Philosophy as a process

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 11:00:24
Nastik asked this question:

Suppose someone objected, If philosophy is ongoing process, what's the point of engaging in it? You'll never get any certain answers; your search will never end. Such a prospect is thoroughly depressing. How would you respond to this criticism?

I've been wrestling with Nastik's question lately. There's a very easy, almost knee-jerk response that philosophers sometimes give to this kind of objection, along the lines of, 'The point of philosophy is that it is a journey.' As a philosopher, you are always on the way towards something but you never finally 'arrive'. Every stopping point is just another stage in the journey.

This response is wrong in so many ways I don't even think I can list them all. But I will just look at one or two.

When is a journey more important than the arrival? I recently bought myself a classic car on eBay. I hadn't driven for ten years. What finally prompted my decision was the realization that I didn't need a car. My 36 year old Scimitar GTE is strictly for joy riding. We're lucky to live in a part of the UK (on the edge of the Peak National Park) which has some great roads. You pick a destination — there are many to choose from — drive there by the most picturesque route and then drive back. There's no point to it other than the pleasure of the ride.

If I'm actually going somewhere, and the distance is short enough, I walk. I walk the two and a half miles to my office. Otherwise, I take the bus or the train. One of the things about an old car is that you can never be certain that you will reach your destination without mishaps. When you're joyriding, it's part of the sense of adventure.

Is that what philosophy is like? Firstly, there is far more pain than pleasure in a philosophical journey. I mean, if you are really serious about it. Philosophy can be agonizing. You do it, you endure, because you are trying to get somewhere and for the sake of getting there. And when you fail, which given the nature of the activity is often a foregone conclusion, on top of the pain is a sense of disappointment and regret.

You can study philosophy for pleasure, if that's what you want. You can follow the thoughts and the lives of the great philosophers, take a dip in the deep waters of two and a half millennia of philosophical thought, and come out feeling exhilarated and refreshed. Many of my students feel this way. But my best students know that there is more to it than that.

There's another way in which one might seek to justify philosophy as a process. This is along the lines of the mental gym where you exercise your thinking muscle. 'No pain, no gain.' You don't give up when the going gets tough, you try harder. All the time you know that your mental powers are being steadily improved. In the mental gym, there's no such thing as failure, because every hour you put in makes your mind stronger, better.

That's fine if you see philosophy as just another means of self-improvement. But if you are really gripped by a philosophical question, you want to know the answer. In athletic competitions, something counts as 'winning' or 'losing'. If you are serious about athletics, not just someone who goes to a gym twice a week to work out, then you want to win. Yes, there is satisfaction in knowing you did your best. But that's not sufficient compensation for coming second.

Why study philosophy? 'For pleasure,' is one good answer. 'For self-improvement,' is another good answer. But neither of these answers gets anywhere close to the core of what philosophy is about. Ultimately, there is no justification for engaging in philosophy other than the brute fact that one finds the problems and questions of philosophy gripping. And if you are gripped, really gripped, then you want to know the answers, just as much as the runner wants to win.

So let's consider 'the philosopher' as a character motivated, neither by pleasure or the desire for self-improvement but solely by the desire for knowledge. The desire for answers. You can satisfy this desire, and many serious and fine academic philosophers do this, by picking problems which can be solved. The implication of Nastik's question, they would say, is simply false.

Open any journal of academic philosophy and you will find contributions which advance the study of philosophy by answering questions, solving difficulties, clarifying confusions. In principle, the situation is no different in academic philosophy than any other academic subject, say, chemistry, or history. Meanwhile, the big questions remain matters of incessant debate. But the progress of the subject isn't judged solely by the progress made with big questions. Physics is not refuted by the likelihood that there will never be a fully consistent 'Theory of Everything'.

That would be fine if you are content to spend your time as a philosopher tweaking theories or debating points of logic. As I am not. Like many committed philosophers I also want answers to the big questions. I'm not satisfied with indefinitely putting off any hope of a solution. But isn't this a strange kind of paradox? I know that the ultimate problems can't be cracked. I know that the effort to find a solution is futile. And yet, I feel compelled to keep trying.

This doesn't depress me. It doesn't exactly fill me with joy either. Because it isn't really about me. Feelings count for something but they are not the most important consideration. Nietzsche understood that there was something more important than happiness (which 'only Englishmen' seek as an end in itself) and that is to have, or to be an arrow, to be possessed by a sense of direction and purpose. Yes, I do feel something, deeply, the sense that in doing this I am fulfilling my purpose even though I couldn't tell you exactly what that purpose is. To know that I would have to know the ultimate answers, and I already said, I don't believe I will ever know.

When I do philosophy, when I grapple with its insoluble problems, I have the sense that I am in the presence of something sublime. That feeling is something I value, even though, as I said, feeling is not the most important consideration. In the presence of the sublime, other things — things which are not sublime but merely mundane, the distractions of everyday living — are put into their proper perspective. And it is good to have a proper perspective.