We Discuss The Book “What Philosophy Was, What It Is, And What It Can Be: A Brief Historical Introduction” (Was Philosophie War, Ist Und Sein Kann. Eine Kurze Historische Einführung) By The Philosopher Ulrich Steinvorth. This Work Represents An Attempt To Read The History Of Philosophy And Its Evolution Across The Ages, In A Style That Seeks To Clarify The Major Landmarks Of Human Intellectual Transformations.
Steinvorth Begins His Journey By Affirming A Historical Truth That Has Long Been Ignored In The Corridors Of Modern Universities, Which Is That Philosophy In Its Essence Has Always Been A Project Fraught With Risks, And Even A Practice Characterized By Fanaticism At Times. Philosophy In Ancient Times Was Not Merely An Intellectual Luxury Practiced In Quiet Salons, But Was An Activity That Cost Its Owners A Lot; Thales Was Harassed, Anaxagoras Was Exiled, And Socrates Paid With His Life As The Price For His Ideas. And In The Midst Of This Risky Path, Philosophers Themselves Were Exchanging Accusations Of Betraying Philosophy, And Founded Closed Schools And Groups To Protect Their Ideas And Their Purity From The Influences Of Other Philosophers. This Anxious Historical Reality Clearly Contrasts With The Contemporary Image Of Philosophy That Is Taught In Universities And Schools Today, Where Contemporary Philosophers Tend To Emphasize The Openness Of Their Activity And Their Acceptance Of Every Possible Understanding Of Philosophy.
However, The Author Sees That The Oldest And Most Important Conflict Over The Very Nature Of Philosophy Itself Is Still Alive, And It Is The Conflict That Manifested Itself In Its Clearest Form Between Plato And Protagoras. This Conflict Is Not Merely A Historical Disagreement, But Is An Early Foundation Of What Can Be Called Ideology. For At A Time When The Public, In Ancient And Modern Times, Rarely Perceived The Subtle Differences Between Philosophers, We Find That The Greek Comedy Writer Aristophanes, Like Most Of His Contemporaries In Athens, Regarded Socrates As Merely A Pretender To Knowledge And A Sophist Who Deserved Punishment. And This Confusion Extends To Our Present Day, Where The Writer Points Out That Many Contemporary Philosophers May Be Unable To Determine Precisely The Dividing Line Between Recognized Philosophy And Condemned Ideology.
The Roots Of This Division Are Manifested In Protagoras’ Famous Saying That Man Is The Measure Of All Things, Meaning That Truth Is What Appears True To Man, Or To The Majority, Or To The Elite That Creates Public Opinion. This Concept, As Presented By The Author, Is Largely Compatible With Democracy, But It Stands In Complete Opposition To Plato’s Thesis Which Insists That Reality Alone Decides What Truth Is, Not The Opinions Of Humans. From Here, Steinvorth Clarifies That The Conflict Between Protagoras And Plato Produces Two Irreconcilable Concepts Of Philosophy; The First Sees It As A Means Of Creating Opinions And Manufacturing Convictions By Using The Power Of Words Instead Of Weapons, While The Second Concept Sees Philosophy As A Tool For Discovering Truth, Which Makes It Comparable To Mathematics, Even Though It Is Also Applicable In The Field Of Politics. According To The First Concept, Knowledge Becomes Merely An Opinion Adopted By Humanity Or Its Majority, While The Second Concept Sees Philosophy As The Inevitable Result Of Investigating Reality According To A Rigorous Model Similar To Mathematics.
Steinvorth Adopts In His Book Plato’s Concept As A Starting Point, Aware Of The Great Political Consequences That Entail From It. But He Departs From Plato On A Fundamental Point; While Plato Assumed That We Acquire Knowledge Through “Forms”, The Author Proposes That Philosophy Acquires Its Knowledge By Answering Two Fundamental Questions, And These Two Questions Grant Philosophy Complete Independence From The Opinions Of The Majority, Just As Mathematics Is Independent. These Two Questions, Which Many Consider The Essence Of Philosophy And The “Metaphysical” Or Ultimate Questions, Concern The Meaning Of Our Existence And The Universe As A Whole: “What Does All This Mean?” And “What Is Real And What Is Illusion?”. And Although Great Philosophers Such As Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz And Martin Heidegger Have Merged These Two Questions Into One Question, Which Is: “Why Is There Something At All Instead Of Nothing?”, The Author Insists On Differentiating Between Them.
Steinvorth Calls The First Question “The Question Of Meaning” And The Second “The Question Of Being” Or Existence. This Distinction Is Central To The Thesis Of The Book, Because The Answer To “The Question Of Being” Is What Paved The Way For The Emergence Of Modern Science, While “The Question Of Meaning” Remained In The Lap Of Philosophy. This Historical Development Explains, According To The Author, Why We Cannot Understand Philosophy In Isolation From Its History, Nor In Isolation From These Two Specific Questions. These Two Questions Are Fundamental Because They Touch Everything That Can Be Thought Or Imagined; We Are Always Forced To Ask Whether Something Is Real And What It Means. The Author Sees That This Questioning Is Necessary For Survival, For Humans Lose The Motivation For Life If They Fail To Find Meaning For It, Or If They Fail To Distinguish Between Truth And Illusion. However, These Two Questions Are Not Constant Across Time, But Their Connotations Change Throughout The History Of Philosophy, Which Makes Them A Complex Of Intertwined Questions.
The Book Then Moves To Detail How Greek Philosophy Paved The Way For The Emergence Of Science Through Its Attempt To Answer The Question Of Being. Steinvorth Points Out That Philosophy Has Always Been A Source Of Attraction And Repulsion At The Same Time, Because Its Two Fundamental Questions Seem Strange, And This Strangeness Is The Secret Of Its Attractiveness And The Aversion Of Some To It. And While The Question Of Meaning Has Become Today Acceptable As A Philosophical Research Point, The Question Of Being Still Retains Its Historical Strangeness. For Although There Are Practical Ways To Distinguish Between Illusion And Reality In Daily Life, Such As A Person Pinching Himself, The Radical Philosophical Doubt, As Posed By René Descartes When He Assumed That The World Might Be Merely An Illusion Created By A Deceiving God, Remains Standing And Influential. And Contemporary Philosophers And Scientists Have Reformulated This Doubt, Such As Hilary Putnam In 1981 By Assuming That We Are Merely “Brains In A Vat”, And He Was Followed In That By Elon Musk Based On The Ideas Of Nick Bostrom About The Possibility That We Live In An Advanced Simulation.
Greek Philosophy Began In The Early Sixth Century BC By Addressing The Question Of Being, And Questioned The Reality Of The Gods And The Sensible World, Which Aroused The Enthusiasm Of A Small Minority And Shocked The Majority. And Here Aristotle Emerges As The Most Important Philosopher Who Sought To Distinguish Between True Philosophical Achievements And Nonsense, And Aristotle Reinforced The Path That Gradually Transformed Philosophy Into Science. The Author Returns To The Very Beginnings, To Thales Of Miletus Who Was Mocked Because He Fell Into A Well While Contemplating The Sky, But Who Was Also Admired. Thales And His Student Anaximander, Then Anaximenes, Embarked On A Journey To Search For The Basic Material Of The Universe, Or What The Neoplatonic Philosopher Simplicius Called The “Foundation” Or Substratum (Hypokeimenon), Which Is The Thing That Lies Behind All Things And Sensible Phenomena, And Which Alone Deserves To Be Described As Existence Or Truth.
Anaximander Called This Foundation “The Boundless” Or “The Infinite” (Apeiron), And Described It As The Source From Which All Heavens And Worlds Arise, And To Which Things Return Upon Their Demise According To Necessity. While Thales And Anaximenes Were Simpler; The First Saw That Water Is The Foundation, And The Second Saw That It Is Air. And Although These Early Philosophers Were Closer To Those Who Believe In The Divinity Of Nature (Pantheists) Than Being Scientists In The Modern Sense, Their Greatest Achievement, As The Book Decides, Lies In Their Transformation Of A Subject That Aroused Fear And Reverence In Souls Into A Subject Subject To Rational Thinking And Judgment.
But The Decisive Development Came With Parmenides Who Wondered About The Authority That Thinking And Judgment Can Possess. Parmenides Found In The Mind (Nous) The Divine And Infallible Judge For Distinguishing Between Being And Non-Being. Parmenides Founded An Absolute Faith In Reason That Was Not Shaken Until The Nineteenth Century With The Emergence Of Non-Euclidean Geometry, Then Collapsed Later With The Replacement Of Newtonian Physics By Einstein’s Physics. The Rigor Of Reason At Parmenides Led To Directing A Scathing Criticism To The Milesian School; Reason Tells Us Not Only That The Divine Is Immortal, But Also Tells Us That It Is Perfect. And Since Perfection Means Absolute Stability, Because Any Change Is A Movement Either Towards Perfection Or Away From It, The Divine, Or The True Essence Of Existence, Cannot Be Something From Which Things Are Generated And Into Which They Perish, Because That Makes It Changeable. And Parmenides Concluded That True Existence Must Be Thought Of As An Unchanging, Immortal, And Complete Entity Like A Perfectly Round Sphere, And That Everything Sensible In The Empirical World Of Change And Movement And Time Is Nothing But Mere Illusion. And His Student Zeno Of Elea Supported This Thesis With His Famous Paradoxes That Prove The Logical Impossibility Of Motion, Like The Paradox Of Achilles And The Tortoise, Emphasizing That When Reason Contradicts Sensory Perception, We Must Consider Perception As Illusion.
The Intellectual Radicalism Brought By Parmenides And His Eleatic Followers Caused A Deep Epistemological Crisis For The Ancient Greek Consciousness; Parmenides’ Assertion That Existence Is One, Eternal, And Unchanging Led To Stripping The Empirical Sensible World Of Any Real Value, And Considering All Movement And Change And Multiplicity As Merely A Deceptive Illusion Of The Thing That Reason Does Not Rely On. This Logical Dilemma Inevitably Required The Philosophers Who Came After Him To Search For New Formulas That Reconcile The Rational Rigor Of The Eleatics With The Material Reality That We Live And Witness Daily, And This Is What Sparked The Following Major Transformations In Greek Philosophy.
Attempts To Get Out Of This Intellectual Strait Began With The Philosophers Of Pluralism And Materialism, And At The Forefront Of Them Empedocles And Anaxagoras, Then The More Mature Crystallization With The Atomic School Founded By Leucippus And Developed By Democritus. These Adopted The Rigorous Thought That Acknowledges That A Thing Cannot Arise From Nothing And Cannot Perish Into Nothing, But They At The Same Time Rejected The Denial Of Change. Empedocles Solved This Equation By Assuming The Existence Of Four Eternal Elements That Do Not Change In Their Essence, Which Are Water And Air And Earth And Fire, And That What We See Of The Formation Of A Thing Or Its Dissolution Is Nothing But The Gathering Or Separation Of These Elements By The Forces Of Love And Strife. And In The Same Vein, Anaxagoras Went To The View That The World Consists Of Small Infinite Parts That Contain The Natures Of All Things, And Are Organized By The Action Of The Cosmic Mind That Moves Them. As For Democritus, He Made A Qualitative Leap In The History Of Material Thought When He Proposed The Idea Of Atoms; Which Are Solid Parts Indivisible And Unchanging, Falling And Moving In The Void, And Forming By Their Intertwining And Separation Everything We See In The Universe. These Mechanical Explanations Of Matter Established The First Building Blocks Of Modern Scientific Thought, Where The “Question Of Being” Was Transformed From Mere Metaphysical Contemplations Into A Study Of Nature And The Laws Of Motion And Material Structures.
However, This Rush Towards Explaining Material Nature Soon Collided With A Great Social And Political Transformation In Athens During The Fifth Century BC. And With The Flourishing Of Athenian Democracy And The Rise Of The Need For Rhetoric And The Ability To Persuade In Courts And Political Councils, The Sophists Appeared To Shift The Philosophical Center Of Gravity From Research Into The Nature Of The Universe To Research Into Man And Society And Laws. And While The Sophists Provided Great Services In Teaching Eloquence And Criticizing Traditions, Their Utilitarian Trend And Their Relative Vision Of Truth – As Manifested In Protagoras’ Thesis – Led To Stripping Truth And Morality Of Any Objective Basis, So That Right And Wrong Became Merely A Matter Of Linguistic Construction And Mass Persuasion. In This Feverish Atmosphere Of Doubts And Verbal Disputes, Socrates Emerged To Represent A Pivotal Turning Point In The History Of Human Thought.
Socrates Did Not Leave A Written Book, But His Oral Approach And His Method Of Thinking Changed The Face Of Philosophy Forever. Socrates Brought Philosophy Down From Heaven To Earth, Abandoning Cosmic Preoccupation In Favor Of Precise Inspection Of The Human Soul And Moral Concepts Such As Justice, And Virtue, And Goodness, And Beauty. Socrates Adopted His Famous Dialogical Method Based On The Generation Of Ideas; Where He Begins By Representing Ignorance And Proposing Simple Questions To His Interlocutors From The Pretentious Or Common People, Then Lures Them By Revealing Contradictions In Their Answers To Reach With Them The Realization That What They Thought Was Certain Knowledge Was Nothing But Unscrutinized Opinions. For Socrates, True Knowledge Begins With A Person’s Awareness Of His Ignorance, And Virtue Is Nothing But Knowledge Itself, Meaning That Evil Results From Ignorance Not From Bad Intent. Socrates Linked Philosophy With A Close Bond To Daily Practice And Moral Behavior, Emphasizing That The Life That Is Not Subjected To Scrutiny And Constant Review Is A Life Not Worth Living. And This Strict Adherence To Truth And Disturbing The Political And Religious Authorities Cost Him His Life, Ending With His Execution On Charges Of Corrupting Youth And Despising The Gods Of The City, Demonstrating That The Search For Truth May Require The Ultimate Sacrifice.
The Trial Of Socrates And His Death Formed A Deep Wound In The Conscience Of His Prominent Student Plato, Prompting Him To Formulate An Integrated Philosophical System Aimed At Protecting Truth And Morality From Sophistic Relativities And Political Confusion. Plato Built His Intellectual System On The Decisive Distinction Between Two Worlds: The World Of Sensory Perception Changing That We Live In And Which Is Marred By Deficiencies And Shadows, And The World Of Eternal Fixed Mental Forms That Contains Absolute Truths And Noble Origins For Everything That Exists In The Lower World. And In His Epistemological Vision, Knowledge By The Senses Gives Us Only Changing Opinions And Conjectures, While True Knowledge Comes Only Through The Mind Which Remembers The Forms That The Soul Beheld Before Its Descent Into The Body. And Plato Formulated This Meaning In The Famous Allegory Of The Cave, Where He Compares Humans To Prisoners Tied Inside A Dark Cave Who See Only The Shadows Falling On The Wall Of The Cave And Think Them The Whole Truth, Until One Of Them Is Freed And Exits To The Outside Light To See The Sun And Things As They Really Are, And He Is The Philosopher Who Must Return To The Cave To Guide His Colleagues, Even If He Is Exposed To Killing Or Mockery.
And Plato Was Not Content With Metaphysics And Knowledge, But Extended His Thesis To The Political Field In His Book “The Republic”, Showing That The Just State Is One That Reflects In Its Structure The System Of The Human Soul And The System Of Divine Forms. So He Divided Society Into Three Classes, Which Are The Class Of Philosopher-Rulers Who Represent The Power Of Reason, And The Class Of Guardians Who Represent Courage And Will, And The Class Of Workers And Craftsmen Who Represent Desire And Matter. And He Saw That Justice Is Not Achieved In The Individual Or In The City Except When Desire And Courage Are Subject To The Control And Guidance Of Reason. And Thus Plato Tried To Integrate “The Question Of Being” With “The Question Of Meaning”, Emphasizing That Knowledge Of True Existence Is The Only Way To Establish A Virtuous Human Life And A State Based On Right And Justice.
Despite The Great Fascination Caused By Plato’s System, His Clever Student Aristotle Took A More Realistic And Organized Path, Urging Steps Towards Establishing An Inductive And Empirical Method Concerned With Studying The Material World Without The Need To Assume A Transcendent World Of Forms. Aristotle Rejected The Platonic Theory Of Forms, Pointing Out That Positing Eternal Distant Images Does Not Solve The Problem Of Explaining Change And Motion In The Sensible World, But Multiplies The Number Of Problems. And Instead Of That, Aristotle Proposed The Concept Of “Form And Matter”; Every Material Body In This World Involves In Itself An Original Matter That Constitutes Its Possibility, And A Specific Form That Gives It Its Essence And Its Actual Characteristics. For Example, The Wood Of The Tree Is The Matter, And The Form Of The Chair Is What Makes The Wood Actually A Chair.
Aristotle Introduced The Concept Of Motion Through The Transition From “Potentiality” To “Actuality”; Nature In His View Is Not Rigid Matter But Is A Dynamic Process In Which Things Constantly Seek To Achieve Their Goals Enshrined In Their Forms. And To Clarify That, Aristotle Put His Famous Theory Of The Four Causes That Explain The Existence Of Anything: The Material Cause (What The Thing Is Made Of), And The Formal Cause (The Form Of The Thing And Its Essence), And The Efficient Cause (Who Brought The Thing About), And The Final Cause (The Purpose Of The Existence Of The Thing). This Aristotelian Teleology Gave The Universe An Organized And Rational Meaning, Where Everything Moves Towards Achieving Its Natural Perfection, And Existents Are Graded In An Ascending Ladder That Begins With Raw Matter That Has No Form, Up To The “Unmoved Mover”, Which Is Pure Mind And The First Cause To Which All Things Are Attracted.
And Aristotle’s Achievements Did Not Stop At Metaphysics And Natural Studies, But Extended To Include The Founding Of The Science Of Symbolic And Formal Logic Through The Theory Of Syllogism, Which Became The Strict Standard Tool For Organized Thinking For More Than Two Thousand Years. He Also Classified And Tabulated Sciences Accurately Into Theoretical Sciences Such As Physics And Mathematics And Metaphysics, And Practical Sciences Such As Ethics And Politics, And Productive Sciences Such As Poetry And Rhetoric. And In The Field Of Ethics, Aristotle Saw That The Highest Goal Of Human Behavior Is Achieving Happiness, Which Is Only Accomplished Through The Optimal Use Of Reason And The Application Of The “Golden Mean” Or The Just Middle Between The Extremes Of Excess And Negligence, So Courage Is A Middle Between Cowardice And Recklessness, And Generosity Is A Middle Between Extravagance And Miserliness.
This Historical Gradation From The Shock Of Parmenides To Materialistic Atomism, Then The Socratic Transformation And The Platonic And Aristotelian Organization, Clarifies How Philosophy Transformed From Mere Initial Intuitions About The Components Of Nature Into Comprehensive Intellectual Systems Possessing Analytical Tools. Greek Thought At This Golden Stage Was Able To Put Solid Reference Frameworks For Addressing The Two Questions Of Being And Meaning; So Being Became A Subject Subject To Methodical Research In The Form Of Matter And Laws And Purposes, And Meaning Became Linked To The Extent Of Man’s Ability To Use His Reason To Perceive The System Of The Universe And Direct His Individual And Collective Behavior Based On This Perception. And With This Eternal Achievement, Greek Philosophy Prepared The Arena For Receiving The Next Major Changes That Will Occur To It With The Extension Of The Hellenistic Era And The Entry Of Philosophy Into Confrontation And Interaction With The Major Monotheistic Religions.
After The Great Expansion Caused By Classical Metaphysics With Plato And Aristotle, The Ancient World Witnessed Huge Political And Social Transformations That Displaced Philosophy From Its Abstract Theoretical Towers To Throw It Into The Heart Of Daily Life And The Urgent Existential Questions Of The Individual. The Collapse Of The Pattern Of The “City-State” Greek During The Conquests Of Alexander The Great And The Establishment Of Vast Empires Led To The Loss Of The Greek Citizen Of His Political Centrality And His Direct Belonging To His Familiar Society, Which Generated A General Feeling Of Alienation And Disturbance. And In This New Historical Context, The Center Of Philosophical Gravity Gradually Shifted; The Fundamental Question Was No Longer Confined To Searching For The First Matter Of The Universe Or Building A Comprehensive Metaphysical System Of Existence, But The Most Important Question Became Related To How To Achieve Psychological Tranquility And A Just Life Amid A World Teeming With Transformations And Uncertainty. Here Precisely, The “Question Of Meaning” Took The Lead In The Philosophical Scene In The Hellenistic Era, Surpassing The Direct Dominance Of The “Question Of Being”, Without Completely Abolishing It.
The Epicurean School Emerged As One Of The Most Prominent Intellectual Responses To This New Reality, Where Epicurus Founded His Philosophy On A Material Basis Aiming To Liberate Man From The Great Fears That Shackle His Soul, And At The Head Of Them The Fear Of The Gods And The Fear Of Death. Epicurus Adopted The Atomic Physics Whose Origins Were Laid By Democritus, Concluding That The Universe Consists Entirely Of Atoms And Void, And That The Gods, If They Exist, Live In Distant Worlds And Do Not Interfere In Human Affairs Nor Punish Or Reward Them. And From This Material Premise, Epicurus Decided That Death Means Nothing To Us; For When We Exist Death Does Not Exist, And When Death Is Present We Have Ceased To Exist. And Based On That, Epicurus Defined The Purpose Of Philosophy In Achieving Tranquility And The Freedom Of The Soul From Disturbance, Taking Moderate Physical And Spiritual Pleasure As A Criterion For Good. But This Pleasure Did Not Mean Excess In Sensual Pleasures As Some Of His Critics Imagined, But It Meant In Its Essence The Absence Of Physical Pain And Psychological Suffering, And Reliance On Friendship And Philosophical Contemplation And Meeting Necessary Needs And Controlling False Desires.
In Contrast, The Stoic School Appeared, Founded By Zeno Of Citium And Developed By Chrysippus, Up To Its Great Philosophers In The Roman Era Such As Seneca And Epictetus And The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, To Present A Different Vision Based On Discipline And Commitment To The Overall System Of The Universe. The Stoics Saw That The World Is One Living Whole Subject To A Comprehensive Rational Law Which Is “Logos” Or The Cosmic Mind That Manages All Events. And Because Everything That Happens In Nature Happens According To A Rational Fate And Path, The True Virtue Of Man Lies In Living According To Nature, That Is, To Align His Will With The Will Of The Universe. The Stoics Divided The Affairs Of Life Into Two Decisive Categories: Actions And Events That Fall Under Our Power And Ability Such As Our Thoughts And Our Attitudes And Our Morals, And Matters That Do Not Fall Under Our Power Such As Health And Wealth And Prestige And External Circumstances. And They Considered That The Origin Of Human Suffering Stems From Attempting To Control What We Cannot Guarantee, And Therefore The Lofty Individual Must Accept Fate And Destiny With An Open Chest, Practicing Strict Self-Control, Which Grants Him Psychological Immunity That Makes Him Free In The Harshest Conditions, And A Citizen In The Great Human Society Without Regard To Nationality Or Social Class.
And Philosophy In The Hellenistic Period Did Not Stop At Epicureanism And Stoicism, But Expanded To Include The Pyrrhonian Or Skeptical School Founded By Pyrrho Of Elis And Renewed By Sextus Empiricus. The Skeptics Started From Observing The Ongoing Disputes Between Philosophers And The Sharp Divergence In Their Opinions About The Nature Of Existence And Good And Evil, Which Led The Skeptics To Say That The Human Mind Is Incapable Of Reaching Absolute Certainty Regarding The Final Truths Of Things. And They Proposed A Practical Solution That Lies In “Suspension Of Judgment” Regarding All Metaphysical Issues And Commitment To Epistemological Cessation, As The Skeptic Sees That Abstaining From Issuing Absolute Judgments Is The Actual Path That Frees The Soul From Intellectual Conflicts And Leads It To Tranquility And Calm. And Thus, Skepticism Provided A Permanent Reminder Of The Limits Of Human Knowledge, Doubting The Ability Of Any Philosophical System To Monopolize The Decisive Answer To The Question Of Being.
And With The Decline Of The Power Of The Roman Empire And The Increasing Need For A System That Combines Spiritual Transcendence And Rational Explanation, Neoplatonism Appeared At The Hands Of Plotinus In The Third Century AD To Bring About A Renewal In The Platonic Heritage. Plotinus Formulated The Vision Of Metaphysics In An Emanationist And Abstract Manner; He Considered That The Origin Of All Existence Is “The One” Or The One, Which Is The First Principle Perfect Free From Any Multiplicity Or Definition, Which Surpasses Description And Reason. And From This “One”, And As An Emanation Of Its Intrinsic Perfection Without Anything Diminishing From It, The Remaining Ranks Of Existence Descend Gradually: So First Emanates From It “The Universal Intellect” Which Contains The Forms Of Things And The Ideals, And From The Intellect Emanates “The Universal Soul” Which Moves The Universe And Grants Life To Existents, Then Matter Comes In The Lowest Ranks As Non-Existence Or A Shadow Far From The Divine Light. And Plotinus Saw That The Purpose Of The Human Soul Imprisoned In The Material Body Is Transcendence And Purification Through Contemplation And Asceticism In Order To Ascend Again Rising In The Ranks Of Emanation Until It Unites With The One In An Illuminative And Emotional Experience.
Neoplatonism Formed The Most Important Intellectual Bridge Over Which Greek Philosophy Crossed To Meet The Major Monotheistic Religions. And With The Emergence Of Christianity And Its Spread, Then The Islamic Conquests Later, Human Consciousness Faced A Pivotal Transformation In Formulating The Two Questions Of Being And Meaning; Truth Was No Longer Coming Only Through Pure Rational Contemplation Or Natural Observation, But Became Associated With Divine Revelation And Holy Books. And Here The Great Problem That Occupied The Entire Medieval Thought Arose: How Can Reason And Revelation Be Reconciled? And Is Philosophy A Servant Of Theology Or Is It An Independent Path To Attaining Truth?
In The Western Christian Domain, Saint Augustine Established The Rules Of Medieval Philosophy Through A Re-Reading Of Plato And Neoplatonism In Light Of Christian Doctrine. Augustine Went To The View That Reason And Faith Are Not Opposites, But Are Two Powers That Complement Each Other, Repeating His Common Phrase About The Necessity Of Faith In Order To Understand, And Understanding In Order To Deepen Faith. And He Considered That Platonic Forms Are Nothing But Ideas In The Divine Mind, And That Truth Does Not Stem From External Senses But Is Revealed In The Depths Of The Human Soul Through Divine Illumination. He Also Formulated In His Book “The City Of God” A New View Of Time And History, To The Effect That Human History Is Not A Repeated Circular Movement As The Greeks Believed, But Is A Linear Path Heading Towards A Specific Purpose, Manifested In A Continuous Struggle Between Two Cities: The Earthly City Based On Love Of Self, And The City Of God Based On Worship And Self-Transcendence.
And In The Islamic World, Philosophy Witnessed The Golden Age Of Translation And Conceptual Crystallization, Where Muslim Philosophers Were Not Content With Transmitting The Greek Heritage But Rebuilt And Developed It In A Mature Manner. This Path Began With Al-Kindi Then Manifested Clearly With Al-Farabi, Who Sought With Serious Effort To Reconcile The Opinions Of The Two Sages Plato And Aristotle, Emphasizing That Truth Is One And That Philosophy And Sharia Come From One Niche; The Prophet And The Philosopher Receive Knowledge From The Same Source, Which Is The “Active Intellect”, Except That The Philosopher Perceives It Through Demonstrative And Rational Concepts, While The Prophet Receives It Through Imagination And Symbols That Suit The General Public. And Al-Farabi Put In His Book “The Opinions Of The People Of The Virtuous City” A Political Vision That Combines The Philosopher-Ruler And The Prophet Leader Who Governs Society With The Light Of Wisdom And Justice.
Then Came Ibn Sina To Establish The Largest Islamic Peripatetic System, Introducing A Crucial Conceptual Distinction In Metaphysics Between “Essence” And “Existence”. Ibn Sina Explained That All Existents In This Universe Are Possible In Existence By Themselves, In The Sense That Their Essence (What They Are) Does Not Necessarily Require Their Existence (That They Are Existent), And Therefore Their Entry Into The Arena Of Existence Needs An External Cause That Grants Them This Existence. And This Chain Of Possibilities Must End With One Being Whose Essence Necessitates Its Existence And Does Not Need A Cause Other Than Itself, And It Is The “Necessary Existence” That Is God. And Thus Ibn Sina Reformulated The Question Of Being Based On The Concept Of Distinction Between The Possible And The Necessary, Which Deeply Influenced Theology And Philosophy In The East And The West Alike.
Despite The Severe Criticism Launched By Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali Against Philosophers In His Book “The Incoherence Of The Philosophers”, Warning Against The Control Of Abstract Reason Over The Unseen Matters Of Creed And Emphasizing The Precedence Of Faith And Mystical Taste, Islamic Philosophy Reached Its Demonstrative Peak With Ibn Rushd In Andalusia. Ibn Rushd Undertook A Detailed Response To Al-Ghazali In The Book “The Incoherence Of The Incoherence”, As He Wrote “The Decisive Treatise On The Connection Between Sharia And Wisdom”, In Defense Of The Legitimacy Of Philosophical Speculation And Its Necessity. Ibn Rushd Emphasized That Truth Does Not Contradict Truth But Rather Agrees With It And Bears Witness To It, Showing That Sharia Urged Rational Consideration And Contemplation Of Existents, And That Any Apparent Contradiction Between The Scriptural Text And The Demonstrative Rational Truth Must Be Resolved Through Proper Linguistic And Conceptual Interpretation. And Ibn Rushd Returned To Adherence To The Pure Aristotelian Text, Purifying It From Neoplatonic Impurities, To Become The Greatest Commentator Of Aristotle Whose Translations Of His Works Into Latin Caused An Intellectual Revolution In Medieval Europe.
Western Latin Thought In The Thirteenth Century Was Influenced By Ibn Rushd’s Averroism And The Ideas Of Ibn Sina And Maimonides, Which Paved The Way For The Emergence Of Scholastic Philosophy (Scholasticism) And Its Culmination At The Hands Of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas Made A Reconciliation Between Aristotelianism And Christian Doctrine, Building A Theological And Rational System That Considers That The Natural Light Of Reason And The Supernatural Light Of Faith Complement Each Other And Do Not Contradict, Because Both Emanate From God The Source Of All Truth. And Aquinas Presented The Five Famous Ways To Prove The Existence Of God Based On Cause And Motion And Possibility And Degrees And Natural Teleology, Transforming Aristotelian Concepts About The First Mover And The Efficient Cause Into Demonstrative Proofs Of The Creator.
This Journey In The Hellenistic And Medieval Ages Reveals How The Two Questions Of Existence And Meaning Transformed Under The Umbrella Of Metaphysical And Theological Thinking. The Question Of Being Became Explained Through The Concept Of Creation And Necessity And Possibility And Emanation Worlds, While The Question Of Meaning Became Linked To The Purpose Of Human Existence, And Spiritual Ascension, And Moral Salvation, And Framing Between Individual Reason And Divine Law. And With This Intellectual Accumulation, Philosophy Remained Retaining Its Centrality As A Means Of Thinking About The Origins Of The Universe And The Purposes Of Life, Until The Beginnings Of The Modern Era Emerged To Pose New Questions And Shake These Stable Metaphysical Systems.
To A Decisive Moment In The History Of Human Consciousness, Which Is The Moment Of The Labor Of The Modern Era And The Emergence Of The Scientific Renaissance That Shook The Pillars Of The Medieval Scholastic System. Steinvorth Clarifies In This Part How The Old Intellectual Chain That Reconciled Aristotle And Religious Doctrine Was Cut, To Make Way For A Major Epistemological Crisis Resulting From The Discoveries Of Copernicus, And Galileo, And Kepler. These Discoveries Led To The Destruction Of The Ptolemaic Model Calling For The Fixed Vision Of Geocentrism And The Closed Universe Organized Teleologically, And An Infinite Universe Was Discovered That Is Subject To Strict Mechanical And Mathematical Laws That Do Not Care About Human Purpose. In The Face Of This Radical Change In The Structure Of Physical Reality, Human Thought Found Itself Forced To Re-Pose The Two Questions Of Existence And Meaning; It Was No Longer Possible To Accept The Truths Of The World And Existence Based On Inherited Authority Or Direct Sensory Impressions, But The Urgent Questioning Became Embodied In How To Build Solid Certain Knowledge That Can Be Founded Upon Without Falling Into Comprehensive Doubt.
At The Heart Of This Great Transformation, René Descartes Stands As The Legitimate Father Of Modern Philosophy, Who Took Upon Himself The Task Of Rebuilding The Edifice Of Knowledge On Foundations Untouched By Doubts. Descartes Began His Project By Using Radical Methodical Doubt, Abandoning All Knowledge That He Drew From The Senses Or From Traditional Heritage, Considering That The Senses Deceive Us In Many Times, And That The Mind May Fall Into Illusions Similar To The Illusions Of Dreams. Indeed He Went To The Utmost Extent When He Assumed The Existence Of A “Deceitful Demon” Possessing Huge Capability And Practicing Misleading To Make Man Err Even In Mathematical Axioms. However, Amid This Overwhelming Doubt, Descartes Found One Coherent Truth That Doubt Absolutely Does Not Reach: That In Order To Doubt, He Must Think, And In Order To Think, He Must Exist. And From Here Was Born His Historical Phrase: “I Think, Therefore I Am”. Descartes Made This Truth The Archimedean Fixed Point From Which He Starts, Transforming The Center Of The Acting Self Into The Source Of Epistemological Certainty.
Based On This Subjective Certainty, Descartes Moved To Answer The Question Of Being Through His Strict Distinction Between Two Independent Substances In This World: The Thinking Substance Whose Essence Is Represented In Pure Thinking And Consciousness And From Which Materiality Is Devoid, And The Extended Substance Whose Essence Is Represented In Spatial Extension And Spatial Occupation And Susceptibility To Movement And Division. This Decisive Separation Between Mind And Matter Led To The Emergence Of What Is Known As Cartesian Dualism, Where The Material World Became Merely A Huge Machine Subject To Pure Mechanical And Mathematical Laws, Isolated From The Purposes And Teleological Concepts That Aristotelian Thought Had Bestowed Upon It. And Even To Restore Descartes’ Confidence In The Validity Of Our Perception Of The Extended Material World, He Needed To Prove The Existence Of The Perfect God And Absolute Truthfulness, Who Is Impossible To Practice Deception, Which Ensures That What We Perceive Clearly And Distinctly About The External World Is A Clear Truth And Not Mere Imagination. And Thus, Descartes Reduced Material Existence To Geometric And Mathematical Dimensions, Paving The Way For The Dominance Of Mechanical Natural Sciences.
However, Cartesian Dualism Created A Thorny Problem That Confused Descartes’ Followers, Manifested In How Two Completely Different Substances Like Mind And Matter Interact Within The Human Being. Here Baruch Spinoza Intervened With Clear Theoretical Boldness To Reject Descartes’ Distinction Between Multiple Substances, Presenting A Comprehensive Monistic System. Spinoza Acknowledged That There Cannot Exist In This Universe Except One Substance Only, Being Self-Subsistent, And Not Needing In Its Conception Any Other Concept, And This Unique And Eternal And Infinite Substance Is What Spinoza Called The Famous Expression: “God Or Nature”. In This Pantheistic And Independent Perspective Of Personal Conceptions Of God, God Is No Longer A Transcendent Being Who Creates The World From Nothing Then Governs It With A Separate Will, But He Became The All-Encompassing Total Substance Whose All Existents And Manifestations Are Attributes And Modes Ongoing In It.
Mind And Matter Manifest At Spinoza As Eternal Attributes Of This One Substance, Each Expresses The Divine Nature Itself But In A Different Way; Thought And Extension Are Not Two Conflicting Substances, But They Are Two Sides Of One Coin. And Because Everything In This Universe Emanates With Absolute Necessity From The Nature Of This Eternal Substance, Spinoza Completely Denied Coincidence Or Free Will In The Traditional Sense, Emphasizing That Every Event Is Subject To An Unchanging Deterministic Causality. And In This Rigorous System, Spinoza’s Answer To The Question Of Meaning Finds Its Moral Course; For Man’s Freedom And Happiness Do Not Come From Exiting The Laws Of Nature Or Fighting Them, But From The Pure Rational Understanding Of This Divine Necessity, And Rising Above Transient Passions And Emotions, To Reach What He Called “The Intellectual Love Of God”, Where The Individual Perceives Himself As A Speaking And Conscious Part Of This Harmonious Whole.
And In Contrast To Spinoza’s Deterministic Material Monism, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Tried To Reconcile The Mechanical View Of The Universe With Metaphysical And Teleological Principles, Addressing The Question Of Being Through His Unique Theory Of “Monads” Or Individual Substances. Leibniz Rejected Considering Matter As Rigid Extension As Descartes Went, Or One Substance As Spinoza Said, Pointing Out That Extended Matter Is Divisible To Infinity, And What Is Divisible Cannot Be The Ultimate Component Of Reality. And Therefore, Leibniz Assumed That Reality Consists Of An Countless Number Of Individual Spiritual Substances, Simple, And Immaterial, Which He Called “Monads”. These Monads Are Centers Of Power And Consciousness Graded In Degree Of Their Perception And Clarity From The Dormant Monads In Matter To The Human Mind, Then To The Greatest Monad Which Is God.
Monads Are Characterized As Self-Subsistent And “Without Windows”, In The Sense That No Monad Can Exert A Direct Physical Influence On Another Monad. And To Explain This Complex Discipline And Harmony Between The Movement Of These Multiple Monads And Their Internal Worlds, Leibniz Proposed The Theory Of “Pre-Established Harmony”, And Its Content Is That God Has Regulated The Course Of Each Monad Since Eternity To Be Compatible With The Actions And Course Of The Rest Of The Monads, Exactly As Two Accurate Clocks That Were Regulated In Advance Without One Influencing The Other Are Compatible. And In This Context, Leibniz Was The One Who Reformulated Metaphysics Clearly When He Posed The Question Which Steinvorth Mentioned As An Advanced Pillar For The Question Of Being: “Why Is There Something At All Instead Of Nothing?”. And Leibniz Answered With The Principle Of Sufficient Reason, Emphasizing That God, By Virtue Of His Unlimited Wisdom And Justice, Chose To Create This World As “The Best Of All Possible Worlds”, Because In It Prevails The Greatest Amount Of Diversity And Harmony With The Least Amount Of Laws.
On The Other Side Of The English Channel, A Competing School Of Thought To The Continental Rationalist Trend Was Being Built, Which Is The Empirical School That Rejected The Saying Of The Existence Of Innate Ideas With Which The Human Mind Is Born, And Made Sensory Experience The Only And Legitimate Source Of All Our Knowledge. This Path Began With John Locke Who Compared The Human Mind At Birth To A “White Paper” Free Of Any Inscriptions Or Prior Ideas. Locke Insisted That All Materials On Which Thought Works Come Exclusively From External Sensory Perception And From Internal Reflection On The Actions Of Ourselves. And In His Analysis Of The Components Of Reality, Locke Distinguished Between Two Types Of Properties In Bodies: Primary Properties Such As Extension And Shape And Motion And Number, Which Are Properties Existing In Things Themselves In An Objective Manner Regardless Of Our Perception Of Them; And Secondary Properties Such As Color And Taste And Smell And Sound, Which Are Not Existing In Things Themselves, But Are Impressions And Effects Produced By Primary Properties In Our Senses.
But This Lockean Distinction Soon Faced Radical Criticism By George Berkeley, Who Pushed Empirical Logic To Its Furthest Possible Limits To Formulate His Doctrine In Subjective Idealism. Berkeley Wondered: How Can The Empirical School Claim The Existence Of “Primary Properties” Or “Material Substance” Independent Of Perception, While We Do Not Perceive In Reality Except Impressions And Ideas Existing In Our Minds? And Berkeley Announced His Resounding Slogan: “To Be Is To Be Perceived”. Berkeley Denies The Existence Of Any Material Substance Independent Of The Mind, Emphasizing That What We Call Bodies And Materialities Is Nothing But Groups Of Ideas That We Perceive With Certain Links. And So As Not To Fall Into Absolute Doubt Or The World Vanishes As Soon As We Close Our Eyes, Berkeley Made God An All-Encompassing Perceiver Who Undertakes Broadcasting These Ideas And Impressions In Our Minds According To A Fixed And Continuous System, Which Makes The Sensible World A Living Truth Existing In Divine Thought And Not Deaf Matter.
The Empirical School Reached Its Most Dangerous And Daring Peak With David Hume, Who Caused An Intellectual Earthquake That Shook The Pillars Of Metaphysics And Natural Sciences Alike. Hume Began By Dismantling Mental Components Into Direct Sensory Impressions And Ideas Which Are Faint Images Of Those Impressions. And From This Strict Epistemological Starting Point, Hume Advanced With A Merciless Critique Of The Concept Of “Causality” Upon Which Human Thought And Natural Science Had Been Founded For Long Centuries. Hume Clarified That When We Observe Two Events Habitually Conjoined (Like The Movement Of A Billiard Ball And Its Collision With Another), All That We Perceive With Our Senses Is Spatial Proximity And Temporal Succession, But We Never Perceive Any Hidden Power Or “Logical Necessity” Linking Cause And Effect.
Hume Concluded That The Concept Of Causality Is Not An Objective Law Inherent In The Nature Of Things, Nor Is It A Necessary Rational Truth, But Is Merely A Mental Habit And A Psychological Association Arising In Our Ideas As A Result Of Repetition Of Similar Experiences. And This Comprehensive Humean Criticism Extends To The Concept Of “Self” Or “Permanent Soul”; He Pointed Out That When Man Dives Into His Depths He Finds Nothing But A Changing Bundle Of Perceptions And Fluctuating Impressions, Without Falling Upon Any Fixed Substance Called The Self. This Radical Skeptical Tendency At Hume Led To Exposing All Our Knowledge To Danger; Natural Science Based On Induction And Causality Became Threatened With Uncertainty, And Metaphysical Research Into The Causes Of Existence And Its Purposes Became Mere Verbal Illusions With No Support From Sensory Impressions. Hume Put Philosophy Before Two Choices The Sweetest Of Which Is Bitter: Either Surrender To The Limits Of Habit And Doubt, Or Re-Present Reason According To A New Intellectual Geometry Unprecedented.
This Skeptical Impasse Left By Hume Was The Cry That Awakened Immanuel Kant From His “Dogmatic Slumber”, As He Himself Stated, To Launch The Largest Review And Synthesis Between Rationalism And Empiricism In The History Of Philosophy. Kant Realized That Traditional Rationalism Went Too Far In Imagining Its Ability To Roam Metaphysical Worlds And Transcend Limits Without Relying On Experience, While Empiricism With Hume Slipped Into A Skepticism That Destroys The Certainty Of Sciences And The Values Of Moral Laws. And To Get Out Of This Double Trap, Kant Made What Is Known As “The Copernican Revolution In Philosophy”. Instead Of Assuming That Our Knowledge And Perceptions Must Completely Conform With Things As They Are In Themselves, Kant Assumed That Things Must Conform With The Cognitive Structure Of The Human Mind In Order For Us To Be Able To Know Them.
In His Comprehensive System Called “Transcendental Idealism”, Kant Explained That Human Knowledge Is Not Merely A Passive Impression Of Sensory Experience As Empiricists Believed, Nor Is It Pure Rational Deduction From Innate Nature As Rationalists Thought, But Is The Product Of Cooperation And Partnership Between Two Regions: Sensibility And Intellect. Raw Data Come To Us From The External World Through The Senses, But This Data Cannot Be Organized Or Become Perceived Except Through Pouring It Into Two Prior Forms To Experience Rooted In Our Mental Structure, And They Are The Two Forms Of “Time And Space”. Then Rational Understanding Intervenes To Link Between These Organized Perceptions Temporally And Spatially Through Applying Twelve Prior Rational Categories To Experience, And Among Them The Category Of Causality And Substance. And Thanks To This Unique Composition, Kant Proved That The Law Of Causality Is Not Merely A Psychological Habit As Hume Claimed, But Is A Necessary Prior Condition For The Possibility Of Any Experience Or Objective Scientific Knowledge.
However, This Great Kantian Achievement To Save Scientific Knowledge Was Limited By A Decisive And Important Condition That Created A Maximum Limit For Traditional Metaphysics; Which Is The Strict Distinction Between “Phenomenon” And “Thing In Itself”. The Phenomenon Represents The World As It Appears To Us And As Our Mind Forms It Through The Forms Of Space And Time And The Categories Of Understanding; And This Scope Alone Is Where Possible And Certain Scientific Knowledge Is Valid. As For The “Thing In Itself”, That Is The Reality Independent Completely Of The Structure Of Our Cognitive Tools And Of The Tools Of Doubt Or Human Perception, It Is A World That Remains Completely Veiled From Theoretical Reason And Cannot Be Inferred Demonstratively.
Based On That, Kant Announced In His Book “Critique Of Pure Reason” The Impossibility Of Metaphysics As A Theoretical Science; Whenever The Human Mind Tries To Apply Its Categories And Its Theoretical Energies Transcending The Limits Of Sensory Experience To Reach Decisive Answers About The Major Metaphysical Subjects – Such As The Existence Of God, And The Immortality Of The Soul, And Freedom Of Will, And The Beginning Of The Universe – It Inevitably Falls Into Contradictions And Logical Fallacies From Which There Is No Exit, Where Reason Can Provide Equally Strong And Powerful Evidence To Prove Something And Negate It At The Same Time. And Thus Kant Provided A Decisive And Restrictive Answer To The Question Of Being, Confining Human Knowledge Within The Limits Of The World Of Phenomena Possible For Empirical Experience.
But, If Kant Had Closed The Door Of Theoretical Reason Before The Metaphysical Answer To The Question Of Being, How Did He Deal With “The Question Of Meaning” That Touches Ethics And Human Purposes? Here Kant Moves To His Book “Critique Of Practical Reason” To Re-Establish Consciously This Fundamental Aspect In Philosophy. Kant Saw That If Theoretical Reason Is Unable To Prove The Existence Of God And Immortality Of Soul And Freedom, Then “Practical Reason” Is Required And Forced To Assume These Concepts As Postulates And Indispensable Pillars For The Establishment Of Conscious Morals.
Kant Founded His Moral Doctrine On The Concept Of “Categorical Imperative”, Clarifying That The True Moral Act Is One That Issues From Pure Moral Duty, Far From Any Personal Benefit Or Emotional Inclination Or Fear Of Punishment. And This Imperative States That The Individual Should Always Act According To A Rule That He Can At The Same Time Will To Become A General Law Comprehensive For All Humans, And That He Should Treat Humanity In His Person And In The Persons Of Others As An End In Itself Always, And Never Treat It Absolutely As A Substitute Or Means To Another End. And Because Achieving The Highest Good Requires Complete Suitability Between Virtue And Happiness, Which We Do Not Always See Achieved In Our Earthly Life, Practical Reason Requires Assent To The Existence Of God And Immortality Of The Soul, So That Human Freedom And Moral Responsibility Become The True Source From Which Man Derives His Meaning And Dignity In This Universe.
This Journey From Descartes And Spinoza And Leibniz, Passing Through Locke And Berkeley And Hume, And Culminating In Kantian Critique, Shows How Modern Philosophy Flipped From Direct Research Into The Existence Of Things And Their Natures To Dismantling The Structure Of Human Thought And Determining Its Limits And Possibilities. The Question Of Being With Kant Transformed From A Theory In Transcendent Existence Into A Theory In The Conditions Of Possibility Of Knowledge, While The Question Of Meaning Was Reformulated Based On Moral Independence And Conscious Human Freedom. And Instead Of Deriving Meaning From An Ancient Cosmology Or Mechanical Teleologies, Man Became The Maker And Responsible For His Epistemological And Moral Path. This Huge Kantian Legacy Opened The Door Wide To More Complex Transformations And Problematics That Philosophy Will Witness In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Starting From German Idealism With Hegel, Reaching To Historical Materialism, And Existential And Analytical Tendencies.
Immanuel Kant Left Behind A Clear Split Between The World Of Phenomena Presented To Sense And Reason, And The World Of The “Thing In Itself” Veiled From Theoretical Knowledge. And This Distinction Was The Focus Of Controversy From Which German Idealism In The Nineteenth Century Launched, With Johann Gottlieb Fichte And Friedrich Schelling, Before It Reached Its Supreme Peak And Full Maturity With Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel Refused To Surrender To The Existence Of A Barrier Preventing Knowledge Between Reason And The “Thing In Itself”, Emphasizing That Reality In Its Essence Is Completely Rational, And That Everything Rational Is Real, And Everything Real Is Rational. Hegel Formulated A Comprehensive Philosophical System Based On “Absolute Idealism”, Where He Looks At Existence In Its Entirety As A Process Of Continuous Becoming And Development Of The “Absolute Spirit” Or Reason. And He Adopted In Explaining This Conceptual And Historical Movement The Dialectical Method, In Which Thought And Reality Move Through A Continuous Triad: Thesis, Then Its Antithesis, Then The Synthesis That Absorbs Both Parties And Elevates Them To A Higher Level. And In This Hegelian System, The “Question Of Being” Merged With The “Question Of Meaning” In The Course Of History; For Human History Is Not In His View Merely A Random Succession Of Events, But Is A Rising Linear Path That Represents The Consciousness Of Spirit Of Itself And Its Actual Realization Of Freedom Through Institutions And The State And Art And Religion Reaching To Philosophy As The Absolute That Thinks Itself.
However, This Huge Metaphysical System Built By Hegel Soon Aroused Sharp Critical Reactions That Took Multiple Directions That Caused Radical Transformations In The Course Of Western Philosophy. Karl Marx Turned Hegelian Dialectic Upside Down, Transforming It From Absolute Idealism Into Historical Materialism. Marx Saw That Thought And Consciousness Are Not The Ones That Make Material Reality, But Economic Relations And Forms Of Material Production Are The Basis That Determines Consciousness And The Superstructure Of Society Of Culture And Laws And Religions. Marx Shifted The “Question Of Being” Towards The Becoming Of Matter And Society, And Considered That The Purpose Of Philosophy Is Not Merely To Interpret The World In Different Ways But To Work To Change It And Liberate Man From Alienation And Exploitation. And In Contrast, The Impact Of Arthur Schopenhauer Came To Reject Hegelian Rational Optimism, Presenting A Vision Based On Doubt And Pessimism, Where He Considered That The “Thing In Itself” That Kant Could Not Know Is “Will”; Which Is A Blind, Irrational Power, With No Purpose, Struggling In Nature And Man And Producing Continuous Suffering And Pain, And There Is No Exit For Man From This Misery Except Through Artistic Contemplation And Asceticism And Transcendence Of Bodily Desires. And Søren Kierkegaard Deepened This Individual Orientation With His Harsh Critique Of The Hegelian Experimental System, Emphasizing That Total Doctrines Neglect The Living Individual And His Subjective Lived Experience. Kierkegaard Founded Existential Philosophy With A Faithful Inclination, Considering That Truth Is Subjective And Not Objective, And That Meaning Is Not Derived From Reading History But From Free Individual Choice And The Faith Leap Stemming From Anxiety And Individual Responsibility Before God. Then Friedrich Nietzsche Crowned This Theoretical Attack By Declaring A Radical Critique Of All Metaphysical And Moral Constants Upon Which The West Was Founded, Declaring The Predicament Of “Nihilism” And The End Of Absolute References. Nietzsche Called For Re-Evaluation Of All Values, Rejecting “Slave Morality” Calling For Weakness And Submissiveness, And Proposing The Concept Of “Will To Power” And “The Overman” Who Possesses The Ability To Create His Own Values And Give Meaning To His Life In A World Devoid Of Ready-Made Purposes.
With The Arrival Of The Twentieth Century, Western Philosophy Branched Into Two Main Currents That Separated In Method And Goals, And They Are The Continental Current And The Analytical School, And Both Tried To Provide New Answers To The Two Questions Of Being And Meaning In Light Of The Scientific And Technical Explosion And The Stormy Societal Changes. In Continental Philosophy, Edmund Husserl Founded The Science Of Phenomena (Phenomenology), Announcing His Famous Slogan Of Return To Things Themselves. Husserl Sought To Make Philosophy A Rigorous Science Through Suspending Pre-Judgments And Dismantling Phenomena Of Consciousness And Its Direct Perceptions, Emphasizing That Consciousness Is Always Characterized By Intentionality, That Is, It Is Consciousness Of Something. And His Student Martin Heidegger Developed This Approach In A Deeper And More Radical Way In His Reference Book “Being And Time”, Re-Posing “The Question Of Being” Which He Considered That Western Philosophy Had Forgotten Since The Time Of Plato And Aristotle When It Confused Being And Beings. Heidegger Focused On Analyzing The Structure Of Specific Human Existence Which He Called “Dasein” (Being-There), Which Is The Only Being That Is Preoccupied With Searching In The Meanings Of Its Existence. Heidegger Clarified That Man Finds Himself Thrown Into A World He Did Not Choose To Leave, Facing Anxiety And The Possibility Of Inevitable Death, And That Authentic Existence Requires The Individual To Confront This Anxiety And Liberate Himself From The Falsity Of Daily Collective Behavior. And Soon Jean-Paul Sartre And Albert Camus And Other Critics Were Inspired By These Theses To Establish French Existentialism, Where Sartre Announced That Existence Precedes The Essence Of Man; Man Exists First, Then Determines His Essence And The Meaning Of His Life Through His Free Choices And Actions, Bearing Comprehensive And Painful Responsibility For Every Decision He Makes.
On The Other Side Of The Intellectual River, The Analytical Current Grew In The United Kingdom And The United States, Taking Logic And Language As A Main Tool For Filtering Philosophical Problems And Clarifying Concepts. This Cognitive Transformation, Which Is Known As “The Linguistic Turn”, Began With The Works Of Gottlob Frege, And Bertrand Russell, And George Edward Moore, And Was Crowned By The Writings Of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In His Early Book “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, Wittgenstein Saw That The Limits Of My Language Are The Limits Of My World, And That The Function Of Language Is To Present A Logical Picture Of Reality; Therefore All Metaphysical And Moral Issues That Transcend The Empirical Description Of Reality Are Issues That Transcend The Limits Of Explicit Language And Cannot Be Said, But Must Be Silenced About. And The Vienna Circle And “Logical Positivism” Adopted This Radical Thesis, Putting The “Verification Criterion” Which Considers That Any Statement That Cannot Be Proven Logically Or Verified Empirically Is A Statement Devoid Of Informative Meaning, Transforming The Entire Old Metaphysics Into Mere Illusions And Linguistic Suspicions. But Wittgenstein Himself Made A Deep Review Of His Ideas In His Late Book “Philosophical Investigations”, Rejecting Looking At Language As A Rigid Logical Picture Of Reality, And Considering It As Communities Of Multiple And Diverse “Language Games” In Which The Meaning Of The Word Is Determined According To The Context Of Its Practical Use In Daily Life. And Thus Analytical Philosophy Transformed From Demolishing Metaphysics Into A Therapeutic And Analytical Tool Aiming To Solve Intellectual Problems Through Clarifying Linguistic Uses And Dismantling Conceptual Confusions.
In Light Of This Crowded And Intertwined Historical Course, Ulrich Steinvorth In His Book Arrives At Formulating The Fundamental Thesis That Summarizes What Philosophy Was, And What It Is, And What It Can Be In The Coming Days. Steinvorth Clarifies That Philosophy In Its Early Emergence (“What It Was”) Was A Total And Single Human Endeavor Embracing Human Knowledge In Its Entirety, And Started From Direct Questioning About “The Question Of Being” And “The Question Of Meaning”. However, Historical Development Led To The Splitting Of This Unity; Natural Sciences And Mathematics And Social Studies Gradually Separated From Philosophy After They Became Independent With Their Own Empirical And Quantitative Methods, And Were Able To Answer The Material Question Of Being With Increasing Efficiency And Accuracy. This Separation Left Contemporary Philosophy (“What It Is”) In A State Of Dispersion And Confusion; Where It Divided Into Precise Analytical Trends Concerned With Language And Partial Logic, And Other Continental Ones Concerned With Cultural And Existential Criticism, While Precise Scientific Specializations Became Undertaking The Direction Of Knowledge And Leading The Technical World, Which Made Philosophy Sometimes Appear In The Eyes Of Non-Specialists As If It Were An Intellectual Luxury Or Merely A Historical Margin That Does Not Possess Decisive Answers.
But Steinvorth Rejects The Decisive Tone Of The End Of Philosophy Or The Death Of Metaphysics, Anticipating What “Philosophy Can Be” In The Future. The Author Sees That Philosophy, Even Though It Has Handed Over The Study Of The Material World To Empirical Sciences, Still Retains A Fundamental Function That No Other Science Can Replace It In. Natural And Technical Sciences, Despite The Breadth Of Their Capabilities And Their Great Achievements, Stand Powerless By Their Nature To Examine Their Foundations And Their Prior Postulates, As They Are Unable To Provide Answers To The Ethical And Teleological Questions That Govern The Use Of This Knowledge. Here Precisely The Future Role Of Philosophy Manifests Itself; It Is Not A Substitute For Empirical Science, But Is The Critical Reviewing Power That Examines Scientific Concepts, And Studies Ethical Principles, And Poses The Major Questions That Narrow Specialization Overlooks. The “Question Of Meaning” — What Does All This Mean, And How Should Man Live In An Era Of Artificial Intelligence And Genetic Modification And Environmental Transformations — Remains A Philosophical Question Par Excellence That Mathematical Equations Nor Experimental Laboratories Can Answer Alone.
