final breakthrough gives us

another way of explaining the symbolism of flying?
 Student P. "His return to the flock at the end seemed like a really sacrificial
act. After all, he could have continued learning so much more if he had stayed
where he was! Could flying represent this kind of self-sacrifice?"

Indeed it could. Remember, Jonathan had to sacrifice a lot at the beginning

of the story just in order to begin his quest for perfect speed. In fact, precisely this
idea is expressed in one of my favorite passages in the whole book, though it is
put in different words than those you have used. Just after Jonathan made his
initial breakthrough in Part Two, his teacher, Chiang, told him he would soon be
ready to begin working on the breakthrough that is "the most difficult, the most
powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the
meaning of kindness and love" (JLS 83). Likewise, Chiang's last words to
Jonathan were "keep on working on love" (84). Jonathan showed he had begun to
learn this lesson when he himself became a teacher, at first as Chiang's
replacement, and then, in Part Three, to the gulls back on the far cliffs. But he
only fully demonstrated how well he had learned to "fly up" when he actually
returned to the old flock that had once cast him out.

What other lessons can we learn from the symbol of flying? In a philosophy
class, an obvious answer, suggested by some of my past students, is that flying for
a bird corresponds to thinking, or perhaps self-understanding, for a philosopher.
Or another possibility is that the whole story is about the learning process in
general, the passage from ignorance to knowledge, which, of course, is also one
of the main themes we have been developing in this course. Do any of you have
anything to add to these ideas, before we go on to the second question?

Student Q. "I think flying represents perfection, since the story mentions
'perfect speed' several times. Even though we cannot fly, we can strive to be
perfect in the things we are able to do."

Maybe so, but I think we have to be careful not to misunderstand what this
kind of "perfection" is all about. I don't think it merely refers to being right or
good all of the time, otherwise Jonathan would have had to follow the "Law of the
Flock", even though it sometimes went against the "true law", of "freedom" (JLS
114). In any case, perfection is a very high ideal to set for oneself. Do you think
Jonathan's quest for perfection did him any good? What can we learn from his
experiences?

Student Q. "Well, without that goal, I don't think Jonathan's life would
have been very meaningful. I think flying is what gave Jonathan's life its
meaning."

So flying represents not just the quest for perfection, but the quest for a
kind of perfection that can bestow real meaning on our otherwise mundane life.
Yes, I think this is one of the key points of the whole book. Not everything can
function in this way, and this means we must be very careful in choosing what we
make the object of our life's quest. Jonathan himself, as I've already said, changed
the way he viewed flying several times during the story, coming closer and closer
with each change to achieving the ultimate goal of participation in a meaningful
reality.

We have actually already begun to answer the second question, concerning

the specific lessons this story can teach us about the pursuit of wisdom. All the
points mentioned so far have implications for this second question; they should be
clear enough without going over them again. So instead of just repeating what
we've already said, let's see if we can draw from the story any further insights
about the nature of wisdom. If we regard the whole story as a story about one
individual's pursuit of wisdom, then what can we learn?

Student R. "Those who are really serious about pursuing wisdom are likely
to live a hard and lonely life."

Judging from Jonathan's experience, this certainly seems to be true.

Moreover, they are also likely to be misunderstood by others. Jonathan was
misunderstood not only in the first part, by the members of his flock, but also by
his friend Sullivan in Part Two, and by some of his students in Part Three. But we
should keep in mind that the difficulties caused by such hardships are, in a sense,
"easy" to cope with for those who have set their eyes on a goal as high as the
pursuit of wisdom. (This is similar, by the way, to Jesus' claim-despite the many
so-called "hard sayings" he used to describe those who set their eyes on the
"kingdom of God"-that anyone who follows this heavenly kingdom will discover
that "My yoke is easy, and my load is light" [Matt. 11:30]!) Jonathan was such a
fast learner precisely because he did not let such apparent burdens weigh him
down for any extended period of time. In the same way, although the life of a
person who pursues wisdom appears to be lonely by our ordinary standards, the
story itself says Jonathan "lived a long fine life" on the far cliffs; and the reason,
no doubt, is that his hardships had purged him of "boredom and fear and anger",
these being "the reasons that a gull's life is so short" (JLS 41). If the story is true
to real life, then the apparent hardships, failures, and suffering are well worth the
price: without them, a breakthrough would be impossible.

Student S. "Jonathan's quest seemed to be continuous, if not unending; he

needed a lot of will power to stick to the task. I suppose the same is true for the
pursuit of wisdom."

Yes indeed. But what is it that gives us the power to stick to such an endless
task? What keeps us from losing hope and simply giving up in despair? Does the
story give us any clues?

Student S. "I believe Jonathan was able to continue pursuing his goal only
because he was able to see a dimension that goes beyond time and space."

This is a very important point. But actually, it takes us directly to the third
question; so before I comment on your answer, does anyone have any ideas about
where this strange place was that Jonathan was transported to in Part Two?
 Student T. "Doesn't the story say he went to heaven? I got the impression
that Jonathan was supposed to have died at the end of Part One, and the two gulls
were like angels taking him up to heaven."

I'm not surprised the story gave you this impression. Indeed, it would
certainly be one possible interpretation, especially since Jonathan himself actually
interpreted the new place in this way at the very beginning of Part Two, when he
thought to himself "So this is heaven ..." (JLS 57). Nevertheless, a little bit later
(64), after realizing he had not yet reached his final goal, Jonathan asked Chiang
"this world isn't heaven at all, is it?" and Chiang answered "there is no such place.
Heaven is not a place and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect." Unfortunately,
when Chiang was just about to explain in more detail what heaven really is,
Jonathan interrupted him (79)-but not before Chiang had the chance to tell
Jonathan that perfection is intimately interconnected with love.

If the place Jonathan went in Part Two was not heaven, since the story
portrays heaven more as a state of being, then where was that place? Or, in other
words, what could that place symbolize for us?

Student U. "How about the 'self' or 'mind'?"

This is one good way of looking at it, though I would prefer to say he went
into his imagination. For he was able to do things in that place that we can do
only in our imaginations. One of the main points of Part Two, in fact, seems to be
that the imagination is just as real as the parts of our mind that give us knowledge
of the external world. In any case, however we wish to interpret that place, it was
certainly a place where the dimension beyond space and time was more readily at
hand than it is for us most of the time. Thus, if we say that in Part One Jonathan
found a treasure chest within himself, but it remained locked, then Part Two
would be the place where he found the key, in the imagination, or if you prefer, in
the ideas found in his own mind. And in Part Three he unlocked the treasure, for
the benefit of those who had once cast him out.
 Using a bit of eisegesis, we can also compare the place Jonathan went in
Part Two to a philosophy class. Part One is like the life each of you have lived up
until now in the real world, where you have learned a great deal about how to
live. But in Part Two Jonathan learned about learning; this "second order"
activity is one way of describing the task of philosophy. This interpretation
implies that the purpose of studying philosophy is not to become a professional
philosopher who writes boring, technical papers no one can understand, in order
to publish them in scholarly journals that no one reads; rather, the purpose is to
prepare you to return to the place you were before (or at least to its horizon), but
with a newfound sense of your connection with a higher reality, a reality capable
of empowering you to pursue the study of wisdom to the very end of your life,
regardless of your profession. Along similar lines, if we think of the three parts of
the story as corresponding to three types of skill, arising out of the physical,
mental, and spiritual aspects of human nature (cf. Figure II.8), then we can use
Figure VII.1 as a map of the developmental process illustrated in the story of
Jonathan's life.

Figure VII.1: The Three Stages in Jonathan's Life

 Looking back over what we have discussed today, we can discern three
important lessons about wisdom that should be kept in mind throughout this third
part of our course. First, wisdom requires us to recognize that there is a boundary
between our knowledge and our ignorance. This much we should have already
learned from our study of metaphysics in Part One. Second, wisdom requires us to
believe it is possible, despite our necessary ignorance, to find a way to break
through this very boundary line. Our study of synthetic logic in Part Two should
have taught us this lesson as well. Finally, then, the new lesson is that we

only really begin to understand what

wisdom is when we recognize that, even
after we succeed in breaking through our
former limits, we must return to our
original home. However, there is a
crucial difference between our original
state and our state when we return: for
we now have some awareness (even if
we cannot call it "knowledge") of both
sides of the boundary. A good way to
picture this would be to say that when
we return home, we still live, as it were,
on the boundary (or "horizon"), as
pictured in Figure VII.2.

Figure VII.2: Wisdom As Returning to

the Boundary

Let's look briefly at two other stories that powerfully illustrate the
importance of returning to the boundary of our former world to share the insights
we gained by breaking through the boundary. The first is a part of Plato's story of
the cave (see Figure II.7) that I did not mention in Lecture 5. Those who manage
to find their way all the way out into the sunlight and are able to see the world as
it is, having learned the philosophical skill of seeing things according to their
form, are so impressed by the sun's power that they are impelled to return to the
cave in hopes of freeing those who are still prisoners in the world of shadows. So
Plato's story actually follows the same form shown in Figure VII.2. The second
one, adapted from a story by G.K. Chesterton (see CO), is quite different from
both Plato's and Jonathan's, but has a similar moral.

Once there was a boy who grew up in a small village, secluded in the hills
of a far-away land. Throughout his childhood, he frequently heard the older
villagers telling stories about a Great Mountain that was shaped in the image of a
person's face. He was so filled with wonder at the tales he heard that he left home
at an unusually early age to search for the famed mountain. Yet, after many years
of tiresome wandering throughout his entire country, he never caught so much as
a glimpse of the image he sought. Disappointed at what he now regarded as the
deceptions of his youth, he finally decided to return home. As he approached his
village, however, he was shocked to discover that the mountain rising up behind it
was shaped in the distinct form of a person's face! Throughout his entire youth he
had never traveled far enough from home to see "the whole picture", and once he
left, he had never turned back to look. Now, of course, his travels had changed
him so much that he would never be able to fit into the life of the village the way
he used to: he would always remain, we might say, "on the boundary".

With this new insight in mind, let us now recall that Parts One and Two of
this course have dealt primarily with the two most important areas of theoretical
philosophy. In Parts Three and Four we will be turning our attention to the two
most important areas of practical philosophy. The first can be called "applied
philosophy", since it requires us to apply what we have learned about logic to
various kinds of human endeavor. But it can also be called science, since the aim
in each case is to establish some kind of knowledge. For the remainder of Part
Three we will be examining three of the major branches of the tree of philosophy:
the philosophies of natural science, moral science, and political science. In each
case our goal will be to discover the boundary conditions that can be transcended
(e.g., by means of synthetic logic), yet constitute the proper home of any
philosopher who wishes to reflect upon these disciplines. In so doing, we will
actually say very little about wisdom as such. However, the underlying
assumption throughout our examination of each of these topics will be that in
locating the proper position for the boundary lines, we will in fact be carrying out
one of the most important tasks in the quest for wisdom.
20. Science and the Anatomy of Wisdom

One of the most important lessons we learned from our discussion in the
previous session was that philosophy, like learning to fly, is primarily a skill. I
want to begin this lecture by emphasizing the same point, especially since the first
eighteen lectures dealt mainly with the theoretical aspects of the tree of
philosophy. If your study of philosophy so far has given you the impression that
philosophy is more a set of theories or doctrines than an activity, then please
forget that impression right now! Philosophy is first and foremost something
people do. And learning to do philosophy is in many ways similar to learning to
play football or speak a language. There are always certain theories and methods
that have to be learned along the way; but in the end you'll never become a good
football player without repeating hours of drills out on the field, and you'll never
become fluent in a language without finding someone who speaks that language
and conversing with them.

The examples of games and languages suggest that two indispensable steps
to learning a skill are practice and imitation; and the same applies to the skill of
doing philosophy. This is why I have encouraged everyone who takes this course
to set aside a regular time for reflecting on philosophical issues raised in the
lectures or listed in the "Questions" section at the end of each week, and then to
write insight papers in response. The insight papers are your chance to practice
doing philosophy. But, unless you have a natural talent for philosophizing, mere
practice is not enough to bring success. You also need someone to imitate. With
this in mind, I hope that as you are attending (or reading) these lectures, you are
paying more attention to the way I do philosophy than to memorizing "facts"
about various philosophers. But, just as there are many different strategies for
playing good football and many different ideas about how best to learn a
language, so also, as we have already seen, there are many different conceptions
of the best way of doing philosophy. This is why it is important for you to read the
original writings of other philosophers as well (such as those suggested in the
"Recommended Readings" sections at the end of each week). When reading these
texts, you should not think of yourself as merely learning the content of
philosophical ideas, but also as learning to imitate how that philosopher does
philosophy. Eventually, you should be able to do philosophy as you read, by
actively employing appropriate methods in dialogue with the text you are reading.

Philosophy is a skill, but it is not just any skill. Indeed, it would be easy to
take the comparison between philosophy and other skills too far. For philosophy
can actually be regarded as the ultimate skill, or the skill of skills. In other words,
philosophy at its best, as the skill of having ideas and discovering the truth in
them, provides the foundation for all other skills. This is the reason virtually every
academic discipline has a "philosophy of ..." attached to it. In addition to the
branches of the tree of philosophy to be considered here in Part Three-philosophy
of science, philosophy of morals, and philosophy of politics-we could study the
philosophy of religion, the philosophy of physics (and of other specific sciences),
the philosophy of art (and of specific forms of art), the philosophy of education-
the list goes on and on. That the skill of philosophizing is the foundation of all
these skills is reflected in our educational establishment by the fact that a person
who masters a certain academic discipline is usually given a degree entitled
"doctor of philosophy". Although most doctoral degrees do not actually require
students to study any philosophy as such, the name of the degree does suggest that
graduates have mastered the foundation of the discipline-and so ought, in
principle at least, to be able to philosophize about it. However, even skills not
normally associated with university education can have a "philosophy of ...", such
as the philosophy of playing chess, the philosophy of cooking, the philosophy of
hunting, etc. And then, of course there is the philosophy of life, not to mention the
philosophy of death. Both of these topics, to be examined in Week XII, refer
primarily to skills: namely, learning how to live, or learning how to die.

How does this view of philosophy as the ideal skill relate to the
fundamental myth of this course? In other words, if philosophy is like a tree, then
what should we call the skill of doing philosophy? And how should we picture the
philosopher? Philosophers work with philosophy in much the same way
gardeners work with the plants in a garden: just as gardeners do not create or
even construct plants, but nurture something that is already given (e.g., in the
form of a seed), so also philosophers do not (or at least should not) see their task
as inventing arguments out of nothing or as building systems up in some
mechanical fashion, but as nurturing a reality that is already given (e.g., in the
form of an idea). With this in mind, let's take a closer look at this course's basic
myth.

The tree of philosophy as I am presenting it in this course is quite different

from the one described by Descartes (see Figure III.1). In fact, the only thing
these two analogies have in common is that both associate metaphysics with the
roots of the tree (cf. Figure VII.3). Just as the roots of a tree are almost entirely
hidden under the soil, so also the subject-matter of metaphysics is hidden almost
entirely from the inquisitive gaze of our cognitive minds. Hence, the fundamental
lesson we learned from studying metaphysics was that, just as a gardener who
continually uproots a tree to see how its roots are growing would soon kill the
tree, so also philosophers who refuse to recognize the necessity of our ignorance
of ultimate reality and who instead claim to have reached a definite knowledge of
ultimate reality (or of its non-existence), will soon inadvertently kill the very
organism they are responsible for nurturing.

The trunk and branches, as we have seen, are for us not physics and the
other sciences, but logic and science (where "science" is taken in its original
meaning to refer to any justifiable "knowledge", not just to those types of
knowledge patterned on the methods of the physical sciences). Just as all the
branches of a tree grow out of the trunk, all our knowledge (i.e., sciens) is
expressible in words (i.e., logoi). We could add that the bark of the tree is like
analytic logic, showing us the protective surface of our ways of thinking, whereas
the core of the tree is like
Figure VII.3: The Tree of Philosophy

synthetic logic, taking us to the very heart and life of thought itself.
 Although Descartes did not carry his analogy of the tree beyond the
branches, we will see in Part Four that the leaves of a tree can be compared to the
area of philosophical inquiry usually known as ontology (the "study of being").
Just as the leaves of most types of trees fall off each year and grow anew in the
spring in a continuous cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth, so also the
phenomena we will study in Part Four are often fleeting and temporary. Yet, even
as a tree's leaves give it its distinctive character, so also the distinctive character of
human beings is determined by such experiences as beauty, love, religious
experience, and death. Moreover, just as dead leaves fall to the ground and then
decompose, in order to constitute the soil that nourishes the roots of the tree, so
also the accumulation of generations of human experiences has constituted a
tradition that cannot be neglected without peril, since it forms the very ground in
which the tree of philosophy grows.

Now let's take this myth of the tree of philosophy one step further, by
assuming we are nurturing a tree that bears fruit. If so, what is the nature of this
fruit? I suggest we view it as the starting point of the various sciences. History
tells us that most of the disciplines we now regard as sciences were at one time
regarded as branches of philosophy. Mathematics, for example, can be traced back
to the ancient Greek philosopher named Pythagoras (whose "Pythagorean
theorem" you probably learned in school). Sciences as diverse as physics, biology,
psychology, and politics all have their origin in Aristotle's philosophical
empiricism. Even chemistry developed out of a quasi-philosophical discipline,
named Alchemy, in which people who called themselves "philosophers" tried to
find ways of converting various common materials into gold. (Alchemists
regarded the "arbor philosophicus" as a symbol of this transformation process,
though this version of the tree of philosophy, as described by Carl Jung (in PSA
420; see also Figures 122,131,135,188,221,231), was very different from the one
employed in this course.) Sociology and Economics also began as aspects of
philosophical systems. And again, the list goes on. Why is it that sciences so often
arise in this way? The tree of philosophy provides a plausible answer: the
branches of this tree represent science in the special sense of the love of wisdom;
on them grow various types of fruit; when one such fruit drops to the ground, rots,
and then takes root, a specific science is born. This explains, incidentally, why
trying to make philosophy itself into just another science is so hopeless: the tree
of philosophy can never become a science, because she is the mother of all
sciences! The tragedy is that these younger trees, though protected as tender
young shoots under the shade of the tree of philosophy, often threaten to choke
out their mother when they reach maturity.

If the new trees that grow out of the fruit of the tree of philosophy are the
specific sciences, then what are the seeds we find at the center of each fruit? The
seeds can represent our ideas, or insights. I believe most, if not all, of us have
many valuable insights throughout our lifetime. The problem is that we usually
fail to recognize their value when they come to us, so we eat the sweet fruit of
opinion, to satisfy our appetite, but throw away the bitter seeds, even though they
could eventually give birth to knowledge. An insight must be planted, watered,
and nurtured by our constant attention if it is to grow into an idea worth
considering by other people, not just held by ourselves as a personal opinion.

This distinction between knowledge and opinion is an important one to

understand before we proceed with our discussion of science and the love of
wisdom. Toward the end of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant suggested an
interesting way of distinguishing between knowledge, belief, and opinion. He said
that in order to claim we "know" something, we should have both objective
(external) certainty and subjective (internal) certainty. "Belief" can have a level of
certainty just as strong as knowledge, but its certainty is only subjective; if I feel
certain of something, even though the external facts are not sufficient to construct
an objective proof (i.e., a proof constraining other people to agree), then and only
then should I say "I believe ...". In a situation where I am neither objectively nor
subjectively certain, by contrast, I should regard myself as holding an opinion.

Kant's distinction is actually based on two questions that form a 2LAR: (1)
Is the truth of p subjectively certain? and (2) Is the truth of p objectively certain?
Kant explained three of the possible situations that arise out of these two
questions, but he did not address the fourth possibility. He probably assumed it is
meaningless to think of a proposition as being objectively certain, yet subjectively
uncertain. Yet I do not think we should be too quick to regard this as an imperfect
2LAR. For what about ignorance? Is not ignorance the state of being subjectively
uncertain about something that has in itself some kind of objective certainty? If
so, then we can map these four cognitive states onto the 2LAR cross, as in Figure
VII.4.
 An insight is never a mere opinion; it is more like a sudden revelation of
something new, an awareness of potential knowledge about something we were
completely ignorant of prior to having the insight. Accordingly, once we have
recognized our ignorance, philosophy calls

Figure VII.4: The Four Cognitive States

us to focus our attention away from opinions and toward knowledge and belief.
Science, by contrast, always aims for knowledge alone, in the sense of objectively
provable certainty. The scientist studies the relations between particular natural
phenomena by observing their general structure, and attempts to discover patterns
that will eventually lead to the understanding of some natural law followed by the
phenomena in question. If a phenomenon always operates in a certain way, then
its activity will be predictable; and of course, one of the great attractions of
science is that, whenever it truly reaches its ultimate goal of establishing
objectively justifiable knowledge, it enables us to know the future! The philosophy
of science, by contrast, is not interested in establishing particular items of
empirical knowledge, but in studying the nature of the overall assumptions and
methods of science. Thus, philosophers of science, instead of asking questions
about particular phenomena, ask questions such as: What is science? What is the
proper scientific method? What gives science its reliability? and Does science
give us knowledge of a reality that is entirely independent of our minds?

In this course we will not be able to examine these questions very

thoroughly. For example, we will not be able to go deeper into the last question
than we did in Lecture 8, where we saw that Kant, at least, believed all scientific
knowledge depends on certain "synthetic a priori conditions" that the mind itself
imposes upon objects in order to make them knowable. This aspect of his
criticism of metaphysics is therefore closely related to the philosophy of science.
In the next lecture we will look more closely at one of Kant's arguments,
concerning the philosophical foundation of the reliability of science, which also
has implications for the nature of the proper scientific method. But for now I
would like to make a few more remarks about the nature of science itself.

There is a common view, especially popular among scientists and science

students, that in order for anything to be true, it must be scientifically provable.
This view is often called "scientism". A similar view, called "naturalism", goes
even further, claiming everything that exists is material, determined, and
mechanical. These two views often go together, since inhabitants of a world that
is entirely "natural" (in this special sense) would be unlikely to be able to discover
truth by any non-scientific methods. As we shall see in Lecture 21, scientists must
assume the phenomena they study are natural in something like this sense,
because otherwise gaining objective knowledge about them would be impossible.
However, the naturalist takes this a step further by claiming there is nothing
outside the realm of what scientists can observe. Even in the social sciences,
where the knowledge established is often knowledge about people's opinions and
beliefs, there is sometimes a tendency to assume the scientist's objective
knowledge is somehow untainted by any stain of subjectivity. However, as Figure
VII.4 suggests, genuine knowledge always has a subjective as well as an objective
element. Indeed, the notion that we can have purely objective knowledge is
dangerously misleading, for such a state actually defines ignorance, not
knowledge! The ignorance accompanying any view that makes scientific
knowledge absolute can be described as, at the very least, ignorance of the
mythical character of the subjective beliefs forming the very foundation of such
views.

The main point I want to make about views like scientism and naturalism is
that, contrary to the assumption of many who hold such views, they are not part of
science, nor are they in any way necessitated by the nature of science; rather, they
are philosophies of science. Scientism is, or ought to be regarded as, an
epistemological theory, and naturalism, a metaphysical theory. Yet in many cases
they are more a result of a one-sided prejudice, an inability to see anything from
more than one point of view, than a well-reasoned philosophical foundation for
science. The fact is that other philosophies of science recognize that our world
consists of more than just mechanically determined material, that science is only
one of many legitimate ways of discovering truth, and that these views of science
provide just as good a foundation for scientific research as do their more narrow-
minded alternatives. Once we realize that an absolute trust in science has nothing
to do with science itself, much of the force is taken away from philosophies such
as scientism and naturalism.

The difference between science and the philosophy of science illustrates

how the disciplines of applied philosophy relate to the kind of wisdom under
consideration here in Part Three. For we have come to view "wisdom" in a
general sense, as referring to the activity of knowing how to decide what counts
as real; or knowing where to place the boundary between knowledge and
ignorance, and when to pass beyond that boundary. In other words, loving
wisdom requires us not so much to gather as many scientific facts as possible, as
to come to know what we could call the Way of science. Indeed, this same notion
is suggested by one of the most common definitions of wisdom, as "knowing how
to use our knowledge (scientia)".

One problem this raises is that applied philosophy, understood as related in

this way to the love of wisdom, might be regarded by some as itself useless.
Complaints such as the following have, in fact, been raised by some of my
previous students: "Why study the 'philosophy of' something, when we can study
the thing itself?" "Scientific facts enable us to make all kinds of technological
advances; but what improvement to our technological society has ever been made
by the philosophy of science?" "It's just a waste of time to study this mysterious
'way', when we could be using our precious time to study something really
useful!"

Chuang Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher whose ideas we met in

connection with our discussion of synthetic logic, was a champion of "the Way"
(called the "Tao", or "Dao", in Chinese). As we might expect, he was acutely
aware of this accusation that a study of the Way is useless. On several occasions
his response was to point out that a tree we think of as "useful" is likely to have a
short life. If the wood is very hard, we will want to use it for building something.
If it is very soft, we will want to use it for carving something. If it has a fragrant
aroma, we will want to use it to make decorative ornaments. But if the tree is
useless, we are more likely to leave it alone. He infers from this that being useless
can be very useful: the apparently "useless" tree is more likely to have a long life!
This application of synthetic logic may not be the most persuasive way of
defending the usefulness of the tree of philosophy; but it is not without merit, for
it demonstrates that we must reconsider our common assumptions concerning
what counts as "useful".

According to Wittgenstein, philosophy is useful only for people who are

plagued with a certain kind of "mental cramp", and his task as a philosopher was
to act as a "masseur" to relieve that cramp. Since it is mainly, if not exclusively,
philosophers who suffer from this cramp, he saw his task as that of helping
philosophers avoid falling into meaningless ways of thinking. Once we recognize,
however, that ordinary people also tend to apply knowledge in meaningless ways,
the usefulness of studying philosophy can be more fully appreciated.

Indeed, our inability to use wisdom in an instrumental sense-e.g., as we use

a fork and knife, or chopsticks, to eat-is precisely what enables it to serve as the
foundation for all that is useful. Merely knowing the boundary between
knowledge and ignorance may not enable us to build a new kind of rocket to
explore the universe faster, nor insure that we will automatically do the right thing
when we are in a morally difficult situation, nor is it likely to empower us to make
peace between the leaders of two warring nations. But it will enable us to see
more clearly the difference between a meaningful and a meaningless application
of these and other kinds of knowledge. Hence, we can use philosophical
knowledge to help those who are engaged in such human activities not to use their
technological know-how, or their moral reasoning, or their political power, in an
irrational, destructive, or self-defeating way.

21. Causality and the Boundary of Science

Today we will look more closely at one of the fundamental issues in the
philosophy of science: the reliability of induction as a tool for gaining knowledge.
But first, let me direct your attention to a question I want you to think about
during the next few weeks, though it is not directly related to the philosophy of
science, . The question, paraphrased from Kierkegaard's quote (in CUP 97) from
Lessing (1729-1781), is:

If God had all truth in his right hand

and the lifelong search for truth in his left,

which hand would you choose?

In a later lecture, about the time I think you will have forgotten my request that
you reflect on this difficult question, I shall make some suggestions as to how I
believe we should respond.
 Do you recall our discussion in Lecture 11 of the analytic and synthetic
methods of argument? At that point we contrasted deduction, the method that
begins with two or more premises and draws a necessary conclusion from them,
with induction, the method that begins by gathering evidence from observations
and generalizes from these to form a probable conclusion. Many scientists, from
the beginnings of science down to the present day, have assumed their task
requires careful observation more than rigorous argumentation, so that the proper
way of doing science is to proceed by the path of induction. The problem this
raises is that scientists nearly always view their task as a search for facts, and they
normally assume that once a "fact" is demonstrated, it is known for certain to be
true; yet, as we saw in Lecture 11, induction on its own cannot provide us with
such certain knowledge, since it always depends to some extent on guesswork.
Solving this problem is of the utmost importance for the philosophy of science,
because it appears to call into question one of our most basic beliefs about
scientific knowledge: that scientific facts are reliable and trustworthy, because
scientists have proved that they must be true.

For most scientists who have thought philosophically about what they are
doing, the solution to the "problem of induction" has been to assume the
phenomena they observe are somehow bound together by a necessary connection.
This would mean the necessity of scientific facts comes not from the logical
structure of the scientific method, but from some law within the phenomena
themselves. And the most basic natural law, governing all other more specific
laws about how phenomena interact, is that any effect we observe in the world is
necessarily determined by some preceding cause. The important thing to
understand about this solution is that this use of the law of necessary causation is
a philosophical assumption, not one based on any scientific proof. Indeed, we
could call it the "myth" that most of modern science is based on. In this century
there have been some scientists, mostly physicists, who claim to reject this myth,
on the grounds that on the subatomic level events "just happen": the path of an
electron, for example, is believed to be entirely random, and thus unpredictable at
any given point of time, so that only the "probability" of any given path can be
known beforehand. Other scientists, however, believe that such an explanation,
even as a way of accounting for the mysterious movements of subatomic
particles, is merely a confession that the physicists have come to the end of their
science. Indeed, it is as if they had "bumped their heads" on the outer boundary of
science itself.
 If physicists really have reached the boundary of the physical world, then
the assumption that subatomic events are uncaused is just as mythical as the more
traditional assumption that all events have a cause. In either case scientists ought
to recognize that the debate over which assumption serves as a better myth to
build a science on is primarily a philosophical debate, not one that can be
answered merely through scientific observation. Accordingly, I shall now
introduce to you two ways philosophers have dealt with the issue of the necessary
connection that is so often believed to give inductive knowledge its reliability.
One comes from the doubts raised by David Hume (1711-1776), and the other
comes from Kant's influential attempt to refute Hume's position.

Hume was a Scottish philosopher who thoroughly defended a philosophical

method called "skepticism". Skeptics call into question the reliability of our
knowledge (in science, morality, aesthetics, or any other area where people claim
to have knowledge), usually by demonstrating that the foundations (or roots) of
that knowledge are either insufficient or nonexistent. Hume called into question
many kinds of knowledge, defending his skeptical alternatives with some
persuasive arguments. At the basis of all his arguments is the assumption that
truth can be reached in only two legitimate ways (cf. Figure IV.4): through
mathematical reasoning (i.e., deduction, producing what Kant later called analytic
a priori knowledge) and through empirical observation (i.e., induction, producing
synthetic a posteriori knowledge). Using this assumption, sometimes called
"Hume's fork", he attempted to locate and discard any and all claims to
knowledge that do not depend on either ideas (thoughts) grounded in logic or
impressions (feelings) grounded in the senses. Thus, his book, An Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding (1748), concludes:

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we
make? If we take in our hand any volume-of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance-let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or
number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of
fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing
but sophistry and illusion. (EHU §XII, Part III)
 When it comes to scientific knowledge, Hume used this "fork" not to deny
the validity of all science whatsoever, but to argue that it is wrong to think of such
knowledge as giving us access to any necessary truth. For he believed it is
impossible to use induction to reach necessity. The reason is that he could find no
grounds for believing in a hidden law of necessary connection. We cannot observe
such a law, and we cannot prove it by deductive reasoning; so it must not be true!
He expressed this argument in a variety of ways. For example, when discussing
the possibility that the human will might give us access to such a law, he
reasoned:

Why has the will an influence over the tongue and fingers, not over the heart and
liver? This question would never embarrass us, were we conscious of a power in
the former case, not in the latter. We should then perceive, independent of
experience, why the authority of will over the organs of the body is circumscribed
within such particular limits. Being in that case fully acquainted with the power or
force ... we should also know, why its influence reaches precisely to such
boundaries, and no farther. (EHU §VII, Part I, my italics)

Here Hume recognized that the search for necessary connection is a search for a
boundary, outside of ordinary experience, that would give us consciousness of
why things are connected the way they are. But he went on to reject such a
possibility, on the following grounds:

... consciousness never deceives. Consequently, neither in the one case nor in the
other are we ever conscious of any power. We learn the influence of our will from
experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly
follows another; without instructing us in the secret connection, which binds them
together, and renders them inseparable.
 Hume's argument here is that, in order to understand the reasons the human
will works the way it does, we would have to be conscious of some power
underlying and determining our experience. But we are in fact conscious of
nothing but our own experiences; we never have even a glimpse of such a hidden
power. We come to believe in such abstract ideas by copying impressions from
our senses and "associating" the resulting ideas with each other. A simple
example is that we may form the illusory idea of "a golden mountain" by copying
legitimate impressions we have had of gold and mountains (EHU §II). The
problem is that some of our most trusted beliefs seem to be just as poorly
grounded (§VII, Part II):

... upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of
[necessary] connection which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose
and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie
between them. They seem conjoined; but never connected. And as we can have no
idea of anything which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment,
the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connection or power
at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning, when employed
either in philosophical reasonings or common life.

If the idea of necessary connection is indeed "without any meaning", then this
poses seemingly insurmountable problems for the view that the inductive method
is sufficient for establishing scientific facts. This way of undermining the
foundation of what was previously assumed to constitute knowledge is typical of
the skeptical method in philosophy.

Hume's skepticism concerning the common idea that there is a necessary

connection between cause and effect implicitly raises two challenges, one directed
more to scientists, and the other, more to philosophers. If Hume is right, his ideas
challenge scientists to choose between two alternatives: either find a scientific
method that is more suitable than induction, or else give up the notion that science
can ever achieve the goal of certainty. That this choice is implied by Hume's
skepticism should be clear enough, especially if we revise Figure IV.2b by taking
Hume's arguments into consideration, as follows:

Figure VII.5: The Uncertainty of Inductive Knowledge

Of course, philosophers of science have responded to this challenge more

often than scientists. One response has been to suggest Hume was right in
rejecting the certainty of inductive knowledge, but to claim that, in fact, the
method followed by scientists is not primarily inductive but deductive. Karl
Popper, for example, argued that scientists actually begin not with a bare
observation, but with an hypothesis that functions like the premise of a deduction.
The scientist assumes this hypothesis, then tests it by trying to "falsify" it through
various experiments. Induction on its own would never enable scientists to reach
factual conclusions; but deduction and induction together are able to do so.
Another response has been simply to agree with Hume, so that scientists need not
view their task as a search for certainty. For instance, Paul Feyerabend has argued
that, rather than searching for the one perfect scientific theory, philosophers and
scientists should encourage a proliferation of theories: the more different
scientific theories there are, the better-even if they seem to be opposed to each
other. Philosophers have attempted to legitimize science in so many other ways
that a fuller account is beyond the scope of this course.
 The more strictly philosophical challenge arising out of Hume's skepticism
is to find a way of defending induction in one of two ways: either by appealing to
some principle other than necessary connection, or by attacking Hume's
arguments more directly, and demonstrating that the idea of necessary connection
is meaningful after all. Hume himself actually pursued something like the former
alternative. He recognized that some explanation must be given for our feeling of
expectation that things will happen in the future the way they have happened in
the past. Accordingly, he argued that this feeling, seeming to close the "gap"
between the evidence and the conclusion in an inductive argument (see Figure
VII.5), is actually a result of nothing but "custom" or "habit":

But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance,
which is supposed to be exactly similar; except only, that after a repetition of
similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event,
to expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist. This connection,
therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination
from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which
we form the idea of power or necessary connection. Nothing farther is the case.
Contemplate the subject on all sides; you will never find any other origin of that
idea. (EHU §VII, Part II)

In other words, when we get used to experiencing objects in a certain way, we

imagine that this way is necessary, and so we expect to continue experiencing
them in the same way. We expect, and even feel "certain" that the sun will rise in
the east tomorrow, even though there is no factual basis whatsoever for real
certainty, but only for a judgment of probability based on the habits we have
developed from past experiences.

We might defend Hume's answer to his own challenge by noting that, in

fact, some people do not expect the sun to rise in the east! For instance, on the
north and south poles there are certain times of year when the sun never rises or
never sets. For example, I was actually born in a small town in northwest Alaska
in the early morning of a long summer's day. My father has told me he walked
home from the hospital at 2am that morning, watching the sun set in the north. A
few hours later it rose again, a bit to the east, but still mainly in the north. So the
typical example of the sun rising in the east also illustrates how what seems to be
a reasonable conclusion ("The sun always rises in the east") can actually turn out
to be based on our habit of viewing the world from the limited perspective of our
own past experiences. Only when we are surprised by discovering an unexpected
exception do we realize the influence of our habits on what we believe to be true.

Kant, however, was radically dissatisfied with Hume's way of accounting

for our feeling that phenomena are connected with each other in a necessary way.
He therefore took the second way of responding to this challenge. Kant agreed
with Hume about the importance of regarding necessary connection as a boundary
between what science can and cannot know; but he rejected Hume's claim that all
knowledge must be either mathematical or observational. According to Kant, a
third type of knowledge, called "transcendental", is synthetic and yet also a priori
-i.e., it is expressed by a proposition that is necessarily true, yet its necessity is not
derived merely from logic (see Lecture 11). And this, it turns out, is the
distinctively philosophical type of knowledge. Anyone who accepts Hume's fork
in its strictest sense will find that it eventually excludes philosophy itself from the
realm of worthwhile knowledge! But when we recognize that Hume's fork
functions as the mythical foundation for his system, we will be free to replace it
by some alternative, more appropriate myth, such as Kant's "Copernican" myth,
that the mind imposes certain synthetic a priori conditions onto any object in the
very process of coming to know that object.

Kant responded to Hume's skepticism in a number of different ways; but his

most influential response came in his theory of the "principles of pure
understanding". They exist in the mind, he argued, yet determine the character of
our experience to be the way it is. One of the principles Kant defended in this way
is precisely the one Hume had rejected as a mere feeling, based on our habitual
way of interpreting our past experiences: the idea of necessary connection. Kant
defended this principle in a section of his first Critique entitled the "Second
Analogy", calling it the "principle of succession in time, in accordance with the
law of causality" (CPR 218). This principle states: "All alterations take place in
conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect." He provided a
complex set of interconnected arguments in defense of this principle-far too
complex for us to examine here. However, we can get a general idea of how he
argued by taking one paragraph out of context and examining it in a bit more
detail.

Kant and Hume both agreed that we have experience, but they disagreed
over what our subjective experience implies about the objective world. Whereas
Hume argued that our subjective experience is merely a "bundle of perceptions",
implying little or nothing about objective reality, Kant argued that "we must
derive the subjective succession of apprehension from the objective succession of
appearances", otherwise it would be impossible to explain why we perceive, or
"apprehend", a series of events in a given order, or a group of objects as distinct
from each other (CPR 221). In other words, our subjective experience is only
possible on the assumption that it is "bound down" to some objective reality. With
this in mind, Kant constructed the following argument:

If, then, we experience that something happens, we in so doing always presuppose

that something precedes it, on which it follows according to a rule. Otherwise I
should not say of the object that it follows. For mere succession in my
apprehension [as in Hume's theory of "habit"], if there be no rule determining the
succession in relation to something that precedes, does not justify me in assuming
any succession in the object. I render my subjective synthesis of apprehension
objective only by reference to a rule, in accordance with which the appearances in
their succession, that is, as they happen, are determined by the preceding state.
The experience of an event [i.e., of anything as happening] is itself possible only
on this assumption. (223)

If Kant's argument is correct, then the principle that there is a necessary

connection between cause and effect must be true, even though we cannot use
either observation or mathematical reasoning to prove it.
 This type of argument has come to be known as a "transcendental
argument". The general form of such an argument is:

In order for experience to happen, p must be true.

I, at least, have experience.

Therefore, p must be true.

Hume would not deny the second premise; so his only rebuttal would be to
question the first premise. Is there really anything that must be true in order for
our experience to be possible at all? If so, then those truths, taken together, would
define the boundary line between what we can and cannot know. Would it be
possible, for example, to imagine a kind of experience that does not require us to
presuppose that we have in some way been determined by something that
happened at some time in the past? Kant believed that in such a case we would
not be justified in claiming to have any experience. "Experience" here refers to an
awareness of "subjective succession" in our perceptions; and if there were not
also some "objective succession", then there would simply be no basis for our
subjective succession to be apprehended. In other words, an appeal to "habit" is
irrelevant, since without an objective succession as the basis for our so-called
habits, we could not even be conscious of those habits.

Some of you are probably rather confused at this point. This is not
surprising, for the arguments we have been considering are among the most
difficult ever proposed by philosophers. Professional philosophers who study
Hume and Kant all their life still debate over how to interpret their views and
which one gives a better description of the way the world really is. So we cannot
hope to settle the question once and for all in an introductory course!
Nevertheless, in hopes of clarifying what each of these positions involves, and
perhaps at the same time, helping you make up your mind about which one is
closer to the truth, I would like to perform a little "thought-experiment".
 Imagine you've just finished with all your classes for the day. Let's assume
you live in Shatin, as I do; so you walk up the road to the nearest bus stop and
wait there for the next bus. After only a few minutes, the bus you normally ride
drives up. It is full of people; but the driver, a friendly man who you remember
seeing before, stops to let you on. Even though the only place for you to stand is
an awkward space right next to the driver, you love philosophy so much that you
immediately pull out the book you are currently reading from the lists of Recom‐
mended Readings, and begin to read. The traffic is not too bad, so after only a
minute or two the bus enters Lion Rock Tunnel, on its way to Shatin. You hardly
notice this, though, since you are so engrossed in your philosophizing. Then, all
of a sudden, you feel the bus stopping. At first, you just continue reading,
assuming there must be heavy traffic in the tunnel. But after a few minutes, you
begin to wonder why the bus still isn't moving. So you pull your eyes away from
your book to see if you can tell what is causing the delay. To your surprise, there
are no vehicles in front of the bus; and the bus driver is still sitting in the same
position he was in before, with his hands on the steering wheel and his feet on the
pedals, just as if he were still driving!

What would you do in such a case? My guess is that, given a long enough
delay, you would eventually ask the bus driver to explain why he had stopped the
bus. Now let's imagine he answers you by saying "I didn't stop the bus" (or the
equivalent expression in Cantonese). You would probably respond by saying
"Well, then, you better call for help, because the bus must be having some engine
trouble." But the driver replies: "No, the engine is working just fine. Listen." And
sure enough, you then notice that the rumble of the bus engine sounds the same as
it normally does when it is driving through the tunnel at a normal speed. I think
you would be a bit perplexed; but after a while, especially if you were going to be
late for dinner, you would again raise some kind of question, such as: "Well, if
you didn't stop the bus, who did? God? Or a ghost?" If the driver then answered
"No, of course not. How many times do I have to tell you, nobody stopped the
bus", then most of us, I think would say, or at least think, something like: "Look,
either someone stopped the bus intentionally, or there is some engine trouble,
because buses just don't stop for no reason at all!"
 I wonder how would you respond if the bus driver replied to this claim by
retorting: "Ha! You just feel that way because of the habit you have developed
over your years of living in Hong Kong, of thinking that buses don't stop in
polluted tunnels for no reason. In fact, they can and do sometimes stop for no
reason; it's just that this is the first time you have experienced an exception to
your habitual expectations." If the driver then turned away and resumed his
driving position, as if nothing at all were unusual, I suspect that most of us would
try to get out of that bus as fast as we could! Why? Because we would all assume
this driver is either playing a very inappropriate (possibly dangerous) joke on his
passengers, or else he is crazy!

We all (even physicists who believe there is no cause behind the

movements of subatomic particles) normally assume that whatever we see and
experience in our everyday life is caused by something. Even miracles are caused
events, since they are events believed to be caused by God. Likewise, people
living in primitive tribes naturally assume that whatever happens is caused to
happen, perhaps by some spirit or god. If we didn't make some kind of causal
assumption, we would simply be unable to function in any human society. If
Kant's view is right, we would not even be able to be aware of our own subjective
experiences. But it is important to understand that Kant's principle is
transcendental, whereas Hume's "habit" is empirical. That means the two views
are not necessarily incompatible, provided we reject the narrow presupposition of
Hume's fork. Hume was actually right when he said there is no way to observe or
calculate our way to an understanding of necessary connection. Kant's argument
shows that Hume's mistake was to ignore the transcendental boundary line
between these two, because that is the true home of necessary connection, and so
also the best justification scientists can appeal to when defending their use of the
inductive method.

Even if you are not convinced by Kant's arguments, or by the foregoing

thought-experiment, to believe that the principle of causality, or necessary
connection, is a transcendental condition for the possibility of experience, I hope
you will agree by now that a view like Hume's would, on its own, undermine the
possibility of science. There could be no objective facts if everything depended on
our own subjective habits. I think most of you probably agree that habit alone is
simply not good enough. There is something absolute about our idea of the
necessary connection between cause and effect, something that seems almost
beyond question! Incidentally, the fact that Hume disagrees with this does not
prove that the idea is "relative"; Hume's theory could be incorrect!

If, on the other hand, we accept Kant's argument and regard everything that
happens as determined by something that happened prior to it, a new problem
arises: How can we explain the feeling we human beings have that we are free? If
everything in the world is determined, does this mean we must discard our belief
in human freedom? This would cause a major problem, given the close
relationship between freedom and wisdom (see Lecture 19). Here the philosophy
of science impinges directly upon one of the central questions of the branch of
applied philosophy we will climb in the next lecture, the branch of moral
philosophy. There we will find to what extent our search for wisdom can lead us
to accept both the determinism of science and the freedom of moral action.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. What is the difference between a limit and a boundary?

B. Is it possible to be free from all limitations?

2. A. Is heaven a place?

B. Where do insights come from?

3. A. How can we be certain of our own uncertainty?

B. How would a metaphysical habit be different from ordinary habits?

4. A. Are there any subjective facts?

B. Could we ever have knowledge of an uncaused event?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (JLS).

2. Daniel N. Robinson, "Wisdom through the Ages", Ch.2 in Robert J. Sternberg

(ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origin, and development (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), pp.13-24.

3. Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, tr. P. Møller (New York: Farrar, Strauss &
Giroux, Inc., 1994[1991]).

4. John Losee, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1980).

5. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §VII, "On the

Idea of Necessary Connection" (EHU 62-85).
6. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, "Second Analogy" (CPR 218-233).

7. Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1972).

8. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an anarchistic theory of

knowledge (London: Verso, 1978).

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D1

22. Freedom and the Boundary of Morals

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Near the end of the previous lecture I left you in a rather uncomfortable
position. Do you remember? You were stuck in Lion Rock Tunnel, inside a bus
being driven by a man who claimed that things just "happen", without being
caused by anything. What should you do in such a situation? Instead of answering
this question directly, I want to change the story a little bit. Let's imagine that
when you ask the bus driver why he stopped the bus, instead of saying "I didn't
...", he pulls out a gun and asks you to give him all your money and leave the bus,
or he will shoot. You would probably obey his demands. But after the bus drove
away, as you walk through the tunnel, you would probably become quite upset at
what that man had done to you. In fact, most of us would probably report his
action to the police as soon as possible, accusing him of doing something wrong.

What would be the rational basis of our claim in such a case? Why would
we judge that man's action to be morally wrong? In philosophy these kinds of
questions are called "ethical". Ethical questions are about how we should and
should not act. There are many, many ethical questions-so many that we cannot
even begin in this class to explore the different kinds of ethical questions, to say
nothing of specific questions about the rightness or wrongness of particular acts.
Ethical questions are like the many small twigs on the end of a tree branch: they
are very important, for on them grow the leaves and the fruit of the tree; yet there
are so many that any one of them could be removed without significantly
changing the appearance or the health of the tree.

There is, however, a similar kind of philosophical question that is more

weighty than an ethical question. All ethical questions are based on certain
fundamental moral principles, just as all leafy twigs are held up by one of the
larger branches of the tree. An awareness of the questions related to these
principles is fundamental if we wish to understand the tree of philosophy. At one
time the term "moral philosophy" was used to refer to this entire branch
(including the twigs). But this term is not used very often nowadays. The entire
branch of philosophy concerned with establishing the rational foundations for
moral actions is now more often referred to simply as "ethics", with "applied
ethics" referring to the twigs and "meta-ethics" referring to the main part of the
branch. In order to avoid confusion, though, I think it is better to use "ethics" to
refer to the whole "science" (in the loose sense of this word) of making moral
decisions, and reserve the term "moral philosophy" for the basic underlying
principles.

As such, "moral philosophy" is the branch of the tree of philosophy that

begins by asking the most basic questions about morality, such as: Are human
beings free? How can we distinguish between good and evil? and How is ethics
itself possible? Of course, the term "moral philosophy" does not refer to a "good
way of doing philosophy", as opposed to a bad, "immoral" philosophy. So-called
"moral philosophers" can be just as immoral in their daily lives as anyone else!
Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of moral philosophy is not just to understand what
goodness is, but to use it to help us become better persons. And, just as Jonathan
Seagull learned to fly much faster once he understood flying, so also
understanding the moral foundations of ethical decisions should help us make
wiser choices in our daily lives.

One of the most influential moral philosophies was proposed by Immanuel

Kant. Kant's first Critique helped us in Part One to reach some fundamental
insights about the nature of metaphysics, so we shall devote most of today's
session to an examination of his second Critique, where he suggests a very
interesting way of coping with our ignorance of ultimate reality. Whereas the
Critique of Pure Reason adopts a "theoretical" standpoint to demonstrate how
space, time, and the categories form an absolutely necessary (i.e., synthetic a
priori) boundary line for human experience (and therefore make possible our
empirical knowledge of phenomenal objects), the Critique of Practical Reason, as
we shall see (cf. Figures III.4, III.6, and IV.4), adopts a "practical" standpoint to
demonstrate how freedom and the moral law form an absolutely necessary
boundary line for moral action (and therefore make possible our moral judgment
of noumenal objects). In simpler terms, we can describe this distinction by saying
Kant developed in these books two distinct ways of looking at the world (i.e., two
"standpoints"): he adopts the standpoint of the head in the first Critique and that
of the belly in the second Critique (cf. Figures II.8 and III.4).

Viewing two sets of opposing ideas as representatives of two standpoints

can often help us see how both can be true, even though they appear at first to be
contradictory. A simple example will help to clarify this point. Most of you have
probably seen at some point one of the many pictures used by psychologists to
test the way our mind perceives objects. A picture is drawn that can represent two
completely different objects, depending on how it is perceived. For example, the
picture given

in Figure VIII.1, looks like a goblet if we

focus on the dark area in the center. Yet if
we look at the edges, we suddenly see
two faces facing each other. Which
answer is correct? Of course, both are
correct, each in its own way. The same is
often true in philosophy, whenever there
are two apparently contradictory answers
to the same question, if it turns out that
each answer approaches the question in a
different way, or with a different end in
view.

In Lecture 9 we saw how Kant

argued that, in the process of gaining
theoretical knowledge, various FigureVIII.1:
TwoPerceptualPerspectives-
AGobletorTwoFaces?
"ideas" naturally arise in the mind of anyone who thinks rationally about their
own experience: among these the most important are the ideas of God, freedom,
and immortality (see CPR 29). But he posed a problem in regard to these ideas;
for, if Kant is right, we are necessarily ignorant of the reality each of these ideas
points to. This "noumenal" reality, he claimed, is beyond the boundary of our
possible knowledge. Nevertheless, we must be careful not to assume, as do some
interpreters, that Kant had a skeptical view of these ideas. On the contrary, one of
his reasons for denying the possibility of our having knowledge of the ideas was
to insure that it would be impossible for anyone to disprove their reality. No one
can prove that our ideas of God, freedom, and immortality are mere illusions,
because in order to do so, a person would need to have knowledge of ultimate
reality; and this, according to Kant, is impossible. Hence, by denying
"knowledge" in this way, Kant left open a space for "faith" in these ideas (29)-
though we still need to find good reasons for adopting such faith, in the face of
our theoretical ignorance. By examining in the second Critique the necessary
conditions for bringing about a moral world, as we struggle with our desires (the
"belly"), Kant attempted to provide such reasons, on the grounds that the ideas
themselves actually point us beyond the realm of theory, to the realm of practice.

The first necessary condition for the possibility of moral action is freedom.
Freedom, Kant argued, is the one and only "given fact" of practical reason. By
adopting the practical standpoint, we can actually break through the boundaries of
space and time (the limitations of our "sensibility") and replace them with
freedom. But this freedom does not leave us lost in a boundless world of
unlimited confusion; rather, freedom itself functions as a new kind of limitation.
Whereas space and time are necessary limits that anything we can know must
appear within, freedom is the necessary limit that any moral action must conform
to. The former is the world-limitation imposed on our heads so we can know the
truth; the latter is the self-limitation imposed on our bellies so we can do the good.
Though these two standpoints lead us in opposite directions, we need not view
them as irreconcilably contradictory, provided we recognize that they refer to
fundamentally different aspects of human life.
 Kant never claimed he could prove human beings are free; on the contrary,
the first Critique demonstrates why such a proof is impossible. Instead, his
argument is that we must presuppose freedom in order to enter the realm of
morality, just as we must presuppose space and time in order to enter the realm of
knowledge. In both cases we are faced with a brute fact that cannot even be
questioned without radically changing (or perhaps even undermining) our human
experience. Although Kant would not have put it in this way, we could therefore
say these "facts" function like complementary myths for anyone in the modern
world who wants to interpret their experience in terms of knowledge or moral
action.

If freedom in the second Critique corresponds to space and time in the first,
what corresponds to the categories? The logical aspect of the boundary of morals
Kant called the "moral law", or "categorical imperative". All maxims (i.e.,
subjective rules of action) must conform to this law to qualify as moral. By
"categorical" Kant meant that this imperative makes an unconditional demand.
"Hypothetical" imperatives, by contrast, are ones with an "if" attached. If I say to
you "Please be quiet when I am in the room", then my command is hypothetical,
because you are not required to be quiet if I am not in the room. A command such
as "Do not tell lies", by contrast, is normally regarded as unconditional. I doubt if
your mother ever said to you "Do not tell lies, unless it makes you feel good"!
That is because commands such as telling the truth are usually regarded as duties.
A "duty", according to Kant, is an action performed out of respect for the moral
law-i.e., in obedience to one's conscience, rather than just following the desires or
"inclinations" of one's belly.

Kant believed he could determine a formula that would apply to all moral
action. In the end he actually proposed three distinct criteria for (or formulations
of) the categorical imperative. The first states that an action is moral only if its
maxim is universalizable: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at
the same time will that it should become a universal law" (FMM 421). This does
not mean everyone will actually agree with your maxim, but only that everyone
ought to agree. The second requires us to respect human persons: "Act so that you
treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end
and never as a means only" (429). The third requires that our maxim must be
autonomous (i.e., self-legislated): since "every rational creature [makes] universal
law", a moral maxim must be "consistent with the universal lawgiving of will"
(431). Let's test these necessary criteria, especially the first, by applying them to
an example.

If I cheat on an exam and someone asks me "Did you cheat on that exam?",
then I am faced with a moral choice. I can either lie, and hope nobody discovers
the truth, or I can tell the truth and suffer the consequences. Although lying in
such a case might make me happier, Kant thought this choice would be morally
wrong, because it would be based on a maxim on that could never become a
universal law. In the former case my maxim might be "It is acceptable to tell a lie,
if it will get me out of a difficult situation", whereas in the latter case my maxim
would be "Never tell a lie". Kant freely admitted it is possible to will (i.e., want to
tell)a particular lie, but he argued it would be irrational to will "a universal law to
lie": in such a case "my maxim would necessarily destroy itself as soon as it was
made a universal law" (FMM 403). In other words, if we imagine a world where it
would be acceptable for everyone to lie whenever it would make them happy, the
primary function of language (i.e., its ability to convey truth) would be
undermined. Moreover, a lie also breaks the second and third criteria: it uses
another human being, neglecting their rational capacity, solely in order to make
oneself happy. Because lying requires us to break a universalizable law (and
therefore also to disrespect human rationality), telling a lie is always morally
wrong, no matter how happy a lie might make us feel.

Kant gave other examples, relating to suicide, laziness, and apathy (see
FMM 421-424); but for our purposes it will suffice to point out the function
Kant's criteria for judging moral actions are supposed to fulfill. According to
Kant, we do not have to think consciously about the categorical imperative's three
formulations each time we face a moral dilemma; rather, their function is to
enable philosophers to locate truly moral issues and then define an objectively
valid boundary line between morally good and evil actions. The boundary line is
objective because it is true for everyone (i.e., universal) and because it uses an
objectively existing reality (i.e., humanity) as a basis for judgment.

When the moral law tells us to do something, performing that action makes
us worthy of praise only if our choice is not also meant to satisfy one of our
inclinations-i.e., only if our reason for doing it is unrelated to satisfying our
desires. Thus, Kant's moral philosophy can be restated as follows: an action can
be morally good or bad only if it is done freely and out respect for the moral law
rather than out of our inclination to fulfill our own desire for happiness. Kant
devoted much attention to the contrast between following inclinations and duty.
Of course, sometimes a single action can both satisfy the moral law and fulfill our
inclination to be happy. But whenever this is not possible, we must choose to say
"No!" to our own happiness. Accordingly, we can express the basic command of
the categorical imperative as: "Respect the moral law!" or "Follow your
conscience as an objective principle!" or simply, "Do your duty!"

This kind of moral theory is sometimes called "deontology" and is

traditionally contrasted with "utilitarianism". The latter view was defended by J.S.
Mill (1806-1873), an English philosopher who argued that an action is good only
if it maximizes human happiness. Kant regarded the outcome of an action as less
important than the inner motivation of the person who performs the action. This is
why he said at one point that nothing can "be called good without qualification
except a good will" (FMM 392); this means there is no such thing as an absolutely
good action, yet there is such a thing as an absolutely good will-namely, a will
that bases its maxims on the moral law. For Kant, the proper order for viewing
morality is from the inside to the outside. For Mill, by contrast, the outer result of
an action is far more important than the motivation behind it: the best action is the
one that makes the most people happy. This means, of course, that Mill would
condone lying whenever it had sufficient "utility" (i.e., usefulness) to help more
people than it harmed. Likewise, the bus driver's theft might turn out to be
morally acceptable, if, for example, he needed your money to feed his hungry
children, whereas you were just going to use it to buy some philosophy books for
your own selfish pleasure. However, if we are to believe Kant, such a world
would be an irrational world-a world without any boundaries-and would
ultimately destroy itself. Instead of examining more closely this long-standing
debate between deontology and utilitarianism, let us continue our discussion of
Kant's version of deontology by looking at some of its further implications.

In order for morality to be truly rational, Kant thought moral action must be
capable of fulfilling its purpose: to bring into being the highest possible good. Just
how this "summum bonum" ought to be defined is, however, a question that has
been debated among philosophers since ancient times. The Stoics believed the
highest good is virtue, and that a virtuous life ought to be pursued without any
regard for happiness. The Epicureans, by contrast, thought the highest good is to
fulfill one's pleasures, and therefore pursue happiness. This difference can be
traced back to the difference between Plato, with his focus on the ideal of
goodness, and Aristotle, with his concern for the experience of real happiness. It
may also appear at first to correspond to the distinction between Kant's
deontology and Mill's utilitarianism. However, Kant rejected this interpretation of
the implications of his own moral philosophy.

Kant argued that the best conception of the highest good must include both
virtue and happiness. Happiness without virtue would be unjust; virtue without
happiness would not be worth the effort. Therefore Kant explained the highest
good as the picture of an ideal world where each person is rewarded for their
virtue with a proportional level of happiness. In other words, if your level of
virtue reaches eight on a scale of one to ten and mine only reaches seven, then
you should be rewarded with 80% happiness, whereas I should be rewarded with
70% happiness. Any other conception of the ultimate purpose of moral action
would make morality irrational, inasmuch as morality would then aim at
something less than perfect goodness and justice.

Kant has often been criticized for introducing happiness into his theory at
this late stage: how could he include happiness in the highest good when he had
already defined virtue in terms of obeying duty rather than happiness? But this
criticism is based on a misunderstanding. By including happiness in the highest
good Kant was not suddenly changing his mind and saying that happiness can be
the motivation for our action after all. Rather, we must distinguish between
happiness as an original motive and happiness as a rational hope. The reality of
human life, according to Kant, is that right action often requires us to do
something we know will make us less happy (such as resisting the temptation to
steal someone else's money, to lie in order protect our reputation, etc.); yet at the
same time our reason tells us that in the end the person who chooses to obey the
moral law is more worthy to be happy than the person who chooses to pursue
happiness as an end in itself.
 This presents a problem that must be solved if morality is to be rational: in
the world as we know it, virtuous people often are not rewarded with happiness.
How then can we conceive of the highest good as possible? Kant argued that
practical reason requires us to "postulate" (i.e., put forward as a necessary
assumption) the reality of life after death and the existence of God. Unlike
freedom, these postulates play no role in making an action moral; instead, they
help us understand the rational purpose of morality itself. Without believing in
another life and in a holy God governing that life, we may well be able to act
morally, but we will not be able to explain how the highest good could ever be
realized. This is Kant's famous "moral argument" for the existence of God. He
never claimed it could give us real knowledge of God's existence; but he did argue
that it provides the best practical reason for believing in God. Essentially, his
argument is that anyone who acts morally and believes such action is rational is
acting as if God exists, whether or not they actually believe in God. In other
words, Kant claimed we must either believe in God or else reject one of the
following propositions: (1) moral action is good; (2) morality is rational; (3) the
highest good combines virtue with proportional happiness.

Aside from providing this "practical proof" of God's existence, Kant's moral
philosophy made several other important contributions. For instance, as we have
seen, it established a clearly defined boundary between moral and non-moral
actions. An action is moral only if it is done freely (i.e., without depending on our
own happiness) and in accordance with the moral law (i.e., based on a
universalizable maxim). These are necessary conditions that must be true for
anyone who wishes to act morally, so they define an absolute set of guidelines for
our inner motivation, just as space, time, and the categories define an absolute set
of guidelines for understanding the outer world. We can picture the opposition
between Kant's two fundamental standpoints as follows:
(a) The bounds of knowledge (b) The bounds of action

FigureVIII.2:TheTheoreticalandPracticalStandpoints

A potential problem arises out of Kant's moral philosophy when it is

viewed together with his theoretical philosophy (as in Figure VIII.2), for it sets up
an apparently irresolvable tension between freedom and nature. How can we be
free on the one hand (when considering the foundations of moral action), yet
determined by laws such as the law of causality on the other hand (when
considering the foundations of empirical knowledge)? Kant tried to answer such
questions by showing how, in some aspects of human experience, the opposition
between freedom and nature, between practical and theoretical reason, is actually
overcome. In Part Four we shall examine the two main ways he did this: Lecture
29 will deal with the theory of beauty he defended in the third Critique; Lectures
32 and 33 will then discuss his most effective way of transcending this
opposition-and at the same time his best answer to the question "What may I
hope?" (see Figure III.6)-his theory of religion. For religion provides us with the
only way of explaining how the highest good can be realized; hence it is the area
of human experience that Kant believed best exemplifies the way nature and
freedom can work together for the good of the human race.
 Although Kant did write several books in the attempt to demonstrate that
there is a realm of human experience that synthesizes freedom and nature, the
strict opposition between these two realms did not bother him as much as it has
bothered many of his critics. For his own tendency was not to regard these two
realms as posing an absolute contradiction that needs to be explained away, but to
affirm the opposition as an essential characteristic of being human. He regarded it
as an opposition between two human perspectives, two ways of looking at the
same thing (see Figure VIII.1), that necessarily arise together and to a large extent
-like the opposition between "hot" and "cold", or "large" and "small"-depend on
each other for their very existence. Only by keeping this in mind can we fully
appreciate the respectful way he talks about this opposition in his well-known
Conclusion to the second Critique:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the
oftener and more steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me [i.e.,
nature] and the moral law within me [i.e., freedom]. I do not merely conjecture
them and seek them as though obscured in darkness or in the transcendent region
beyond my horizon: I see them before me, and I associate them directly with the
consciousness of my own existence. (CPrR 161-162)

23. Transvaluation: A Moral Breakthrough?

We saw last time how Kant tried to intensify the rational significance of
acting morally by arguing that morality is based on an internal
FigureVIII.3:

The Contrast betweenSubjective andObjectiveEnds

sense of freedom and moral duty. His belief in a universally valid "voice" inside
us, telling each person the difference between right and wrong, may seem odd to
anyone who has been thoroughly immersed in the relativism that tends to
dominate modern western culture, where no clear distinction is drawn between
right and wrong. As a quick review of Kant's moral philosophy, and in order to
point up some of the differences between his view that moral ends (or aims) are
"objective" and the common view that they are all "subjective", I have
summarized some of the main differences in Figure VIII.3. Ever since Kant
proposed his radical distinction between the standpoints of moral action and
empirical knowledge, philosophers have been attempting various ways of
overcoming the limitations he proposed. (More often than not, the ways Kant
himself tried to reconcile these two realms have, unfortunately, been completely
ignored.) In this lecture we shall examine the main ideas of one such philosopher,
a man who foresaw many of the changes in ways of thinking and acting that have
occurred in the twentieth century and who, in some respects at least, was
responsible for them; for he started, as it were, a new cycle in the history of
western philosophy (cf. Figure III.3).
 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher who believed
the traditional values of the society of his day had cut religion and philosophy-and
indeed, humanity itself-from their proper roots. As a response to the impending
disaster he saw looming on the horizon, he called for a thoroughgoing
"transvaluation of values"-that is, a complete rethinking of the whole
philosophical and religious tradition that produced those traditional values. The
theories he developed in carrying out this task set up something like a new myth,
replacing the myth of dispassionate rationality, established by Socrates and
popularized by Plato, with a myth of passionate irrationality, whose implications
are only now beginning to be understood. (Nietzsche claimed, incidentally, that
his philosophy would not be fully understood until two hundred years after it was
written.) The problem with understanding his ideas is that he intentionally wrote
in an unsystematic way; constructing systems he saw as part of the old set of
values. Not only do some of his ideas contradict his other ideas, but many of his
books do not even pretend to develop a single, well-argued set of ideas. Rather,
they contain collections of diverse ideas, often expressed in the fragmented form
of "aphorisms". It is as if Nietzsche simply wrote a bunch of insight papers, then
published them whenever he had enough to make a book! He viewed himself
more as a poet, a psychologist, or even a prophet than as a philosopher in any
conventional sense. Nevertheless, many of his insights are directly addressed to
philosophical issues; so a summary of his main ideas should enable us to
appreciate his significance for the philosophical tradition.

Nietzsche himself (whose name, by the way, is pronounced as if it were

spelled "Neecha") was the son of a Lutheran pastor. He was so intelligent that he
finished his formal education early and became a professor of classics at the
University of Basel when he was only 24. Many of his ideas during this period
developed through a brief but intense friendship with the musician, Richard
Wagner. After teaching for ten years, however, he became disillusioned with the
game of academia and retired to a hut in the mountains, where he spent the next
ten years of his life as a recluse, writing some of the most passionate and
challenging books in the history of western philosophy.

Nietzsche's transvaluation of values, a focal point uniting all his other ideas,
was primarily an attempt to break through the traditional understanding of the
boundaries that limit our moral and intellectual life, establishing in its place a new
set of higher values. The old values, as represented especially by Christianity and
the philosophical tradition culminating in Kant, are "life-denying", he argued;
they must therefore be replaced by "life-affirming" values, the best examples
being found in the pagan religions and philosophies of ancient Greece. Science,
with its narrow field of vision, interpreting the world as basically dead, is not
solely responsible for this faulty world view. For the traditional Christian morals
accepted by the vast majority of the western world, and defended in Kant's
philosophy, also support notions such as love, humility, and self-sacrifice; and
such values, according to Nietzsche, have killed the human spirit itself, and
caused us to forget how to dance.

Looking back to ancient Greek mythology, Nietzsche chose names for these
two types of outlook on life: the traditional, life-denying outlook he called
"Apollonian" (after the God of the sun, named "Apollo"), while the life-affirming
outlook Nietzsche hoped to put in its place he called "Dionysian" (after the God
of wine, named "Dionysius"). Whereas the Apollonian outlook is conscious,
rational, and calm, the Dionysian is unconscious, irrational, and passionate. The
former gives rise to a "slave morality" that causes people to adopt a "herd
mentality" and view themselves as determined by a fixed boundary line defining
good and evil; in politics this attitude gives rise to democracy (rule by the
masses), thus encouraging everyone to be alike in mediocrity. By contrast, the
latter gives rise to a "master morality" that causes people to adopt a "hero
mentality" and view themselves as free to break out of the conventional ways of
interpreting right and wrong; in politics this attitude gives rise to aristocracy (rule
by a few people), thus encouraging the greatness of the human spirit to be
expressed.

In these and other ways the Dionysian outlook enables us to go "beyond

good and evil" and live on a higher plane, characterized by what Nietzsche called
"the will to power". The will to power is a form of radical freedom that solves the
problem posed by Kant's distinction between nature and freedom by demolishing
both sets of boundary lines:

"we must...posit hypothetically the causality

of the will as the only causality." We can truly
master ourselves, according to Nietzsche,
only by courageously taking hold of a
freedom that refuses to be enclosed within
any boundary, for only in so doing can we
affirm life as it actually is. Following these
guidelines, we can picture Nietzsche's
transvaluation of values with the map shown
in Figure VIII.4.

The problem Nietzsche faced was that

the society of his day was thoroughly
entrenched in the Apollonian way of
thinking. Hence, his own attempt to balance
this with a Dionysian mes-

Figure VIII.4: Nietzsche's Trans‐

valuation of Values

sage inevitably came across as madness. This is at least one of the points of
Nietzsche's famous story of the madman in the market place:

Have you not heard as yet of that mad-man who on one bright forenoon lit a
lantern, ran out into the market-place and cried out again and again, "I seek God! I
seek God! -Because there were standing about just at that time many who did not
believe in God, the mad-man was the occasion of great merriment. Has God been
lost? said one of them. Or is He hiding himself? Is He afraid of us? Has He
boarded a ship? Has He emigrated? Thus they cried and laughed.

But the mad-man pierced them with his glance: "Whither has God gone?" he
cried; "I am going to tell you. We have killed Him-you and I! We all are His
murderers. But how have we accomplished this? How have we been able to empty
the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe off the entire horizon? What were we
doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither does the earth now
move? Whither do we ourselves move?

"Are we not groping our way in an infinite nothingness? Do we not feel the
breath of the empty spaces. Has it not become colder? Is there not night and ever
more night? How do we manage to console ourselves, we master-assassins? Who
is going to wipe the blood off our hands? Must not we ourselves become gods to
make ourselves worthy of such a deed? (JW 125)

This famous passage not only states the problem, that our lifeless, Apollonian
personalities have killed God, it also gives a clue as to Nietzsche's solution. The
only beings capable of killing God are those who can themselves become gods.
Out of this arose Nietzsche's theory of Superman.

When Nietzsche talked about people transcending their themselves and

becoming §bermensch (the German word usually translated as "Superman", but
also sometimes as "overman"), he was not thinking of the strange man in the red
suit who flies around "faster than a speeding bullet" fighting the powers of crime
and defending the American Way! On the contrary, the imaginary hero from
Krypton first appeared shortly after Nietzsche died and bears little similarity to
Nietzsche's ideal. The Superman whose coming Nietzsche proclaimed was far
more important, for he is the very purpose of the earth. Thus, the "future hope for
man" lies entirely in the emergence of this powerful person from the otherwise
hopelessly lost conditions of modern society: whereas ordinary people are all like
"polluted streams", "we need to become oceans". In order to bring on the
Dionysian outlook of the Superman, we must, for example, love our fate (called
"amor fati" by Nietzsche) so thoroughly that we could will each and every
moment of our life to be endlessly repeated in a continuous cycle of "eternal
recurrence".

Nietzsche's best description of this ideal Superman, and of how his

character is to emerge, comes in his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1884).
The Prologue to this book tells a story about a man named Zarathustra (actually
the name of the founder of the ancient Persian religion called Zoroastrianism),
who lived alone in the mountains for ten years. One day he meets an "old saint in
the forest" and is surprised to find that this man "hath not yet heard of it, that God
is dead!" Zarathustra then goes to the market-place of the nearest town, where
many people are assembled to watch a tight-rope walker whose performance is
about to begin, and he begins to preach to them, saying:

I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What

have ye done to surpass man? ...

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the
same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still
worm....

Lo, I teach you the Superman!

The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman
shall be the meaning of the earth!

I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who
speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or
not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of
whom the earth is weary: so away with them!

Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and
therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest
sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!
...

Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted

stream without becoming impure.

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your greatest
contempt be submerged. (TSZ Prologue ?)
Someone in the crowd, getting impatient with Zarathustra's strange words, then
asks to be shown this "rope-dancer" (meaning the Superman). Zarathustra
responds by saying: "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the
Superman-a rope over an abyss." After suggesting with this metaphor the picture
of humanity shown in Figure VIII.5, Nietzsche told how, after another speech by
Zarathustra, the tight-rope walker then

Figure VIII.5: Nietzsche's Tight-Rope

started his act, but was disturbed by someone else on the rope, who, "like a
buffoon", caused the tight-rope walker to fall to the ground. The story ends by
telling how Zarathustra helps the injured and dying man. Although we do not
have time to discuss the interpretation of this story in detail, I should at least add
that in the first section of the book itself, Nietzsche told a story about "three
metamorphoses": a spirit is transformed into a camel, the camel into a lion, and
the lion into a child. If we treat this as symbolizing three stages in the
development of humanity, it could be used to argue that for Nietzsche the
Dionysian ("lion") outlook was not to be part of the ideal man, but was merely a
necessary compensation for the over-rational bias of the contemporary Apollonian
("camel") outlook. The ultimate ideal of Nietzsche may well have been the person
who transcends the distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, by
adopting neither the servant-based outlook of a camel nor the power-based
outlook of a lion, but the instinct-based outlook of a child.
 In any case, the final aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy I shall present to you
today is his theory of perspectivism. Nietzsche was the first philosopher to use the
word "perspective" as a technical term in his philosophizing. And this, as you
may have noticed, is a practice I believe can be of utmost value to the
philosopher. However, for Nietzsche, the implication of saying that everything we
"know" is limited to some perspective is that there are actually no facts, only
interpretations. Indeed, he went so far as to suggest that everything is false; in
other words, language falsifies reality. This view is similar in some respects to
both Kant and Wittgenstein, as well as to the ideas of many other philosophers
who wished to distinguish between what is and what we can say about what is.
Unlike Kant, but like Wittgenstein, he was highly critical of all metaphysical
theories (especially dualism). For the very idea of a "true world" beyond this one
is, he believed, the root of all life-denying outlooks. This radical rejection of all
truth, metaphysical and otherwise, is an aspect of what is often called "nihilism".
For the true nihilist there are no real moral limitations whatsoever: all values can
be rejected as meaningless. Understood in this way, there is some debate as to
whether or not Nietzsche, whose ultimate goal was to reach a Higher Value
(namely, Superman), ought to be called a "nihilist" in the strict sense.

What are we to conclude, then, about Nietzsche's philosophy? How are we

to respond to such a passionate plea for a moral breakthrough? How can we cope
with his scathing criticisms of religion and the modern scientific world view? Has
man ironically "killedGod" with the very rationality that virtually all philosophers
from Socrates to Kant believed can point us beyond ourselves to that God? Can
we truly become God through the force of our own will? Surely these and the
many other questions raised by Nietzsche's philosophy cannot be answered in any
satisfactory way in this introductory course. However, I would like to point out
that, above all else, Nietzsche's writing is calculated to evoke some response.
Nietzsche would regard his task as a success if his ideas have shocked us into
rethinking our entire system of values and beliefs. The last thing he ever wanted
was to found a new "school" of thinking, called "Nietzschean philosophy"!

With this in mind, I have several comments to make about Nietzsche's

ideas. First, the mythical character of his philosophy should be clear by the very
fact that he refused to see or accept any boundaries. Nietzsche's world was a
world with no limits-or at least, the limits it had were arbitrary, and could not be
used to determine the truth. (This is partly due to the fact that he had no clear
recognition of the difference between analytic and synthetic logic.) This is why I
have suggested we regard his philosophy as having started a new revolution in the
cycle of western philosophy (cf. Figure III.3), replacing Plato's Socrates as the
foundation for a new philosophical age, often called "post-modernism". We shall
examine that the latter movement in more detail in Lecture 24.

Another interesting point is that the relationship between Kant and

Nietzsche is comparable in some ways to the relationship in ancient Chinese
philosophy between Confucius and Chuang Tzu. The former in each case
developed a massive philosophical system revolving around the principle of
inwardly legislated moral action, whereas the latter in each case tried to break
through the typically rigid ways of interpreting that system, by living a wanderer's
life and urging us all to be guided by the passionate "Way" that is in some sense
the essence of life itself. Unfortunately, we do not have time to pursue this parallel
relationship in the context of this class. So it will suffice merely to note that, like
Nietzsche, Chuang Tzu's radical destruction of traditional values often makes him
look like a nihilist; yet we can avoid this error by keeping in mind that the Way
serves as an ineffable, but nonetheless real limit for human action.

At this point we may want to ask: which is truly life-denying, Nietzsche's

interpretation of man as either purely Apollonian or purely Dionysian, or a
confession of the inevitable tension between these two aspects of human nature
(as in Kant)? The person who crosses the tight-rope and is successfully
transformed into Superman (i.e., into the Dionysian hero) will be just as one-sided
as the one who sits back and remains satisfied to be a mere animal (i.e., part of the
Apollonian herd). In either case, if we try to regard life in terms of either one of
these outlooks on its own, we will surely end up denying life: this can be visually
represented by noting that the tight-rope of humanity in Figure VIII.5 would fall
to the ground if either building supporting it were to be taken away. This surely
suggests that the only truly life-affirming view is the one that regards humanity as
both Apollonian and Dionysian. Whether the tension be between love and
passion, consciousness and unconsciousness, knowledge and ignorance, or any
other pair of Nietzschean opposites, it is in each case the tension itself that keeps
us alive. Indeed, this is simultaneously the greatness and the tragedy of human
life: that we are capable of taking great risks in the pursuit of high ideals; and yet,
that we cannot reach those ideals without losing our very life. And the good life,
just as the good tight-rope walker, will be the one that exhibits the best balance
(e.g., by integrating the opposites).

Finally, I should mention that, for the last eleven years of his life, Nietzsche
was insane. Trying to explain what caused his insanity can only be a matter of
conjecture. Some believe it was the result of a physical illness. Others interpret
his suffering as that of a true prophet, as if he were symbolically accepting such a
punishment on behalf of those who could not see mankind's tendency toward self-
destruction so clearly. Still others regard his final fate as a natural outcome of his
philosophical outlook. In the latter case his example could certainly serve as a
warning to anyone who wishes to experiment with a philosophy cut off from its
natural roots in metaphysics. In any case, because of her brother's insanity,
Nietzsche's sister ended up taking charge over the publication of his writings and
the promotion of his ideas. Unfortunately, she perverted his ideas in such a way
that Hitler was able to use what looked like Nietzsche's ideas as a philosophical
support for his own fascist political regime. Political philosophy will, in fact, be
the focus of next week's lectures. But we can end today by noting that the use
Hitler (and others) made of Nietzsche is now generally recognized to be a gross
misrepresentation. For Nietzsche was no anti-Semitic fascist, but truly a
philosopher unto himself-a new Socrates (or anti-Socrates) if ever there was one.

24.Perspectivism:ReconstructingtheBoundaries

Probably the most common myth to be assumed (and sometimes defended

with arguments) in the insight papers written by my past students has been the
view known as relativism. Students frequently claim there is nothing absolute in
the world, though few think very deeply about the implications of such a position.
The reasons typically cited are that actions can be right in one situation yet wrong
in another situation, or that propositions can be true in one context yet false in
another, or that a physical feature regarded as beautiful in one culture may be ugly
in another culture. As these examples illustrate, the issue of relativism concerns
not only moral philosophy, but virtually all aspects of applied philosophy.
Wherever a boundary has to be drawn and a wise choice made as to what falls
inside the boundary and what should remain outside, the question of whether or
not the boundary is "absolute" (i.e., fixed, or true in every respect, without
considering context or individual differences) eventually arises. In ordinary life,
most boundary issues are obviously relative. For example, there is no absolute
principle to tell you whether or where to erect a fence between your property and
your neighbor's; such a decision depends on a variety of "relative" factors, such as
what laws apply to the district where you live, what kind of relationship you have
with your neighbor, how you feel about fences, etc.

The philosophical question concerning relativism is not whether anything is

relative; that is obviously true. Rather, the question is whether everything is
relative, or whether, by contrast, some fundamental principles might be absolute.
And nowhere is this question more important than in moral philosophy. This week
we have seen that the twentieth century's tendency toward relativism derived to a
large extent from (or at least, was foreseen by) Nietzsche. But its roots go way
back. As early as 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote in Chapter 13 of his book,
Leviathan, that "moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good,
and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind; which in different tempers,
customs, and doctrines of men, are different." The distinction between good and
evil is thus regarded as purely a matter of social custom, not rooted in any
absolute moral principles. Furthermore, Hume argued that "ought" statements
cannot be justified by appealing to "is" statements (THN 469-470). For example,
just because abortion is a common practice nowadays does not mean that it ought
to be regarded as "right". This gap between the "is" and the "ought" prevents
moral "science" from ever reaching the level of objectivity that natural science
aims to obtain. Indeed, Hume inferred from the absence of any empirical
justification for moral beliefs that they are merely a matter of custom or habit (cf.
Lecture 21)-a view that leads directly to extreme forms of relativism.

Strict relativism, the view that no opinion is ultimately any better than any
others, must be clearly distinguished from "perspectivism". For Nietzsche, as we
have seen, the latter means that everything is false. Yet, if we really take this
seriously, we are left with a tree without roots-and perhaps even without a trunk!
Throughout this course I am defending a radically different version of
perspectivism. Instead of arguing from the perspectival nature of all knowledge
(as demonstrated by Kant) to the falseness of all language, we can regard each
well-defined perspective as an opportunity to gain truth within boundaries. Thus,
for example, I have defended a philosophy of perspective wherein truth does
exist, but can be known as such only within the boundary of a distinct
perspective. In this way we can say truth is relative, without saying it all boils
down to personal opinions: once we realize that the love of wisdom requires first
and foremost a search for the proper perspective for interpreting ideas such as
truth and goodness, then and only then will we be able to affirm that opinions
(sometimes even the majority opinion) can be wrong! Rather than saying, with
Nietzsche, that all interpretations of the world are false, we can then affirm that
many of them can be true. Indeed, even when two views appear to conflict with
each other, they may both be right, if they are assuming different perspectives.

Of the current movements in western philosophy that look back to

Nietzsche as the father of the "post-modern" era, "deconstructionism" is one of
the most influential. Deconstructionism originated as a method of interpreting
literary texts (cf. Lecture 18), but has now grown into a distinct philosophical
school, based on the assumption that the world has no "deep structure"
whatsoever, so that the search for the foundations of anything is necessarily futile
and counterproductive. I think the life of this movement will be short-lived,
because, like logical positivism (cf. Lecture 16), it attempts the impossible task of
growing a tree without roots. While rightly claiming that the belief in
metaphysical foundations is all too often used to close off the possibility of
alternative explanations, and can therefore be misused as a tool of oppression,
deconstructionists themselves, in effect, close off the possibility for any
communication whatsoever, by their belief that there is no common ground we
can all stand on. Because they focus much of their attention on interpreting past
classical texts, many of their legitimate insights can be found in a less extreme
form in the writings of more conventional philosophers. Nevertheless, let's look at
a few of the ideas defended by one of the most influential deconstructionists.
 Jacques Derrida (1930-) is an Algerian-born scholar who has spent most of
his professional life living and writing in Paris. He attracted much attention
during the last one-third of the twentieth century, thanks to his provocative and
insightful writing style. The most popular of his works, Margins of Philosophy
(1972), sets out the most detailed defense and explanation of the main features of
his new, "deconstructionist" approach to philosophy. Derrida rejects a number of
key assumptions made by past philosophers (especially the "structuralists" whose
views were very influential in France during the middle part of the century), such
as: the priority of speech over writing; the notion that texts have an objective
structure giving each a primary or most correct "meaning"; the belief that the
author rather than the reader gives the text its true meaning; etc. In place of such
views he demonstrates with his own writing that texts have many layers of
genuine meanings and that the reader's own meaning(s) may be just as valid as the
one(s) intended by the author. Moreover, he refuses to give philosophical texts a
privileged position in relation to other types of writing; they are simply another
form of literature to be interpreted and critically assessed.

As a literary critic, Derrida values the act of writing as the primary category
of all philosophy and the most basic form of verbal communication. The essence
of writing is a "free play" of language, not the communication of some deeper
"meaning". As he puts it: "There is nothing outside the text." Rather than
searching for some elusive "true meaning", interpreters should view their task as
playing with the text until some new insight arises as a result. Some of the "tricks"
Derrida uses to deconstruct classical texts in this way are to find a dominant
metaphor that guides the way the key terms are used and understood, to trace all
such terms back to their original or literal meanings, to focus on differences
between what might seem to be the "obvious" meaning of a text and other, hidden
meanings, and to explore the way different types of differences interact (including
differences in sound, spelling, etc.). He coined the term "différance" to refer to the
latter, the interplay between different differences, emphasizing that we are able to
examine only one type of difference at a time: the other types must "defer" to the
one that grabs our attention at any given time. To locate such alternative or under‐
lying metaphors, meanings, differences-such différance-Derrida often utilizes
concepts from depth psychology, arguing that unconscious connections are
imbedded in the text. In so doing, his aim is not to deny a text's "traditional"
interpretation(s), so much as to play around with the wide variety of other
interpretations that might be just as plausible.
 So convinced is Derrida that the proper interpretation of a text must always
remain an "open", unstructured question, that he claims that the margins of a book
are as important as the printed words. The margins, together with all the spaces
between the words, constitute the différance that makes reading possible in the
first place. On the one hand, the margins represent what is not written, and this
tells us as much about a text's meaning as what is written. On the other hand,
when a reader writes his or her own comments in the margins, these become as
much a part of the text's meaning as what the original writer had in mind.

Though deconstructionism is by no means limited to texts relating to issues

in moral philosophy, this is the best week to deal with the movement, because it
tends to result in the notion of a text's meaning being totally relativized. And the
implications of this total relativization are nowhere felt more strongly than in the
realm of ethics. Derrida and other deconstructionists go so far as to claim that any
attempt to insist on a "true" meaning, or to regard any principle as absolutely true,
is a political ploy used to "oppress" people who hold different views. As such, the
whole movement takes on a moralistic tone not unlike that of Nietzsche's,
whereby any attempt to support traditional ideas is cast into disrepute. In fact, I
was once at a seminar where a deconstructionist argued that even a simple logical
principle such as the law of noncontradiction is nothing but a tool of oppression
that ought therefore to be rejected! Another influential deconstructionist, Michel
Foucault (1926-1984), applied such ideas in far more detail to moral issues,
especially those relating to sexuality and mental illness But rather than examining
his or others' ideas at this point, let us return to Kant in order to draw some
conclusions about the implications of a healthy perspectivism for moral wisdom.

On the standard interpretation of Kant, as assumed by Nietzsche, he

regarded the categorical imperative and perhaps even the specific maxims
justified by it (such as "Never tell a lie") as absolute moral principles. However,
Kant's moral theory need not be interpreted so rigidly. For, just as he regarded
everything that appears in space and time (i.e., in the world) as contingent and
therefore relative, while only what our mind imposes on the world a priori (i.e., as
the world's boundary) is necessary or absolute, so also he regarded the moral
worth of an action as stemming not from its result in the world of outer objects,
but from its source in the agent's world of inner motives. Hence, Kant's moral
theory is relativistic at least in this sense: the same action can be right in one
situation and wrong in another if the underlying motivation is different in each
case. Where Kant parted with strict relativism, in his moral theory as well as in
other areas of his philosophy, was in believing there are absolute principles that
underlie all such "relative" decisions. These principles are absolute only in the
sense that they define specific perspectives; but we are free to adopt different
perspectives to interpret any given situation. In this way, Kant's position
transcends both the foundationalism that naively upholds the maxims of
traditional morality as if they were absolutes and the antifoundationalism of
deconstructionist relativism that wipes away all boundaries. Instead, Kantian
perspectivism recognizes the boundaries as "relatively fixed"-i.e., fixed only in
relation to the principles that define each perspective. No principle is true from
every perspective, so nothing we know is "absolutely absolute".

Kant did recognize a level of reality that goes beyond the relatively absolute
principles of his perspectivism. But as we saw in Lecture 8, he regarded this
absolute or "ultimate" reality, the realm of the "thing in itself", as unknowable.
Rather than merely defending the "old" morality, as Nietzsche claimed, Kant's
perspectivism thus provided us with a third alternative. Traditional morality lives
in the myth that a specific set of moral maxims (e.g., those found in the Bible) are
absolutely true for all people and at all times. Relativism breaks through this myth
by arguing that, because nothing is absolute, anything can be true or right.
"Cultural relativism" is the more specific view that each culture sets its own
boundaries, and that right and wrong are in fact nothing but cultural norms. But if
this were the case, then no culture could ever be wrong and it would be difficult to
imagine how or why a culture would ever change its moral standards. Nietzsche's
relativism is not cultural, for he clearly accuses some cultures (namely, the
Apollonian ones) of being morally corrupt. His view might rather be called
absolute relativism, inasmuch as he argued that the only healthy moral theory is
one that breaks through all boundaries, cultural or otherwise. Kant's position goes
beyond relativism by encouraging us to return to the boundary of morality even
though we are ignorant of exactly how fully we are following the moral law at
any given time. For Kant, we are to believe there is something absolute, even
though we cannot know exactly what it is; only when we humbly accept this
unknowable absolute as a boundary-defining reality will we be able to make
moral decisions that are genuinely our decisions (i.e., free) and yet genuinely
moral as well.
 The presence of a moral absolute, even if it is in a sense outside the world
of our actions, has important implications for how we treat those who disagree
with our opinions. Relativists usually encourage us always to be tolerant of the
views of others. Tolerance in general is, of course, a very good thing. It is a
reaction against an older way of looking at the world, as full of absolute, black
and white distinctions that ought to be strictly forced onto all other people. In the
name of absolute truth and goodness many people down through history have
been attacked, ostracized, beheaded, and burned at the stake, merely for holding
opinions differing from those of the people with more political power.
Nevertheless, the danger in relativism is that it ultimately leads to the destruction
of both knowledge and morality. By blurring the distinction between true and
false or between right and wrong, it convinces people nowadays to ignore the
inner guidelines that reason provides for us to determine truth and goodness. Must
we, so to speak, "throw out the baby with the bath water"? Kant would say "No!"
Be tolerant up to a point, but not at the expense of denying two of the highest
values in human life. Kantian perspectivism provides an alternative to relativism
by maintaining that there are rational absolutes, and that, although these absolutes
are objectively unknowable, practical reason itself communicates them to each
person, if only we will listen to its voice. Because goodness and truth have their
absolute basis not in the actions and objects found in the world, but in the rational
voice within each individual, intolerance can still be opposed, but not so
systematically as to destroy the possibility of knowledge and morality.

Kant's own keyword for the basic principle of morality, respect is actually
related in a significant etymological way (at least in English) to the whole notion
of a perspective. To "re-spect" a person is "to look again" at them and their
situation-to think twice before judging or acting according to one's own
inclinations. To "per-spect" a situation is "to look through (or by means of)" a
given presupposition at the various details under consideration. Interestingly, at
least one translator has used "to perspect" for Kant's term "einsehen", literally
meaning "to see in" and as a noun, "understanding" or "insight". This accurately
reflects the close relationship we have seen operating throughout this course
between perspectives and insights. Thus we could say that, as respecting is to
morality, perspecting is to insight, and so also to philosophy in general.
 Before concluding this lecture, I would like to mention that some of you are
still falling into the self-reference trap (see Lecture 10) in your insight papers.
Now that we have a deeper understanding of perspectives and how they function
in relation to myths, I hope you will be more adept at stating your arguments more
carefully. With this in mind, let me now give another example of how to deal with
philosophical questions without falling into this fallacy. Once I read a paper that
claimed "Truth always hurts", and another that similarly argued "The only time
we can be certain of what is true is when it inflicts pain on us." Such claims may
be true and even wise in a variety of human situations. But if we present such an
insight as a universal principle, then it obviously fails the self-reference test. For
merely believing the statement "Truth always hurts" does not, in itself, inflict any
pain on the believer. If the principle is true, then there is at least one truth that
does not hurt!

Kant's perspectivism, on my interpretation, is unique and superior to all the

other options we have considered, inasmuch as it argues that each area of applied
philosophy does have its proper boundary, but that none of these are absolute in
the sense of applying to all situations. On the contrary, we may choose to impose
one set of boundaries on a situation at one point in time, thereby treating it as a
determined event in a scientific framework, yet impose a different set of
boundaries on the same situation at a later time, thereby treating it as a moral
situation. Whereas Nietzschean perspectivism, like deconstructionism, regards the
perspectival nature of all knowledge as virtually doing away with the notion of
truth, Kantian perspectivism reconstructs what has been relativized by regarding
perspectives as truth-defining boundaries -or in the case of moral philosophy, as
goodness-defining boundaries. To say that an act is good only relative to the
moral standpoint does not reduce morality to a cultural norm or personal
preference, but raises it to the status of a philosophically justified belief.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Can a single action be both free and determined at the same time?

B. Are there any absolute (i.e., unchangeable) boundary lines?

2. A. Can a value judgment ever be false?

B. Can two genuine duties contradict each other?

3. A. Are "life-denying" acts ever morally right?

B. Could a human being kill God?

4. A. Is a "breakthrough" always good?

B. Is philosophy without reason really possible at all?

RECOMMENDED READINGS
1. Immanuel Kant, Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals, Second Section,
"Transition From the Popular Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysics of Morals"
(FMM 405-445).

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Book II, "Dialectic of Pure

Practical Reason" (CPrR 106-148).

3. J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Oskar Piest (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957).

4. G.E. Moore, Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965[1912]).

5. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, ?25 (JW).

6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue (TSZ).

7. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the

future, tr. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973).

8. Jacques Derrida, "Différance", Margins of Philosophy, tr. A. Bass (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp.1-27.

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D1
25. Power and the Boundary of Politics

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Here in Part Three we have been learning that philosophy deals not only
with abstract theoretical issues relating to metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and
language usage, but also with more concrete practical issues, such as those
relating to science and morality. The philosophy of science and moral philosophy
are both major branches of philosophy: they provide the basis for applying
philosophy to more practical issues relating to specific sciences or specific ethical
situations. In this and the following lecture I want us to consider one further
branch of the tree of philosophy, political philosophy. There are actually a number
of other fields of philosophical inquiry that might be included in Part Three, if we
had time. But for our purposes a discussion of political philosophy can serve as an
adequate way of completing our study of how to apply philosophical thinking in
our search for wisdom.

Many of the philosophers we have already studied had much to say about
political philosophy. For example, the main point of Plato's longest and most
systematic book, called Republic, is to set out a rational plan for the ideal political
system. However, many aspects of his proposal appear to modern readers to be
too unrealistic and/or outdated to be considered very seriously. The suggestion
that philosophers ought to be trained to serve as kings, for instance, is an idea that
has rarely, if ever, been put into practice. One of the reasons Plato's political
philosophy seems so distant from our own ways of thinking about politics is that
modern political thought is rooted to a large extent in the quite different ideas put
forward by his star student. Aristotle's book, Politics, also contains some
examples whose relevance is limited to the ancient Greek city-states, where the
political systems were early forerunners of modern democracies; yet the main
issues it raises are of timeless interest, transcending their original historical
context in their applicability. Hence, we shall use today's lecture to take a close
look at this classic text in political philosophy.

Aristotle regarded politics not merely as an optional field of philosophical

inquiry, but as an essential task for any philosopher, because "man is by nature a
political animal" (AP 1253a(37)). In Politics Aristotle attempted to determine
what constitutes the "best" city. (The Greek word for "city", incidentally, is polis,
from which we derive the word "politics".) This required him not only to discuss
what its particular characteristics would be, but also to analyze the general nature
of a city and the different political systems ("politeiai") that can be used to govern
a city. But politeiai include not only specific governmental structures, but also
"the way of life of a city" in general (1295a(133)). Although his analysis is by no
means the last word on the subject, an examination of Aristotle's ideas can
provide a good sampling of the various ways of drawing the boundary that defines
possible political systems.

Aristotle began his study of politics by claiming that "every city is some
form of partnership ... for the sake of some good", and that the political
philosopher's task is that of "investigating what the city is composed of" (AP
1252a(35)). He then pointed out that families and business relations are also
examples of partnerships exhibiting something like politics on a lower level. A
partnership between several families gives rise to a village, and a partnership
between several villages gives rise to a city. The partnership that makes up a city
therefore requires certain agreements between "similar persons, for the sake of a
life that is the best possible" (1328a(209)). Aristotle never suggested that such
partners must be similar in every respect, but that both unity and diversity must
exist between the partners in different respects: "a city tends to come into being at
the point when the partnership formed by a multitude is self-sufficient" (1261a-
b(55-57)). The purpose of a city, therefore, is
not [to be] a partnership in a location and for the sake of not committing injustice
against each other and of transacting business. These things must necessarily be
present if there is to be a city, but not even when all of them are present is it yet a
city, but [the city is] the partnership in living well both of households and families
for the sake of a complete and self-sufficient life. (1280b(99))

Anyone who can participate actively in the political partnership that makes
up a city is qualified to be a "citizen". Thus Aristotle defined a citizen as anyone
who can hold a government office: "Whoever is entitled to participate in an office
involving deliberation or decision is ... a citizen in this city; and the city is the
multitude of such persons that is adequate with a view to a self-sufficient life" (AP
1275a-b(87)). Sharing in the political partnership of the city requires the citizen
not only to be a capable decision-maker, but also to be a person who is willing to
abide by decisions made by others. For Aristotle stressed (1277b(92)) that "the
good citizen should know and have the capacity both to be ruled and to rule, and
this very thing is the virtue of a citizen-knowledge of rule over free persons from
both [points of view]."

In this sense monarchies, where only one person rules, have no citizens; in
fact, they technically have no city and no politics either, inasmuch as there is no
partnership between equals for the purpose of ruling and being ruled. This is why
Aristotle sometimes contrasted monarchies with what we would call "republican"
(i.e., non-monarchical) political systems: only the latter are politeiai in the strict
sense of the word (though he sometimes used this term loosely to refer to
monarchies as well), so republican systems occupied his primary attention in
Politics.

One of the most interesting aspects of Aristotle's political philosophy is

that, in the course of his discussion, he developed a systematic framework
consisting of six possible types of political system. They are distinguished by the
different source of authority and power that characterizes each. After asserting
that "the authoritative element" in a political system must "be either one or a few
or the many", he explains the difference between "correct" political systems and
their "deviations" (AP 1279a(96)): "when the one or the few or the many rule with
a view to the common advantage, these political systems are necessarily correct,
while those with a view to the private advantage of the one or the few or the
multitude are deviations."

The names Aristotle assigned each of these six systems are as follows. The
correct form of monarchy is called a "kingship". (In ancient Greek monos means
"alone" or "single"; archos means "ruler". The suffix "-cracy" comes from kratos,
meaning "power".) The correct form of "rule by the few" is "aristocracy", meaning
the power is held by the best (aristos) people. And "polity" is the correct form of
majority rule, though Aristotle also used this term to refer in a general way to all
political systems. Since he sometimes contrasted politeiai with monarchy,
Aristotle in this context probably intended politeiai to be interpreted in this
narrow sense; as such, his claim was that all non-monarchical systems (i.e., all
republics) can be called polities. In Nicomachean Ethics (NE 1160a), he avoided
the equivocal use of "polity" by referring to this third correct political system as
"timocracy", meaning power held by those who own property (timema).
Moreover, he explicitly stated that this term is to be preferred to the term "polity",
even though the latter is the more common of the two terms. However, this brief
account of timocracy is difficult to distinguish from oligarchy (see below); so I
shall adopt the usage given in Politics in spite of its possible ambiguity.

Aristotle also described deviations from each of the three basically positive
forms of political system:

Deviations from those mentioned are tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from
aristocracy, democracy from polity. Tyranny is monarchy with a view to the
advantage of the monarch, oligarchy [rule] with a view to the advantage of the
well off, democracy [rule] with a view to the advantage of those who are poor;
none of them is with a view to the common gain. (AP 1279b(96))

Let's now examine each of these six political systems in a bit more detail.
 In his discussion of kingship, Aristotle was careful to point out that there
are several different kinds of kings. The main distinction is between those whose
authority transcends the law and those who must themselves obey the law. A
political system where the "so-called king" rules "according to law" is not a true
kingship; such a king is more like a "permanent general" (AP 1287a(113)). A
kingship in the true sense of the word is an "absolute kingship", where "one
person has authority over all matters ..., with an arrangement that resembles
household management" (1285b(110-111)). In a kingship, "the best political
system is not one based on written (rules) and laws", because a good king will be
able to judge fairly according to the circumstances of each specific situation,
being guided by the general principles of the law, even though his judgment need
not be determined by them (1286a(111)). As Aristotle put it in AP 1284a(106-
107): "If there is one person so outstanding by his excess of virtue-or a number of
persons ...-... such persons can no longer be regarded as a part of the city.... [For]
they themselves are law." He then pointed out that "ostracism" is the inevitable
fate for such persons "in the deviant political systems" (1284b(108)), even though
in "the best political systems ... persons of this sort will be permanent kings in
their cities."

Although kingship is technically the best political system, Aristotle

preferred aristocracy for several reasons. There is always a danger that the one
man holding all the power will turn bad, so that the best system would degenerate
into the worst (i.e., tyranny). The only protection against such a man being
overcome by his own selfish desires is for him to accept the rule of law; thus "it is
laws-correctly enacted-that should be authoritative", not persons (AP 1282a-
b(103)). The nature of law is such that it protects people against the ever-present
danger of being corrupted by their own appetite, for as Aristotle explained
(1287a(114)): "One who asks law to rule ... is held to be asking god and intellect
alone to rule, while one who asks man adds the beast. Desire is a thing of this
sort; and spiritedness perverts rulers and the best men. Hence law is intellect
without appetite."

Another problem with kingship in Aristotle's mind is that there is likely to

be more than just one good man in most cities, so the good men who are not
allowed to rule may not be satisfied with the inequality between themselves and
the king. Such an unjust situation is almost inevitably resolved by replacing the
king with an aristocracy, where all the rulers are good men (AP 1286b(112)).
(They cannot be good women because, according to Aristotle, women are not
even be allowed to become citizens!) Hence, Aristotle suggested that, ironically,
the less power a king has (i.e., the less he is like a true king), the longer he will be
able to preserve his rule (1313a(173)).

An "aristocracy ... is in some sense an oligarchy" (oligos means "few"),

since in both types of political system "the rulers are few" (AP 1306b(159)). The
difference is that, unlike a typical (i.e., deviant) oligarchy, where the rulers are
chosen merely "on the basis of wealth", the rulers in an aristocracy are chosen "in
accordance with virtue" (1273a (82)). (When property ownership is the type of
wealth used as one of the main qualifications for choosing who is given the power
and authority to rule in an oligarchy (see e.g., 1279b(96)), the system could also
be called a timocracy. One way of accounting for the potential ambiguity between
the terms "oligarchy" and "timocracy" would be to note that a timocracy would be
a polity if the amount of property required to be a citizen is very low, whereas it
would be an oligarchy if the amount is high, since only a few people would then
be wealthy enough to be citizens.) Oligarchy is usually bad for a city, because
there is no guarantee that the rulers will be virtuous (e.g., by looking after the
welfare of the poor) just because they are rich. An aristocracy, by contrast, is by
definition (in Aristotle's sense of the word) a political system where the few men
who are given the power and authority to rule will, being virtuous, look after the
interests of those who are not members of the ruling class.

The distinction Aristotle devoted the most attention to in Politics is between

the two extreme forms of non-monarchical government, oligarchy and democracy.
This is probably because these two systems are the ones found most frequently in
real historical cities, both in ancient Greece and in modern times. For example, he
said "law may be oligarchic or democratic" (AP 1281a(100)), in the sense that "in
democratic political systems the people have authority, while by contrast it is the
few in oligarchies" (1278b(94)). In AP 1279b-1280a(96-97), he explained:

oligarchy is when those with property have authority in the political system; and
democracy is the opposite, when those have authority who do not possess a
[significant] amount of property but are poor ... What makes democracy and
oligarchy differ is poverty and wealth: wherever some rule on account of wealth,
whether a minority or a majority, this is necessarily an oligarchy, and wherever
those who are poor, a democracy. But it turns out ... that the former are few and
the latter many ...

Whereas "the defining principle of aristocracy is virtue" and "that of oligarchy is

wealth", the defining principle of democracy is "the majority [i.e., the poor]
having authority" (1310a(167)).

Democracy is a political system where a partnership between the "common

people" (démos) determines how power and authority are distributed in the city. It
is therefore characterized by a type of "freedom" that involves "being ruled and
ruling in turn" (AP 1317a-b (183)). Such an arrangement of reciprocal ruling
among equals "is law" (1287a(113)). As with most of the other political systems,
Aristotle discussed several varieties of democracy, including the type where "the
people become a monarch", in the sense that "the many have authority [over the
law, though] not as individuals but all together" (1292a(125-6)). In the narrow
sense of a political system (i.e., as excluding monarchies), "a democracy of this
sort is not a political system. For where the laws do not rule there is no political
system."

Aristotle warned that the best political system for a given city cannot be
determined in advance: any of the systems (except tyranny) may end up being the
most appropriate, once the specific situation is taken into consideration. Thus, for
example, he admitted that sometimes a kingship will be the best system for a city,
even though in general "to have law rule is to be chosen in preference to having
one of the citizens do so" (AP 1288a(115-116)). Polity, the political system
Aristotle thought is most often to be preferred, is midway between aristocracy and
democracy. Yet even in the case of polity, he granted that "there is nothing to
prevent another political system being more advantageous for certain [cities]"
(1296b(136)).
 Polity is a political system based on the "golden mean" (see e.g., NE 1106a-
1109b(65-75)), Aristotle's famous principle telling us always to avoid extremes; in
this case it tells us that "the middling sort of life is best" for both the city and the
individual (AP 1295a(133)). In other words, polity is a political system where the
"middle class", as we would now call it, forms a majority of people who have the
power and authority to rule in a way that mixes elements of the other three
republican systems. The mixture Aristotle had in mind involves a combination of
democracy and oligarchy (the two extremes) in such a way that their extreme
elements will cancel each other out: a polity requires "a mixture of ... the well off
and the poor" (1293b-1294b(129-132)). But it might also mix elements of
aristocracy and oligarchy, as when a polity requires "a law distributing offices on
the basis of merit [as in aristocracy] to those who are well off [as in oligarchy]"
(1288a(116)). When we read Aristotle saying that the best sort of oligarchy "is
very close to so-called polity" (1320b(190)), we must assume this good oligarchy
is actually an aristocracy. For aristocracy and polity are the good "means"
between the bad "extremes" of oligarchy and democracy.

With this in mind, we can now map the relations between the four
republican (non-monarchical) political systems, by using either a simple flow
chart (as in Figure IX.1a), or a 2LAR cross (as in Figure IX.1b) based on the
following two underlying questions: (1) Are there only a few rulers? and (2) Is the
system good (i.e., "correct")?
(a) As a Flow Chart (b) Mapped onto the Cross

Figure IX.1: Four Forms of Republican Political System

These maps help us see why Aristotle sometimes virtually equated polity with
aristocracy (e.g., AP 1286b(112)): these systems, as the "means", are good for
most cities, while democracy and oligarchy, as the "extremes", are bad.

The remaining political system in Aristotle's framework is "tyranny".

Technically this is the opposite of (i.e., deviation from) kingship. Yet Aristotle
also called it "the extreme form of democracy", and added that some forms of
oligarchy and democracy are "tyrannies", divided among many persons (AP
1312b(172)). He explained the relation between tyranny and the other two deviant
political systems as follows:

Kingship accords with aristocracy, while tyranny is composed of the ultimate sort
of oligarchy and of democracy-hence it is composed of the two bad political
systems and involves the deviations and errors of both of them....

.... Having wealth as its end comes from oligarchy ..., as does its distrust of the
multitude.... From democracy comes their war on the notables ... (1310b-
1311a(168-169))

He then explained why kingship is not worth the risk of tyranny:

Kingships no longer arise today; if monarchies do arise, they tend to be tyrannies.

This is because kingship is a voluntary sort of rule ..., but [nowadays] there are
many persons who are similar, with none of them so outstanding as to match the
extent and the claim to merit of the office. (1313a(173))

If we now add the two forms of monarchy to the four forms of republican
political system, we can put all six systems together in the form of a circular flow
chart, enabling us to see the entire framework at a single glance.

Figure IX.2: Aristotle's Six Forms of Political System

In his discussion of political revolutions, Aristotle argued that, although each

system can change into virtually any other system, they tend to "undergo
revolution more frequently into their opposite than into a political system of a
neighboring sort" (AP 1316a-b(179-80)). In other words, a revolution is more
likely to be influenced by the internal logic of the relation between different
political systems than by the empirical factor of what type of system is in effect in
a neighboring city.
 In AP 1286b(112) Aristotle described more fully how the progression of
political systems, as represented by the arrows in Figure IX.2, typically works
itself out in real historical situations: political systems normally start out as
kingships, pass over into aristocracies or polities, degenerate into oligarchies, fall
into the grips of a tyranny, and are liberated from oppression by a democracy.
Even though moving from an aristocracy to a democracy does "harm to the
political system" (1270b (76)), he regarded democracy as the almost inevitable
political system, inasmuch as it serves as the best protection against tyranny. Yet
Aristotle hoped this historical fact could be overcome by reason, so that the least
extreme of the truly good systems, polity, can become a reality, even though it had
rarely existed in the past. This progression can also be mapped onto a 6CR
triangle (with a few extra arrows added) by placing the three "good" systems on
an upward-pointing triangle and the three

"bad" systems on a downward-pointing

triangle, as in Figure IX.3 (cf. Figure
V.8). The lines pointing upward to polity
are dashed in order to represent the
difficulty of implementing a transition to
this ideal system.

Aristotle's helpful summary of his

framework for political systems in Book
VIII, Chapter 10 of Nicomachean Ethics
adds several additional points worth
mentioning in conclusion. Here kingship
is treated as the best option, for any truly
Figure IX.3: Aristotle's Framework as a
good king will always have the best
inter- 6CR

ests of his subjects in mind. Since he has absolute power and authority over all the
people, no one will be able to prevent the king from putting his good will into
practice. Even though an aristocracy consists of the "best" men, it is not as good
as kingship, because it is more likely that a few bad men will infiltrate the
aristocracy and corrupt the intentions of the otherwise good rulers. And when all
property owners are allowed to influence the way laws are formed and rights are
distributed among the citizens, such corruption becomes even more likely.
 Aristotle compared the relationship between the citizen and the city in these
three good political systems to three types of family relationships. In kingship the
king is like a father and the citizen is like a son. In aristocracy the ruling class is
like a husband and the other citizens are like a wife. And in timocracy (or polity)
the relationship between property owners is like that between siblings. But just as
family relationships are not always harmonious, each of these political systems
can be perverted, thus giving rise to tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy,
respectively.

As we have seen, kingship is the most risky option, because "the worst is
that which is the opposite to the best." When choosing a political system, we must
therefore keep in mind that when we aim at a particular system, we might end up
with its opposite instead. This is why, as we have seen, Aristotle elsewhere
defended polity (i.e., timocracy) as the safest option: even if it slips into
democracy, the negative effect on the average citizen is kept to a minimum, since
democracy is "the least bad" of the three bad political systems. In a "majority
rules" system the will of the majority is likely to be adversely influenced by the
selfish motives of the many bad people who live in any society, though in some
cases this will be balanced by the good motives of the virtuous people. In the next
lecture I shall suggest a rather surprising way of breaking through the boundary of
politics as defined by Aristotle's system. We shall then conclude Part Three by
considering what type of political system is wisest for modern western societies as
we enter the third millennium.

27. Theocracy: The Ultimate Breakthrough

We hear so much these days about how wonderful democracy is that it

probably came as quite a shock for you to learn in the previous lecture that a
philosopher as great as Aristotle regarded it as a bad system! Why do people
believe democracy is so good? Most of you are probably thinking: "because it
gives us maximum freedom." But this myth is highly questionable. What
democracy gives its citizens is power and authority to elect officials and enact
laws. If Aristotle is right, the net result is likely to be bad, because the good men
will probably be in the minority. And in that case, these good men will be unable
to exercise enough control to implement truly wise policies for the city. The
stories of Socrates and Jesus provide two good examples of how the majority
tends to make the wrong decision, for they were both sentenced to death as a
direct result of something like a democratic vote. Despite the many differences
between these two events (e.g., Socrates defended himself at length, whereas
Jesus remained silent before his accusers), there is a basic similarity. In both cases
the majority of the people allowed to voice their opinions felt it would be better
for the city to have these men executed.

With this in mind, let's examine more closely how Aristotle's three pairs of
political systems differ in the level of freedom they offer to their citizens. It is
often said that there is no such thing as unlimited freedom: indeed, freedom is
normally defined by reference to some limitations, such as the self-imposed
limitations of loyalty to an authority, or obedience to laws. So the question here is,
how does each type of political system set up a boundary defining the citizen's
freedom? A king requires a high level of loyalty from his subjects, to the extent
that they cannot properly be called "citizens" at all; but in return a good king gives
his subjects a high level of freedom. Their daily lives need not be encumbered by
excessive laws as long as they remain loyal to the king. The ruling class in an
aristocracy requires a more moderate level of respect and loyalty, but offers in
return only a moderate level of freedom. More laws are needed to keep the lower
classes under control, and these laws restrict the freedom of all citizens. Finally, in
a polity (or timocracy), and even more so in a democracy, the level of freedom for
the citizens is actually at a comparatively low level-despite the common belief to
the contrary. Why? Because in these systems there is little or no need for the
citizen to be loyal or respectful to fellow citizens; so instead, a complex network
of laws must be instituted in hopes of preventing the stronger citizens from
mistreating the weaker ones.
 In a polity or a democracy the laws take away freedoms and replace them
with rights. Aristotle's framework of political systems clearly reveals that such a
sacrifice of freedom is the price that must be paid by those who wish to minimize
the risk of tyranny. For a system boasting a higher level of freedom can quickly
change into its opposite, offering little or no freedom to the citizens, but
promoting injustice and oppression of a type that is unlikely to occur in a
democracy. (This inverse relationship between freedom and risk is a key
component of the table given in Figure IX.6, summarizing the Aristotle's six basic
types of political system, plus the two new extremes we will examine today.) As
we shall see in Lecture 27, Aristotle's terminology is now somewhat outdated.
Nevertheless, by providing a clear framework for understanding how political
systems operate (whatever we call them!), he has demonstrated how loyalty to
those in power forms the boundary that enables political systems to make freedom
possible for their citizens.

This paradox, that higher degrees of freedom are possible only by

sacrificing more and more of our rights to a higher power, is closely related to
another problem-one that is actually a fairly common theme among political
philosophers. Indeed, many introductory philosophy courses would devote most
or all of the lecture(s) on political philosophy to a discussion of this other
problem, produced by the conflict between freedom and equality. Both freedom
and equality are typically regarded as ideals that ought to characterize a good (and
today that usually means a "democratic") political system. Yet if everyone were
totally free to do as they pleased, then there would be a great deal of inequality:
the strong would tend to overpower the weak; the rich would tend to deprive the
poor; the powerful would tend to disregard the powerless; etc. Such an extreme
state of having no ruler (and no rules) is called "anarchy". By contrast, a state of
total equality between everyone could come about only by taking away the
freedom of the people involved. B.F. Skinner's famous novel, Walden Two, gives a
good example of this option. The ideal society he imagined is one where
psychological conditioning is used to determine the relationships between
everyone, so that the people live in a state of harmonious equality, even though
they have no freedom.

There are two fundamentally different ways of responding to this problem

of the conflict between freedom and equality. The first is to attempt a
compromise. This is the option taken by democratic political systems (i.e., by
"republics", to use Aristotle's term [see Figure IX.1]) . There are, of course, many
different ways of conceiving how that compromise can best be made. For
example, socialists do so by tightening governmental control of the economy, thus
reducing the level of inequality by reducing the level of freedom, whereas
libertarians do so by loosening such governmental controls and trusting in a
natural economic force that will regulate the changing levels of both freedom and
equality.

The second response to this problem is to refuse to compromise, on the

grounds that what is needed is a breakthrough. This is the option taken by utopian
political systems. For example, in its original, Marxist form, communism is a
political philosophy that claims it is possible to have a society where individuals
enjoy the highest degree of both freedom and equality. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
believed work is the most important factor giving meaning to a person's life, for
we are what we do. Marx saw that in the capitalist societies of his day most
workers were alienated from the product of their labor by the greedy
entrepreneur, who used the workers as objects, as a means of making money. If
only the people would stand up and revolt against this and other evils perpetrated
by capitalism, he proclaimed, a new society would be ushered in. Marx's vision of
this society of perfect communion between people was one where everyone
would give work "according to their ability" and take the products of labor
"according to their need". Unfortunately, the twentieth century gave us ample
proof that the character and motivations of the people who revolt against injustice
simply are not as pure as Marx dreamed they would be. Communism as a political
system has failed for precisely the same reason that Marx believed capitalist-style
democracy had failed: in both cases the more people try to take freedom and
justice into their own hands, the more they ironically become slaves of the
injustice they themselves have created!

There are numerous other models for utopian societies; but today I shall
focus special attention on one alternative to communism that is rarely
acknowledged as a viable political system, even by those who are supposed to
believe in it. This is the vision of a utopia quite different from Marx's communist
state or Nietzsche's Superman; for it is a vision of the purpose of the earth as
determined and controlled not by people breaking through the alienating limits of
a life-denying outlook, but by God breaking through the hardened shell of human
hearts. Most religious people believe not only that God exists and that we can
somehow communicate with God, but also that God has a plan for this world-a
plan whose ultimate fulfillment cannot be thwarted by any counter-efforts on the
part of humanity. Some religious people believe this plan is confined to a
"spiritual" realm, and that in the "material" realm of (for example) economics and
politics, human systems can function quite apart from this divine plan. However,
the deepest (and most philosophically-minded) religious thinkers have always
affirmed that such an artificial distinction is illegitimate. If there is a God with a
plan, then this plan relates just as closely to the political activities of entire
societies as it does to the personal activities of any individual within a given
society.

The best name for the idea that God's rule applies not only to the operation
of divine power in human hearts, but also to its operation in the courtroom and the
market-place, is "theocracy" (with theos meaning "God" and kratos meaning
"power"). Unfortunately, this term has often been used in the past to refer to a
deceptively similar idea that is actually quite opposed to theocracy in its pure
form. Traditionally a political system has been called a "theocracy" if a religious
group (such as a church) regards itself as God's mouthpiece on earth, so that
whatever policies the leaders formulate must be accepted by the people as direct
commands from God. In order to distinguish this traditional usage from what I
believe to be the proper meaning of "theocracy", I have coined the term
"ecclesiocracy" to refer to any political system where the power is wielded by the
leader(s) of an "assembly" (ekklesia) of religious people. Typical examples of
ecclesiocracy would be the nation of Israel during the period following Ezra and
Nehemiah (i.e., after returning from Babylonian exile), most of southern Europe
during the time of the Holy Roman Empire, and the city of Geneva during the
latter part of John Calvin's life.

The reason it is so important to distinguish between ecclesiocracy and

genuine theocracy is that, although the latter is really a vision of the "kingdom of
God on earth" that religious people ought to be regarded as the best of all possible
political systems, the former is a perversion of this ultimate ideal that fools many
sincere believers. Moreover, as we learned from Aristotle, the perversion of an
ultimately good system would be an ultimately bad system. Ecclesiocracy
perverts theocracy by replacing God's autonomous rule in the heart of each
individual with a religious version of one of the humanly-rooted political systems.
This means one or more human beings end up wielding power over the ordinary
members of the religious assembly, using the name of God as an authenticating
guarantee. Yet this is the tragedy of human religion: that in trying to lead other
people to God many religious believers end up blocking other people from
receiving the very spiritual power they believe they are promoting. Indeed, this
happens whenever one person imposes a set of standards upon another person,
claiming that God only works in this particular way, so that everyone who does
not conform to this particular conception of "God's Way" will be rejected by God.

Among the many problems with this all-too-common attitude to religious

beliefs is that it assumes we human beings can actually grasp God; theocracy, by
contrast, assumes only that to follow God's plan a person must be willing to be
grasped by God. And this usually means being ignorant of God's Way until the
moment it is actually revealed in your own heart. I believe this "pure" form of
theocracy is presented throughout the Bible (and in the Scriptures of many other
world religions, though not in such a pure form) as an actual political system. The
difference between theocracy and all other political systems (including
ecclesiocracy) is precisely in the fact that theocracy alone renounces all rights of
human beings to govern themselves, acknowledging God as the only true
governor. In this sense theocracy can be called a "non-political political system",
provided we understand that his phrase must be interpreted using synthetic logic.
The political philosophy called anarchy (i.e., "no ruler") actually shares with
theocracy the notion that people only perpetuate injustice when they try to use
laws to govern themselves; however, since it rejects all rule, it cannot properly be
called a political system as such. Viewed from the perspective of someone who
does not believe in God, theocracy would be hard to distinguish from anarchy.
The difference, of course, is that theocrats believe in a common guiding principle
that unites everyone together inwardly, whereas anarchists are left with nothing
but infinite diversity and an irresolvable struggle between opposing wills.

In the Bible, as in other religious literature, the kingdom of God is

presented as something that comes suddenly, invading the realm of human justice
with a divine justice that can neither be predicted nor comprehended in human
categories. This divine invasion is primarily directed toward the human heart; yet,
as the New Testament makes clear in many ways, a person's response to this
change should not be merely interior, but should revolutionize every aspect of the
person's life. Jesus' suffering in particular should be seen as a thoroughly political
kind of suffering, directly related to his radical rejection of any human means of
achieving

justice on earth. The message of the cross and

resurrection is a theocratic message: only when
we die to human ways of governing ourselves will
we allow God to permeate us with a new life
characterized by divine justice. The contrast
between this notion and that of Nietzsche's
Superman suggests that we can call this way of
resolving the problems of human injustice "God's
transvaluation of values". The way God's justice
breaks through all forms of human justice
(including those upheld by supporters of
ecclesiocracy), imparting a new meaning to words
like "equality" and "rights", is depicted in Figure
IX.4.

Many of the implications of theocracy

Figure IX.4:

God's Transvalua-

tion of Values

as a political system are too complex to be discussed here. However, I will

mention one of the most significant implications: it rejects the idea, so often taken
for granted in modern western culture, that we have rights, such as the rights to
"life, liberty, and happiness". In place of this assumption it claims that human
rights should never be regarded as anything other than gifts from God. Only if we
recognize that we have no rights of our own, and that we therefore owe absolute
loyalty to God, will we be given absolute freedom. In the Bible this freedom is not
just spiritual, but also thoroughly political. Theocracy is therefore the direct
opposite of democracy; for the latter emphasizes human rights in return for strict
limitations on our freedom. Yet theocracy does not require the destruction of other
systems. On the contrary, it can coexist with any of Aristotle's six systems (even
democracy). For the freedom it offers starts in the human heart, and loosens our
attachment to any and all of the limited, man-made political system under whose
control we live.

The fact that theocracy is described most often in the Bible in terms of a
kingdom suggests it is most properly viewed as a type of monarchical political
system, rather than a republican one. Indeed, if we consider theocracy and its
perversion, ecclesiocracy, together with Aristotle's two forms of monarchical
political system, kingship and tyranny, we can depict their relationship as a
perfect 2LAR, arising out of the two questions: (1) Is the system a religious one?
and (2) Is the system good (or "correct")? Just as theocracy is a religious form of
kingship (regarding God as the king), ecclesiocracy is a religious form of tyranny.
The same two maps used in Figure IX.1 to describe the relations between the four
republican political systems can therefore be used to map the relations between
the four monarchical political systems:

(a) As a Flow Chart (b) Mapped onto the Cross

Figure IX.5: Four Forms of Monarchical Political System

Figure IX.5a shows how ecclesiocracy is the extreme form of theocracy, just as
oligarchy is the extreme form of aristocracy. Moreover, just as kingship
degenerates into tyranny, theocracy degenerates into ecclesiocracy when the role
appropriate only for a divine being is usurped by human beings. In this sense,
ecclesiocracy is the root form of all tyranny, because its oppression is spiritual as
well as physical.

By putting the 2LAR cross here in Figure IX.5b together with its republican
correlate in Figure IX.1b, we can now construct a perfect 3LAR. The three
questions that give rise to the complete set of eight possible political systems are:
(1) Is the system monarchical? (2) Is the system either religious or ruled by a few
people? (3) Is the system good (or "correct")? These eight systems could be
mapped onto a double cross (i.e., a pair of concentric crosses, with one rotated at
a 45˚ angle from the other). But instead of drawing such a complex figure here, I
have provided a more detailed summary of the relationships between the eight
systems in the table given in Figure IX.6. This table lists the eight types of
political system from the best to the worst, together with the 3LAR component
corresponding to each. The second column provides a simple description of how
the name for each system is derived from some key Greek word referring to its
source of political power. The third and fourth columns compare the levels of
risk, freedom, and rights provided by each system. And the fifth column
summarizes and expands
Figure IX.6: Eight Basic Types of Political System

Aristotle's analogy between the citizen-state relationship and the relationship

between various members of a family.

The truth or falsity of theocracy is not something that could ever be

demonstrated by any philosophical or scientific proof. Rather, it must be accepted
as a "myth", in the special sense introduced in Lecture 3, as a truth that is so true
that it cannot even be questioned by those who live their lives by its guiding light.
This does not mean there is no reason for believing in theocracy. On the contrary,
upon stepping into the myth, a person will discover God breaking into their life in
real, concrete experiences, whose validity can hardly be doubted. But for this
reason-that is, because theocracy can be validated not by science and the love of
wisdom, but only by experience and the wonder of silence-I shall refrain from
discussing this religious point of view any further at this point; instead we shall
return to the topic of religious experience in Week XI.

27. Wisdom on the Boundary: Ideas vs. Ideology

If we now take a step back and look at the variety of solutions we have
considered to the problem of finding the best political system, we might easily
become discouraged. Indeed, the same could be said for most of the other topics
we have discussed, especially here in Part Three. Without a doubt, the theme I
have come across most frequently in reading students' insight papers has been the
idea that philosophical questions have "no definite answers"; and this is
sometimes used as evidence for the view that the realities such questions refer to
are either nonexistent or irrelevant to real life. However, I hope I have
demonstrated by now that both of these views are incorrect. Far from finding no
definite answers to the questions we have been considering, we have usually
found many definite answers! For good philosophers seek definite answers, just as
much as natural scientists do; the problem, of course, is that philosophers are
unable to attain the level of agreement reached by natural scientists, because
philosophical questions are concerned with ideas, rather than empirical objects. In
other words, the problem raised by the experience of coming face to face with a
reality we are necessarily ignorant of is usually not the problem of having nothing
to say about it; on the contrary, the problem is that we have many, apparently
conflicting things to say about it. The task of the philosopher, therefore, is to seek
to fit each part of the puzzle together in such a way that the true aspects of each
answer can be recognized for what they are. Philosophers who regard the love of
wisdom as an essential part of their task will never be satisfied with a single,
supposedly all-encompassing answer; yet this is not because they doubt such an
answer exists, but because they have seen a glimpse of its awesome reality!
 The alternative to loving wisdom "on the boundary" between our
knowledge and our recognized ignorance is to single out a single idea or set of
ideas and raise it to the level of absolute truth. When this happens, those who
claim to possess this "truth" typically regard it as their duty to share this gospel
(the "good news" that absolute truth can be knowable!) with others who remain in
the dark. Unfortunately, this goal is all too often taken to the extreme of forcing
others to "agree" with the single definite answer that is being taken as absolutely
true. As a result, a set of philosophical ideas that may have a wealth of insight to
offer us is transformed into a political ideology, the very antithesis of good
philosophy. An ideology, as I am using the term, is any set of ideas-often very
insightful ones when viewed objectively, outside their political (mis)application-
that is presented in such a way that the "believers" regard themselves as having a
monopoly on the truth. That is, when a person denies at the outset the very
possibility of other legitimate perspectives, an ideology is sure to be at work. An
ideology is a well-developed system of thought that is not only treated as a myth
by those who "live in" it, but is forced on those who do not wish to accept the
myth as it stands.

The twentieth century could well be called "the century of ideology".

Ideology in politics produced the east-west divide, reaching its climax during the
Cold War years, when the terms "Marxist" and "Capitalist" seemed almost to
define "evil" to those standing on the other side. In the realm of morals, the
various sorts of religious fundamentalism that cropped up around the world
illustrate the dangers of ideology better than any other single example. Whenever
people would rather kill those who disagree with their ideas than dialogue with
them, an ideology is sure to be operating. But ideology operates just as
powerfully, though less obviously, in the sciences-especially the social sciences,
where the differences between (for example) behaviorists and depth psychologists
are often so vast that no dialogue whatsoever is possible. Rather than seeking out
genuine insights wherever they may be found, those under the control of an
ideology will be unwilling even to consider that other approaches to their field
might be legitimate. And even the natural sciences are not totally immune to the
power of ideologies, though scientists tend to excuse themselves by using terms
such as "paradigms" to account for their irreconcilable differences. The point is
that, if we learn any lesson from the twentieth century, it should be ideology
backfires. To quote from the last book of the Bible: "those who live by the sword
die by the sword" (Revelation 13:10).
 With this in mind, I would like to warn against turning theocracy into an
ideology, an "ism" that might be treated as a final solution to all humanity's
problems. If someone who has tasted theocratic freedom refuses to return to the
boundary of political reality by recognizing that not everyone accepts the
theocratic vision, then such a person will risk turning a system of potentially
insightful ideas into a frightening ideology: theocracy will degenerate into eccle‐
siocracy. In this final lecture of Part Three I want us to explore the challenges of
living wisely with in the real world. The key to doing so, I believe, is to be
confident enough to uphold our ideas as ideals to live by, yet humble enough to
resist the temptation to turn them into an ideology.

In discussing various branches of applied philosophy here in Part Three, we

first considered the question of causality that arises in the philosophy of science.
Hume's view of "habit" is a definite answer: it defines his idea of how we come to
feel that objects and events are governed by a power of necessary connection.
Kant's argument that the "law of causality" is necessary for the very possibility of
experience is a definite answer to the same question. These contrasting ideas were
not put forward as mere opinions, as if Hume were saying he preferred to live in
England rather than Scotland, and Kant were responding that he would prefer
Scotland, because his grandfather had lived there; these men were expressing
views they believed everyone who wishes to think philosophically ought to affirm
as true. In this case these two definite answers to the same question appear to
contradict each other, though there may be some way of viewing both as correct.
For example, we could regard Hume's answer as correctly describing what we can
discover by limiting ourselves to the empirical perspective, while Kant's describes
what we discover by also adopting the transcendental perspective.

Next we considered moral philosophy and the question of right action.

Once again, we saw how Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche each proposed a definite
answer to this question; yet their answers came out looking very different.
Likewise this week, when considering political philosophy and the nature of right
government, we saw that Aristotle had six definite answers; yet subsequent
philosophers have proposed still other alternatives that Aristotle never imagined.
When such inevitable conflicts of ideas arise between different philosophers, we
should not infer that such questions must, in fact, have no answer at all. On the
contrary, we should take it as a challenge, to determine which of the definite
answers is the most adequate and/or to show how two or more of these answer
can be true simultaneously, each in its own unique way. In doing the latter we will
not only be establishing a set of justifiable perspectives within which knowledge
(i.e., science) can arise; we will also be practicing the art of loving wisdom, and
thereby guarding against the danger of such ideas being misused as ideologies.

In light of this distinction between wisely respecting the perspectival basis

of all insightful ideas and foolishly raising one set of ideas to the absolute status
of an ideology, let us devote the remainder of this lecture to an examination of
what political philosophy best suits the real world as it now exists, at the dawn of
the third millennium A.D. Without a doubt, the political ideology that "won" the
twentieth century's battle of ideologies is democracy. Despite the bad press
democracy has had from many philosophers, from Aristotle down to Nietzsche,
nearly everyone in modern western society now regards it as the "correct"
political system-perhaps the least questioned of all our cultural myths.

Kant is often regarded as one of the ideological founders of modern liberal

democracy. Half of his book, Metaphysics of Morals (1797), and several
influential essays written toward the end of his life, defend a system of universal
human rights as enforced by a "league of nations"-an idea that has significantly
influenced the subsequent development of western political systems, including
what we now call the "United Nations". However, what Kant meant by "rights" is
actually quite different from what we nowadays mean when we use this word. For
him our "rights" must arise out of the concept of right action:

Every action is right which in itself, or in the maxim on which it proceeds, is such
that it can coexist along with the freedom of the will of each and all in action,
according to a universal law. (SR 45)
That is, an external act (as governed by the domain of politics) can be right only if
it can coexist with the free (right) acts of all other individuals. This principle is
not only the basis for a Kantian theory of rights, but also lies at the foundation of
theocracy! Unfortunately, Kant's understanding of human rights is often taken out
of its proper context and used to make rights-based democracy into a political
ideology.

If we were to use Kant and other influential modern philosophers as the

basis for constructing an updated version of Aristotle's framework of political
systems, it would look quite different. The main distinction would be between
"democratic" and "totalitarian" systems (instead of "republican" and
"monarchical"); socialists and libertarians would represent the "extreme" forms of
democratic systems, while liberals and conservatives would represent the "mean"
forms (cf. Figures IX.1 and IX.5). In this system "democracy" takes on a far more
sophisticated meaning than it had for Aristotle. Yet our use of "democratic" and
Aristotle's use of "republican" both refer to types of federal system, whereby the
people agree (at least implicitly) to abide by a certain political structure in the
hope of maximizing mutual freedoms without depriving essential rights. Likewise
and by contrast, our use of "totalitarian" and Aristotle's use of "monarchical" are
both akin to the feudal system, whereby local and/or national monopolies of land
ownership operate without allowing widespread participation in political decision-
making.

The philosopher generally recognized as having put forward the most

sophisticated defence of modern liberal democracy is John Rawls (1921-). His
classic book, A Theory of Justice (1971), proposes two essentially Kantian
principles as a theoretical foundation:

First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty
compatible with a similar liberty for others.

Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are
both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to
positions and offices open to all. (TJ 60)
These principles guarantee equal rights and equal opportunity, respectively, to all
citizens. Governments should use the first principle as a guide for assigning a
basic set of rights, such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (as in the
U.S. Bill of Rights), to all persons, regardless of their race, religion, sex, etc.
Rawls' own examples of such rights include the right to vote, to own property, to
speak freely, etc. The second principle likewise requires governments to insure
that positions such as political offices and high paying jobs (or any paid employ‐
ment, for that matter) are open to all persons without discrimination that is
unrelated to their suitability for the position. The second principle is an attempt to
preserve a sense of justice in spite of economic and social inequalities by defining
"injustice" as inequalities that are not to everyone's mutual benefit.

A considerable portion of Rawls' book is devoted to clarifying and

qualifying these two basic principles of justice. Among the numerous points made
in this regard are that basic political rights cannot be traded for social or
economic advantages, that one person's (or group's) misfortunes cannot be
excused by appealing to another person's (or group's fortunes (as a utilitarian
politics might allow), that the principles apply to the way institutions are to be
structured but not necessarily to the way we treat any specific person(s) known to
us in real-life situations, and that policy-makers must consider the rights and
opportunities of past and future generations just as much as those of the present
generation. In a word, Rawls defined justice as "fairness", arguing that
governments are responsible to look after the less fortunate members of society.
His position sparked such a huge debate that we cannot even begin to consider the
pros and cons in this introductory course, except to say that the chief opponents of
such a position are libertarians (e.g., Robert Nozick), who argue that
governmental intervention deprives people of their basic liberties, and
communitarians (e.g., Alasdair MacIntyre), who argue that different principles of
justice arise out of different communities and therefore cannot be generalized so
neatly.

From a Kantian perspective, the major problem with such attempts to

defend a socialist version of liberal democracy is the tendency to assume that
"society" (i.e., government) bestows rights and opportunities onto people. Kant
defended a more individualistic view, whereby each person (in the form of a
"noumenal self") bestows or fails to bestow these rights (along with
corresponding duties) on himself or herself-a difference Rawls himself
acknowledges (TJ 257). This is a problem because it tends to shift responsibility
away from persons and toward institutions, thereby tending to make individuals
feel like insignificant "cogs" in the social "machine". Indeed, for many political
theorists nowadays, the responsibility for bestowing and protecting rights is
regarded as being the role of an international political body, the United Nations.
That this way of defending democracy is essentially ideological is evident from
the fact that the ultimate goal of most such proponents is one-world government.
Kant himself regarded this as a desirable stage in the development of human
political history; but only if those in positions of power remain aware that the
power resides not in the institutions but in the people themselves, without whom
there would be no rights to bestow.

Virtually all proponents of democracy as a prelude to one-world

government unfortunately tend to ignore an aspect of Kant's theory that was
crucial to his overall vision: that democracy is merely a stage in the long-term
development of the human race's political evolution. The ideal goal we ought to
see all political structures as pointing toward, in Kant's view, is something very
similar to what I have called "theocracy". Kant looked forward to a day when all
outward forms of control people impose on each other (i.e., all "coercion",
whether political, religious, or ideological in any other way) will give way to a
world wherein every person lives freely and responsibly according to their own
awareness of the moral law within them. This can happen, of course, only when
the human race learns once and for all that the most important virtues in life -the
philosophical virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty-cannot be imposed on others
by fiat; rather, we should encourage each person to use their own reason to decide
for themselves what is true, good, and beautiful. This, he thought, is an essentially
religious vision, yet it is religion without any outward, ideological form that will
cause it to clash with other ideologies. This conception of a moral religion, a way
of experiencing the meaning of life without forcing an ideology onto others who
may not be open to it, can come about only when religion and politics merge.
Kant referred to this merger as the "kingdom of ends" in his moral theory and as
"the kingdom of God on earth" in his theory of religion. The latter is such a
significant (and often grossly misunderstood) part of Kant's philosophy that I shall
devote two lectures to the subject in Week XI.

The way forward from democracy, if we take into consideration this wider
context of Kant's political vision, is to begin doing away with the common
assumption that morality can be legislated. The more democracies can move
toward anarchy (i.e., fewer laws, and eventually no laws), the better off we will
be. For one thing, this will give people the opportunity to be genuinely moral,
rather than just "politically correct". In the current situation in most western
countries, the majority of people don't care much about being moral because they
have come to believe that the government legislates morality; this leads to the
mythical belief that, as long as I am a "law abiding citizen", I am morally good.
But as Kant's arguments demonstrate, legal (external) goodness does not
necessarily coincide with moral (internal) goodness. Ironically, legal systems that
try to enforce so-called "moral" laws end up taking away the potential
praiseworthiness of the citizens' good actions.

Has the human race developed to the stage where all outward political
forms can simply vanish in the near future? Obviously not! That this ought to be
our ultimate goal is the grain of truth in Marxist ideology. But to attempt to
implement such policies in the short term would not be a step forward, but a grave
setback to humanity's political development-as the twentieth century's experiment
with Marxism so poignantly illustrated. Instead of trying to force the goal ("peace
on earth") through ideological coercion, our aim should be to seek to implement
political structures that have an in-built self-negating form-i.e., structures that
discourage by their very nature anyone who would seek to raise them to the status
of ideology. The more this happens, the more human beings will learn to trust
their own inner principles above the feeble attempts of politics to determine right
and wrong by external means. Perhaps the single most important lesson we can
learn from our study of wisdom here in Part Three is that, as we live in waiting for
the day when human beings can live in peace without outward political structures,
we must welcome differences of opinion rather than resisting them. The more we
can incorporate the idea that "opposition is true friendship" into our understanding
of political reality, the closer we will come to bringing the entire human race to a
deep awareness of wisdom on the boundary.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. What is power?

B. Where does law come from?

2. A. Is anarchy ("no ruler") a political system?

B. Is absolute freedom possible?

3. A. How can God have a "kingdom" on earth?

B. Would philosophers make good kings?

4. A. Do human beings have any inborn rights?

B. Is anything in the world really fair?

RECOMMENDED READINGS
1. Aristotle, The Politics, Book 4, Ch. 2 (AP 1289a-b).

2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Ch. 10 (NE 1160a-1161a).

3. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, tr. G. Bull (Harmondsworth, Middlesex:

Penguin Books, 1961).

4. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, tr. Katherine Woods (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1943).

5. Stephen Palmquist, Biblical Theocracy: A vision of the biblical foundations for

a Christian political philosophy (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1993).

6. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, tr. Samuel
Moore (Moscow: Progress Press, 1952[1888]).

7. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, ?1, "Two Principles of Justice" (TJ 60-65).

8. Stephen Palmquist, "'The Kingdom of God is at Hand!' (Did Kant really say
that?)", History of Philosophy Quarterly 11 (1994), pp.421-437.

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D1
28. What is Silence?

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

During the first three parts of this course we have encountered a variety of
different philosophical theories, proposed by philosophers attempting to solve a
diversity of problems. This very diversity, compounded by the variety of
approaches we have at our disposal, is one of the most serious threats to the health
of the tree of philosophy. For if nothing can unify the diversity that naturally
arises out of our human experience and out of our reflection upon it, then we are
in danger of meeting the same fate as Nietzsche. As we saw in Lecture 23,
Nietzsche uprooted the tree of philosophy in an attempt to awaken modern man
from our self-satisfied slumber under the shade of Socrates' philosophical tree.
But just as the first sign of impending death in an uprooted plant is that its leaves
go limp, so also Nietzsche's attempt to philosophize without grounding his
reasoning in an ultimate reality ended when his own experience went limp in the
unceasing noise of insanity.

The person whose quest for wisdom ends in insanity has completely lost touch
with the reality that makes the quest worthwhile. Fortunately, this tragic fate is not
inevitable, provided we learn to respond to the diversity of thought and life by
replacing the noise generated by the virtually endless choices at our disposal with
a silence that can lend unity and purpose to our fragmented existence. For this
reason, I shall begin this final part of our course by asking you to suggest some
answers to the question, "What is silence?"
As you think about this question, let me remind you that the part of the tree of
philosophy that best represents our need for a unifying principle in our thinking
and a unifying power in our lives is the leaves. For when we look at a tree with no
leaves, the distinction between its branches stands out clearly; yet when the same
tree has a full set of leaves, the branches actually appear to be connected, as if the
leaves have resolved the tension between the branches by holding them together
in a higher unity. The leaves of a tree, more than any other part, give us the
impression that the tree is a unit: especially when viewing a tree from a distance,
the leaves lose their distinctness and blur into each other. Moreover, a tree is often
more difficult to distinguish from other types of tree if it has no leaves. For
botanists normally use a tree's leaf to identify and classify it in relation to other
types of tree.

This analogy suggests one of the most important principles we will come across
here in Part Four: just as a tree's leaves give the tree both its distinctiveness and its
unity, so also the part of the tree of philosophy we shall now begin examining
operates according to the principle of "unity in diversity". Since
"unity" and "diversity" are opposites, this principle clearly requires us to think in
terms of synthetic logic if we are to make any sense out of it. But before we begin
looking at some examples of how this principle works, does anyone have any
ideas about how we can define silence?

Student V. "Silence refers to an environment where there is no sound-or at least,

very little."

I was hoping someone would give this kind of answer, because it gives me the
opportunity to clarify the question I am really asking. Your answer is correct as
far as it goes; but it defines silence in a merely superficial way. On the surface,
silence is indeed just the absence of sound. Thus, for example, if several of you
start talking while I am trying to give today's lecture, I might say "Silence
please!"; this would mean something like "Please stop making those sounds!"
However, the word "silence" normally suggests much more than this. For aren't
there some kinds of sound that do not disturb our silence? And what about the
popular song that talks about the "Sound of Silence"? If silence is the absence of
sound, then how could silence itself have a sound? In any case, does anyone have
a suggestion as to how we could go a little deeper into the meaning of silence?
What is silence?

Student W. "No noise."

This is a more helpful definition, especially if we define "noise" as

"disturbing sound". We can then see why some kinds of sound actually promote
silence rather than disturbing it. For instance, those birds chirping away in the tree
just outside the classroom window are probably making more sound than that
made by two or three students talking to each other out of turn while I am
lecturing. Yet I don't think any of us would say those birds are making noise, as
long as they are not competing with me for your attention. In the same way, the
background music in a film makes lots of sound; yet it can actually promote a
sense of silence in the film if it is used in the right way. But if the music detracts
our attention from the action happening on the screen, then it begins to function
more like noise. Likewise, music can enhance the conversation between a group
of friends; but if the same music is playing while one of them is trying to tune a
guitar, it will probably function more like noise. What do these examples tell us
about silence?

Student X. "It's quite subjective. What is silence for me might be noise for you."

That depends on what you mean by "subjective". So let's press your idea a bit
deeper. When you say silence is "subjective", does this mean merely that different
people experience silence in different ways (a rather obvious point), or does it also
tell us something about where silence is actually located? In other words, what
makes the difference between a person who can experience silence in a certain
situation and another person who cannot?

Student X. "It must be something inside the person. Yes, I think that's what I
meant by 'subjective'! Real silence is inner silence."
Good! This is precisely the point of my original question: What is inner silence?
What can we do to cultivate within ourselves a disposition that enables us to
experience silence when other people are being disturbed by the sounds all around
us? How can what is noise to other people become like music to our ears?Is this
just a basic difference between different people's personalities, or is there anything
we can do to improve our capacity for hearing the sound of silence?

Student Y. "I find that getting away from everyone and being alone for
awhile often gives me an inner peace that helps me cope with the disturbances
that come from my relationships with other people."

The kind of experience you are referring to is sometimes called "solitude". I too
enjoy being by myself sometimes; and I agree that it can foster the development
of a sense of inner silence. But the strange thing about solitude is that some
people don't like it; they are too afraid of becoming lonely. What's the difference,
then, between "being alone" and "being lonely"?

Student Z. "Some people can be alone for long periods of time without
feeling lonely at all; others will feel lonely even when they are with a group of
friends."

So what is it that makes these two types of people so different?

Student Z. "The lonely person seems to have something missing inside.

Could we call it silence?"

That's a good suggestion, although we should be aware that we are now

reasoning in a circle: solitude helps us develop inner silence; inner silence helps
us experience solitude without feeling lonely. So this still doesn't help us very
much if we happen to be lonely and/or lack inner silence right now. Nevertheless,
it is a good suggestion because it emphasizes the close connection between
solitude and silence. Solitude and silence normally go together: either we have
both or we have neither. In fact, experiencing one without the other is usually a
sign of mental and/or spiritual disintegration: silence without solitude breeds
dread; solitude without silence breeds insanity. In Lecture 34 we will look more
closely at the paradoxical insights we can gain from these all-too-common human
experiences.

People who spend much of their time in solitude and silence are sometimes
called "contemplatives". Contemplatives in virtually every major religious
tradition have worked hard to explain what silence and solitude are and how we
can go about nurturing the potential for such experiences. In ancient China, Lao
Tzu is a good example of such a contemplative. His poetic account of how to
follow the "Tao" that "cannot be expressed" is full of practical advice-though
often couched in terms of synthetic logic-as to how we can live a life of humility,
solitude, and silence, even amidst the apparent busyness of everyday life. The
Buddha would, of course, be another good example. And numerous others could
be cited from Hinduism, Islam, and various other religions.

The Jewish and Christian religious traditions also have a long line of such
contemplatives. One of the most influential Christian contemplatives in the
twentieth century was Thomas Merton, whose writings inspired many to deepen
their own inner experiences. An extended quote from his little book, Thoughts in
Solitude, can help us understand how solitude and silence work together in our
experience of the reality religious people call "God":

As soon as you are really alone you are with God.

Some people live for God, some people live with God, some live in God.

Those who live for God, live with other people and live in the activities of

their community. Their life is what they do.

Those who live with God also live for Him, but they do not live in what they do
for Him, they live in what they are before Him. Their life is to reflect Him by
their own simplicity and by the perfection of His being reflected in their poverty.

Those who live in God do not live with other men or in themselves still less in
what they do, for He does all things in them.

Sitting under this tree I can live for God, or with Him, or in Him....

To live with Him it is necessary to refrain constantly from speech and to

moderate our desires of communication with men, even about God.

Yet it is not hard to commune with other men and with Him, as long as we find
them in Him.

Solitary life-essentially the most simple. Common life prepares for it in so far as
we find God in the simplicity of common life-then seek Him more and find Him
better in the greater simplicity of solitude.

But if our community life is intensely complicated-(through our own fault)-we are
likely to become even more complicated in solitude.

Do not flee to solitude from the community. Find God first in the community,
then He will lead you to solitude.

A man cannot understand the true value of silence unless he has a real respect for
the validity of language: for the reality which is expressible in language is found,
face to face and without any medium, in silence. Nor would we find this reality in
itself, that is to say in its own silence, unless we were first brought there by
language.

The final paragraph is reminiscent of Wittgenstein's idea of language as a "ladder"

that must be thrown away when we begin to see things as they "manifest
themselves" to us (see Figure VI.1). Similarly, this passage explains that we must
learn to be with people before we gain benefit from being alone. Solitude and
silence benefit us only to the extent that we have already met the reality that holds
together the diversity of our lives in an underlying unity.
Another example from the Christian tradition comes in a popular book entitled
Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster. This book was written for ordinary
Christian believers, so some of the language might be difficult for some non-
Christians to appreciate; nevertheless, I believe it contains insights that can benefit
anyone. The book describes twelve distinct "disciplines" (arranged, significantly
enough, as a perfect 12CR!), each working together to promote the kind of inner
disposition we have been discussing today. Chapter 7, on the close relationship
between solitude and silence, is especially relevant to today's discussion. In that
chapter Foster distinguishes in a helpful way between solitude and loneliness (CD
84): "Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment. Solitude is not
first a place but a state of mind and heart." In the same way we could add that
"noise" is inner chaos, while "silence" is "inner peace". But such inner peace and
fulfillment cannot be attained merely by fighting against their opposites (chaos and
loneliness). Rather, Foster argues, they develop slowly as a result of continuous
self-discipline. Thus, after quoting the old proverb, "the man who opens his mouth,
closes his eyes!", Foster explains (86): "The purpose of silence and solitude is to
be able to see and hear. Control rather than no noise is the key to silence."

Those who emphasize such contemplative control over our inner disposition are
sometimes called "mystics". Mystics are those who experience a power that
unifies the diversity of their everyday experiences, and in response, change their
way of life accordingly. For the mystic, silence is not just a convenient tool used
to reduce the level of stress in a busy life, or even to develop the skill of having
insights; rather, in its deepest sense it is a way of life. Thus, the mystic "vision"
(SF 9) sees all of life as a "a supreme gift for which the most appropriate posture
is the giving of thanks.... To acknowledge life as a supreme gift is to sense that the
underlying mystery ... is nevertheless benevolent. To receive it as a mystery is to
respect the beauty of its pathos." We have no right to possess a gift, but must
patiently wait for it to be given, and then accept or reject it when and as it comes.
The disciplines of a mystical way of life are intended to prepare us to receive the
mysterious gifts of silence and solitude when they do come.

This mystical vision can also help us understand the nature of insights. We can
prepare ourselves to receive insights; but cannot control exactly when or how
they will come to us. All we can do is sit, as it were, under the tree, waiting for
the fruit to drop into our open hands, just like the sage pictured on the cover of
this book. The control that comes from spiritual discipline is not control over the
mysterious reality that gives insights; rather, it is control over our own hands (and
minds), which are usually too busy (filled with "noise") to receive what is being
offered. The same point is made in The Giving Tree: because the boy's hands are
always too full of his own selfish interests, he is unable to receive the love and
happiness the tree offers him. This is why I have asked you to spend some time
quietly meditating before you begin the process of actually writing your insight
papers. During these times of silence we prepare our minds (as well as our hearts)
for receiving insights. The most important insight might not come during the time
of silence; but without that time of preparation, our attention would be too
cluttered with other concerns to receive any real insights.

Once an insight "comes" to us, we should not, of course, merely let it sit there
collecting dust. Rather, the proper response, as suggested in Lecture 18, is to
criticize it. Such criticism does not require us to deny the validity of the original
insight (though such a denial might be appropriate sometimes), but should always
help us separate what can be known to be true from what is false or unknowable.
A good philosopher always tries to balance the tasks of insight and criticism, so
that the two work together: when new insights break through into old ways of
thinking, we should not merely reject the old ways, but make an effort to
synthesize the old and the new to form a consistent whole. The best insight papers
are always those utilizing both of these complementary activities, as suggested by
the map introduced in Figure VI.5.

Comparing that map with those given in Figures VIII.4 and IX.4, we find
there are, in fact, two quite distinct types of philosophical "breakthrough". The
first is the one I have described above: a mystery manifests itself through some
insight (see Figure X.1a). But the mysterious origin of the insight is only fully
apparent when we try to comprehend it with

(a) Mystery (b) Paradox

Figure X.1: The Two Kinds of Breakthrough

our critical powers. The second type of breakthrough is exemplified by

Nietzsche's "transvaluation of values", whereby we reach out to the transcendent
reality by using our own powers of reason and/or will (see Figure 22.1b). But
doing this gives rise to paradoxical statements that shatter our usual, analytic
ways of thinking. Hence, "mystery" is the best word to describe what happens
when our synthetic powers enable us to experience the wonder of silence, while
"paradox" is the best word to describe what happens when we use our analytic
powers in hopes of comprehending that mystery. These two types of breakthrough
are like two sides of a leaf, as closely intertwined in our experience as analytic
and synthetic logic are in our thinking: they work together as complementary
aspects of a single process. The process of having an insight typically begins as a
silent intuition breaking into our thoughts; it will remain a mystery unless we
criticize it. When a criticized insight becomes an established tradition, our
continued wonder may produce reasoning that leads to an even deeper,
paradoxical insight. If we simply hold this paradox in silence, the entire process
begins again! In each of the remaining three weeks we will artificially separate
this process by focusing first on "paradox", then on "mystery". In so doing we
must not forget that the opposite form of breakthrough is always operating in a
covert, cyclical fashion.

Words like "mystery" and "paradox" can give the impression that the insights
arising out of such breakthroughs are unclear. This is a complaint I have heard
on a number of occasions from beginning philosophy students. Although it is, of
course, entirely possible that my explanation of an idea is unclear, or that a given
student's understanding of a clear explanation might be clouded in various ways,
we should beware of thinking philosophical ideas themselves are necessarily
unclear. On the contrary, once we recognize the difference between two kinds of
clarity, we shall see that philosophical ideas are the clearest of all ideas!
Consider the difference between a cloudy day and a sunny day. On a cloudy day
the sunlight is blocked, so the things we look at outside are not as distinct as they
are on a sunny day. Even if you've never noticed that things look "duller" on a
cloudy day, I'm sure you've noticed that the shadows of things (if any) are not
very clearly visible, whereas they become crisp and sharp when the sun comes
out. This is one type of clarity. But what about our ability to look at the sun itself?
On a clear day the sun is difficult to look at-indeed, if we look at it for very long
we could go blind! However, on a cloudy day we can look in the direction of the
sun for a long time without difficulty. This second type of clarity is different from
the first, because the clearer it is, the harder it is for us to see it! In other words,
on a clear day, the source of light cannot be looked at, because it is too clear; yet
the things it illuminates can be seen more clearly.

Philosophical clarity is often not like the things the sun enables us to see, but like
the sun itself. For our deepest and most profound insights are the ones that appear
to be the most clear, and whose certainty we are therefore the least likely to doubt.
Yet if asked to express such insights in words, we are often unable to do so
without great difficulty. For it is actually easier to describe a deep insight when it
is not very clear in our mind. The true test of the clarity of a deep insight,
therefore, is not how well we can express the insight itself, but how well we can
use that insight to illuminate other aspects of our thought and experience. Take as
an example the idea that the "recognition of ignorance" is the starting-point of all
philosophy. My hope is that at some point during the first part of this course you
were suddenly struck with the truth of this idea: whereas you probably did not
understand it before taking this course, now (assuming it has become an insight
for you) you are certain it can illuminate your understanding of what philosophy
is. Yet if someone asks you at this point to explain just how it is possible for you
to recognize your ignorance, you will probably remain speechless. On the one
hand, you can see clearly the results of the insight; yet on the other hand, you are
unable to state exactly what it is that enables you to have this gift of vision. My
point here is that this is typical of philosophical ideas in general: they are so clear
that their brightness often makes them unbearable to look at directly.
29. Finality and the Paradox of Beauty

Let me begin today by sharing a memorable experience I had when I was living in
England. Shortly before dawn one crisp winter morning my young daughter woke
up crying. It was my turn to do "night duty", so I dragged myself out of bed and
did my best to comfort her. Before too long she was quiet again, and a bit later
she was fast asleep. Usually on such occasions I was so tired that I had no trouble
falling asleep again once my task was finished. This time, however, I left the
room feeling wide awake. Even though it was still quite dark, I decided to sit in
the living room instead of going back to bed. As I looked out the window of our
cozy flat, I could see that the dark sky was beginning to lighten ever so slightly in
the east. Everything was quiet, inside and out. Three stories below, just on the
other side of the tree whose branches nearly touched the window of our flat, the
main road into the city center had not yet begun to fill up with its daily traffic of
noisy commuters. The beauty of the scene which then unfolded before my eyes
was truly unforgettable. Beyond the leafless branches and over the housetops
across the street emerged a deep purple glow gradually pushing the blackness to
its home in the west. Before long the purples faded into
deep red, and then brightened to a pastel orange. When the whole sky was ablaze
in a strange mixture of reds, oranges, and yellows, a band of bright blue began to
rise up as if from the depths of the sea. It was breathtaking. I could hardly move,
much less think or speak.

As I sat there in silence, on the boundary line between nighttime and daytime,
time itself seemed to stand still amidst the changeless changes unfolding before
me. Looking back, I would guess the transformation I beheld took an hour or
more, though it might have been less than fifteen minutes for all I know. When I
finally came to my senses, I decided I should try to capture this "moment" on film
before it was too late. That way perhaps those who were now sleeping might later
be able to share in the awesome scene I was witnessing. A camera can be an
effective tool for artists, if it is used to distort a natural scene in such a way as to
reveal an underlying beauty that would remain hidden to the naked eye. However,
when we use the same machine in hopes of copying the beauty of a natural scene
that is already manifested before our eyes, the result is often the very antithesis of
artistic beauty. Unfortunately, the photo I took that morning probably illustrates
the latter principle better than the former. (A mere copy of nature is bad enough,
but a copy of the copy is even worse. Nevertheless, I have reproduced my
photograph in black and white on the previous page, in hopes of sparking the
reader's imagination to fill in the missing colors.)

Let's just imagine this photo is good enough to put you in touch with the beauty of
the boundary-experience I had that morning. Why is it that we judge such a scene
to be beautiful? What does the word "beauty" mean when we use it in a
proposition such as "That sunrise is beautiful"? How are judgments of beauty
related to other kinds of judgment? Answering such questions is the task of the
area of philosophy called "aesthetics" (from the Greek word, aisthetikos, meaning
"sense perception"). The leaves of experience that grow on this branch of the
philosophical tree are so healthy, and so familiar to us all, that such questions are
better dealt with in terms of ontology (the study of "being") than in terms of
science. In other words, although we will never know enough to construct a
science of beauty, we can experience enough to construct an ontology of beauty.
And that is, in fact, what many philosophers have done when dealing with
questions of aesthetics.

The aesthetic question asked most frequently in students' insight papers goes
something like this: Is there an objective standard of beauty? or Is there a fixed
set of guidelines we can use to test whether such a judgment is right or wrong?
Students nearly always answer these questions in the negative. But philosophers-
especially good philosophers-are not so quick to assume that aesthetic judgments
are based on nothing more than mere personal opinions. Any attempt to construct
an ontology of beauty would assume that beauty is something, and would seek
first and foremost to discover the nature of that hidden essence. So let's look today
at one example of how philosophers answer such questions.

Since I have already taken Kant's ideas as exemplary of "good" philosophy in

several previous lectures, I shall again use his approach to illustrate how
aesthetic questions can be answered. Although there are many other philosophers
whose views on aesthetics would be worth considering here, Kant's views, as in
so many other areas of philosophical inquiry, represent a major turning point in
the history of aesthetics, and the issues he struggled with are still relevant to
contemporary issues in aesthetics. Moreover, examining Kant's views on
aesthetics will enable us to gain a more complete understanding of his overall
system of Critical philosophy. In Lecture 8 we saw how Kant's first Critique
defines a theoretical standpoint governed by the "faculty" (i.e., mental power) of
"cognition" (or knowing). In Lecture 22 we saw how his second Critique defines a
distinct practical standpoint governed by the power of "desire" (or willing). Let us
now examine how Kant's third and final Critique, the Critique of Judgment
(1790), defines a new standpoint governed by the power of feeling.

Because the first two powers adopt the opposite standpoints of theory and
practice, Kant claimed a third standpoint is needed to form a bridge between these
two. This third standpoint must be both free (as in our moral judgments) and yet
based on a sensible object (as in our cognitive judgments). In its most general
sense, this "third thing" in Kant's System always consists of experience itself; but
in the third Critique his particular focus is on specific types of judgments, so I call
this third, mediating standpoint the "judicial". The judicial standpoint focuses on
the judgments we make about the kinds of experience we cannot interpret
straightforwardly in terms of scientific knowledge or moral practice-in particular,
the judgments that arise out of our power to feel "pleasure and pain". Thus, if we
think of Kant's first two Critiques as viewing experience from the perspectives of
the head and belly, respectively, then we can think of the third Critique as viewing
experience from the perspective of the heart, the physical organ ordinary
associated with our feelings. Like the moral judgments that correspond to the
belly (see Lecture 22), so also aesthetic judgments, according to Kant, are always
noncognitive-i.e., they do not produce knowledge, the way logical (i.e.,
theoretical) judgments do (see e.g., CJ 228). In a logical judgment our thinking
controls our imagination to expose truth, whereas in an aesthetic judgment our
imagination controls our thinking to reveal beauty. This account of the
relationship between Kant's three systems can now be used to construct a more
detailed synthesis of Figures II.8 and III.4:
Figure X.2:

Feeling as Kant's Bridge between Knowing and Willing

The main idea governing Kant's third Critique is "finality" or
"purposiveness" (two ways of translating the German word, endlichkeit). This
term refers to the feeling we have that certain contingent objects or events
necessarily point to a goal or end-i.e., an intrinsic purpose they must fulfill in
order to realize their final reason for existing. The first half of the book deals with
the "subjective" finality we experience whenever we judge something to be
"beautiful" or "sublime". The second half deals with the "objective" finality we
experience whenever we judge some natural object to have a purpose or design.
Today we will have time to examine only the first of Kant's two examples of
subjective finality.

Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment is based on a perfect 2LAR, distinguishing

between four ways of feeling "delight" in sensible objects. Each produces a
distinct type of aesthetic judgment: "an object is to be counted either as agreeable,
or beautiful or sublime, or good (absolutely)" (CJ 266). Kant saw a direct
correspondence between this distinction, the fourfold division of the categories
(see Figure III.9), and the four main faculties of the mind (sensibility,
understanding, judgment, and reason): the "agreeable" is what "pleases
immediately" (208) and relates primarily to the quantity of a judgment, as fully
revealed in sensation; the "beautiful" requires a "quality" that also "permits of
being understood"; the sublime posits a "relation" between "the sensible" and "a
possible supersensible employment" of understanding in human judgment; and the
good consists in "the modality of a necessity", requiring everyone to agree with a
"pure intellectual judgment" (266-267, my italics). Whereas the agreeable and the
beautiful both result from a "judgment of taste", the sublime and the good both
stem from "a higher, intellectual feeling" (192). By regarding this as defining the
first term in each 2LAR component, with the second term being defined by the
question, "Is this form of delight universal?", we can construct the following map:
Figure X.3: Kant's Four Forms of Aesthetic Judgment

In his attempt to explain what is unique about our judgments of beauty, what
makes them different from all other types of judgments we make, Kant
distinguished between four "moments" (or essential elements) of any such
judgment of taste. These correspond, as usual, to the pattern determined by his
special set of four categories. But because beauty itself is most like the category
of quality, he began his ontology of beauty with a description of the "moment of
quality" (CJ 203); it stipulates that the delight experienced in an object judged to
be beautiful must be disinterested. An "interest" is any "delight which we connect
with the representation of the real existence of an object" (204). The judgments
that determine "the agreeable and the good" are both "invariably coupled with an
interest in the object" (209): the former depends on the existence of something
"the senses find pleasing in sensation" (205), and the latter on the existence of
something "reason recommends ... by its mere concept" (207). By contrast, a
judgment of beauty, being a pure judgment of taste, "relies on no interest" (205n):
a person making such a judgment ought to have "complete indifference"
concerning "the real existence of the thing" (205). Otherwise, Kant warned, our
judgments of taste will be "biased" in favor of our own interest, instead of
assessing whether or not our feeling truly merits the ascription of "beauty" to the
object.

An illustration should help clarify this first, and perhaps most important, of Kant's
points. Let's imagine three possible situations when a person might refer to the
sun's "beauty". First, imagine the weather was so fine this morning that you
decided to skip your classes and go to the beach for the day. In that case, you
might be laying on the sand right now with your closest friend, soaking up the
warm sun. If you turned to your friend and said "The sun feels beautiful right
now", then, according to Kant, you would be misusing the word "beautiful". Your
feeling of pleasure would be a direct result of your interest in the existence of the
sun's existence, aroused by your sensation of its warmth on your body. So it
would be better to say the sun feels "agreeable" (or "nice") in such a situation. For
the second scenario, imagine you are now walking along the road with your
geography teacher, talking about the various forms of life on earth. Suddenly you
become aware of the sun shining brightly all around you, so you exclaim, "Isn't
the sun beautiful, the way it sustains life on earth?" This too would be a misuse of
"beautiful". For once again, your feeling of pleasure would be a direct result of
your interest in the sun's existence, though this time your interest would be
aroused by your intellectual grasp of the sun's goodness. The third scenario could
be the one I described at the beginning of today's lecture. Only if, as I sat there
gazing at the sunrise, the pleasure welling up in me had nothing to do with the
sun's objective existence, only if my judgment was based not on my agreeable
sensations (I was actually quite cold at the time!) nor on my appreciation of the
sun's usefulness (I was too tired to think so clearly!), was I justified in exclaiming:
"This sunrise is beautiful!" But if my judgment was not based on my own interest
in the object, what was it based on? Kant answered this question in his discussion
of the other three essential characteristics of any judgment of beauty.

Although a judgment of beauty is always subjective, and thus has "no bearing
upon the Object" (CJ 215), Kant argued that the "quantity" of such a judgment
requires that some object "pleases universally" (219). The second characteristic is
therefore a special kind of subjective universality. By contrast, judgments of the
agreeable express a delight that is subjective but not universal, and judgments of
the good express a delight that is universal but objective. The criterion of
subjective universality means that a person must regard delight in the object

as resting on what he may also presuppose in every other person; and therefore he
must believe that he has reason for demanding a similar delight from everyone.
Accordingly, he will speak of the beautiful as if beauty were a quality of the
object and the judgment logical [even though it is not] ... (211).
Unlike a truly logical judgment, a judgment of taste "does not postulate the
agreement of every one ...; it only imputes this agreement to everyone" (216). We
assume everyone will agree that the sun is good because it sustains life, but we do
not assume everyone will agree that sunbathing is an agreeable experience. These
two kinds of judgment are quite straightforward. But when we judge something to
be beautiful, we feel everyone ought to make the same judgment if placed in the
same position: for we adopt the "idea" that our judgment extends "to all subjects,
as unreservedly as it would if it were an objective judgement" (285), even though
we may know very well that, as a matter of fact, everyone does not agree.

The third characteristic of all judgments of beauty deals with the relation of
"ends" (CJ 219): the object of such judgments must exhibit "the form of finality
[i.e., purposiveness] ... apart from the representation of an end [i.e., purpose]"
(236). This paradox requires that, in judging an object to be beautiful, we regard it
as existing for a reason, because we perceive an inner purposiveness; yet no
external purpose can be found. This is no illusion, according to Kant, but part of
what it means for something to be called beautiful: judging something to be
beautiful means judging that it points to itself rather than to some agreeable sensa‐
tion or good state of affairs outside of the object. Since the "determining ground"
of such a judgment "is simply finality of form" (223), our delight in something
beautiful is based solely on the conviction that "the state of the representation
itself" is intrinsically worth preserving (222). By contrast, our delight in
experiencing something agreeable or good is determined by the external goal it
points to, such as the pleasant sensation of tasting well prepared food, or the
ability of food to satisfy our hunger. In other words, delight in the beautiful means
delight in something we do not wish to consume but to preserve, just as in the
case of the "timeless moment" I described at the beginning of this lecture.

The fourth and final characteristic, the "moment" of modality in any judgment of
beauty, is that the experience must produce "a necessary delight" (CJ 240). Kant
carefully distinguished between the "theoretical objective necessity" of empirical
knowledge, the "practical necessity" of moral action, and the
"exemplary" necessity of aesthetic judgment (236-237). An experience of delight
in a beautiful object can be regarded as a necessary example only when we
presuppose "the existence of a common sense" (i.e., a common way of sensing the
world), corresponding to the "common understanding" that enables us to agree on
cognitive judgments (238). (The latter, by the way, is closer to the traditional
notion of "common sense" than is the former.) All but the most extreme skeptics
assume this common sense to be "the necessary condition of the universal
communicability of our knowledge", so it can also serve as an "ideal norm" that
forms the basis for the necessity of our aesthetic judgments (239). Kant also
referred in a similar way to an internal "archetype of taste" that serves as "the
highest model" for aesthetic judgments, but cautioned that people vary widely in
their ability to access it; "each person must beget [this archetype] in his own
consciousness" (232), for it is a skill that must be acquired. What we do all have
access to, Kant believed, is "a universal voice" telling us "only the possibility of
an aesthetic judgment capable of being ... deemed valid for every one" (216).

Having now examined Kant's often paradoxical account of the four principles
essential to the ontological nature of our judgments of beauty, we can
summarize his theory with this map:

Figure X.4: The Four Moments in a Judgment of Beauty

Note that the two characteristics mapped onto the horizontal line are both
expressed in terms of synthetic logic, while those on the vertical line both
conform to analytic logic.

Taken together, these four characteristics of all judgments of beauty suggest that
such judgments point not to some obvious purpose, but to a mystery hidden deep
within certain objects we experience: our aesthetic ideas "strain after something
lying out beyond the confines of experience" (CJ 314). In addition to
using the term "finality" (or purposiveness) to describe this mystery, Kant also
claimed that, ultimately, "the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good" (353).
By this he did not mean that the experience of beauty is in any way dependent
upon the experience of goodness, but only that, just as respect for the moral law
gives moral goodness a foothold in the will, so also the "analogy" between beauty
and morality can give morality a foothold in nature. In so doing, such experiences
serve to resolve the tension between our theoretical and practical standpoints (cf.
Figures VIII.2 and X.2).

Let's now take a step back from Kant's theory and ask: Do such basic
characteristics establish an objective standard of beauty? Yes and no! On the one
hand, they do demonstrate that we use the word "beauty" at precisely those times
when we are acting as if everyone else ought to agree. And this means judgments
of beauty require us to adopt the universal standpoint of "common sense"-or, as
we could also call it, the unifying standpoint, through which the diversity of our
ordinary experience is held together by a common, gut-level feeling. But on the
other hand, Kant fully recognized that this feeling is subjective, and that people
are therefore bound to disagree about what ought to be regarded as beautiful
(239). In such a case, he argued, if both parties are truly judging aesthetically,
then "both would ... be judging correctly" (231). This is possible, of course, only
if we interpret such experiences in terms of synthetic logic. So, although his
account of the four essential elements in any judgment of beauty cannot be said to
give us an objective standard, in the sense of a set of universal criteria that can be
externally forced upon all possible objects, it does give us a universal standard, in
the sense of a set of criteria that is internally applicable to all possible subjects
who hope to experience beauty. And this is no small achievement!

This means our ability to experience beauty depends not so much on the objective
characteristics of the objects we meet every day, as on whether we are able to
adopt this standpoint when the appropriate situations present themselves. In other
words, like all the unifying experiences we shall examine here in Part Four, an
experience of beauty is likely to "hit" us only when we are prepared internally to
receive the mystery of such a gift. It is therefore entirely possible that people
living near me on that bleak winter's morning in England might have woken up at
the same time as me, looked out the window, and noticed nothing beautiful. Had I
met them, I would have felt quite strongly that they ought to have
noticed the beauty of the sunrise, and would have noticed it, had they adequately
nurtured the "common sense" that gives us our taste for beauty; nevertheless, I
could have done nothing to force them to agree with my judgment.

Kant's ontology of beauty therefore suggests that the old saying "beauty is in the
eye of the beholder" has some measure of truth. However, this saying is grossly
misinterpreted if we associate it with a relativistic saying such as
"different strokes for different folks", and thereby take it to mean that "it doesn't
really matter what different people think about what is and isn't beautiful, because
beauty is different for everyone". By assuming that because beauty is not
scientific it must be a mere illusion, this all-too-common view strips beauty of the
paradox that makes it what it is. For, as Kant has shown us, the subjective
character of such judgments (i.e., the fact that they depend primarily on our own
eyes) does not imply that our experiences of beauty are all merely relative; on the
contrary, such experiences put us into contact with an absolute reality, a mystery
that our imagination glimpses but our thoughts cannot fully comprehend. Just
because beauty is not in my eye at one particular moment does not mean it is not
there, waiting to be seen and tasted, if only I am willing to feel its presence.

30. Reunion and the Mystery of Love

What is love?

Answering this question is, or at least ought to be, of interest to everyone, even
people who know nothing about philosophy. For each of us has experienced love
on numerous occasions in the past, though admittedly our awareness of love
varies greatly. Some people feel they have rarely experienced more than glimpses
of love here and there, while others feel they have to hold love back, lest it rush
forth like a raging flood and wash away the objects it is directed toward. Nearly
everyone agrees that love is an indispensable aspect of human life, and that
without love it would be difficult if not impossible to live a meaningful life.
Therefore, it is not surprising to find that love is usually one of the most
frequently discussed topics (along with truth, beauty, death, and the meaning of
life) in students' insight papers.

When students write about love, there is usually a tendency to emphasize

romantic love, and thus to view love as primarily a feeling, directed exclusively
toward the perfect person known as the "lover". But of course, as is often pointed
out, there are many different types of love. And some of these are more properly
described in terms of a commitment, directed inclusively toward many imperfect
people. One of the most common ways of answering the question of the nature of
love is to confess ignorance, by arguing either that no one can define love, or that
everyone has their own definition, so that there is no single, all-encompassing
definition. In one respect, there is no doubt that this is true: of all the experiences
human beings have, love is certainly one of the most mysterious; and because
each of us must rely primarily on our own experiences, there are indeed almost as
many different ideas about love as there are different people who have given and
received love.

Where does this leave the philosopher? Is it hopeless to try to give a truly
philosophical account of love-that is, one that describes an underlying similarity
between all types of love, and a common factor in all acceptable definitions? In
one sense it is. For as we have seen on numerous occasions, some experiences can
never be adequately described, especially in terms of analytic logic alone; and in
such cases we actually discover that we can sometimes understand our experience
better in silence than we can in words. However, in another sense, the philosopher
is never satisfied with complete silence, but always holds out a hope that words
can somehow be used to express the inexpressible. This is the purpose of
symbolic language, as we shall see more fully in Lecture 31, and is made possible
by synthetic logic. Provided we do not expect to grasp love completely, as if we
could reduce it to a mere formula, but attempt only to learn what it means to be
grasped by love, I see no reason why we should not search for a philosophy of
love that enables us to see the diversity of human experiences as part of a unified
whole.
Many philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle right down to the present day, have,
in fact, developed theories of love. Since we have no time to examine the whole
history of the philosophy of love, let's take a closer look at the ideas of one fairly
recent philosopher, whose quest for love's meaning led him to some very
interesting conclusions. The person I am thinking of is Paul Tillich, whose idea of
faith as expressed in terms of symbols of ultimate concern will be examined in
Lecture 31. His insightful little book, called Love, Power, and Justice (1954),
devotes most of one chapter to the explanation of "The Ontology of Love". The
term "ontology" can be defined rather simply as "the study of being". However,
let us look briefly at the more in depth account of the meaning of this term that
comes at the beginning of Tillich's chapter on love.

Tillich's account begins by suggesting that the Greek words for "ontology" are
best translated as referring to "the 'rational word' [logos] which grasps 'being as
such' [on]" (LPJ 18). In order to grasp this "word", he paradoxically claims,
"ontology asks the simple and infinitely difficult question: What does it mean to
be? What are the structures [or "characteristics"] common to everything that ...
participates in being?" (19). Ontology recognizes the "manifoldness" of being, but
attempts to unify this diversity by describing "the texture of being itself" (20).
Everyone who has knowledge engages in ontology, because "knowing means
recognizing something as being." He distinguished ontology from metaphysics in
the following way:

... ontology is the foundation of metaphysics, but not metaphysics itself. Ontology
asks the question of being, i.e. of something that is present to everybody at every

moment.... Ontology is descriptive, not speculative. It tries to find out which the

basic structures of being are. And being is given to everybody who is and who
therefore participates in being-itself. Ontology, in this sense, is analytical. It
analyses the encountered reality, trying to find the structural elements which
enable a being to participate in being. (23)
Although Tillich never explicitly said so, this passage clearly implies that
ontology is both analytic and a posteriori (see Figure IV.4): like logic, ontology is
"analytic", yet unlike logic, it is "descriptive" (i.e., it focuses a posteriori on what
is rather than on what we think). Metaphysics, by contrast, is synthetic and a
priori (at least according to Kant): it asks questions about what is necessary
before we experience "what is", but it requires us to step outside of our analytical
concepts. Rather than saying ontology is the "foundation" of metaphysics, it
would therefore be more accurate to say metaphysics and ontology are two
diametrically opposed tasks that nevertheless depend on each other, just as the
opposites -- and ++ depend on each other, and just as do the roots and leaves of a
tree.

The passage where Tillich set out his ontological description of love is actually
quite brief. It begins with a description of the relationship between love and life
itself (LPJ 25): "Life is being in actuality and love is the moving power of life." In
other words, when a being ceases to be merely possible, and becomes actual, we
can say it is "alive"; and the very power that moves beings into life and through
life is called "love". This means being requires love in order to become "actual",
and through love we learn what life really is. Of course, this description is so
broad that it seems to include nearly everything! So Tillich narrowed his
description with an idea borrowed directly from Plato's Symposium:

Love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. Reunion presupposes sepa‐
ration of that which belongs essentially together.... [But] separation presupposes
an original unity.... It is impossible to unite that which is essentially separated....
Therefore love cannot be described as the union of the strange but as the reunion
of the estranged. Estrangement presupposes original oneness.

The basic meaning of this passage can be understood quite effectively by mapping
the key ideas onto the pair of 1LSR triangles shown in Figure V.7 (cf. Figure
III.7). The resulting map, given in Figure X.5, depicts how estrangement is a
necessary step in the process of love, the process whereby two "estranged"
opposites (+ and -) that were once held together in a mysterious, original unity
(0), are brought back together in a "reunion" (1). Almost any pair of opposites
could be used to exemplify

Figure X.5: Tillich's Ontology of Love

this process. But an obvious example occurs whenever a man (+) and a woman (-)
are in love. The two lovers, as they gaze into each other's eyes, want to be closer
and closer, until, if possible, they merge into one being (1). Whenever they are
together they feel as if they have returned to a long lost home (0); yet there
always seem to be obstacles keeping them ultimately estranged. An indispensable
point in Tillich's discussion, therefore, is that the reunion itself is not love, but is
the goal love drives toward. Love itself, the being of love, is the power of driving
toward reunion. This means it is a mistake to think of love as the goal; love is the
unifying power of a relationship, enabling two beings to drive toward a higher
goal.

Tillich warned his readers not to make the mistake of confusing this rather
abstract, ontological description of love's essential nature with the emotion we
often associate with love. Love as such can occur without being accompanied by
any emotion whatsoever. However, when emotion does accompany love, Tillich
argued, the ontology of love helps us explain why it is present. Since love is the
drive toward reunion, it is certainly possible to love someone without thinking
much about what the final state of reunion will be like. If this happens, then there
will be little or no emotion associated with love, for "love as an emotion is the
anticipation of the reunion" (LPJ 26). This means a person who, by contrast,
frequently imagines a future state of increased unity with another person will find
that a great deal of emotion accompanies the experience of driving toward that
reunion (i.e., of love).
Once this point is recognized, an interesting paradox arises when we consider
what happens when we experience the fulfillment of love: "Fulfilled love is, at the
same time, extreme happiness and the end of happiness. The separation is
overcome. But without the separation there is no love and no life" (LPJ 27).
Tillich's point here is that the very nature of our anticipation of a goal is such that
the moment of reaching that goal, the very moment of most intense satisfaction, is
at the same time the beginning of a feeling of emptiness at the prospects of no
longer having that goal to strive after. This enables us to understand why the
romantic emphasis on love as a feeling can be so misleading. Feeling is important,
of course, for it is aroused by our anticipation of reunion; and if we never
anticipate this goal, our love is less likely to develop toward its proper end. But if
love is not based more fundamentally on a commitment of the will, then when the
"end of happiness" arrives-as it inevitably does-we will be caught off guard, and
might even think our love has died, just because the old feelings are gone.

This point reveals a very practical insight as to how we ought to view marriage.
Lovers who view marriage as the final goal of their relationship are likely to be
quite shocked once they realize, usually soon after their wedding day, that
marriage is not all pleasant feelings: the person who was once viewed as the ideal
lover inevitably "changes" into an ordinary, imperfect human being. This is why
the typical Hollywood love story is so misleading: I'm sure you've all seen plenty
of films and/or read lots of novels where the man and woman fall in love with
each other, struggle to overcome numerous obstacles to the fulfillment of their
love, finally get married, and then ride off into the sunset at the end of the film, to
live "happily ever after". By the end of such stories most of us are wishing "if only
that could be me ...". But beware: the whole thing is an impossible dream, because
the point where the film ends is where life's real struggles are likely to begin!

The lesson this should teach us is to set high goals in love relationships
(indeed, perhaps even absolute goals), so that each small step along the way (each
"mini-reunion", so to speak) can bring its extreme happiness and at the same time
complete the happiness experienced in the process of driving toward that step,
without undermining the basis of the love relationship. In other words, there is
always room for any relationship to grow into a deeper level of love: we must
never expect to reach "true love", since true love is the process of reaching toward
an ultimate goal. The fulfillment of this goal is the end of love, and hence can
come only at (or after) the end of life. This is why, as we shall see in Week XII,
death is such an important topic in ontology. But in the meantime we must
recognize that our problems are not solved merely by understanding the essential
ontological nature of love; on the contrary, the process of understanding the being
of love is, like ontology itself, "a never-ending task" (LPJ 20).

Having completed his description of the essential nature of love, Tillich

proceeded to explain four distinct ways love is manifested. Love itself is "one"
way of being (LPJ 27): it is always the drive toward reunion of the separated. But
this drive appears in many different forms. The four forms Tillich discussed can
be regarded as a perfect 2LAR, constructed out of the two questions: (1) Is this
form of love personal? and (2) Is it unequal (rather than mutual)? As such, they
can be mapped onto the cross in the following way:

Figure X.6: The Four Basic Types of Love

This map shows how epithymia and philia are similar in that they both require the
loving subject and the loved object to be mutual participants in the love
relationship, while eros and agape both require the two parties to have unequal
roles; likewise, it shows how eros and epithymia are similar in being primarily
impersonal, while agape and philia are similar in being personal. The sense in
which "transpersonal" is a special type of impersonal love and "super-personal" is
a special type of personal love should become clear as we look more closely at
Tillich's account of how each of these types of love illustrates his definition of
love's essence.
The Greek word "epithymia" (meaning desire) is roughly equivalent, according to
Tillich (LPJ 28-30), to the Latin term "libido", as popularized by Freud (see DW
56-61). These terms refer to the basic instinctual desires that characterize all
animals, especially the sex drive. In itself (viewed apart from the other types of
love that often accompany it in human beings), epithymia is radically impersonal.
One's sexual urges, for example, could in principle be satisfied by virtually
anyone, regardless of their personality, just as hunger can be satisfied by any type
of food, regardless of how bad it might taste. Normally, the parties in such an
encounter desire mutually to fulfill each other's urges. In this way, epithymia gives
rise to sensual pleasure in the process of driving two separated beings into
physical reunion. But, Tillich argued, in a proper expression of epithymia love, "it
is not the pleasure as such which is desired, but the union with that which fulfils
the desire." That is, the two lovers desire reunion, and this reunion produces
pleasure. Hence this basic animal desire has a legitimate right to be called "love",
even though it represents only the "lowest" of the basic types of love.

When epithymia transcends the mere expression of sexual union and is sublimated
in the form of a drive "towards union with the forms of nature and culture" (LPJ
30), it is more properly called "eros". This Greek word (related rather
misleadingly to the English word "erotic") was used by Plato and other ancient
Greek philosophers to describe the philosophical search for union with the ideas-
especially with truth, goodness, and beauty. As such, it refers to a transpersonal
form of love that "strives for union with that which is the bearer of values". Unlike
epithymia, this higher form of impersonal love is fundamentally one-sided or
unequal, in the sense that the "lover" strives toward something that does not
necessarily respond with a mutual drive toward unity of its own. Truth, goodness,
and beauty often fail to cooperate when we try to apprehend them. Have you ever
suddenly realized that what you formerly thought was true is actually false? Have
you ever tried to do something right, but ended up doing something you know is
wrong instead? Or have you ever had people laugh at your choice in clothing, or in
anything else that required a judgment of taste? If so, then you have experienced
the struggle that inevitably accompanies the drive of eros toward reunion with a
recalcitrant object of value.
Tillich referred to the mutual interdependence between eros and "philia" (the
Greek word for friendship) as a "polar" relationship (LPJ 31). This is reflected in
Figure X.6 by the fact that these two terms both appear on the "impure" (+- and -
+) positions of the cross (though I would refer to this as a "contradictory" form of
interdependence). As the truly "personal" love, philia is a prerequisite of eros,
since one cannot pass from the impersonal to what transcends the personal until
one has achieved personhood. As such, philia refers not only to conventional
friendships, but also to the mutual drive toward unity that characterizes family
relationships and all other relationships between individuals in a common group.
As Tillich put it (32): "Love as philia presupposes some amount of familiarity
with the object of love. For this reason Aristotle asserted that philia is possible
only between equals."

Whereas the first three types of love are closely interrelated in human
experience, Tillich claimed that the fourth type, known as "agape" (the Greek
word for love used primarily in the New Testament), is radically different:

One could call agape the depth of love or love in relation to the ground of life
[i.e., God]. One could say that in agape ultimate reality manifests itself and
transforms life and love. Agape is love cutting into love, just as revelation is
reason cutting into reason ... (LPJ 33)

Unlike eros, which transcends philia by driving toward a higher unity beyond
personhood, agape transcends philia by driving toward a higher unity within
personhood. Agape achieves this super-personal kind of love by reversing the
goal set by eros. Agape is like eros, however, insofar as they both presuppose a
fundamentally unequal relationship between the lover and the object of love:
whereas eros is the drive of a person lacking value toward unity with an
intrinsically valuable object, agape is the drive of a person having value toward
unity with an object that has in itself no value to the lover. This is the kind of love
Christians believe God has for human beings and we ought to have toward people
we would not naturally love. From an ontological point of view, this is the most
profound type of love, especially since it has the same, analytic a posteriori status
as does ontology itself (cf. Figures I.1, IV.4, and X.7). This status is expressed in
terms of synthetic logic in Jesus' command that we should love our enemies.

To conclude this week's study of ways of feeling united, let's use Tillich's
ontology of love, and especially his way of distinguishing between agape and
eros, to rephrase the question I quoted from Lessing (via Kierkegaard) at the
beginning of Lecture 22. Do you still remember the question? If not, I hope you
will go back and reread it; then, before forgetting it again, you should spend some
time thinking about how you would respond. Lessing, along with Plato and
anyone else who emphasizes the search for "heavenly" ideals, chose the lifelong
search. Which one do you think Tillich would have chosen? Once we recognize
that the "lifelong search" corresponds closely to eros, while the attainment of "all
truth" corresponds to agape, it becomes evident that Tillich would have regarded
the two as complementary. If so, the very idea that we must choose one or the
other is a mistake; for each has its proper place in life.

Relating agape and eros to beauty and sublimity can aptly illustrate the two forms
of breakthrough (see Figure X.1). We experience agape whenever Truth suddenly
breaks into our ordinary ways of thinking and puts us into communication with
the Mystery of life. Agape begins when synthetic logic breaks into our ordinary,
analytic ways of thinking with a concrete example of the law of non-identity: it
teaches us to accept as beautiful what we thought was ugly in ourselves and
others, and/or to reject as ugly what we thought was beautiful
(A=-A). We experience eros, by contrast, by actively pursuing the eternal quest
for a means of breaking through the boundaries that traditionally hold us in place.
Eros begins by assuming analytic logic; but once we achieve a breakthrough, we
realize we can speak of this breakthrough only in the paradoxical terms of the law
of contradiction: it teaches us that the quest for Truth requires the sublime
recognition that truth is not Truth (A≠A); we will be unable to proceed unless we
see our quest for literal truth as part of a sublime quest for the symbolic Truth. We
can thus picture the complementary relationship between eros, agape, beauty, and
the sublime as follows:
(a) Agape and Beauty (b) Eros and Sublimity
Figure X.7: The Mystery and Paradox of Love and Beauty

Our examination of beauty and love this week has exemplified how we all
experience the paradox and mystery of feeling united. Next week we shall look at
examples of how being religious leads to paradox and mystery as well. For now,
let me reiterate one of the most important lessons we have learned from Tillich:
that both unity and diversity, both the belief in a mysterious, "heavenly" Truth,
and a lifelong search for it, must coexist in order for love in its fullest
manifestation to continue to grow and prosper. Hence it should be clear that there
is no straightforward answer to Lessing's question, for it suggests that,
paradoxically, it is more important to keep asking the question than it is to settle
upon one side or the other as the exclusively correct answer.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1.?A. Does silence have a sound?

?? B. Can insights be controlled?

2.?A. What does it mean to say unity exists "in diversity"?

B. Could a person who possesses "all truth" still search for truth?
3.?A. Does beauty relate only to objects of sense perception?

B. Can we ever know that a certain object is beautiful?

4.?A. Could there be an ontology of hate?

?? B. If love's goal can never be reached, what is the use of loving?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, Ch. 7, "The Discipline of Solitude"

(CD 84-95).

2. James P. Carse, The Silence of God: Meditations on prayer (New York:

Macmillan, 1985).

3. Max Picard, The World of Silence (South Bend: Gateway Editions, 1952).

4. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, Part I, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement,

§§1-22, "Analytic of the Beautiful" (CJ 203-244).
5. Erazim Kohák, The Embers and the Stars: A philosophical inquiry into the
moral sense of nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

6. Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice, Ch. II, "Being and Love" (LPJ 18-34).

7. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957),
especially Chapters I-II, "Is Love an Art?" and "The Theory of Love", pp.9-61.

8. Stephen Palmquist, Dreams of Wholeness, Ch. X, "Psychology of Love" (DW

211-235).
CDP
31. The Numinous and its Symbols

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Philosophy begins in wonder. This was the view Plato expressed in his
Theaetetus ( 155d) and echoed by many other philosophers down through the
ages. Wonder in this sense is not merely idle curiosity, but a passion for the
unknown that drives us to seek an underlying meaning behind the diversity of our
life, impelling us to ever new depths of insight and heights of understanding. I
have chosen to introduce philosophy to you in this course by starting not with
wonder, but with its opposite, ignorance. This is because the logical progression
of the parts of the tree of philosophy is opposite to the normal chronological
progression in our experience of doing philosophy. In these lectures I am
attempting to explain philosophy in such a way that, having completed the course,
you will be able to set out on a philosophical journey of your own. That means
that, although the best way to learn philosophy may be to move from metaphysics
through logic and science to ontology, the best way to do philosophy will be to
move from wonder through wisdom and understanding to a fuller recognition of
your own ignorance.

Wonder relates primarily to our amazement at the great diversity of human

experience, especially experiences giving rise to questions that cannot be
answered merely by logical reasoning, but only by living through the experience
itself. The most basic kind of philosophical wonder is wonder about the meaning
of life. We cannot satisfy that wonder merely by developing metaphysical
theories, sharpening our logical thinking skills, or expanding the depth and range
of our knowledge. Rather, the meaning of life gradually emerges out of our
willingness to be open to the kinds of "wonderful" experiences we are discussing
here in Part Four. Even though our discussion of these experiences depends on
words just as much as in the previous lectures, we must keep in mind that we
experience wonder most profoundly in silence. All the theories we are examining
as possible "answers" to the various problems raised here in Part Four pale in
insignificance compared to the real answer we receive whenever we experience
the wonder of silence. For silent wonder, more than any number of words, can
impress us with a true sense of our own reality, and can urge us on to a level of
wholeness that words alone can never express, giving the diversity of our words
their ultimate meaning.

As you have been learning to do philosophy, I hope you have already

experienced this philosophical kind of wonder. Indeed, another reason for starting
this course with lectures on ignorance is that I have found this is one of the best
ways to awaken wonder in those whose modern, scientific world view tends to
isolate them from the many experiences that used to be a natural part of
everyone's life, prior to the domination of technology over human society. I have
considered teaching this course in the reverse order, starting with a lecture on
death and ending with a lecture on myth. Although this would probably have
made the course more interesting at the beginning, and thus attracted you more
quickly to a serious study of philosophy, there would have been a danger of
interpreting the kinds of experience discussed here too scientifically, without
recognizing the wondrous mystery they point us toward. These days, when beauty
is so often locked within the confines of a museum's walls, when religious
experience is so often identified with doing "churchy" things, when death so often
happens in the anonymity of a hospital ward, it has become all too easy to think
we have really experienced the mysteries of life, when in fact all we have done is
isolate ourselves from the real thing through the trappings of technology.
Recognizing our ignorance of ultimate reality has, I hope, shocked you out of the
common complacency that kills our instinct to wonder.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is one of the best examples of a philosopher who

appreciated the shock value of recognizing human ignorance, as well as the
connection between such a recognition and philosophical wonder. His collection
of insights, called Pensées, is filled with passages expressing the tensions in
human existence, as in the following:
 What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos,
what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the
earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of
the universe!

... Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble
yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely
transcends man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are
ignorant. Hear God....

Whence it seems that God, willing to render the difficulty of our existence
unintelligible to ourselves, has concealed the knot so high, or better speaking, so
low, that we are quite incapable of reaching it; so that it is not by the proud
exertions of our reason, but by the simple submissions of reason, that we can truly
know ourselves. (PP 434)

Pascal's paradoxes point us beyond our ordinary way of looking at the world, and
confront us with a transcendent reality whose mystery stirs up silent wonder in the
depths of our heart.

Today I shall introduce one of the most common and yet profound ways of
experiencing the wonder of silence: namely, the discipline that has as its object
the ultimate reality most people call "God". As we saw last week, one of the
names traditionally given to the philosophical task of understanding this and other
ways of experiencing the "unity in diversity" of existing things is "ontology"-i.e.,
the "study of being". Ontology, the study of what is, is one of the methods
philosophers have used to resolve the various tensions created by our
philosophical reasoning. For example, Kant not only recognized the tension
between freedom and fate, as we saw in Lecture 22, but also argued that man has
a "practical need" to resolve it in order to appreciate the "totality" of human
knowledge and experience. We saw in Lecture 29 how he initially attempted to
resolve this tension by adopting something like an ontological point of view in his
account of the role of beauty and purpose in nature. In Lectures 32 and 33 this
week we shall examine Kant's most significant example of how the tension
between theory and practice is resolved in experience.

The ontological study of human experiences of the transcendent (i.e., of

God) has often been regarded as one of the tasks of the branch of applied
philosophy known as "philosophy of religion". However, the scope of this
discipline ought to be limited to issues related more directly to our knowledge,
such as the arguments for the existence of God, the nature and reliability of
religious language and beliefs, and the problem of evil. The task of understanding
what is typically called "religious experience" belongs to the branches of the tree
of philosophy only insofar as we are asking whether or not such experiences can
give us knowledge of God. The examination of the experiences as such belongs
more properly to the leaves of the tree. The common term "religious experience"
can be misleading, though, since it could be taken to imply that such experience
can occur only in people who belong to some established religion. But in fact,
many people who are not religious in any traditional sense do have experiences of
this type at some point in their life. This suggests that we need a new name to
refer to such experiences when studying their ontological character.

Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) was a German theologian who adopted a Kantian

framework in attempting to construct a thoroughgoing interpretation of religion
and religious experience. His stress on discovering the essence of the empirical
manifestation of religious experiences was quite different from Kant's stress on
their rational foundation. Nevertheless, Otto believed his ideas could serve as a
helpful complement to Kant's. After investigating the similarities between the
religious experiences of people in many different traditions, especially those
normally regarded as "mystical", Otto wrote a book, called The Idea of the Holy
(1917), offering a now famous description of the fundamental characteristics of
such experiences. Let's look today at just a few of his main ideas.

Because the word "God" is not used in all religious traditions, and because
traditions that do refer to God inevitably employ different names and/or
descriptions of God, Otto decided to avoid using the word "God" as much as
possible. Moreover, in examining the bare phenomena of our experiences (i.e.,
when we focus only on what we can observe), we do not actually find God as
such. What we find is various types of experience. Therefore, Otto coined the
words "numen" and "numinous" to refer to whatever object gives rise to the deep,
religious experiences sometimes referred to as the "presence" of God.
(Remember, Kant had distinguished between the "phenomenal" and "noumenal"
in a similar way (see Figure III.5).) Of course, most people would call this object
"God". But Otto's goal was not to propose a theory about the object causing such
experiences (i.e., whether it is really God, or nature, or just something we ate for
lunch); instead, he only wanted to give a phenomenological description of what
happens. This is, by the way, the typical method employed in doing ontology. For
that reason ontology and "phenomenology"-i.e., describing the essential character
of the phenomena we experience-always tend to be closely related disciplines.

According to Otto, the feeling of being in the presence of a numen,a

transcendent reality that is "wholly other" than my own self, is a basic human
experience, and should therefore serve as the starting point for any ontology of
religious experience. The result of experiencing this numinous presence is to feel
deeply impressed with my own dependence on it. This gives rise to what Otto
called a "creature-feeling". He warned against the temptation to regard this
"feeling of dependence" (as Schleiermacher had called it) as the primary reality,
and to think we infer from it the belief in some underlying object. On the contrary,
Otto claimed, the object mysteriously presents itself to us first, and the mystical
feeling follows only as a consequence. No matter what we believe about God, this
numinous presence will appear to us as something that can be described by
appealing to the idea of the "holy".

Otto devoted a great deal of effort to the task of explaining the nature of our
experience of the numinous. The "holy" object, he argued, will be both
"nonrational" and "nonmoral". This does not mean it will be irrational and
immoral, but only that questions of rationality and morality will be irrelevant
when it comes to the feeling aroused by such a deep experience. Otto further
named this feeling "mysterium tremendum" and argued that it involves five
distinct "elements": awe, majesty, urgency, mystery (or "otherness"), and
fascination. The feeling of awe refers to a special kind of fear or dread (a tremor)
in the presence of something mysterious. (We shall look more closely at this
feeling in Lecture 34.) The recognition of the majesty of the numinous object then
gives rise to a sense of humble self-abasement (or "creaturehood") in us. The fact
that this is a real experience of a living object, and not just an abstract philo‐
sophical theory, is expressed in the "energy" or urgency we feel whenever we
have such an experience. This urgency can sometimes intensify our

dread, as when it comes in the form of

"the wrath of God", but it also leads to
the recognition that this object is
"wholly other" (i.e., mysterious). These
feelings are all rather negative so far,
and might on their own cause us to flee
from the numinous object; but they are
balanced by a sense of fascination that
keeps us intensely interested in the
experience and in its unknown object.
With this brief description of Otto's
theory in mind, we can summarize it by
combining the two maps in Figure X.1,
as in Figure XI.1.

It is worth mentioning that

Figure XI.1: TheNuminous

Breakthroughandthe

Idea of theHoly

Kant himself had a profound awareness of this kind of numinous experience. For
example, the passage concluding the second Critique (quoted above, at the very
end of Lecture 22) refers to the "starry heavens above me" and the "moral law
within me" as basic experiences ("I see them before me"), giving rise to the
feelings of "admiration and awe", as well as to a sense of mysterious urgency and
dependence ("I associate them directly with the consciousness of my own
existence"): one could hardly cite a better example of Otto's ontological
description of religious experience! Moreover, Kant elsewhere described these
same experiences in terms of the "hand of God" in nature and the "voice of God"
in our hearts. These two ways reason has of manifesting itself to human beings
were, for Kant, self-validating, for they represent the very source of our scientific
knowledge and moral goodness, respectively. As such, they unify the endless
diversity that always characterizes our actual experiences of truth and goodness.
This, in fact, is why the source of logical reasoning cannot itself be logical; nor
can the source of the moral law itself be moral. Kant recognized (though he
unfortunately did not emphasize the fact) that the "starry heavens" (nature) and
the "moral law" (freedom) are like boundaries that we bump our heads against if
we try to pass beyond them. For, just as Otto claimed, the source of these
boundaries must itself be nonrational and nonmoral in order to be capable of
unifying the diversity of our rational and moral experiences.

Anyone who has had such experiences of the numinous will have an
immediate response to Nietzsche, or to anyone else who wishes to argue that God
is dead. The death of God as Nietzsche proclaimed it was real enough; but it was
the death of a false God, a God invented by human rationality more than by divine
revelation. Those who have experienced God will know we cannot force God to
live within the boundaries of any human system. Just as Nietzsche rightly
claimed, to attempt to do so is to kill God; and the only proper response is to
break out of that mold in order to regain the possibility of experiencing the life-
giving reality itself. But this raises a crucial question: Once we have experienced
the numinous, how can we describe it or understand it without forcing it into an
unnatural mold?

Many scholars in the twentieth century addressed this question by referring

to the power of symbols. In the remainder of today's lecture I shall discuss the
views of an existentialist thinker we already met in Weeks VI and X and will meet
again next week. Of Paul Tillich's many interesting insights, his account of the
nature of faith and its relation to symbols is one of the most important. According
to Tillich everyone has faith, because everyone has some "ultimate concern", even
those who are not aware of it. Our ultimate concern is the thing or person or goal
that all our energies in life are directed toward; it is the final determining factor in
all our decisions. For many students, "doing well in university" is their ultimate
concern-the issue determining what they do and when they do it most of the time.
However, Tillich claimed that some things do not deserve this honor, for "the
surrender to a concern which is not really ultimate" is "idolatrous" and hence
"destructive" (DF 16,35): "Our ultimate concern can destroy us as it can heal us.
But we never can be without it." An improper object of ultimate concern is
dangerous because faith is more than mere trust or rational belief. As Tillich
wrote in The Courage to Be (CB 168):

Faith is not a theoretical affirmation of something uncertain, it is the existential

acceptance of something transcending ordinary experience. Faith is not an opinion
but a state. It is the state of being grasped by the power of being which transcends
everything that is and in which everything that is participates. He who is grasped
by this power is able to affirm himself because he knows that he is affirmed by
the power of being-itself. In this point mystical experience and personal encounter
are identical. In both of them faith is the basis of the courage to be.

We shall look more closely at Tillich's concept of "courage" in Lecture 34.

The problem at this point is that the proper object of faith is what Otto called the
"numinous"-in other words, it is the mysterious object of certain deep but
inexplicable experiences we have. So how can faith exist if its object is a
mystery? Tillich's answer was that objects that are not mysterious can lead us to
the mysterious object. The former objects are called "symbols". Thus Tillich
defined the special, religious form of faith as "the acceptance of symbols that
express our ultimate concern in terms of divine actions" (DF 48).

Tillich carefully distinguished between "symbols" and "signs". A sign is a

knowable object that merely points beyond itself to some other knowable object,
whereas a symbol is a knowable object that points beyond itself to a hidden
reality, while at the same time participating in the mystery to which it points. A
road sign directs us to the place we are going, but when we reach our destination
we see that it has nothing to do with the sign(s) we followed along the way. Like
Wittgenstein's "ladder" (see Figure V.1), we can discard a sign once it has done its
job. A symbol, by contrast, is intimately connected with our ability to experience
the reality in question. Without symbols, we would be unable to experience

the thing symbolized. As such, Tillich

argued, "symbolic language alone is able
to express the ultimate.... The language of
faith is the language of symbols" (DF
41,45). The difference between signs and
symbols is, in fact, parallel to the
difference between analytic and synthetic
logic. We can depict this difference by
using the map in Figure XI.2, where the
double-headed arrow (being a com‐
bination of the two types of arrow given
in Figure X.1) represents participation.

This correlation between the sign-

symbol relationship and the analytic-
Figure XI.2: The Logic
synthetic relationship is not accidental.
of Signs and Symbols

For symbolic language is based on synthetic logic, while our ordinary, literal use
of words (as signs) is based on analytic logic. Thus, just as the former, according
to Tillich, relates to the language of faith, so also the latter relates to the language
of knowledge. As we saw in Part Two, our literal use of words requires any "A" to
remain "A" and hence always to be opposed to "-A". As a result, any "B" that is
not identical to "A" must be included as part of "-A". (This, by the way, is often
regarded as the third law of analytic logic, called the "law of the excluded
middle": "B = either A or -A".) Signs always direct us in this way around the
world of the known and the knowable. But whenever we use words in a symbolic
way, the original symbol ("A") itself presents to us a hidden reality ("-A") that
we can actually experience, because this A participates in the -A, and vice versa.
(Obviously, synthetic logic therefore rejects the law of the excluded middle.)
Symbols enable objects, paradoxically, to be for us something they are not, so we
should not be surprised to find some philosophers basing symbolic language on
the "law of paradox" or "law of participation" (see Lecture 12).
 Let's take my wedding ring as a simple example. If I were to regard this
object merely as a sign of my status as a married person, then the ring itself, as an
object, would not be very important to me. I would be more concerned with how
it looks on me than with what it means to me. If I were to lose it, I would be sad
mainly because of its monetary value, being made out of gold. But the loss would
not have any effect on my marriage, since I could buy a new one that would point
to my married status just as effectively. However, because I regard my ring as a
symbol of my commitment to love my wife as long as we are alive, the ring itself
actually participates in my marriage. To lose it or even to decide not to wear it
would be a tragedy, since part of my marriage would thereby be lost. I could, of
course, buy another ring to replace it; but it would take a long time for that new
object to become as profound a symbol of the mystery of love as my original ring
is. For love, as we saw last week, is one of the most common types of experiences
that require us to interpret objects as symbols.

Since this week's lectures deal mainly with "religious experience", let's use
the Christian ritual of the Eucharist as another example to help clarify just how
symbols operate. When Christians partake of the Lord's Supper, each participant
usually eats a small piece of bread and drinks a small amount of wine or grape
juice. The significance of this ritual varies greatly, depending on whether the
person regards these common, "knowable" objects as signs or as symbols.
Regarded as signs, the bread and wine point the person to some other knowable
reality, such as the actual body and blood of the historical man named Jesus Christ
(in the case of the Catholic who believes in the doctrine of "transubstantiation"),
or to the memory of this same person and what he did (as in the typical Protestant
interpretation). In both cases the original objects lose their importance as bread
and wine once we apprehend the object to which they point. Regarded as symbols,
however, these same objects no longer have anything to do with magic or
memory; instead, they are recognized for what they are (namely, bread and wine),
but they are believed to participate in the mystery of the Incarnation of God in
human flesh. Eating them is therefore a profound expression of one's own
willingness to participate in this mystery. By experiencing this ritual symbolically,
the person is transported by these ordinary objects into a deep communion with a
mysterious reality that can never be comprehended, except perhaps in the
incomprehensible wonder of silence.
 To conclude our brief look at Tillich's position, let's use his definition of
faith to distinguish between metaphysics and ontology-two disciplines that are
easily confused, even by philosophers. Whereas metaphysics is the search for
knowledge of an ultimate reality, ontology is a search for experience of an
ultimate concern. So as we study various forms of ontology here in Part Four, we
must keep in mind that the "ultimate", toward which our attention is pointed by
the various symbols we meet in our experience, is an ultimate attitude or way of
life much more than an ultimate object or set of dogmas. Such symbols should all
be regarded not as giving us metaphysical knowledge of ultimate reality, but only
as kindling within us the silent fire of concern for the ultimate direction and
meaning of our life. In the remaining two lectures this week, we will go back to
Kant, in the hope that his Critical philosophy may be able to provide us with some
even deeper insights into what it means to be religious in this way.

32. Evil and the Paradox of Grace

Ever since Lecture 8 I have been putting more emphasis on the ideas of
Immanuel Kant than on any other philosopher-indeed, far more than would
normally be thought appropriate for an introductory-level course such as this.
Kant's terminology is so complex, his theories so deep, and his arguments so
controversial, that most teachers of beginning students dare not mention anything
more than the essential features of Kant's moral theory, with perhaps some
passing references to his epistemology. But in this course, we have covered not
only these areas (in Lectures 22 and 8), but also his view of metaphysics proper
(Lecture 9), his basic logical distinctions (Lecture 11), his defense of the principle
of causality for science (Lecture 21), his political theory (Lecture 27), and his
theory of beauty (Lecture 29). I have two reasons for focusing so much attention
on this one philosopher. First, I am far more familiar with his theories than with
those of any other philosopher, so I am more confident in offering interpretations
that are both accurate and meaningful. Indeed, much of my research and nearly all
of my publications have focused on this one figure. The second reason, however,
is far more significant: I believe Kant comes closer to a balanced and systematic
treatment of the whole range of philosophical issues than any other philosopher.
Moreover, his treatment is nearly always insightful and usually right as well!

The one exception to my generally positive impression of Kant's approach

to philosophical issues came when I first read his book, Religion within the
Bounds of Bare Reason (1793). At that time, I was still in the early stages of
developing my own interpretation of the other areas of Kant's philosophy. As
someone who hopes to qualify as a Christian, though without sacrificing my
freedom to question, doubt, and/or reinterpret some of the traditional dogmas, I
had welcomed Kant's metaphysical humility: his persuasive demonstrations that
God's existence cannot be proved theoretically (arguments whose details we have
not had time to examine in this course) seemed to be a profound philosophical
confirmation of the biblical warnings against trying to storm heaven with human
knowledge. His moral theory had seemed even more obviously compatible with
Christian thinking: the dual principles of freedom and the moral law struck me as
a beautiful restatement of Jesus' internalization of ethics; and Kant's moral
argument seemed like an appropriate way of expressing the moral person's
conviction that God must exist, even though we cannot prove it. Even in his
account of beauty and natural purpose in the third Critique, Kant had seemed
intent on developing a theocentric philosophy-one that points the reader to an
ever-deepening awareness that God is "all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). But when
I first read Kant's Religion, my heart sank: he seemed to be reducing the riches of
religious experience to nothing but morality in disguise!

Fortunately, I decided to reread Religion a few years later, when my

perspectival interpretation of Kant's System was more thoroughly developed. In
so doing, I felt as if interpretive scales were falling from my eyes: an entirely new
understanding of what Kant was attempting to accomplish became clear to me.
When I first read the book, I had allowed myself to fall for the traditional
interpretation, whereby Kant is not really seriously attempting to defend religion
at all, much less Christianity, but is merely hoping to convert religiously-minded
people to a Kantian substitute for religion. What I realized the second time around
is that Religion is not a book about the "philosophy of religion" in the sense we
ordinarily think of it nowadays; rather, it is a book about the being of religion, an
interpretation of what it means to be religious. Moreover, I realized that Kant was
not reducing religion to mere morality, but was raising morality (which is a
hopeless ideal on its own) to the higher (and more realistic) level of religion! For
this reason, and because I have studied this book more carefully than any of
Kant's other works, I shall devote most of two lectures to explaining its contents.

What does it mean to be religious? Is "being religious" something all

human beings necessarily experience, or is it just an optional choice some people
make-e.g., when they are afraid of what will happen to them after they die? And
which religion, if any, is the best one to follow? Kant's Religion is a systematic
attempt to answer these and many other questions, based on the foundations laid
in his preceding systematic works. He divided the book, somewhat predictably,
into four parts, each representing a stage in the process of explaining what makes
religion what it is. Here we shall examine the first two stages, leaving the other
two for the following lecture. But first, an overview of these four stages (see
Figure XI.3) should help you to keep track of where we are going. Book One asks
whether human beings are good or evil by nature, and defends both an interesting
two-sided answer, in terms of the "radical evil" that lies at the very root of our
nature. Book Two considers how we are able to overcome the problems created
by the presence of such evil in the world, arguing that some inscrutable assistance
from a benev-
FigureXI.3:TheFourStagesinKant'sSystemofReligion

olent God must be presupposed. Books Three and Four then deal with the new
problems that arise when good-hearted people come together in social groups.
Book Three argues that the final "victory" over evil can take place only when
human beings join together in a religious community (i.e., a "church"). And Book
Four distinguishes between true and false ways of serving God in a church.

According to Kant evil is the basic limiting condition that gives rise to the
need for religion. That there is evil in the world is not an issue he believes is open
to doubt. The philosophical tasks are to identify what evil is, why it is here, and
where it comes from (i.e., how it arises). In the process of discussing these issues,
he totally ignored the so-called "problem of evil" that is now regarded as one of
the major areas of concern for philosophers of religion-i.e., the problem of
explaining how a good and all-powerful God could permit undeserved suffering
and evil to exist. Such an attempt to justify God in the face of evil is called a
"theodicy". Kant's total neglect of this issue in Religion may be due in part to the
fact that he had written a separate essay on this subject shortly before starting to
write this book. That essay, entitled "On the failure of all the philosophical essays
in the theodicy" (1791), had argued that the attempt to defend God in this way is
bound to fail. Appealing directly to the biblical story of Job (the Old Testament
character whom God allowed to suffer horrendously, merely as a test of his faith),
Kant had examined nine different types of theodicy, demonstrating why each one
must fail. Any attempt to concoct rational excuses for God's decision to allow evil
to exist is misdirected, because knowledge of such mysteries is beyond the limits
of human understanding. Instead, the very insolubility of the problem serves to
heighten the existential significance of evil by forcing each individual to accept or
reject God on the basis of faith.

Book One of Religion begins by asking whether human beings are good or
evil by nature. First, Kant rejected the possibility that we might be both good and
evil; this can be true of our empirical character (because actions can be partly
good and partly bad in their outcome), but the motive behind an action must be
either good or evil. Kant then distinguished between a "predisposition" (the
universal tendency all human beings have at birth, before any moral actions have
been performed), a "disposition" (the fundamental subjective basis, in the depths
of our character, that determines how we choose to act at any given point in time),
and a "propensity" (the likely tendency of a person, or indeed, of the whole
human race). Kant proceeded to argue that our predisposition is good, because our
animality, our humanity, and our personality all contain features that are clearly
intended for good; our disposition may be good or bad at any given time, because
it cannot be both; and our propensity is always towards evil, because our
predisposition has somehow been corrupted. Just how this corruption occurred is
a question Kant claimed human reason is powerless to answer. But as a reminder
that it has occurred, he adopted the term "radical evil", thus indicating that the
human will (or disposition) has been corrupted at the very outset ("radical" means
"at the root") by an unexplainable evil force that does not belong to our original
nature (our predisposition).

What exactly is this evil? Kant defined evil as a reversal in "the moral order
of the incentives" that determine our maxims (RBBR 31). You may recall from
Lecture 22 that for Kant a choice is morally good whenever we obey the voice of
the moral law in our hearts, and that a person who makes such a choice deserves
praise if he or she has had to sacrifice some personal happiness (or "self-love") in
order to do the right thing. Evil is therefore a person's decision to let matters of
self-love be more important than the commands of conscience. Kant argued that
empirical evidence alone is enough to demonstrate that human beings everywhere
begin their moral lives with choices based on self-love rather than on the moral
law. He also tried to develop a transcendental argument, though its details remain
obscure in the text. I have reconstructed this argument as follows: a person cannot
make a truly moral choice until he or she knows what evil involves as well as
good; since our predisposition is good, we instinctively know what is good by
listening to our conscience; but until we actually make an evil choice, we cannot
be said to have attained genuine freedom, inasmuch as we will not have a true
understanding of what is at stake; the first genuinely free (i.e., moral) act of every
person must therefore be a choice to do evil.

Why begin a book about "rational religion" with the claim that we all start
out by ruining our chances of living a morally spotless life? Doesn't this call into
question the rationality of our effort to obey the moral law-an effort whose
importance Kant had emphasized so firmly in the second Critique? Indeed it does!
And this point baffled most of Kant's philosophical peers, who accepted the
Enlightenment's absolute faith in the powers of human reason, and thought Kant
did too. Goethe, for example, exclaimed that Kant had "slobbered on his
philosopher's cloak" with the doctrine of radical evil (see KCR 129n). But Kant
himself was not put off; for he knew what he was doing. Our experience of evil
and our inability to explain its rational origin except by merely confirming its
mystery ("it's radical!") serve to fill us with an existential wonder that impels us to
be religious. Indeed, Kant's intention in Book One was to present us with the
transcendental conditions for the possibility of religion: religion is possible only
in a world where rational beings are meant to be good, but are unable to fulfill
that existential goal. And this is the world we find ourselves living in.

Book Two takes a somewhat surprising turn. Having argued that human
beings inevitably start out with an evil disposition as a result of the negative
influences of radical evil, Kant went on to claim that the presence of our good
predisposition gives us a grain of hope that there may be a way of transforming
our evil disposition into a good one. But how can this happen? First, Kant
suggested, the only hope for anyone who believes morality is a worthwhile goal to
pursue is to believe in a God who in some way provides us with the assistance we
need to overcome our evil disposition. In traditional Christian theology, such
assistance is referred to as "grace". The main question for Book Two is: on what
basis does a person have rational grounds for hoping that God will provide such
assistance? In particular, is there something we must do to merit divine grace, or
is it a free and unmerited gift from above? Kant's solution to this problem is often
criticized for being paradoxical and, as a result, unclear. But I believe the paradox
is intentional: for in the context of Kant's Critical philosophy, any attempt to
explain how God (the transcendent reality) could assist human beings (living as
we do in the phenomenal world) is bound to be paradoxical. Kant would defend
his explanation as merely an accurate reflection of a paradoxical situation.

Book Two begins by introducing what Kant called the "archetype" of

perfect humanity (RBBR 54), then uses familiar biblical imagery to describe its
nature. This archetype has a divine origin; yet it "has come down to us from
heaven" to reside within each person (54-55). It empowers us to do what would
otherwise be impossible: to turn away from the evil disposition (or evil "heart", as
Kant also called it) and begin living by a new principle. In order for this change to
a "good heart" to be effective, however, we must have "practical faith" in this
archetype. By this Kant meant that we must believe that if we do everything in our
power to obey the moral law, then God will supply what is lacking. On this basis,
many interpreters have accused Kant of defending a form of "righteousness by
works", whereby we must earn our own salvation. Yet this is not the way Kant
himself portrayed his position. Rather, he insisted such divine assistance is
entirely undeserved and, in any case, cannot be controlled or determined by
anything we do or fail to do. Indeed, he even warned that we are unable to see
anyone's disposition (even our own!) clearly enough to know for certain whether
it is good or evil. God, he claimed, judges us by this disposition, but because we
are ignorant of its true nature at any given point in time, the only basis we have
for judging our current status is to assess the morality of our actions. If we see
evidence of moral progress, this is a sign that our disposition may be good.
Nevertheless, because we all started with an evil disposition, our situation is
hopeless unless we believe God will make up for our shortcomings. In order for
religion to be rational, though, God must use some basis for deciding who to
assist and who not to assist. Kant's point, then, was not that we can make
ourselves worthy to be accepted by God (who demands perfection), but rather,
that we can make ourselves worthy to be made worthy by God.

Because the archetype has the same function in Kant's system of rational
religion that Jesus has in Christianity, Book Two deals with a number of
theological issues relating to Jesus' nature and status. The issues include Jesus'
divine nature, his human nature, his virgin birth, his resurrection from the dead,
his status as a moral example, and various broader doctrines such as
sanctification, eternal security, and justification by grace. Many interpreters have
claimed that Kant's intention was to deny any real value to most if not all of these
traditional doctrines. However, such interpretations are based on a careless
reading of the text. For what Kant's actual strategy in each case was to argue that
such doctrines can have a legitimate rational meaning provided they serve the
practical goal of helping the religious believer to follow the moral law more
consistently. In each case he warned against any interpretation that is likely to
produce a morally lazy individual. What many interpreters overlook is that he also
warned against the opposite danger: dogmatically asserting that certain doctrines
cannot be true, simply because they cannot be proved theoretically. Even a
doctrine such as the virgin birth, Kant warned, cannot be absolutely denied,
inasmuch as the possibility of miracles is an issue that lies beyond the bounds of
human reason. As explained in great detail in my recent book, Kant's Critical
Religion (2000), the true intention of Kant's arguments is to show us how those
who wish to believe that, for example, Jesus was God in human form, must
interpret this doctrine in order for it to support rather than hinder the genuinely
religious core of a person's beliefs. Kant himself certainly did not recommend that
we adopt such doctrines as philosophers; he did not claim that we must believe
them in order to be accepted by God. But he did demonstrate that we can believe
them without sacrificing our rationality, and that doing so can sometimes greatly
strengthen our religious faith.

One of the main reasons so many interpreters have misunderstood Kant's

intentions in Religion is that the standard English version of this book for most of
the twentieth century utilized a very misleading translation of the title. Greene and
Hudson translated Kant's title (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen
Vernunft) as Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Yet Kant elsewhere
clarified that the term Grenzen refers to the boundaries that separate an area from
the surrounding territory, not as absolute limits that cannot be surpassed. (For the
latter, Kant used the term Schranken.) Moreover, the term "blossen" does not
mean "alone"; it means "naked" or "bare". The effect of these two mistranslations
has been to give readers the initial impression that Kant's book will be an attempt
to force religion entirely within the strict limits of reason. But as we have already
seen, this is not what he did. Rather, his strategy in each Book is to distinguish
between what reason can and cannot tell us about our religious impulses.

In Book One we learned that reason can tell us what evil is, and that we are
all inevitably ensnared by evil desires; but it cannot tell us the source of this
mysterious phenomenon, except to say that it is not rooted in the very definition
of what it means to be human. In Book Two we learned that reason can tell us
how conversion works and what we must do in order to have rational grounds for
hoping God will save us; but it cannot tell us who really is good, nor can it give us
definite knowledge of who will receive God's grace. In the next lecture we shall
see how important it is to keep in mind that Kant was not promoting a one-sided
view of religion as nothing but moral reason in disguise, but was describing the
two sides of all genuine religion: the rational (and therefore universal) core along
with the historical (and therefore inevitably non-universal) shell. As we shall see,
both aspects of religion must work together in order our religious experience to be
genuine.

Taken together, evil and grace represent a twofold basis for wonder as we
ponder the human situation. Grace in particular is not something we can ever hope
to understand through reason alone-unless we have actually experienced it. Good
philosophy is superior to traditional theology precisely to the extent that it does
not claim to understand what is by its very nature incomprehensible. It merely
hopes and provides rational grounds for hope. But in so doing, its function is not
to undermine religion, but rather to prepare us to experience the fruit of such
hopes. Lecture 33 will examine how Kant himself regarded the first two stages of
his theory as giving rise to the experience of religion through the forming of
communities devoted to serving God.

33. Community and the Mystery of Worship

You probably noticed in the previous lecture that Kant's account of what it
means to be religious bears a striking resemblance to the biblical stories of the fall
of Adam in Genesis 1-3 and the saving work of Jesus in the Gospels. So close are
the parallels that some commentators have actually accused Kant of simply
translating Christian ideas into a rational terminology. Before continuing with our
study of Religion, we must therefore consider how best to interpret these parallels.
They are, in fact, a crucial part of Kant's strategy. For in the Preface to the second
edition, he explained that the book carries out two experiments: the first is to see
how far philosophy can go in disclosing the rational elements of all genuine
religion; the second is to see how well the beliefs and practices of one specific
"historical faith" correspond to this rational ideal. For the latter, Kant chose
Christianity, the tradition "already at hand" (RBBR 11, 123). With this in mind, we
should not interpret the presence of parallels as a weakness in Kant's theory;
rather, the closer the parallels, the more successfully Kant has demonstrated that
Christianity has a high degree of compatibility with rational religion. For he
always justified the elements of the latter with arguments that do not depend on
Christian tradition.

In Books One and Two Kant has established the rational elements that make
religion a necessary concern for all human beings. Every person starts out with a
potential to be good (based on their predisposition), yet inevitably allows this
original innocence to be corrupted with evil choices. Each individual is thereby
presented with the challenge of how to transform their evil heart into a good
heart-a change that is possible only for those who have faith in the assistance of a
divine power present within them, in the form of the "archetype" of perfection.
Books Three and Four shift from a focus on individual salvation to an
examination of how individuals who have experienced such an inner
transformation can form communities of good-hearted people in order to please
God through their actions. This conception of the whole human race pleasing God
is the ultimate goal of all genuine religion. The problem, as Kant noted at the
outset of Book Three, is that individuals-even good-hearted ones-inevitably
corrupt each other whenever they relate together in groups:

Envy, the lust for power, greed, and the malignant inclinations bound up with
these, besiege his nature, contented within itself, as soon as he is among men.
And it is not even necessary to assume that these are men sunk in evil and
examples to lead him astray; it suffices that they are at hand, that they surround
him, and that they are men, for them mutually to corrupt each other's predispo‐
sitions and make one another evil. (RBBR 85)

The solution to this problem is to form a community for the purpose of

encouraging each other to do good. Kant called such a community the "ethical
commonwealth". It differs from a "political commonwealth" insofar as the latter
unites people together by means of external laws ("laws of coercion"), whereas
the former must use only internal laws ("laws of virtue"). Some Christian readers
have complained that a genuinely religious community must be far more than
merely a group of people who meet together to do good deeds: social
organizations such as the Rotary Club meet that criterion without needing to be
religious at all! But Kant actually recognized this problem. For the second step in
the argument of Book Three is that an ethical commonwealth is bound to fail in
its attempt to encourage moral goodness if it does not conceive of itself as a
"People of God" under divine guidance. For without viewing the community from
this perspective, there would be no hope that our differing views of what
constitutes a "virtuous life" (see Lecture 24) could work together for the common
good without applying any external force.

The argument Kant used to support this crucial step is brief and has been
overlooked by virtually all past interpreters. So let us take a closer look. The
argument presented in the simple paragraph at RBBR 89 can be expressed in a
more logically precise form as follows:

1. The highest good: The true end of human life on earth is to realize the highest
good, by seeking to be worthy of happiness through obedience to the moral law.
Working towards this goal is a human duty.

2. Radical evil: Human beings on their own seem to be incapable of achieving the
highest good, because of the radical corruption in the heart of each individual. At
best, all we can say is that "we do not know whether ... it lies in our power or
not."

3. Ethical commonwealth: No organization based on externally legislated rules

(i.e., no "political commonwealth") can achieve this goal, because the moral law
can be legislated only internally-i.e., through an "ethical commonwealth".

4. "Ought" implies "can": Anything reason calls us to do (i.e., any human duty)
must be possible; if it seems impossible, we are justified in making assumptions
that will enable us to conceive of its possibility.

5. Divine assistance: The only way to conceive of a human organization that

could succeed in becoming an ethical commonwealth (i.e., in promoting the
highest good as "a social goal") is to presuppose the assistance of "a higher moral
Being through whose universal dispensation the forces of separate individuals,
insufficient in themselves, are united for a common end." This Being legislates
the moral law internally to all individuals, thus insuring the harmony of their
diverse actions.

6. God exists. In order to work towards the fulfilment of the highest good, we
must therefore presuppose that God exists as a gracious moral lawgiver, and that
to obey the moral law is to please God. That is, the ethical commonwealth can
succeed only if it takes a religious form. (KCR 167-168)

I call this Kant's "religious argument" for the existence of God. In a nutshell, it
states that trusting in a moral God provides the only rational basis for believing
that our human duties can be fulfilled.

The technical term used in Book Three for this "People of God" is church.
What is crucial in Kant's view is to regard the church not as a purely physical,
humanly-organized entity, but to see it as an invisible spiritual reality, based on
rationally-justifiable principles. Indeed, following the pattern of the four main
categories (see Figure III.9), Kant suggested four basic principles for the
organization of any "true church" (RBBR 92-93): (1) its quantity is "Universality,
and hence its numerical oneness ... with respect to its fundamental intention"; (2)
its "quality" is "purity, union under no motivating forces other than moral ones";
(3) its "relation", both "of its members to one another, and ... of the church to
political power", is determined by "the principle of freedom"; and (4) its
"modality" is "the unchangeableness of its constitution", i.e., of certain "settled
principles" that are "laid down, as it were, out of a book of laws, for guidance".
The form of the true (universal) church, then, can be mapped onto the cross as
follows:
Figure XI.4:

The Archetypal Characteristics of the Invisible Church

The two 1LARs that give rise to this 2LAR can be identified as distinguishing
between characteristics concerned with laws (+) or freedom (-) on the one hand,
and between their external (+) or internal (-) manifestations on the other.

The goal of Book Three is to show how an ethical commonwealth, under

God's guidance and based on these principles, can make the "kingdom of God"
real on earth. Much of Book Three is therefore devoted to discussing how the
church can meet this goal more effectively. First and foremost, the participants in
a church must distinguish between their specific historical/ecclesiastical traditions
(called their "faith" by Kant) and the principles of rational morality that lie at its
core (called the "religion" proper). Kant had this distinction in mind when he
claimed (RBBR 98): "There is only one (true) religion; but there can be faiths of
several kinds." The problem is that religious people tend to regard their faith as a
unique source of salvation, sometimes even denying that moral goodness (the core
of "pure religion" in Kant's view) has any relevance at all. This tendency often
leads them to regard their scripture as a set of absolute truths telling them what to
believe and what to do, regardless of the content. Kant actually agreed that all
faiths need a revelation, as best preserved in a holy scripture such as the Bible,
because reason alone (as we have seen) cannot answer all our questions.
However, he argued that those who interpret scripture for the church ought to use
morality as their principal guideline. To illustrate how this can be done, he
suggested symbolic interpretations of numerous Christian doctrines and practices,
showing how interpretations that point beyond the literal story to an underlying
moral meaning preserve what is most essential to the Christian message, while
protecting it from being perverted into cultic propaganda.

The key question here is: "How does God wish to be honored?" (RBBR 95).
Religious believers tend to answer in one of two ways: either God wants us to be
good and regards worship as an optional extra, or God wants us to worship and
regards moral goodness as unimportant or even impossible. Kant argued that a
true religion will adopt the former standpoint, while a false religion adopts the
latter. The latter is false because it requires as a duty belief in dogmas that cannot
be known to be true by bare reason, claiming that those who blindly believe will
be given the gift of moral goodness without actually needing to do good deeds at
all. True religion, by contrast, correctly recognizes that doing good is the
universal duty of all human beings (the only way to please God), adding that our
inevitable moral shortcomings can be overcome through faith that God's grace
will provide a supplementary gift to make up for the duties we are unable to
fulfill. Book Four develops this theme in considerable detail, in terms of the
distinction between "true service" and "pseudo-service" of God.

To illustrate the difference between true and false service, we can imagine
ourselves ordering a meal at our favorite restaurant. Waiter A fills the order with
the food that was requested, but never smiles or engages in friendly conversation.
Waiter B is all smiles and chats at length about everything under the sun, but ends
up letting the food go cold and bringing someone else's order to the table. A
friendly attitude would obviously be a welcomed supplement to good service, but
on its own it is insufficient. In this example waiter A performs 'true service',
despite being unfriendly, whereas waiter B performs 'pseudo-service' by allowing
the supplement (friendliness) to stand in the way of performing good service
(delivering hot food to the correct table). Kant seemed to have such situations in
mind when he defined pseudo-service as
the persuasion that some one can be served by deeds which in fact frustrate the
very ends of him who is being served. This occurs ... when that which is of value
only indirectly, as a means of complying with the will of a superior, is proclaimed
to be, and is substituted for, what would make us directly well-pleasing to him.
(RBBR 141)

Does Kant's conception of the service of God in a true religion leave any
legitimate role for worship, prayer, and other attempts to experience God in our
daily life? The traditional interpretation claims that he totally rejected all such
practices as illusions that lead to pseudo-service. But this ignores one of the most
important distinctions in Book Four, between "direct" and "indirect" ways of
serving God. We serve God directly and immediately whenever we do our moral
duty; we serve God indirectly whenever we do something that heightens our
awareness of what this duty is, or encourage us to obey it. Along these lines, Kant
explicitly allowed that religious practices such as prayer, church-going, baptism,
and communion can play a significant role in a genuinely religious life: they stir
up our moral sense and make us more keenly aware of what we ought to do.
Kant's negative words about such practices apply only to false interpretations of
their significance, as when someone interprets praying for a neighbor's financial
problems as fulfilling a religious duty without ever considering helping the
neighbor, or thinks attending church pleases God even if we learn nothing about
how to live a better life, or regards baptism as a way of forcing God to accept
people into the heavenly kingdom, or treats the communion ritual as a magical
way of making a bad person good. The correct interpretation in each case must be
symbolic: such practices belong to genuine religion only when they point beyond
themselves to a moral meaning.

Some of you may be inclined to conclude up to this point that the traditional
interpretation is right, that Kant did attempt to reduce religion to morality. We can
settle this issue once and for all by examining Kant's definition of religion. The
first main section of Book Four begins by defining religion as "the recognition of
all duties as divine commands" (RBBR 142). The reductionist interpretation reads
this as meaning "to be religious is to act morally". But this is not what Kant
wrote! Rather, his whole point is that religion goes a step beyond self-sufficient
morality by calling on God for assistance in what is recognized as an otherwise
impossible task. The text goes on to distinguish between "natural religion"
(religion that can be universally known through bare reason) and "revealed
religion" (religion that requires access to some specific historical faith). For the
philosopher, natural religion must have priority, because it is grounded in what we
can know (namely, our human duties); but in order to realize the final goal of
religion and actually please God, natural religion must be supplemented with
revealed religion. The test of whether a faith's alleged revelation is genuine is
whether or not it encourages the believers to do their duties. But this is not
reductionism; rather, it is a reasoned attempt to ensure that religious faith is rooted
in a rational core than can be shared by all human beings.

Although I have not emphasized the architectonic pattern in Kant's religious

system up to now, you may have noticed that each of its four stages can be
expressed in terms of a three-step argument. Accordingly, his system of religion
can be summarized by mapping all the steps onto a 12CR (cf. Figure III.9), as
follows:

Figure XI.5: The Twelve Steps in Kant's Religious System

This map summarizes Kant's solution to the first of his two experiments. He
regarded these twelve elements as describing what it means to be religious,
regardless of what tradition a person belongs to. The remaining question, then, is
to what extent Christianity conforms to this model.

In the Preface to the first edition of Religion, Kant distinguished between

the standpoints of the philosophical theologian and the biblical theologian: the
former take reason alone as their guide, while the latter regard scripture as the
primary authority. In this way, he left room for Christians (or any other religious
believers) to defend those aspects of their faith that might not have a directly
moral content. As we have seen, all he required is that the believer's faith must not
contradict morality. Kant never denied the legitimacy of a unique Christian
standpoint (nor that of any other religious faith); he merely showed us how to be
sure our faith maintains a genuinely religious character, without degenerating into
mere superstition or fanaticism. Kant's own conclusion regarding his second
experiment was surprisingly positive: he repeatedly referred to Christianity as the
only truly moral faith, even suggesting at one point that it may be destined to
become "the universal religion of mankind" (RBBR 143, 145-151).

I hope I have made clear in this and the previous lecture that Kant's theory
of religion is not so much a "philosophy of religion" that covers the topics we
now tend to expect from books on that subject, as a philosophical theology that
aims first and foremost to clarify what it means to be religious, and secondly
argues that the Christian faith has the highest potential of all such faiths to
promote the universal religion that has a pure moral core. That Kant (despite
commentators' tendency to believe otherwise) was writing a book about religious
experience can perhaps best be seen by examining the evidence that his entire
philosophy was an attempt to develop what I call a "Critical mysticism"-i.e., a
way of understanding how we can experience transcendent reality (e.g., God)
without interpreting that experience in a way that will transgress the boundaries of
Critical philosophy.

The last book Kant published before starting to develop his Critical
philosophy was called Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Illustrated by Dreams of
Metaphysics (1766). In this work he examined and interpreted the mystical
experiences of the Swedish visionary, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). After
giving both positive and negative assessments of the nature of such experiences,
Kant settled on a moderate position: metaphysical speculations about ultimate
reality are to thought what mystical visions are to sensation; in both cases, we
must first determine the limits of what we can know, and beyond that, we should
affirm only those mysteries that promote moral goodness. That Kant himself had
a deep experience of transcendent reality is evident from numerous hints he gave
throughout his writings. But we have no time to consider such claims here;
instead, we shall begin next week with a lecture on an openly Christian
philosopher who was deeply affected by Kant's philosophy in general and his
philosophy of religion in particular.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Would it be possible to experience the wonder of noise?

B. What is the relationship between wonder and ignorance?

2. A. What is the opposite of "ontology"?

B. Would it be possible to experience an unholy symbol?

3. A. Could a person's nature be "partly" good and "partly" evil?

B. Must a person be morally good before being accepted by God?

4. A. Could there be more than one "invisible church"?

B. Can a person really hear the voice of God?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An inquiry into the non-rational factor in
the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational2, tr. J.W. Harvey (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977[1923]), Chs. III-VI, pp.8-40.

2. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith , Ch.3, "Symbols of Faith" (DF 41-54).

3. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (Houndmills, Hampshire: Macmillan

Press, 1989), Ch.10, "Religious Meaning and Experience", pp.153-171.

4. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book One and
"General Observation" to Book Four (RBBR 15-39,179-190).

5. Stephen Palmquist, "Immanuel Kant: A Christian Philosopher?", Faith and

Philosophy 6:1 (January 1989), pp.65-75.

6. Stephen Palmquist, Kant's System of Perspectives, Ch. X, "Religion and God in

Perspective" (KSP 313-323).

7. Christopher L. Firestone, "Kant and Religion: Conflict or Compromise?",

Religious Studies 35 (1999), pp.151-171.

8. Adina Davidovich, Religion as a Province of Meaning: The Kantian

foundations of modern theology (Minneapolis, Mn.: Fortress Press, 1993).
170):

34. Angst and the Paradox of Courage

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

The most fundamental question of all ontology is: Why is there something
(or being) rather than nothing (or non-being)? This question is the ultimate basis
of all existential wonder. For the question, Why is the world here? leads directly
to the question, Why am I here? and from there to a host of questions about the
meaning of life. The latter has been among the most frequent topics addressed in
my students' insight papers. This is particularly true once we recognize that most
questions about death are also, at least indirectly, questions about the meaning of
life. For the awareness of non-being first raises the question of being; and in the
same way the awareness of death first raises the question of the meaning of life.
In Lecture 35 we will examine how the inevitability of death affects the mystery
that arises when we search for life's meaning. But first let's focus on a closely
related paradox that arises within us any time we choose life in the face of death.

According to most existentialists, any time we come face to face with the
possibility of our own non-being (e.g., as when we reflect upon our eventual
death), we have a natural "existential response" involving a very special kind of
fear. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), the German existentialist philosopher who,
with Wittgenstein, is generally regarded as one of the two most influential
twentieth-century philosophers (see Week VI), distinguished between this special
existential fear and ordinary kinds of fear in the following way. Ordinary fear is a
person's empirical response to a threatening object within the world: it usually
requires us either to fight the object in hopes of overpowering its threat, or to flee
from the object in hopes of escaping from its threat. In both cases we can say the
person who is afraid of something in the world responds by trying to push
something out of the world-either the feared object or one's own self (see Figure
XII.1a). By contrast, existential fear is a response in the depths of a person's being
to the general human situation, especially when that situation reveals within us the
presence of non-being or "nothingness" in some way. The natural human response
is to flee from the threat, since it seems impossible to fight against "nothing"! But
in this case we flee not by seeking to escape the world, but by immersing
ourselves more fully into the empirical objects of our ordinary experience (see
Figure XII.1b). This may be done in many ways, such as by pursuing hobbies,
watching television, becoming an avid sports fan, or even becoming a scholar and
immersing oneself in books. Heidegger's point is that the usual (unhealthy) way of
escaping from the threat of non-being is merely to pretend it is not there, by
immersing oneself in being.

(a) Ordinary Empirical Fear (b) Existential Fear ("Angst")

Figure XII.1:

Inappropriate Responses to Two Kinds of Fear

 Using Heidegger's distinction as an introduction, let us now look back to
the ideas of an earlier philosopher, who also had much to say about the nature and
function of existential fear. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is generally
recognized as the father of theistic existentialism (as opposed to the atheistic
existentialism fathered by Nietzsche). Kierkegaard (pronounced "Keerkagore",
meaning "churchyard"-i.e., graveyard) was a lonely Danish philosopher who
wrote twenty-one books (as well as 8000 pages of unpublished papers) in twelve
short years, and whose ideas were never well received during his own lifetime. He
expounded his main philosophical ideas in a series of books written under several
different pseudonyms (some arguing against each other!). But in the last few
years of his life he wrote a number of books using his own name, mainly
attacking the corruptions he perceived in the Christianity of his day. Of his many
interesting ideas, the only one we will have time to investigate here is his use of
the Danish word "angst" to refer to what I have called "existential fear".

Although angst is sometimes translated as "dread" or "anxiety", neither of

these words captures the full depth of the existential fear of non-being
Kierkegaard intended this word to denote. Dread is too often associated with
extreme displeasure or apprehension at the thought of facing some empirical
threat, as when I say I dread going to the dentist. Likewise, anxiety is too often
associated with ordinary "stress", as when students say they feel anxious about
their ability to pass an examination. In order to guard against the temptation to
connect angst too closely with ordinary empirical types of fear, many scholars
have adopted the habit of simply using the original Danish word-a practice I shall
follow today. When I do refer on several occasions to dread or anxiety, we should,
of course, identify these with angst, not empirical fear.

Kierkegaard's first book, Either-Or (1843), distinguished between two basic

ways of life, the aesthetic and the ethical. The former is based on feelings and
focuses on enjoying the pleasures of life; the latter is based on duty and focuses
on doing what is good. As such, this distinction corresponds to the distinction we
discussed in Lecture 22, between utilitarianism and deontology. Those who first
read the book debated over which of these two opposing points of view the author
actually wished to support. But Kierkegaard's true intention was to demonstrate
that either choice on its own is as absurd or incomplete as the other. For he later
published another book, Stages on Life's Way (1845), wherein he argued

that the aesthetic and ethical

stages both point beyond
themselves to a third stage, the
religious, which synthesizes
and surpasses the two earlier
stages (see Figure XII.2). He
defined the religious way of
life in terms of an attitude of
"inwardness" that transcends
the "outwardness" required for
theoretical reasoning and
scientific knowledge.

Figure XII.2: Kierkegaard's Three Life Stages and

In The Concept of
Two Leaps

Anxiety (1844) Kierkegaard developed his idea of angst by analyzing the

Christian idea of sin. Angst, he claimed, is a psychological state arising naturally
out of the essential, ontological nature of man: our freedom gives us infinite
potential for the future; yet our presence in time makes us finite and ignorant. In
other words, angst arises out of the tension between the sensuousness of our body
(rooted as it is in time) and the freedom of our soul (rooted as it is in eternity).
Our ignorance insures that the choices we make for our own future will eventually
plunge us into sin, so that angst comes to be experienced as "entangled freedom"
(CA 320)-that is, as the infinite tangled up in the finite. Sin, then, as the normal
state of the human spirit (see Figure XII.3), is the first of two "qualitative leaps"
we must make in order to progress through the stages of life shown in Figure
XII.2. After leaping from innocence to sin (as in the story of Adam and Eve), the
second leap is from sin to faith (as in the story of Abraham). The first leap
corresponds to the change from the aesthetic to the ethical (or vice versa), while
the second corresponds to the change from the aesthetic/ethical choice to the
religious. Paganism is rooted in the aesthetic stage, where the leap of sin is
experienced as
fate and the leap of faith as
providence; Judaism, by contrast,
is rooted in the ethical stage,
where the leap of sin is
experienced as guilt and the leap
of faith as atonement.
Christianity surpasses both of
these by actually being rooted in
the properly religious stage of
absolute faith in God.

Kierkegaard's analysis of
angst and sin suggests that the
lack of angst is the worst possible
psychological state, since without
Figure XII.3: The Ontological Origins of Angst
angst we could
and Sin

never progress to the stage of spirit. In the original state of innocence angst arises
as a response to the "nothing" (i.e., the person's ignorance) of the future: "anxiety
is freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility" (CA 313). To ignore this
freedom is actually idolatry when it causes the person in the aesthetic stage of life
to grasp innocence, peace, happiness, beauty, etc., as if they were good in and of
themselves. For to do so is to separate oneself from the spiritual depths of one's
own human nature: "The most effective means of escaping spiritual trial is to
become spiritless" (385). Yet once this freedom is utilized, an awareness of sin
arises, causing a new kind of angst, in the form of "anxiety about evil" (381-386).
This comes in three forms: (1) the desire to return to a state of innocence; (2) the
threat of falling deeper into sin; and (3) the wish that mere repentance were
enough to atone for sin. Unfortunately, the attempt of many religious people to
overcome such anxiety by means of outward goodness only gives rise to more
angst, in the form of "anxiety about the good" (386-420).

The truly religious person turns away from both aesthetic and ethical aims
in order to become inward. "Inwardness" refers to immediate self-understanding
in action (CA 408), requiring a person to be open to the eternal in one's own self.
To turn toward oneself in this way is therefore identical to turning toward God. As
a result, it always begins by heightening a person's awareness of guilt:

In turning toward himself, [the religious "genius"] eo ipso turns toward God, and
... when the finite spirit would see God, it must begin as guilty. As he turns toward
himself, he discovers guilt. The greater the genius, the more profoundly he
discovers guilt....

In turning inward he discovers freedom....

To the degree he discovers freedom, to that same degree the anxiety of sin is
upon him in the state of possibility.... (376-377)

Such a person will then recognize that anxiety really points beyond itself to faith:

The only thing that is truly able to disarm the sophistry of sin is faith, courage to
believe that the state [of sin] itself is a new sin, courage to renounce anxiety
without anxiety, which only faith can do; faith does not thereby annihilate anxiety,
but ... extricates itself from anxiety's moment of death. (385)

In other words, the proper response to anxiety is to stop being anxious about
anxiety, accepting it in the belief that it exists for a higher purpose. Whereas
pagan anxiety expresses itself most profoundly as fate, and Jewish anxiety as
guilt, the anxiety of the true Christian (whom Kierkegaard regarded as practicing
the most advanced form of religion) is therefore expressed in the form of suffering
(see Figure XII.2)
 Kierkegaard argued that the key to solving the problem of angst is to learn
to face it courageously, with the paradoxical feelings of "sympathetic antipathy"
and "antipathetic sympathy" (CA 313). Anyone who "has learned to be anxious in
the right way has learned the ultimate" (421). For "anxiety is through faith
absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends" (422). Despite its
apparently negative character, the suffering caused by angst is therefore essential
to our spiritual growth: "the more profoundly he is in anxiety, the greater is the
man" (421). Kierkegaard had numerous other philosophical insights, not only
concerning the human experience of angst, but also about numerous other topics,
such as the paradoxical relationship between history (the finite) and subjectivity
(the infinite), and the true nature of Christian faith as requiring a subjective
willingness to die. However, we will be unable to pursue these or other interesting
topics here.

Instead, I want to point out that, given Kierkegaard's analysis of angst, the
relationship between dread and death is analogous to the relationship between
love and life: just as love is the moving power of life, so also dread is the moving
power of death. Whereas the former is the power of being, driving us toward the
unity of opposites, the latter is the power of non-being, driving us toward the
diversity of opposites. In other words, dread is the driving power behind the
"estrangement" Tillich regarded as the necessary prerequisite for love (see Figure
X.5). The struggle between these two powers is, in fact, what keeps us alive,
while at the same time giving us a glimpse of our eternality in the midst of our
finitude. In other words, dread, in spite of being a primarily negative experience,
reminds us of our capacity for self-transcendence. Together, the powers of love
and dread remind us that, on the one hand, we are not at home in this world, and
yet on the other hand, we are not entirely strangers either. Recognizing this
paradox can help us respond to real experiences of angst in a way that is
appropriate to the eternal dimension of our lives.

The failure to balance the powers of eternality (love) and temporality

(death) in our lives usually results is some type of psychological disturbance, and
can eventually lead even to insanity. Insanity does not come from paying too
much attention to the paradoxes of human experiences; rather, it results from the
attempt to run away from them to the security of either the infinite or the finite on
its own. As long as the two powers are engaged in a struggle within us, our mental
health will be preserved. But the loss of either eternality or temporality can drive
a person insane: for the former would limit us to an application of analytic logic,
thereby causing us to see the world as an unbearable diversity of fragmented and
disconnected bits, while the latter would limit us to an application of synthetic
logic, thereby causing us to see the world as an overwhelming unity, without
discrete and intelligible parts. The former describes the form of insanity that
stems from an overemphasis on reason over imagination, as when paranoid
schizophrenics interpret their experience within a narrow set of limits (e.g.,
"everyone is against me"); the latter describes the form of insanity that stems from
an overemphasis on imagination over reason, as when the elderly lose themselves
in the limitlessness of senility.

Tillich argued that we are all guilty of losing our eternality to some extent.
The best explanation for the angst we feel when we think honestly about our own
death, he claimed, is that we all know deep down inside that we deserve to die,
because of the inauthentic way we have lived. Too often, people's response to this
guilt is merely to flee from it into the safety of philosophical arguments for
immortality or a religious hope for eternal life. Yet the latter only increases the
philosopher's over-dependence on logical reasoning, while the former only
increases the believer's over-dependence on religious imagination. In other words,
these common "solutions", though not in themselves wrong, can sometimes
backfire by intensifying the loss of eternality that comes from denying one side of
the paradox.

The only proper response to the loss of eternality revealed in our

experience of existential dread is, according to Tillich, to face the threat of non-
being with an existential courage to be. In his book, The Courage To Be (1952),
he described this response in the following way:

Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the

act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirm‐
ing itself ... Courage always includes a risk, it is always threatened by non-being
... Courage needs the power of being, a power transcending the non-being which
is experienced in the anxiety of fate and death, ... in the anxiety of emptiness and
meaninglessness, ... [and] in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. The courage
which takes this threefold anxiety into itself must be rooted in a power of being
that is greater than the power of oneself and the power of one's world.... There are
no exceptions to this rule; and this means that every courage to be has openly or
covertly a religious root. For religion is the state of being grasped by the power of
being itself. (CB 152-153)

Like Kierkegaard, Tillich therefore saw the threat of non-being as an existential

problem whose only adequate solution is essentially religious. This word
"religious" should not be misunderstood as referring to religious practices, such
as going to church, singing hymns, etc. For as we saw in Lecture 33, such things
can be misused to keep us away from truly religious courage. Instead, the point
here is that to be religious means to be open to an experience of the Being who,
by transcending the distinction between being and non-being, can alone supply us
with the courage to be.

This basic experience of receiving the gift of the courage to be is closely

related, according to Tillich, both to mystical experiences of participation in God,
and to more ordinary experiences of a personal encounter between man and God.
Such experiences are rooted in a recognition that the presence of non-being within
us estranges us from our true nature, and that this problem can be solved only if
we are willing to be "grasped by the power of being itself" (CB 153). For only
when we "participate in something which transcends the self" (161) will we be
prepared to experience the most profound manifestation of the courage to be, in
the form of the "courage to accept acceptance" (159-166). This courageous self-
affirmation is not merely "the Existentialist courage to be as oneself. It is the
paradoxical act in which one is accepted by that which infinitely transcends one's
individual self." Nor does this ultimate acceptance require us to deny our guilt, for
"it is not the good or the wise or the pious who are entitled to the courage to
accept acceptance but those who are lacking in all these qualities and are aware of
being unacceptable" (160-161).
 At the beginning of the process of accepting acceptance, we experience the
courage to be as the bare "courage of despair [angst]" (CB

the acceptance of despair is in itself faith on the boundary line of the courage to
be. In this situation the meaning of life is reduced to despair about the meaning of
life. But as long as this despair is an act of life it is positive in its negativity.

By living our life in the paradoxical power of the courage to be, we will
eventually be ready to welcome death itself not as a tragic confirmation of angst,
but as the final step in this life-long process. Along these lines, Tillich claimed
that Plato's arguments for the immortality of the soul were "attempts to interpret
the courage of Socrates", who had clearly recognized that "the courage to die is
the test of the courage to be" (164). We will look more fully at the experience of
death itself in the following lecture. For now, however, it will suffice merely to
summarize Tillich's theory of courage in terms of the following map:

Figure XII.4: Courage in the Face of Non-Being

 The religious basis of the courageous acceptance of life in the face of death,
of being in spite of the dreadful prospects of non-being, is made explicit in the
biblical notion of the "fear of the Lord". The Old Testament references to fearing
God are too often watered down to the point where they are taken to mean
nothing more than being careful to obey the Law lest we be punished. But they
refer far more profoundly to the fact that the God of the Old Testament, as the
Being who holds all beings in His hand, is the ultimate source of life and death;
as such, anyone who is courageous enough to approach this Being must do so
with the utmost reverence and awe. As Mitchell put it: "Fear of the Lord is being
in awe, aware of the shocking, silent, presence of God" (IPW 75) -a comment
reminiscent of Otto's notion of awe in the presence of the numinous (see Lecture
31). Throughout the Bible this fundamental, other-worldly fear is depicted as an
existential response to the human situation which, if we accept it, will give us
otherwise unattainable strength to cope with the fearful situations that arise in the
ordinary world. This could indeed be regarded as the basic message of the Psalms
and Proverbs: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (e.g., Psalm
111:10; Proverbs 1:7) means we will learn best how to respond to the threats
within the world only when we have courageously responded to the threat outside
the world. In other words, angst and wisdom are best regarded, paradoxically, as
two sides of the same coin.

If we do not merely ignore the basic ontological question raised at the

beginning of this lecture, then we seem to have a choice between two possible
answers: either the existence of the world is meaningless and the courage to be
has no basis, or else there is a God who is, paradoxically, beyond the very
distinction between something and nothing, and who thereby lends meaning to
both being and non-being, thus forming the ultimate basis of faith, and so also of
our courage to be. But as Kant, Kierkegaard, Tillich, and many other religiously-
minded philosophers have pointed out, this God cannot lend meaning merely by
being a doctrine imposed on us by the social pressures of a religious community;
rather, we must experience God as a reality that gives us power to cope with the
paradoxes of life, providing us with faith in the face of doubt, peace in the face of
turmoil, acceptance in the face of guilt, and courage in the face of dread.
35. Death and the Mystery of Life

One of my students once defined silence as the state of no longer needing to

ask any questions. This suggests an interesting paradox in the claim that the final
goal of philosophy is to experience inner silence, since one of the philosopher's
main tasks is to raise questions whose answers are usually not immediately
apparent. Yet I believe it expresses a deep insight into the nature and purpose of
doing philosophy. If silence is actually a questionless state, then have we merely
been wasting time raising so many difficult philosophical questions here in Part
Four and throughout these lectures? Not at all! Such questions must be raised, or
the deeper levels of silence can never be enjoyed: for the questions stir up in us
the wonder that draws us out beyond the noise of the world to meet the meaning
of the world. Wittgenstein expressed this basic paradox by saying the meaning of
life is found outside of life, which is why he believed we cannot speak about that
meaning. Our inability to give scientifically verifiable answers to most
philosophical questions does not, however, mean the questions (or our attempted
answers) are meaningless. For their final purpose is not to be answered in words-
this may or may not be possible-but to help us discover the meaning of life and of
the world in the silence that such questions tend to induce.

In the previous lecture we learned about the paradox of courage in the face
of the dread of non-being. This leads us directly to the ultimate philosophical
question, for the inevitability of our own non-being-that is, of our own death-
raises the question of the meaning of life; and this question itself directs our
attention toward the ultimate silence beyond life. As far as we can judge by what
we observe when a person dies, death marks the end of our capacity to use words,
and thereby ushers in a silence unlike anything we have experienced during life.
The mystery of what, if anything, happens after we die is one of the primary
sources of the "angst" we all feel from time to time-this being, as we have seen,
one of the primary concerns of existentialist philosophers. This angst has
therefore driven ordinary people-even those who know nothing about philosophy-
to propose various ideas about what happens after death.
 Is there a life after death? If so, what is it like? There are four basic ways of
answering such questions, though each type of answer, of course, has many
variations. We can analyze these four ways of envisioning the "after death"
experience as arising out of two questions: (1) Does our consciousness of our own
identity continue after we die? and (2) Will we acquire a new body after our
present body dies? With these questions in mind, we can map the four traditional
answers to the question of life after death onto the 2LAR cross, as shown in
Figure XII.5. This is probably not a "perfect" 2LAR, since it is highly unlikely
that all four possible answers describe what actually happens after death.
Although two or three of these views might be simultaneously true in different
ways, most people feel constrained to choose only one as the best hypothesis. So
let's compare these four possibilities in a bit more detail.

The theories of extinction and reincarnation both agree that the part of me
that enables me to remember who I am (often called the "mind" or "soul") will not
survive my death; but they disagree as to whether or not

Figure XII.5:

Four Basic Ways of Conceiving Life After Death

I will acquire a new body. If not, then I will simply cease to exist (--): my
individuality will discontinue altogether-though in some versions of extinction,
such as the mystical application of Aristotle's "spark of the divine" (see Lecture 6,
especially Figure II.9), something other than my body and mind continues to
exist. If, by contrast, I do acquire a new body, then I will reappear as another
person (-+), whose memory will be discontinuous with my present memory.
People who believe in reincarnation often claim we can learn to become
conscious of memories from our "past lives". We have to learn how to regain such
memories precisely because there is normally no conscious continuity between
our different reincarnations, even though there may be some deeper spiritual
"core" connecting the lives of these apparently different persons.

Those who, like Plato, believe in the immortality of the soul are actually
closer to those who believe in extinction than to those who believe in
reincarnation. For, although the immortality theory disagrees with both of these
two theories by claiming that we have a soul (i.e., a capacity for continuous,
conscious memory) that survives our body's death (+-), it actually agrees with the
extinction theory's claim that our dead body will not be replaced with a new one,
as the reincarnation theory believes it will. This might seem rather surprising,
especially to those who view Plato's belief in the immortality of the soul as the
ancient Greek equivalent of the Christian belief in life after death. The latter,
however, is not based on any logical arguments for the necessity of the soul's
immortality, but on a religious hope that people will be saved from extinction
through divine intervention in the form of resurrection.

The theory of resurrection must be clearly distinguished from each of the

other three theories. As the direct opposite of resurrection, extinction is properly
regarded by those who believe in resurrection as being our natural fate, should
resurrection not occur. By contrast, the other two theories share with resurrection
common factors that sometimes overshadow their differences. Like immortality,
resurrection assumes a person's conscious powers will continue, more or less
uninterrupted, after death. And like reincarnation, resurrection assumes a person
will have a new body after the present body dies. But in opposition to Plato,
resurrection focuses primarily on the body, assuming like Aristotle that, without a
resurrected body, the soul itself would also die. And in opposition to
reincarnation, resurrection views the new body as a new kind of body, not just
another body of the same kind. The pictures that sometimes appear in religious
literature, of bodies floating out of their graves up into the sky, misrepresent the
real meaning of resurrection. For in the New Testament, a person's earthly body is
described as a mere "seed" in comparison to the fully matured "spiritual body" to
be given after death (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-44). That is, our conscious life in the
present body will somehow be united in a continuous way with this new spiritual
body (++), so that all our unrealized potentials in this life will blossom and bear
fruit in the life to come.

Although we do not actually experience our own death from within our
present life, we do experience other people's death as the ultimate end of their life
as we know it. As a result, none of us can know for certain until after we die
which of these four views best describes what lies on the "other side". Perhaps
this is why philosophers are often less interested in the questions death raises
about a possible afterlife than in the questions it raises about life itself. Plato, for
example, insisted that the fear of death is appropriate only for those who are still
bound to the "cave" (cf. Figure II.7). Transcending this fear by "learning how to
die" is one of the basic tasks any good philosopher must perform. Plato was
referring here, I believe, to the lifelong task of learning how to live with the
darkness of the unknown, even before we die; for when we do so, we discover
that this absolutely real mystery paradoxically sheds light on how we should live.
In other words, by raising the question of the meaning of life, death points us
directly toward the need to live what existentialists call an authentic life.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow referred to the authentic or truly human

life as the life that attains "self-actualization". This now common term has often
been wrongly criticized for promoting a selfish, "do your own thing" lifestyle that
permits a person to ignore the needs of other people. However, this is a gross
misunderstanding. For Maslow and many others have been careful to point out
that the inward focus of self-actualizing people does not mean they care only
about their own egotistical interests, but that they are self-transcending people,
whose understanding of themselves has led them to reach outward to others in
love and compassion. Interestingly, one source of the misunderstanding of such
terms is that the self-actualizing life is itself essentially paradoxical. The more he
studied self-actualizing people, the more Maslow came to realize that they are
people who can resolve paradoxes within themselves: instead of being either
selfish or unselfish, they are somehow both (see e.g., TPB 139). Socrates' famous
"know thyself" carries essentially the same message: we know ourselves not in
order to become self-enclosed solipsists, but in order to become self-giving saints.
And the more we know ourselves (i.e., the more apparently selfish we are), the
more we are capable of knowing others (i.e., the more unselfish we can be).

Learning to transcend ourselves in this way will prepare us to accept death

with open arms as a gift. For we can view death as the ultimate gift only if we
have learned to live with death-that is, to live with our own non-being through
such acts of self-transcendence-while we are still alive. As we saw in the previous
lecture, the importance of recognizing the presence of non-being in all beings was
one of the key insights of the existentialists. The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao
Tzu, expressed a similar insight when he claimed non-being is actually more
useful than being (TTC 11). For example, a window would be useless for seeing
through if not for the blank space in between the edges of the frame. And a cup
would be useless for holding liquids if it were not hollow inside. Such examples
show that what is would often be unable to fulfill its proper function if it did not
make use of what is not. Likewise, people should view their own death as a
natural part of the life process.

The two ways of describing transcendent reality, as either "being-itself" or

"nothing" (see Figure VI.2), suggest two corresponding ways of viewing the
"natural" relationship between life and death. I would guess nearly all of us feel
more inclined to hold one or the other of these two views. According to Lao Tzu,
a person who treats death as a natural part of life will no longer need to search for
the "infinite", or "eternal life". Viewing death as the ultimate end of all life, he
believed such a search is bound to fail, and will only succeed in producing anxiety
(see Figure XII.6a). Yet the anxiety we feel at the prospect of our own death need
not cause us to give up the search for the infinite, provided we view death as a
boundary, with the object or purpose of our quest lying on the other side (see
Figure XII.6b). Only in this latter sense does it make sense to regard death as a
gift that can truly be affirmed as a natural part of life. If there is nothing after life
but death and extinction, then regarding death as a natural part of life makes no
more sense than regarding the wall as part of the window, or the space outside the
cup as part of the cup. A boundary is part of the thing it defines; but the space
outside the boundary is wholly other.

(a) Anxiety as the Boundary (b) Death as the Boundary

Figure XII.6: Two Views of Life and Death

Whichever view of death is correct, the issue raised by Lao Tzu highlights
the central paradox of life itself: an essential part of the human task is to seek
after the infinite, yet this search is bound to fail because death makes life itself
finite. But the search "fails" only if success is judged in terms of analytic logic. If
we affirm the paradox, if we affirm (with Lao Tzu) the presence of non-being
within all being, if we affirm (with the existentialists) our finitude in the very
process of seeking the infinite, then we have grounds for hope that meaning will
break through in the midst of our struggle. Even if this breakthrough occurs only
after our death, it legitimates the search within this life. Indeed, Lao Tzu's real
point is not that the search itself is wrong, but that we should not expect to
discover the infinite in a form we can grasp within this life.

We must therefore always be careful not to think we can resolve the

paradox of life by making something less than infinite the source of our life's
meaning. For example, I cannot count the number of students who have written
insight papers claiming "happiness", or perhaps "satisfaction", is the purpose for
which people ought to live their lives. Yet the problem with this view is that, as
we learned from Tillich in Lecture 30, once happiness is reached, it ends. Those
who live their lives in order to fulfill their own desires inevitably end with a sense
of emptiness and meaninglessness, even if they are lucky enough to have those
desires fulfilled. Satisfaction is not ultimately satisfying. So the paradox is
accentuated to the point of absurdity if we direct our lives toward a finite end. Lao
Tzu's advice, coming from a person whose basic message was that we must live in
the presence of the mysterious (i.e., infinite) "Tao", should not be taken to imply
that there is nothing infinite worth searching for; rather, it implies that the
ultimate goal of the quest for the infinite is to teach us that it is present now in the
midst of our finitude, so that we can give up the quest in order to rest in that
presence.

The lesson we learn by facing the paradox of death, in other words, is that
the search for the infinite must be pursued in the context of a recognition of the
finitude of life as we know it. The need for a recognition of both human finitude
and an eternal context beyond human life is an insight recognized by most
religions. For example, one of the many ways the Bible expresses this paradox
comes in Isaiah 40:6-8:

... All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

When the breath of the Lord blows upon it;

Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

But the word of the Lord stands forever.

This "word" here is the same word John spoke about at the beginning of his
Gospel; and it is, paradoxically, a word that can be heard only in the depths of
silence: "'In the beginning was the Word....' The Word did not come into being,
but it was. It did not break upon the silence, but it was older than the silence and
the silence was made of it" (HMD 90-91).

The latter quotation suggests that life is to death as words are to silence.
Similarly, just as life ends in death yet draws its meaning from the mystery that
death veils, so also, as I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture, the questions
of philosophy end in a silence that no longer has use for questions. Life is, in fact,
full of such mysteries and paradoxes. The few we have touched upon here in the
fourth part of this course only represent the tip of the iceberg. Our dreams, for
example, put us in touch with a huge area full of mystery and paradox. If we had
more time we could look in greater detail into some of these other dark and inter‐
esting aspects of our lives. Indeed, I devote an entirely separate course to the
subject of dream interpretation and the unconscious aspects of self-knowledge
(see DW). So instead of developing that topic any further here, we shall return in
the final lecture to the question this course began with, in order to examine how it
too reveals the paradoxical mystery at the heart of human experience.

36. What is Philosophy?

This course began with a discussion of the question "What is philosophy?"

Some of you offered some interesting suggestions, demonstrating that even before
taking this course you had some good ideas about what philosophy is. Perhaps
this is because every thoughtful human being has a philosophy of one sort or
another, though many never bother to work it out very precisely. The problem is
that most people never get beyond the stage of having "my philosophy". That is,
although many, if not most, people have established for themselves a particular
philosophical point of view, very few people seriously work at expanding that
personal point of view in such a way that it can be regarded as having a legitimate
range of application beyond their own personal opinions. Yet this step is crucial if
we are ever to understand what philosophy really is. My philosophy must go
beyond the stage of being "my philosophy" and must become philosophy before I
can rightly say "I am a philosopher". That crucial step is one I hope you have
begun to take while studying this course.

In Lecture 1 I said I hoped by the end of this course you would know less
about philosophy that you did at the beginning. Some of you laughed at this
suggestion. Others seemed to be confused. Still others thought I was confused.
Most of you probably thought it was just a joke. But in fact, I was quite serious.
At several points during this course I have argued against naive versions of
relativism, on the grounds that certain boundary lines are absolute. More adequate
versions of relativism always recognize that the very possibility of "relativity"
depends on something that is, by comparison, "absolute". In physics, for example,
the theory of relativity was able to acknowledge the relative character of events in
our time-space world only after physicists agreed to treat the speed of light as a
"constant" (i.e., as an absolute). I now want to add that the ultimate purpose of all
philosophical inquiry is to become more and more aware of such absolutes; for
the more we do so, the more fully we can appreciate the beauty of the "mystery"
we have been talking so much about here in Part Four. Indeed, the final
ontological paradox is that this mystery makes itself known first as my
philosophy, but gradually reveals itself to be the source of philosophy itself. In
other words, it is both absolute and yet the source of all relativity.

To explain how this can be so, I like to compare philosophy to a huge

diamond with many facets carved into it. At first, all I am aware of is that my own
perspective, the facet I can see most clearly, is true. When I take a step back, I
recognize that other facets on the diamond-other legitimate perspectives-are
equally true. This might seem to justify a belief in relativism: your facet is true for
you and mine is true for me. However, when I step back far enough to see the
whole diamond, I suddenly recognize that there is a pattern: each facet is related
in such a way that the whole does, in fact, display an absolute (fixed) design, in
spite of the great diversity of the individual facets. Those who continue to view
philosophy as entirely a matter of subjective opinion, and fail to see its potential
for bringing us to an objective truth, are merely chaining themselves to their
particular facet of the diamond, much as the prisoners in Plato's cave can see
nothing but the shadows on their particular section of the wall. But if you have
begun to take the step from a philosophy that suits you to a philosophy that can be
true for everyone, then I think you will have learned at least something of the
importance of the principle of recognizing your ignorance: we can never see all
the facets of the diamond at once, no matter how far back we step! When you
have learned to distinguish between "my philosophy" and "philosophy", and when
you have begun to transform the former into the latter, you will then be prepared
to begin constructing a truly philosophical answer to the question "What is
philosophy?"

You may have noticed that this entire course has, to a large extent, been an
attempt to answer this basic question. With that in mind, let me suggest one last
answer. When we consider how philosophy is different from other academic
disciplines, its virtually unending concern with self-definition stands out,
suggesting that philosophy may be defined as "the discipline whose purpose is to
define itself"-or more simply, "philosophy is the self-defining discipline." For
when any other discipline asks the question of its own nature, it strays into the
realm of philosophy. A history teacher is doing philosophy, not history, when he
or she asks students to reflect on the very nature of history. But throughout this
course we have discovered that the focal point of most (if not all) good
philosophers is precisely this question: what am I doing when I practice
philosophy? Of course, defining philosophy as the self-defining discipline relates
only to its form; the content (i.e., the details of how philosophy actually goes
about defining itself) has been the topic of this entire course.

Having now finished my attempt to introduce you to philosophy in such a

way that you can begin to participate in its self-definition, I shall take this
opportunity to summarize the entire course by relating the myth of the tree of
philosophy to the account of mystery given here in Part Four. We began this
course by treating metaphysics as the roots of the philosophical tree; in so doing
we found in Part One that, in order to study these roots without killing the tree, we
had to recognize our ignorance. Without establishing an area of necessary
ignorance, nothing could be mysterious, since everything would have to be
regarded as a "knowable object". There would be nothing hidden. No roots. In
such a case we might think we understand the words we use, but we would
inevitably commit one of two mistakes: we would conclude either that all mystery
is nonsense (as does the skeptic), or that we could (or have) actually attain(ed)
knowledge of that mystery (as does the dogmatist).

Both skepticism and dogmatism result from a failure to gain a proper

understanding of the logical trunk and the scientific branches of the philosophical
tree. For as we learned in Part Two, logic teaches us that, instead of giving up the
mystery by treating it as either meaningless or knowable, the mystery itself has its
own kind of logic. Having distinguished between knowledge and ignorance, we
learned how to use analytic logic to understand words describing the former and
synthetic logic to understand words describing the latter. In this way we clearly
defined the boundary between knowledge and ignorance. Just as the branches of a
tree show us, as it were, the natural purpose or implications of the trunk, so also
logic remains abstract and meaningless unless we use it to gain knowledge
("science"); in so doing, as we found in Part Three, we can discover some of the
implications the mystery has for what is not mysterious. The latter is the task of
wisdom, and can be fulfilled only if we know where to place the boundary lines
around different kinds of knowledge, and when it is appropriate to break through
those boundary lines. In other words, only by learning to love wisdom can we
honor the mystery for what it is, while at the same time allowing it to enlighten
what need not be mysterious.

Finally, by treating our meaning-filled experiences as the leaves of the

philosophical tree, we have learned in Part Four how we can actually become
personally acquainted with this mystery, through opening ourselves to
experiencing the wonder of silence. By allowing the mystery to invade us rather
than trying to take it by storm, by allowing it to grasp and possess us rather than
trying to grasp and possess it, the diversity of our knowledge can be unified by the
power of the mystery. The paradoxes of life then cease to be so troublesome. They
are still paradoxes, for the reality of our ignorance is not diminished but
intensified by our experience of the mystery. The difference is that we now have
within us an ultimate concern enabling us to cope with the fact that there are some
things we can never hope to know. Kant aptly expressed this ability to cope with
ignorance when he wrote (CPrR 148): "the inscrutable wisdom through which we
exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in
[respect to] what it has granted."
 The capacity to wonder in spite of, or even because of, our ignorance is
actually one of the main characteristics distinguishing a good philosopher from a
bad one. That wonder is childlike may be why some philosophers, wishing to
appear "mature", shun the temptation to wonder. This is also why children so
often make such profoundly philosophical statements. The difference between a
child and a full-grown, childlike philosopher is that the latter has added self-
consciousness to the original instinct to wonder. The problem is that self-
consciousness tends to negate the instinct to wonder: self-consciousness puts up
with ignorance in its search for the unity of the "I", whereas wonder wants to
achieve knowledge in response to its apprehension of the diversity of the world.
Bad philosophers, as we have seen, limit the philosophical task to only one of
these two opposite goals. Good philosophers, by contrast, will continually seek
after the best way of resolving (or at least coping with) the tension between these
two forces. One of the best ways of doing this, I believe, is to direct our self-
consciousness to the higher goal of self-understanding. For the never-ending task
of coming to "know thyself", rightly recognized by Socrates as the ultimate goal
of doing philosophy, requires us to reach ever-increasing levels of both self-
consciousness and wonder.

With this in mind, I would like us to consider a passage from a book that
encourages us to hear the wonder of silence throughout the busyness of our
everyday life. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's little book, Gift from the Sea, is a series
of meditations on her holidays at an island beach, focusing especially on the
symbolism of the activity of collecting sea shells. In considering the following
summary of her reflections on the prospects of returning home (GS 113-116,119-
120), let's interpret the "island" as a metaphor for studying philosophy, and the
"shells" as a metaphor for having insights.

As she packed her bags to leave the island, Lindbergh asked herself what
she had gained from all her meditative efforts: "What answers or solutions have I
found for my life? I have a few shells in my pocket, a few clues, only a few." She
thought back to her first days on the island, and realized how greedily she had
collected the shells at first: "My pockets bulged with wet shells ... The beach was
covered with beautiful shells and I could not let one go by unnoticed. I couldn't
even walk head up looking out to sea, for fear of missing something precious at
my feet." The problem with this way of collecting shells (or having insights) is
that "the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty." But
after all her pockets were stretched to the limit with damp shells, she found it
necessary to become less acquisitive: "I began to discard my possessions, to
select." She then realized it would be impossible to collect all the beautiful shells
she saw: "One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few."
Can we say the same for philosophical insights? Perhaps so. For Lindbergh
herself generalized the lesson she learned by saying "it is only framed in space
that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people unique and
significant-and therefore beautiful."

This insight, that beauty requires space and selectivity, prompted Lindbergh
to reconsider the reasons why her life at home tended to lack the qualities of
significance and beauty, so characteristic of her time on the island. Perhaps life
seems insignificant not because it is empty, but because it is too full: "there is so
little empty space.... Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting
people.... We can have ... an excess of shells, where one or two would be
significant." Being on the island, by contrast, had given her the space and time to
look at life in a new way-as I hope this philosophy class has done for you.
"Paradoxically, ... space has been forced upon me.... Here there is time; time to be
quiet; time to work without pressure; time to think ... Time to look at the stars ...
Time, even, not to talk." The problem in going home is that in many ways the
island had selected what was significant for her (as this course of lectures may
have done for you) "better than I do myself at home." She therefore asked herself:
"When I go back will I be submerged again ...? ... Values weighed in quantity, not
quality; in speed, not stillness; in noise, not silence; in words, not thoughts; in
acquisitiveness, not beauty. How shall I resist the onslaught?" She answered by
suggesting that, in place of the island's natural selectivity, she will need to adopt
"a conscious selectivity based on another set of values-a sense of values I have
become more aware of here.... Simplicity of living ... Space for significance and
beauty. Time for solitude and sharing.... A few shells."

In the end Lindbergh discarded most of the shells she had collected on her
island holiday, and took with her only a few of the most special ones. Her
experiences on the island, she explained, now serve as "a lens" that she can take
home with her in order to examine her own life more effectively: "I must
remember to see with island eyes. The shells will remind me; they must be my
island eyes." In the same way, I hope this course has provided you with a new
way of seeing yourself and the world. For the real reason the university requires
you to take a philosophy course is not to train you to participate in academic
debates on technical issues, but to enlarge your capacity to experience the
unifying beauty of life-that is, to enable you to "see with island eyes", even when
the examination is over and you have returned home, to the ordinary world of
your infinitely diverse personal concerns.

In Shel Silverstein's story of The Giving Tree, the little boy does not learn
this lesson until the very end of his life. During his life he forgets all about the
carefree days of his childhood, when the tree was almost like part of his own self.
Instead he goes off on his own, in search of happiness and fortune. The boy
simply ignores the silent screams of the tree as she allowed herself to be torn to
pieces by the boy's selfish desires. Only as an old man is the little boy once again
able to sit and rest with the tree, enjoying with her the wonder of silence. To some
extent this process of leaving the tree, venturing out on our own, and finally
returning to it in the end, describes the paradoxical steps each of us must
inevitably pass through in our search for a suitable philosophy of life. The tragedy
of that story is that, unlike the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the main
character virtually destroys the source of his wisdom in the process of looking for
a meaningful life, leaving only a stump in the end. My hope is that this course will
have supplied each of you with "a few shells" to help you avoid such a fate. With
these in hand, I hope each of you, even those who will never study any more
philosophy in a formal way, will be able to live with a continuous, silent
awareness of the mysterious tree of philosophy and will always respectfully wait
to receive from the endless supply of gifts she has to offer.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Is it possible to choose both the aesthetic and ethical ways of life?

B. Is it necessary for human beings to sin?

2. A. Does angst actually help us to cope with ordinary, empirical fears?

B. Could resurrection and reincarnation both be true?

3. A. What would a "spiritual body" be like?

B. Could an unhappy person live a meaningful life?

4. A. How is philosophy like a tree?

B. What is philosophy?

RECOMMENDED READINGS

1. Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, ?, "The Concept of Anxiety" (CA

313-316).
2. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, Ch. VI, "Courage and Transcendence" (CB
152-183).

3. Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being2, Ch. 10, "Creativity in

Self-Actualizing People" (TPB 135-145).

4. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching.

5. Plato, Phaedo and Book X of Republic (CDP 40-98, 819-844).

6. John Hick, The Fifth Dimension: An exploration of the spiritual realm (Oxford:
Oneworld Publications, 1999), Ch. 26, "Death and Beyond", pp.241-252.

7. Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).

8. Stephen Palmquist, The Tree of Philosophy4 (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press,

2000[1992]).

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De Anima
By Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

The following books are cited in the main text of the foregoing lectures,
using the abbreviations shown to the left of each entry. Citations in the main text
refer to that book's page numbers, unless otherwise specified in the corresponding
entry, below. Some works cited only once in the text or Recommended Readings
did not require abbreviations, and are not included here.

BWA The Basic Works of Aristotle. Tr. and ed. R. McKeon. New York:
Random House, 1941. Marginal (Greek) pagination used.

AC Aristotle. Categoriae (Categories ). Tr. E.M. Edghill in BWA 3-37.

DA Aristotle. (On the Soul ). Tr. J.A. Smith in BWA 533-603.

AM Aristotle. Metaphysica (Metaphysics ). Tr. W.D. Ross in BWA 681-926.

AP Aristotle. The Politics. Tr. Carnes Lord. Chicago: Chicago University

Press, 1984. Marginal (Greek) pagination used.

NE Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Tr. J.A.K. Thomson in The Ethics of

Aristotle. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1953. Marginal (Greek)
pagination used.

LTL Alfred Jules Ayer. Language, Truth and Logic2. New York: Dover
Publications, 1952(1938).

JLS Richard Bach. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. New York: Avon Books,
1970.

SF Walter Holden Capps and Wendy M. Wright. Silent Fire: An invitation

to western mysticism. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.
CO G.K. Chesterton. Orthodoxy. London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1996(1908).

CTBW Chuang Tzu. Basic Writings. Tr. Burton Watson. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1964.

LT Edward de Bono. The Use of Lateral Thinking. Harmondsworth:

Penguin Books, 1967.

PO Edward de Bono. Po: Beyond Yes and No2. Harmondsworth: Penguin,

1973(1972).

MT Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius). The Divine Names and

The Mystical Theology. Tr. C.E. Rolt. London: S.P.C.K., 1920. Reference is to
Chapter number.

CD Richard Foster. Celebration of Discipline. New York: Harper & Row,

1978.

MM Sigmund Freud. Moses and Monotheism. Tr. K. Jones. New York:

Vintage Books, 1967(1939).

TM Hans Georg Gadamer. Truth and Method2. Tr. G. Barden and J. Cumming.
London: Sheed & Ward, 1975(1965).

EHU David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Chicago:

Henry Regnery Company, 1956[1748]). References are to Section and Part
numbers.

BM Julian Jaynes. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the

Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

PSA Carl G. Jung. Psychology and Alchemy2. Tr. R.F.C. Hull. London:
Routledge, 1968(1953).

CPR Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Tr. Norman Kemp Smith.
London: Macmillan, 1929.

CPrR Immanuel Kant. Critique of Practical Reason. Tr. Lewis White Beck.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956. Marginal (German) pagination used.

FMM Immanuel Kant. Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr. Lewis

White Beck. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959. Marginal (German) pagination
used.

CJ Immanuel Kant. Critique of Judgement. Tr. James Creed Meredith.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Marginal (German) pagination used.

OST Immanuel Kant. On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy. Tr.

Peter Fenves in Raising the Tone of Philosophy: Late essays by Immanuel Kant,
transformative critique by Jacques Derrida. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1993.

SR Immanuel Kant. Metaphysics of Morals, Part Two. Tr. W. Hastie as The

Metaphysical Principles of the Science of Right in The Philosophy of Law.
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1974(1887).

RBBR Immanuel Kant. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone2. Tr. T.M
Green and H.H. Hudson. New York: Harper & Row, 1960(1934).

CUP Søren Kierkegaard. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Tr. D.F.

Swenson and W. Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941.

CA Søren Kierkegaard. The Concept of Anxiety: A simple psychologically

orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin. Tr. Reidar Thomte
and Albert B. Anderson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Marginal
(Danish) pagination used.

TTC Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Reference is to section number.

GS Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Gift from the Sea2. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1975(1955).

PCT John Macquarrie. Principles of Christian Theology2. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1977(1966).

TPB Abraham H. Maslow. Toward a Psychology of Being2. New York: D.

Van Nostrand, 1968(1962).

TS Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude. New York: Dell Publishing,

1956.

IPW Joan Mitchell. In Pursuit of Wonder. Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1977.

HMD N. Scott Momaday. House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper & Row,
1966.
JW Friedrich Nietzsche. The Joyful Wisdom. Tr. Thomas Common. London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1910. References are to section numbers.

TSZ Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Tr. Thomas Common.

London: George Allen and Unwin, 1909. References are to section numbers.

APK Stephen Palmquist. "A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: (II) Naming,

Necessity, and the Analytic A Posteriori". The Review of Metaphysics 41.2
(December 1987), pp.255-282.

KSP Stephen Palmquist. Kant's System of Perspectives: An architectonic

interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy. Lanham: University Press of
America, 1993.

DW Stephen Palmquist. Dreams of Wholeness: A course of introductory

lectures on religion, psychology, and personal growth. Hong Kong: Philopsychy
Press, 1997.

KCR Stephen Palmquist. Kant's Critical Religion: Volume two of Kant's

System of Perspectives. London: Ashgate, 2000.

PP Blaise Pascal. Pensées: Thoughts on religion and other subjects. Tr.

William Finlayson Trotter. New York: Washington Square Press, 1965. Reference
is to section number.

CDP The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Tr. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Marginal (Greek) pagination used.

PA Plato. Apology. CDP 3-26.

PR Plato. Republic. CDP 747-772.

TJ John Rawls. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1971.

LPJ Paul Tillich. Love, Power, and Justice: Ontological analyses and ethical
applications. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954.

DF Paul Tillich. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper & Row, 1957.

CF Paul Tillich. The Courage to Be (London: Collins, 1952.

I. Kant's Technical Terms
By Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

This Glossary briefly defines the most important technical terms used in
The Tree of Philosophy. Where relevant, opposite terms are given in parentheses
at the end of the definition. Words defined herein (including slight variations)
appear in italics the first time they are used in the definition of some other word in
either section of this Glossary. An asterisk (*) is appended to any italicized word
that is defined in the other section. The first section defines terms used mainly by
Kant. The second section defines other technical terms as they are used in this
text, usually naming the philosopher(s) who used them in the specified way(s).

a posteriori: a way of gaining knowledge by appealing to some particular

experience(s). Kant used this method to establish empirical and hypothetical
truths*. (Cf. a priori.)

a priori: a way of gaining knowledge without appealing to any particular

experience(s). Kant used this method to establish transcendental and logical
truths*. (Cf. a posteriori.)

aesthetic: having to do with sense-perception. In Kant's first Critique this word

refers to space and time as the necessary conditions for sense-perception. The first
half of his third Critique examines the subjective purposiveness in our perception
of beautiful or sublime objects in order to construct a system of aesthetic
judgment. For example, he defined beauty* in terms of four basic principles:
subjective universality, disinterested delight, purposiveness without a purpose,
and necessary delight.(Cf. teleological.)

analysis: division of a representation into two opposing representations, with a

view toward clarifying the original representation. Philosophy* as metaphysics
employs analysis more than synthesis. (Cf. synthesis.)

analytic: a statement or an item of knowledge that is true solely because of its

conformity to some logical laws. "All bachelors are unmarried" is a typical
analytic proposition*. (Cf. synthetic.)

anarchy: a politicalsystem having "no ruling power" ("an" and "arche" in Greek)
and serving as the basis for many versions of utopian visions.

appearance: an object of experience, when viewed from the transcendental

perspective. Though often used as a synonym for phenomenon, it technically
refers to an object considered to be conditioned by space and time, but not by the
categories. See also appearance*. (Cf. thing in itself.)

architectonic: the logical structure given by reason (especially through the use of
twofold and threefold divisions), which the philosopher should use as a plan to
organize the contents of any system.

autonomy: the principle of self-legislation, whereby the subject freely chooses his
or her own ends by imposing the moral law onto the will. An action must be
autonomous in order to be moral. (Cf. heteronomy.)

belief: holding something to be true on the basis of subjective certainty, even

though objective certainty is lacking. See also faith. (Cf. knowledge.)
categorical imperative: a command expressing a general, unavoidable
requirement of the moral law. Its three formulations convey the requirements of
universalizability, respect and autonomy. Together they establish that an action is
properly called "morally good*" only if (1) we can will all persons to do it, (2) it
enables us to treat other persons as ends and not merely as the means to our own
selfish ends, and (3) it allows us to see other persons as mutual law-makers in an
ideal "kingdom of ends".

categories: the most general concepts, in terms of which every object must be
viewed in order for it to become an object of empirical knowledge. The four main
categories (quantity, quality, relation, and modality) each have three sub-
categories, forming a typical example of a twelvefold, architectonic pattern. (Cf.
space and time.)

concept: the active species of representation, by means of which our under‐

standing enables us to think. By requiring perceptions to conform to the
categories, concepts serve as "rules" allowing us to perceive general relations be‐
tween representations. (Cf. intuition.)

conscience: the faculty of the human subject that enforces the moral law in a
particular way for each individual by providing an awareness of what is right and
wrong in each situation.

Copernican revolution: in astronomy, the theory that the earth revolves around
the sun; in philosophy*, the (analogous) theory that the subject of knowledge does
not remain at rest, but revolves around (i.e., actively determines certain aspects
of) the object. Thus, the formal characteristics of the empirical world (i.e., space
and time and the categories) are there only because the subject's mind puts them
there, transcendentally.
Critical: Kant's philosophical* method, distinguishing between different
perspectives and then using such distinctions to settle otherwise irresolvable
disputes. The Critical approach is not primarily negative, but is an attempt to
adjudicate quarrels by showing how both sides have a measure of validity, once
their perspective is properly understood. Kant's system of Critical philosophy
examines the structure and limitations of reason itself, in order to prepare a secure
foundation for metaphysics. .

Critique: to use the Critical approach to doing philosophy*. This term appears in
the titles of the three main books in Kant's Critical philosophy, which adopt the
theoretical, practical and judicial standpoints, respectively.

disposition: the tendency a person has in any given situation to act either good* or
bad (i.e., to obey the moral law or to disobey it). (Cf. predisposition.)

duty: an action that we are obligated to perform out of respect for the moral law.

empirical: one of Kant's four main perspectives, aiming to establish a kind of

knowledge that is both synthetic and a posteriori. Most of the knowledge we gain
through ordinary experience, or through science*, is empirical. "This table is
brown" is a typical empirical statement. (Cf. transcendental).

experience: the combination of an intuition with a concept in the form of a

judgment. "Experience" in this (mediate) sense is a synonym for "empirical
knowledge". The phrase "possible experience" refers to a representation that is
presented to our sensibility through intuition, but is not yet known, because it has
not been presented to our understanding through concepts. "Experience" in this
(immediate) sense contrasts with "knowledge".

faculty: a fundamental power of human subjects to do something or perform some

rational function.
faith: in the first Critique, a synonym of belief. Kant encouraged a more humble
approach to philosophy* by claiming to deny knowledge in order to make room
for faith-i.e., by distinguishing between what we can know empirically and what
is transcendent, which we can approach only by means of faith. "Practical faith"
refers to the conviction that God will reward those who adopt a good* disposition.
"Rational faith" is Kant's term for pure (moral) religion, in contrast to "historical
faith", which refers to the extra-rational tradition that attempts to explain what we
cannot understand by reason alone.

formal: the active or subjective aspect of something-that is, the aspect that is
based on the rational activity of the subject. (Cf. material.)

heteronomy: the principle of letting something other than the moral law
determine what ought to be done. This replaces freedom with something outside
of practical reason, such as a person's inclinations. Such actions on their own are
nonmoral-i.e., neither moral nor immoral-but can be immoral if they prevent a
person from doing their duty. (Cf. autonomy.)

hypothetical: one of Kant's four main perspectives, aiming to establish knowledge

that is both analytic and a posteriori-though Kant himself wrongly identified it as
synthetic and a priori. Most metaphysical ideas are properly viewed from this
perspective, instead of from the speculative perspective of traditional
metaphysics. (Cf. logical).

ideas: the species of representation that gives rise to metaphysical beliefs. Ideas
are special concepts that arise out of our knowledge of the empirical world, yet
seem to point beyond nature to some transcendent realm. The three most
important metaphysical ideas are God, freedom and immortality.

ideology: an idea or system* of ideas that is treated as a myth to live by and often
forced onto others who may not otherwise accept it as true.
imagination: the faculty which, when controlled by the understanding, makes
concepts out of intuitions and synthesizes intuitions with concepts to produce
objects that are ready to be judged. In aesthetic judgment, by contrast,
imagination takes control over the power of thinking. See also imagination*.

inclination: the faculty or object that motivates a person to act in a heteronomous

way. Following inclinations is neither morally good* nor morally bad, except
when doing so directly prevents a person from acting according to duty-i.e., only
when choosing to obey an inclination results in disobedience to the moral law.

intuition: the passive species of representation, by means of which our sensibility

enables to have sensations. By requiring appearances to be given in space and
time, intuitions allow us to perceive particular relations between representations,
thereby limiting empirical knowledge to the sensible realm. (Cf. concept.)

judgment: in the first Critique, the use of the understanding by which an object is
determined to be empirically real, through a synthesis of intuitions and concepts.
The third Critique (adopting the judicial standpoint) examines the form of our
feelings of pleasure and displeasure in order to construct a system based on the
faculty of judgment in its aesthetic and teleological manifestations.

judicial: one of Kant's three main standpoints, relating primarily to experience-

i.e., to what we feel, as opposed to what we know or desire to do. Judicial reason
is virtually synonymous with "Critique" itself, and is concerned with questions
about our deepest ways of experiencing the world. Finding the source of two
examples of such experiences is the task of the third Critique. (Cf. theoretical and
practical.)

knowledge: the final goal of the understanding in combining intuitions and

concepts. If they are pure, the knowledge will be transcendental; if they are
impure, the knowledge will be empirical. The certainty produced must be
objective as well as subjective. In a looser sense, "knowledge" also refers to what
arises out of adopting any legitimate perspective. (Cf. belief.)

logical: one of Kant's four main perspectives, aiming to establish a kind of

knowledge that is both analytic and a priori. It is concerned with nothing but the
relationships between concepts. The law of noncontradiction (A≠-A) is the
fundamental law of traditional, Aristotelian or analytic logic*. Synthetic logic* is
based on the opposite, the law of contradiction (A=-A). (Cf. hypothetical.)

material: the passive or objective aspect of something-that is, the aspect that is
based on the experience a subject has, or on the objects given in such an
experience. (Cf. formal.)

maxim: the material rule or principle used to guide a person in a particular

situation about what to do (e.g., "I should never tell a lie"). It thus provides a kind
of bridge between a person's inner disposition and outer actions.

metaphysics: the highest aspect of philosophy*, attempting to gain knowledge of

the ideas. Because the traditional, speculative perspective fails to succeed in this
task, Kant suggests a new, hypothetical perspective for metaphysics. Metaphysics
can succeed only when it is preceded by Critique. See also metaphysics*.

moral law: the one "fact" of practical reason that is present in every rational
person, though some people are more aware of it than others. The moral law, in
essence, is our knowledge of the difference between good* and evil, and our inner
conviction that we ought to do what is good. See also categorical imperative.

noumena/noumenal: objects viewed as having transcendent reality. Also the

realm consisting of such objects. (Cf. phenomena/phenomenal.)
object: a general term for any "thing" that is conditioned by the subject's
representation, and so is capable of being known. The thing in itself is a thing that
cannot become an object of human knowledge. (Cf. subject.)

objective: related more to the object or representation out of which knowledge is

constructed than to the subject possessing the knowledge. Considered
transcendentally, objective knowledge is less certain than subjective knowledge;
considered empirically, objective knowledge is more certain. (Cf. subjective.)

opinion: holding something to be true even though both objective and subjective
certainty are lacking. (Cf. ignorance*.)

perspective: Kant himself did not use this word, but he used a number of other,
equivalent expressions, such as standpoint, way of thinking, employment of
understanding, etc. The main Critical perspectives are the transcendental,
empirical, logical, and hypothetical. See also perspective*.

phenomena/phenomenal: objects of knowledge, viewed empirically, in their fully

knowable state-i.e., conditioned by space and time and the categories. Also the
realm consisting of such objects. See also appearance. (Cf. noumena/noumenal.)

practical: one of Kant's three main standpoints, relating primarily to action-i.e., to

what we desire to do as opposed to what we know or feel. Finding the sources of
such action is the task of the second Critique. Practical reason is a synonym for
will; both terms relate to issues concerning morality. (Cf. theoretical and judicial.)

predisposition: the natural tendency a person has, apart from (or before having)
any experience, to be morally good* or evil. (Cf. disposition.)
pure: not mixed with anything sensible. Although its proper opposite is "impure",
Kant normally opposes "pure" to "empirical".

rational: grounded in the faculty of reason rather than in sensibility.

reality/real: if regarded from the empirical perspective, this refers to the ordinary
world of nature, or to an object in it; if regarded from the transcendental
perspective, it refers to the transcendent realm consisting of noumena.

reason: in the first Critique, the highest faculty of the human subject, to which all
other faculties are subordinated. It abstracts completely from the conditions of
sensibility and has a predetermined architectonic form. The second Critique
(adopting the practical standpoint) examines the form of our desires in order to
construct a system based on the faculty of reason. Reason's primary function is
practical; though interpreters have often regarded its theoretical function as
primary, Kant viewed the latter as being subordinate.

religion: the way of acting, or perspective, whereby we interpret all our duties as
divine commands.

representation: the most general word for an object at any stage in its de‐
termination by the subject, or for the subjective act of determining the object at
that level. The main types of representations are intuitions, concepts, and ideas.

sensibility: the faculty concerned with passively receiving objects. This is

accomplished through physical and mental sensations, via "outer sense" and
"inner sense", respectively. However, such sensations are possible only if the
objects are intuited, and intuition presupposes space and time to exist as pure
formal conditions. (Cf. understanding.)
sensible: presented to the subject by means of sensibility. Contrasts with
"intelligible", a term roughly equivalent to supersensible and transcendent.

space and time: considered from the empirical perspective, they constitute the
context in which objects interact outside of us; considered from the
transcendental perspective, they are pure, so they exist inside of us as conditions
of knowledge. (Cf. categories.)

speculative: the illusory perspective adopted in traditional metaphysics by

wrongly using reason in a hopeless attempt to gain knowledge about something
transcendent. Sometimes used loosely as a synonym of theoretical.

standpoint: the special type of perspective that determines the point from which a
whole system of perspectives is viewed. The main Critical standpoints are the
theoretical, practical, and judicial.

subject: a general term for any rational person who is capable of having
knowledge. See also representation. (Cf. object.)

subjective: related more to the subject than to the object or representation out of
which knowledge is constructed. Considered transcendentally, subjective
knowledge is more certain than objective knowledge; considered empirically,
subjective knowledge is less certain. (Cf. objective.)

summum bonum: Latin for highest good*. This is the ultimate goal of the moral
system presented in the second Critique; it involves the ideal distribution of
happiness in exact proportion to each person's virtue. To conceive of its
possibility, we must postulate the existence* of God and human immortality, thus
giving practical reality to these ideas.
supersensible: see transcendent.

synthesis: integration of two opposing representations into one new repre‐

sentation, with a view toward constructing a new level of the object's reality.
Philosophy* as Critique employs synthesis more than analysis. On the operation
of synthesis in the first Critique, see imagination. (Cf. analysis.)

synthetic: a statement or item of knowledge that is known to be true because of its

connection with some intuition. "The cat is on the mat" is a typical synthetic
proposition*. (Cf. analytic.)

system: a set of basic facts or arguments, called "elements", arranged according to

the order of their logical relationships, as determined by the architectonic patterns
of reason. Kant's Critical philosophy* is a System made up of three subordinate
systems, each defined by a distinct standpoint, and each made up of the same four
perspectives. The System's overall Perspective is determined by Kant's
Copernican revolution.

teleological: having to do with purposes or ends. The second half of the third
Critique examines the objective purposiveness in our perception of natural
organisms in order to construct a system of teleological judgment. (Cf. aesthetic.)

theoretical: one of Kant's three main standpoints, relating primarily to cognition-

i.e., to what we know as opposed to what we feel or desire to do. Theoretical
reason is concerned with questions about our knowledge of the ordinary world
(the world science* seeks to understand). Finding the source of such knowledge is
the task of the first Critique, which would best be entitled the Critique of Pure
Theoretical Reason. See also speculative. (Cf. practical and judicial.)

thing in itself: an object considered transcendentally apart from all the conditions
under which a subject can gain knowledge of it. Hence the thing in itself is, by
definition, unknowable. Sometimes used loosely as a synonym of noumenon. (Cf.
appearance.)

time: see space and time.

transcendent: the realm of thought that lies beyond the boundary of possible
knowledge, because it consists of objects that cannot be presented to us in
intuition-i.e., objects we can never experience with our senses (sometimes called
noumena). The closest we can come to gaining knowledge of the transcendent
realm is to think about it by means of ideas. The opposite of "transcendent" is
"immanent".

transcendental: one of Kant's four main perspectives, aiming to establish a kind

of knowledge that is both synthetic and a priori. It is a special type of
philosophical knowledge, concerned with the necessary conditions for the
possibility of experience. However, Kant believed all knowing subjects assume
certain transcendental truths*, whether or not they are aware of it. Transcendental
knowledge defines the boundary between empirical knowledge and speculation
about the transcendent realm. "Every event has a cause" is a typical
transcendental proposition*. (Cf. empirical.)

transcendental argument: Kant's special method of proof by reference to the

possibility of experience; it claims that something (e.g., the categories) must be
true because if it were not true, experience itself would be impossible.

understanding: in the first Critique, the faculty concerned with actively

producing knowledge by means of concepts. This is quite similar to what is
normally called the mind. It gives rise to the logical perspective, enabling us to
compare concepts with each other, and to the empirical perspective (where it is
also called judgment), enabling us to combine concepts with intuitions in order to
produce empirical knowledge. The first Critique (adopting the theoretical
standpoint) examines the form of our cognitions in order to construct a system
based on the faculty of understanding. (Cf. sensibility.)

will: the manifestation of reason as viewed from the practical standpoint,

including but not limited to the faculty of choice.

II. Other Technical Terms used in The Tree of Philosophy

2LAR: see second level analytic relation.

analytic logic: the type of logic based on the laws of identity (A=A) and
noncontradiction (A≠-A). (Cf. synthetic logic.)

analytic method: see deduction.

angst: the Danish word for anxiety or dread. Kierkegaard used this term to refer
to a special kind of existential fear, involving a person's fear of non-being. It
therefore includes not only a fear of death, but a fear of the meaninglessness of
life.

appearance: Plato's term for an object* or event in the material world, indicating
it is an illusory reflection of an ultimate reality* in the world of forms. See also
appearance*.

Apollonian: Nietzsche's term for the type of person who is willing to sacrifice
personal greatness in order to follow traditional (life-denying) moral and political
norms. Following a "slave" morality and a "herd" mentality, they tend to be
conscious, rational, and calm in their actions, and democratic in their politics. (Cf.
Dionysian.)

aristocracy: Aristotle's term for a political system* wherein a few of the "best"
("aristos" in Greek) people have the power and authority to rule. (Cf. oligarchy.)

beauty: one of the three aims of the philosophical quest, as conceived by Plato
and many subsequent philosophers. It corresponds to the heart and is powered by
the spirit. See also aesthetic*.

being-itself: the term used by Tillich and other existentialists to refer to the
ultimate reality* from which existing things stand out; also referred to as "the
Ground of Being" or "God".

compound relations: the term used in Palmquist's geometry of logic to refer to

any logical relation that combines an analytic* (twofold) and a synthetic*
(threefold) relation. The most significant type is twelvefold (12CR), combining a
second-level analytic relation with a simple synthetic relation. Kant's table of
categories* is a typical example of a 12CR.

deconstructionism: a literary and philosophical movement in the late twentieth

century inspired largely by Derrida and based on the conviction that supposedly
absolute foundations for knowledge* or truth are actually tools of oppression that
need to be replaced by a more playful approach to interpreting the meaning of
spoken and written language.

deduction: Euclid's analytic method of arguing that defends a predetermined

conclusion by showing how it necessarily follows from two or more "premises"
(i.e., propositions that are assumed to be true). Aristotle demonstrated that if the
premises are accepted and if the deduction is constructed properly, without any
fallacies, then the conclusion is certain. (Cf. induction).
democracy: Aristotle's term for a political system* wherein the "common"
("demos" in Greek) people have the power and authority to rule. He calls it the
"least bad" of the three bad types of political systems. (Cf. polity.)

demythologizing: the process of questioning a myth in order to distinguish

between aspects that are worth believing and aspects that should be given up as
meaningless.

dialogue: Plato's method of philosophizing, whereby two or more persons discuss

various philosophical questions, in the hope that reason will lead them to the
truth.

Dionysian: Nietzsche's term for the type of person who is more concerned about
personal greatness and other life-affirming values than about following traditional
moral and political norms. Following a "master" morality and a "hero" mentality,
they tend to be unconscious, irrational, and passionate in their actions, and
aristocratic in their politics. (Cf. Apollonian.)

ecclesiocracy: Palmquist's term for the worst kind of political system*, wherein
leaders believe God directs the people solely through their mediation and/or
church structures are imposed onto the secular political realm. Following this
system requires people to give up their God-given freedom in exchange for the
presumed right to claim salvation. (Cf. theocracy.)

empiricism: the approach to philosophy that regards sense* experience* and

observation as the fundamental means of finding philosophical truth. Empiricists
usually tend to mistrust evidence based solely on logical argumentation. Hume is
a typical example of an empiricist. (Cf. rationalism.)
epistemology: the branch of philosophy dealing with questions about the origin
and nature of knowledge*. One of its most fundamental questions is: "How do we
come to know something that we do not already know?" Since Descartes, most
philosophers have thought one's epistemology determines one's metaphysics,
rather than vice versa.

existence: Tillich's term for the quality of "standing out" ("ex-sistere" in Latin)
from being-itself. Also Palmquist's term for the common factor uniting
metaphysics and science through the application of ignorance and knowledge*,
respectively. (Cf. meaning.)

existentialism: the major school of twentieth century western philosophy inspired

largely by Heidegger and based on the conviction that discovering the meaning of
human existence is philosophy's main role. This is typically accomplished by
means of analogical reasoning, based on the fundamental distinction between
existing things and being-itself and/or nothing. (Cf. hermeneutics and linguistic
analysis.)

fallacy: a mistake in the formal* structure of an argument used to draw a

conclusion based on some evidence. A fallacious argument may appear to prove
something that is not actually true. Aristotle was the first to give a systematic*
account of the various types of logical* fallacies.

geometry of logic, the: Palmquist's method of mapping logical relations onto

simple geometrical figures. The simplest analytic* relations are twofold while the
simplest synthetic* relations as threefold; these are best mapped onto the
endpoints of a line and a triangle, respectively. See also compound relations and
second-level analytic relations.

goodness: according to Plato and many subsequent philosophers, one of the three
aims of the philosophical quest. It corresponds to the belly and is powered by
appetite.
hermeneutics: the major school of twentieth century western philosophy inspired
largely by Gadamer and based on the conviction that grasping the art of
meaningful interpretation is philosophy's main role. This is typically
accomplished by reflecting on the nature of texts-e.g., by focusing on the
fundamental interplay between the author's intentions and the reader's prejudices.
(Cf. existentialism and linguistic analysis.)

idealism: the metaphysical position inspired largely by Plato and based on the
conviction that the objects* we perceive in the external world are not ultimately
real, but are "shadows" or appearances of a higher or deeper reality*.

ignorance: the goal of metaphysics, serving as the door to all good philosophical
thinking. Kant distinguished between necessary (i.e., unavoidable) ignorance and
empirical* ignorance that can be transformed into knowledge* once we recognize
that it exists. (Cf. opinion*.)

imagination: the power of the mind that is typically most active in a person's
childhood and reaches its highest expression in myth. See also imagination*.

induction: Euclid's synthetic method of arguing that draws a conclusion based on

evidence collected from experience*. Hume argued that induction always
involves some guesswork, so it can never suffice to provide absolute certainty that
its conclusion is true. (Cf. deduction.)

insight: the "fruit" of the tree of philosophy; a creative new thought that comes to
a person suddenly and often unexpectedly, providing a deeper understanding* of
some issue or a way of answering a previously unanswered question. Insights
often provide a new perspective that enables us to break through old, traditional
ways of thinking. To be sure they are more than mere opinions*. we should
subject our insights to thorough analysis*.
kingship: Aristotle's term for a political system* wherein one good person holds
all the power and authority. (Cf. tyranny.)

language-game: Wittgenstein's term for the different socially-constructed

contexts that give meaning to the way people use words in specific situations. For
example, a word such as "spirit" will have one meaning and follow one set of
rules if it appears in a religious context, but may take on a completely new
meaning, with different rules, if it appears in a conversation between two fans at a
sports event.

lateral thinking: de Bono's term for a way of thinking that runs counter to the
ordinary or accepted ("horizontal") way of thinking about a given problem or
situation . By looking at a familiar situation from a new perspective, we can gain
interesting new insights about how best to proceed.

linguistic analysis: the major school of twentieth century western philosophy

inspired largely by Wittgenstein and based on the conviction that clarifying
concepts* is philosophy's main role. This is typically accomplished by means of
logical* analysis* of key propositions, or by showing how most philosophical
problems arise out of a misuse of the way words are used in ordinary language.
(Cf. existentialism and hermeneutics.)

logic: the systematic* study of the structures that enable words to be understood.
The main question of logic is: "What gives words and propositions their
meaning?" See also logical*.

meaning: Palmquist's term for the common factor uniting logic and ontology
through the processes of understanding* words and silent wonder, respectively.
Frege argued that a proposition has meaning only if it has both a "sense" and a
"reference". (Cf. existence.)
metaphysics: Aristotle's term for the area of philosophy that is "after" or "beyond"
physics. Its main question is "What is ultimate reality*?" Socrates and Kant both
thought the proper outcome of studying metaphysics is negative: to enable us to
recognize our ignorance. See also metaphysics*.

myth: Eliade's term for a belief* that is held to be absolutely true. Palmquist's
term for any unquestioned belief that a person holds with deep conviction. (Cf.
science.)

numen/numinous: Otto's terms for the mysterious object* that causes a religious*
experience* to happen. He argued that a numinous experience typically involves
the same set of five elements, regardless of one's religious tradition: awe, majesty,
urgency, mystery (or "otherness"), and fascination.

oligarchy: Aristotle's term for a political system* wherein only "a few" ("oligos"
in Greek) wealthy people hold all the power and authority. (Cf. aristocracy.)

ontology: the study of being, aiming to promote silent wonder of the mystery of
human existence. One of the four main aspects of philosophy, investigating the
essential nature of various kinds of human experience*.

paradox: a meaningful contradiction, used intentionally by philosophers such as

Chuang Tzu and Hegel in order to stimulate insight into various aspects of
transcendent* reality*. Synthetic logic can also be called the "logic of paradox".

perspective: Palmquist's term for a way of thinking about or dealing with an issue
or problem, or a set of assumptions adopted when viewing an object*. Knowing
which perspective is assumed is important because the same question can have
different answers if different perspectives are assumed. See also perspective*.
philosophy: the Greek term for love of wisdom. It is a product of human
understanding* whose four main aspects are metaphysics, logic, science, and
ontology. One distinctive feature of philosophy is that it is self-defining: it is the
only discipline wherein asking the question "What is this discipline?" is part of
the discipline itself.

poetry: a product of passionate human creativity (or "making") that provides a

cultural link between mythical and philosophical ways of thinking.

polity: Aristotle's term for a political system* wherein the middle class holds the
power and authority to govern. In the version called "timocracy", only landowners
are eligible to vote. (Cf. democracy.)

proposition: a sentence or set of words that expresses a meaningful content.

rationalism: the approach to philosophy that regards logic and rational* argument
as the fundamental means of finding philosophical truth. Rationalists usually tend
to mistrust evidence based solely on the senses*. Descartes is a typical example of
a rationalist. (Cf. empiricism.)

realism: the metaphysical position inspired largely by Aristotle and based on the
conviction that the objects* we perceive in the external world are ultimately real.

republic: Plato's term for a political system* wherein a philosopher serves as king,
who wisely distributes the power and authority to a trusted body of advisers and
representatives.
science: a product of human judgment; derived from "sciens", Latin for
"knowing". Viewed in this broad sense, it is one of the four main aspects of
philosophy, aiming to determine the transcendental* boundary between
knowledge* and ignorance in various fields. Viewed more narrowly, as
empirical* or natural science, it is the discipline that attempts to transcend
philosophy by ignoring all myth, yet paradoxically ends up creating one of the
greatest modern myths.

second-level analytic relation (2LAR): the most widely used term in Palmquist's
geometry of logic, referring to any set of four concepts* that can be derived by
relating two sets of opposites to each other. A 2LAR is most often mapped onto
the four poles (or the four quadrants) of a cross, though the corners of a square
can also be used.

self-reference, the problem of: a paradox that arises by applying a certain type of
proposition to itself. For example, "This sentence is false" makes sense if it refers
to some other proposition; but if it refers to itself, it produces a logically
impossible situation.

skepticism: a metaphysical position that calls into question the human capacity to
obtain knowledge*, expressed in its most influential form by Hume.

spirit: together with mind and body, one of the three traditional aspects of human
nature. Kierkegaard regarded the human spirit as the paradoxical key to both
human sinfulness and genuine religious faith*.

symbol: Tillich's term for an empirical* object* that points beyond itself to a
transcendent* object and somehow participates in the reality* of that more real
object.
synthetic logic: the type of logic based on the laws of nonidentity (A≠A) and
contradiction (A=-A). (Cf. analytic logic.)

synthetic method: see induction.

theocracy: Palmquist's term for a non-political political system*, wherein the

person regards God as the absolute ruler of the heart, regardless of which human
political system may be operating concurrently. Following this system requires a
person to give up all rights, but promises to provide absolute freedom in return. It
can be used as a model for the best kind of human leadership. (Cf. ecclesiocracy.)

timocracy: see polity.

transvaluation: Nietzsche's term for the radical reinterpretation of traditional

morals, whereby our usual conceptions of good and evil are negatively assessed
as tools for making human beings mediocre; genuine values must transcend*
good and evil.

truth: according to Plato and many subsequent philosophers, one of the three aims
of the philosophical quest. It corresponds to the head and is powered by reason*.

truth table: any of numerous ways of displaying the truth value of a specific type
of logical* proposition. One of the functions of truth tables is to help avoid
committing fallacies.

tyranny: Aristotle's term for a political system* wherein one bad person holds all
the power and authority. (Cf. kingship.)

verification: the principle used by Ayer and other logical* positivists in the hope
of constructing a philosophy that would be genuinely scientific. It states that a
proposition should be admitted as true only if it can be shown to be true by
reference to some empirical* state or situation.

wisdom: the ideal object* of a philosopher's love ("sophos" means wisdom in

Greek), telling us how to use or apply our knowledge* most appropriately.
According to Socrates, only God is truly wise; for human beings, wisdom consists
in recognizing our ignorance of genuine wisdom.

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 By Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])
Abraham 266
Adam (and Eve) 17, 255, 266
Alexander the Great 33
Alice (in Wonderland) 7
Allen, Reginald E. 39
Anaximander (c.610-c.546 B.C.) 25, 39
Anaximenes (c.585-c.528 B.C.) 25
Anscombe, G.E.M. 132
Apollo/Apollonian 125, 172-173, 175-177, 182
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) 17-18, 24, 26, 33-39, 40-43, 45-48, 51, 56, 66, 74, 77-78, 87, 102, 126, 145, 186-198,
200, 202, 205-206, 210, 230, 235, 273, 274
Atlas 125
Augustine of Hippo, St. (354-430) 40-41, 126
Ayer, Alfred Jules (1910-1989) 114-116, 132

Bach, Richard D. 131, 160

Barrow, John D. (1952-) 39
Bass, A. 185
Beck, Lewis White 62
Berkeley, George (1685-1753) 46
Bloom, Allan (1930-) 39
Boole, George (1815-1864) 87, 109
Bowman, Laurel 132
Buddha 215
Bull, G. 210

Calvin, John (1509-1564) 198

Campbell, Joseph 20
Carse, James P. 238
Chaerephon 27
Chesterton, G.K. (1874-1936) 140
Chiang (Seagull) 136, 138
Chladenius, Johann (1710-1759) 126
Chuang Tzu (c.369-c.286 B.C.) 79-82, 86, 88, 102, 149, 176
Cohen, Morris (1919-) 86
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) 17, 79, 176
Copernicas, Nicolaus (1473-1543) 52, 54, 57, 156

Dallob, Pamela 20
Davidovich, Adina 262
Davidson, J.E. 20, 109
De Bono, Edward (1933-) 103-105, 109
Democritus (c.460-c.371 B.C.) 25
Descartes, Ren? (1596-1650) 40-49, 51, 57, 62, 143, 145
Derrida, Jacques (1930-) 61, 179-181, 185
Dewey, John (1850-1952) 59
Dilthey, William (1833-1911) 127
Dionysius/Dionysian 172-173, 175-177
DionysiustheAreopogite(“Pseudo-Dionysius”) (c.485-c.513) 83-84, 86, 102, 120
Dominowski, Roger L. 20
Dudley, Underwood 109
Duerr, Hans Peter 39
Durant, Will 62
Eliade, Mircea (1907-) 14-16, 20
Empedocles (c.495-435 B.C.) 25
Engels, Frederick 210
Euclid (fl. c.330-300 B.C.) 75
Ezra (fl.457-430 B.C.) 198

Fallshore, Marte 109

Feyerabend, Paul (1924-) 154, 160
Fichte, Johann (1762-1814) 58-59
Fiore, Stephen M. 109
Firestone, Christopher L. 262
Foster, Richard 216, 238
Foucault, Michel (1926-1984) 181
Frege, Gottlob (1848-1925) 111-112
Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939) 14, 234
Fromm, Erich (1900-) 238

Gaarder, Jostein 160

Gadamer, Hans Georg (1900-) 60, 127-130, 132
God 4, 14, 17, 24, 27-28, 37-38, 44, 46, 55, 60, 84, 86, 102, 115, 118-123, 125, 132, 137, 150, 158-159, 163,
167-168, 172-176, 185, 189, 198-200, 202, 208, 210, 215, 236, 238, 240-244, 247-250, 252-262, 266-267,
269-271
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832) 251
Goodman, Felicitas 39
Greene, Theodore M. 254

Harvey, J.W. (1889-) 262

Heath, T.L. (1861-1940) 86
Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831) 58-60, 83, 86, 102
Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976) 39, 60, 119, 127-130, 263-264
Heraclitus (fl. 500-480 B.C.) 25, 39, 83, 97
Hermes 125-126, 132
Hick, John 262, 284
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945) 177
Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679) 46, 178
Hollingdale, R.J. 185
Homer (c.900 B.C.) 17-18
Hudson, Hoyt H. 254
Hume, David (1711-1776) 46, 152-157, 159-160, 178, 205
Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938) 127

Isaiah (fl.745-695 B.C.) 277

Jaynes, Julian 17, 20

Jesus Christ (c.0-c.33) 17-18, 120, 122, 137, 195, 199, 236, 246, 253, 255
Job 250
John, St. 24, 277
Jonathan Livingston Seagull 131, 134-140, 160, 283
Jubien, Michael 62
Jung, Carl G. (1875-1961) 20, 145

Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804) vii, 47-63, 64, 66, 74-77, 82, 84, 86, 88, 96, 101, 107, 110, 119-120, 128-130,
146-147, 152, 155-157, 159-160, 162-172, 175-176, 179, 181-185, 205-210, 222-229, 231, 238, 241-244,
 247-262, 271, 280
Kessler, Gary E. 20
Kierkegaard, Søren (1813-1855) 59-60, 150, 236, 264-267, 269, 271, 284
Kohák, Erazim 238

Lafleur, Laurence J. 62
Langer, Susan K. (1895-) 86
Lao Tzu (fl. c.600 B.C.) 215, 275-277, 284
Lawler, Robert 109
Lessing, Gottlob Ephraim (1729-1781) 150, 236-237
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow (1906-) 281-282
Losee, John 160

Machiavelli, Niccolo (1469-1527) 210

Macquarrie, John (1919-) 119, 121-124, 130, 132
MacIntyre, Alasdair 207
Magill, Frank N. (1907-) 39
Maia 125
Malebranche, Nicolas (1638-1715) 46
Marx, Karl (1818-1883) 58-59, 83, 197, 204, 209-210
Mary (mother of Jesus) 122
Maslow, Abraham H. 274-275, 284
Maxwell, James Clerk (1831-1879) 101
McGuinness, B.F. 132
Merton, Thomas (1915-1968) 215
Methuselah 81
Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873) 166-167, 185, 205
Miller, A.V. 86
Mitchell, Joan (1920-) 271
Møller, P. 160
Moore, G.E. (1873-1958) 185
Moore, Samuel (1877-) 210

Nehemiah (fl.444-432 B.C.) 198

Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727) 45, 57
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900) 60, 170-177, 178-179, 181-182, 184-185, 197, 200, 205, 212, 218, 244, 264
Noel, D.C. 20
Nozick, Robert 207

Oedipus 14
Osborne, Richard 20
Otto, Rudolf (1869-1937) 241-245, 271, 262

Palmquist, Herman (1905-) 103

Palmquist, Stephen (1957-) 62, 86, 109, 210, 238, 262, 284
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) 240
Passmore, John 62
Pears, D.F. 132
Peirce, C.S. (1839-1914) 59
P’eng-tsu 81
Picard, Max 238
Piest, Oskar 185
Plato (427-347 B.C.) 22, 26-34, 36-37, 39, 40-43, 46-47, 51, 56, 140, 171, 176, 186, 230-231, 235-236, 239,
270, 273-274, 279, 284
Pleione 125
Popper, Sir Karl Raimund (1902-) 154, 160
Prometheus 14
Pythagoras of Samos (c.569-c.475 B.C.) 96, 109, 145

Rawls, John (1921-) 206-208, 210

Robinson, Daniel N. 160
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970) 60, 111, 132
Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976) 46, 62

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de (1900-1944) 210

Santa Claus 73
Schelling, Friedrich (1775-1854) 58-59
Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst (1768-1834) 126, 242
Schooler, Jonathan W. 109

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860) 59

Silverstein, Shel 20, 283, 284
Skinner, B.F. (1904-) 196
Socrates (470-399 B.C.) 13, 24, 26-30, 33, 39, 48-49, 55-56, 64, 73, 171, 176, 195, 212, 270, 275
Spinoza, Benedictus de (1632-1677) 46
Sternberg, R.J. 20, 109, 160
Sullivan (Seagull) 137
Superman 173-176, 197, 200
Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688-1772) 261

Thales (c.624-c.546 B.C.) 17-18, 24-25, 39, 96

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881-1955) 38-39
Thomas Aquinas, St. (1225-1274) 40-41, 48, 126
Tillich, Paul (1886-1965) 60, 121, 124, 132, 230-238, 244-245, 247, 262, 268-271, 276, 284
Tipler, Frank J. 39

Underwood, Richard A. 20

Wagner, Richard (1813-1883) 171

Wall, Bernard 39
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947) 111
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951) 60, 112-114, 116-117, 120, 123, 130, 132, 149, 175, 216, 245, 263
Wolff, Robert Paul ix, 20
Woods, Katherine 210

Zarathustra, or Zoroaster (fl. c.650 B.C.) 173-175

Zeus 125

Omitted from TP3:

Anderson, Albert B. (1928-)

Becker, Ernest
Boerwinkel, F.
Burleigh, J.H.S.
Cairns, Huntington (1904-)
Capps, Walter Holden
Capra, Fritjof
Carroll, Lewis (1832-1898)
Common, Thomas
D’Arcy, Martin C. (1888-)
Edghill, E.M.
Edwards, Paul (1923-)
Halverson, William H.
Hamilton, Edith (1867-1963)
Hamlyn, D.W. (1924-)
Hesse, Hermann (1877-1962)
Hodges, Wilfred
Hoskins, Hubert
Hospers, John (1918-)
Jaspers, Karl (1883-1969)
Jones, Katherine
Kaufmann, Walter (1921-)
Kemp Smith, Norman (1872-1958)
Kirk, G.S.
Kluback, William
Koestler, Arthur (1905-)
Kuhn, Thomas S.
Lord, Carnes
Manheim, Ralph (1907-)
Maritain, Jacques (1882-1973)
McKeon, Richard (1900-)
Meredith, James Creed
Momaday, N. Scott (1934-)
Moses (c.1300 B.C.)
Nygren, Andres (1890-)
Ostwald, H.G.
Pennick, Nigel
Pirsig, Robert M.
Rolt, C.E.
Rosner, Hilda
Ross, W.D. (1877-)
Roubiczek, Paul
Saddam Hussein
Scruton, Roger
Smith, J.A.
Stebbing, Susan
Thomson, J.A.K. (1879-1959)
Thomte, Reidar
Trotter, William Finlayson
Vlastos, Gregory
Walsh, W.H. (-1986)
Walton, Douglas N.
Warner, Rex (1905-)
Watson, Burton (1925-)
Watson, Philip S. (1909-)
Wilhelm, Richard (1873-1930)
Woodhouse, Mark B.
Woolger, Roger J.
Wright, Wendy M.
Yoder, John Howard