What Philosophy Is All About?
We do not exclusively think like scientists or like religious people. Philosophy is neither an Art nor a Science. Philosophy is what it does…writes Ajay Mohan
We shall try to make a minimal and naive understanding of Philosophy by providing a short description of Philosophy. Our aim is to provide a holistic impartial discription of it. To provide a holistic description is to synthesize different models of Philosophy. For an impartial description it needs a metaphilosophical enquiry.
The description proceeds in two ways. First is to state the main features of Philosophy. Second is to show the activity of philosophizing. The Former is given as the contents of this article and the latter is the way it is shown. It is because an attempt to understand Philosophy itself is a Philosophical problem.
I
We can broadly classify the entire philosophical landscape into two- Western and Eastern. Obviously they have a lot of differences. Finding the common thread in these models is our first task. A fundamental difference between them lies in their inclinations. Western Philosophy (WP) functions more as a part of the intellectual activity of human kind whereas Eastern Philosophy (EP) is more interested in the human life and its perfection. EP presupposes human life as existing in a
world which conditions the existence of
it. EP proceeds to positive and negative theorizing of this conditioning. The positive is more popular and it suggests conditioning of knowledge as the major form of conditioning. The unconditioned human state is the state of having unlimited knowledge in which will enable us to see the real nature of everything. That means there is a state of higher knowledge. This higher knowledge is either the knowledge about God or knowledge of categories or knowledge of Reality.
We have already seen that EP presupposes a world and our situatedness in it. The minimal understanding of the concept of World is as a structure with a set of entities and a set of functions. We also saw that highest knowledge is knowing everything. This 'everything' should be understood as the ontological space in a particular system. It is not a kind scientific of knowing some facts. But it is a holistic kind of knowing which includes the nature of self and world.
WP did not presuppose the conditionality of knowledge. It did not presuppose the situatedness as the basic problem, for them the existence of object and objectivity is the major issue. Not only that, conditionality of knowledge is a skeptical position, a kind of remote possibility.
In WP Ignorance is ignorance of something. It will vanish when the particular knowledge comes in. So if our ontology consists in infinite number of objects, knowing is an endless process. But this problem does not arise because WP presupposes that we are equipped with the ability of reasoning. In EP ignorance is our empirical state of existence. It can be overcome only when we achieve the highest knowledge. In some systems of EP this knowing is not mere understanding, but realizing fact. The element of hope in WP is Rationality (in a broad sense as an intellectual ability) and the element of hope in EP is the concept of Realization or enlightenment.
EP uses human intelligence for the purpose of achieving higher knowledge. In this process we are supposed to figure out the nature of Reality. WP uses human intelligence for finding the real or fundamental nature of the World. Using the reason to understand the nature of Reality is the general character of Philosophy.
II
The broad question of Philosophy which is the question of Reality or Truth is related to several other basic questions. For example: Reality and appearance, the substratum of everything, the problem of creation, etc.
The broad question of Reality has to be understood as the question of Absolute Truth. The sub-question of Reality is the problem of Real and appearance. One of the best ways of understanding the concept of Reality is to look at the usage and origin of the word Reality. In that direction I could say that the word Reality has an extended use in philosophical issues. The basic meaning of 'Reality' can be figured out when we distinguish between illusory experience and non-illusory experience. In a sophisticated philosophical endeavour we extend this meaning and question whether the world as such is real or an illusion.
We can see different questions in Philosophy which aim to figure out a holistic picture of Reality. We often deal with these things because of intellectual curiosity or spiritual desire. But how far they are significant in our ordinary life and thinking? One way of dealing with this question is considering these questions as the fundamentals of our thinking. A soft version of this answer is considering them as back grounds of our thinking. In these cases we can say that philosophy will provide us with a clear understanding of anything and avoid errors in thinking. Philosophy can give the best way of dealing with some problems. It is also possible that there are different thinking patterns, so that there are no basic concepts. In that case Philosophy is a study of the different presuppositions of different thinking patterns. One Philosopher can argue for one pattern by providing arguments for that. What if these questions are neither fundamental nor presuppositions of any pattern? Philosophy will survive even if there are arguments which state that there is no Philosophy at all, because to prove them is also a Philosophical endeavor.
III
We have seen that Philosophy is an intellectual activity of dealing with a set of significant questions. This activity of philosophizing is an activity of reasoning. We contemplate over these philosophical issues. This contemplation or reasoning is guided by some Logic. The minimal understanding of Logic is a set of rules for thinking. The Logic can satisfy reasoning to an extent. It will be in trouble when the presupposition of Logic itself is philosophized. This may lead us to think that we do not want to depend completely on only one kind of Logic; rather we can have different kinds of Logic. We can provide reasons for religious beliefs and scientific belief by providing Logic which states their plausibility. We do not exclusively think like scientists or like religious people. Philosophy is neither an Art nor Science. Philosophy is what it does.
We do Philosophy neither because we know things nor because we do not know things, but because we are not sure whether we know or do not know. Greatest minds in history have tried to put the anchor at some point. The failure or victory of their struggle is not important. What is important are the insights they have given and the new horizons they have opened. We shall pay respect to their endeavors and hope for new insights.
Ajay Mohan M
M. Phil Research Scholar
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