What is Philosophy?

[Amedeo]

====== WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? ======

Philosophy is something somebody does. Science is something somebody does. Theology, history, etc., are things some people do. They all write reports of what they do. The resulting bodies of knowledge are subjects others can read and learn... or investigate themselves, in which case they become philosophers, scientists, or historians, and what not.

PHILOSOPHY is the critical pursuit of true knowledge. A philosopher is a pursuer or seeker, but he differs from pursuers/seekers such as hunters, food-gatherers, fishers, job-seekers, treasure hunters, and they like. Philosophers [those people who because of what they do are called philosophers] seek true knowldge deliberately and critically, and they do so by mentally exploring things they speak of -- named and judged realities. They seek true knowledge of anything which is spoken, of the human WORD.
Their pursuit includes the seeking of the understanding of what constitutes TRUTH (true knowledge).

Philosophers engage in conversations with other people, not to name or judge things and people, but to INQUIRE about anything that is ever spoken. So, a conversation or dialogue consists of queries and responses, in both directions. An inquiry or probe is an exploratory movement which possibly elicits or brings forth insights (understanding) into what is spoken of. / This is the nature of the philosophical or Socratic dialogue. But this kind of dialogue can also be carried out within oneself. In that case we have a philosophic monologue. Plato defined "thinking" [probing, exploratory thinking] as "conversation with oneself."

THEOLOGY is the the divine word [theou logos] and the thinking that evolves around that Word. For instance, the Biblical prophets and the rabbinical exegesists of the Bible are theologians, but sometimes theologians make syntheses of exegetic doctrines and philosophic doctrines [theses or "theories"]. The theologians do not inquire into what is spoken by the gods; they ASSUME it to be true knowledge. The divine word = dogmatic (infallible and complete) information about anything, and that's final.
[On the other hand, Philosophy is critical dialectical meditation on the human WORD.]

HISTORY [historiology] is research -- that's what Herodotus' "historie" means. It's observation of and research into the lives or cultures of peoples in the course of time. ["History" means also the object of the research, namely the aeval life and cultures of peoples.] The reports of the searches are meant to be to be empirical accounts of history in contradistinction to myths (which take up human events into a theological framework, or which are theological interpretations or inventions of historical events). [Theology speaks of gods, the world, and human affairs.]

SCIENCE is the pursuit of true knowledge of the universe or nature. It comprises research (investigations of cosmic ingredients) and non-linguistic dialogue with the universe (called experimentation). Since the investigated things are things of perception, there is an issue of truth concerning percepts and things in themselves, just as in philosophy there is an issue of truth concernig linguistic concepts and the things which are named and spoken of. Thus, science includes also philosophical dialogue (limited to the sphere of its object). An outcome of this dialogue has been the Galilean method of inter-objective observation (which I have described on other occasions), which requires the invention of comparison standards (which are popularly known as instruments of measurement). Galilean science constitutionally comprises inter-objective observation and instruments thereof, experimentation and "procedures and apparatuses" thereof, and mathematics, which turns out to be the language of nature.

Other EMPIRICAL INFORMATION results from (and can be learned from) those who describe things they observe, from the constitution of an automobile made in a certain year to the biography of an individual man. This is all research or "historic" information, but not in the above technical and restricted sense of the term.


LOGICAL OR DEDUCTIVE SYSTEMS, such as mathematics, which consists of constructive and/or deductive systems of concepts which rest on arithmetical or geometrical numbers.

Thus, the human mind has historically undergone modifications [to use Vico's fortunate term] which have resulted in philosophy, history, science, and logico-systems.

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Philosophers inquire into ANYTHING that is spoken. However, many people talk about what has already been spoken, without inquiring. Manners of speaking:

(A) PRISTINE SPEAKING

In everyday life, we SAY something: We gives specific commands; give instructions for the performance of a work; tell somebody what happened yesterday; advise somebody of the approaching enemy, storm, or train; discuss what we should do about the storm; welcome and chat with a friend; and so forth. In a given talking session, one may tell long stories, may give a lecture, or may give detailed news -- telling a lot and conversing little. In another session, we may concentrate of one topic or issue -discussing just one thing: how to climb a mountain, planning a legal strategy, devising a commercial strategy; and so forth.
Saying consists in disclosing, asking for disclosures, voicing one's thoughts, voicing one's feelings, voicing what is good or bad, voicing what is right or wrong. A DICTUM (a thing SAID) is a thing translated into sound, which others can hear. A dictum is that which is communicated through sound.
So, "pristine speaking" corresponds to "saying" [or "dicere" in Latin, wherefore dictum is any specific thing which is being said].

(B) TALKING ABOUT WHAT IS SPOKEN: "LOQUI-LOQUATING"

In any urban society of the modern world, we have a huge baggage of said things [dicta]. Whether our vocabulary consists of 3,000 or 9,000 words, the pieces of information (the said things), learned from television, from home, from school, and from publications, are a million or more -- huge.
We form our own opinions about many of the things in our verbal baggage. We ourselves may SAY something in this or that field of information. We juggle pieces of information. And we can sit at the internet and discuss, in a given forum, some of the information pieces. Thus we talk about the talking which was done to us: we loqui-loquate. (The statements in our loqui-loations can be called loqui-locutions.)

Loqui-loquating does not discuss WHAT was said or WHAT was talked to us about -- the OBJECT of the information. Loqui-loquating means talking about linguistic information. For instance, somebody decides to talk about "consciouness." To begin with, he has got the name of something. It is a generic and vague name, like "flower." For the sake a clear example, let us suppose somebody chooses "flower" as a topic of discussion. He and others may start asking where flowers come from, what produces flowers.... that is, he asks questions about flowers in the same way that he asks questions about houses and cars: how they are produced, etc. They don't ask WHETHER flower are produced. They do not see that there are no such realities as flowers. They don't think of exemplifying flowers and of speaking of THIS rose, which has been picked from a plant, which somebody had planted but did not produce either the plant or the rose. So, the present kind of discussing is not inquisitive or aiming at revealing [SAYING]; it is a kind of juggling words around, treating a word like any other word, expressing one's opinions or feelings about the vaguely alluded things which somebody said, and nothing more. In effect, in this kind of thinking [or speaking], there is hardly any utilization of lots of information which a person has.

It takes intelligence to make use of information. It takes intelligence to make use of learned axioms and theorems for the sake of demonstrating a new theorem. It takes intelligence to see that what you are talking about does not even exist. And you end up discussing THEORIES about the subject at hand, while you do not know that theories (if valuable at all) depend on the sayings or revealings of specific realities and connections with other realities. This means that the theories -- used for either justifying or refuting -- are as little understood as the objects under discussion. The loqui-loquating mind is a mind that operates in the dark and illogically. It plays with language and nothing more.

(C) INQUIRING ABOUT WHAT IS SAID = PHILOSOPHICAL SPEAKING

A philosophical speaking, done dialectically with other or within one's own mind, constitutes a DISQUISITION, an investigation of WHAT words say (of the OBJECTS of speech). Through the words, the mind is led to the plenitude of reality that lies behind a word. That plenitude has or may have been unfolded in innumerable words, or new names have to be given for what is beheld behind the sounds of the language. Philosophy is thus the path of inquiry, investigation, exploration of reality and of what ought to be. The mind is the scalpel that severs tissues instead of cutting them, and the microscope that reveals what is ordinarily blurred. Philosophy is not a technique or a method one can learn, but apprendiceship can help those who have the eagerness TO KNOW.

When Plato set out to teach a man statesmanship, he prescribed learning geometry first. People who do not know what a training of the mind (thinking, logical analysis, etc.) is laughed. I also suggest courses in analytical chemistry, anatomy, and microbiology, as much as Plato's dialogues, and undoubtedly people laugh. People in general have lost the idea of training for craftsmanship... programmed machine do such a precise work! And doing loqui-loquating is so much easier and fun!

If doing philosophy is to do probing thinking or to inquire into that which is being said -- as I have stated so far, then philosophy goes beyond the opinions which people have formed about what they have experienced, or the explanatory accounts that people have devised. The philosopher abandons opinions and myths, wherefore he can be said to deal with reality itself or occurrences. But this presupposes that he can distinguish facts and opinions about facts. This is more easily said than done, for the power of discernment, perspicacity, is not a given power in any man. If all men were endowed with perspicacity, then opinions would have been dispelled the moment they were formed.

This attitude to speak of reality itself or to clear it from opinions and myths is the philosophical perspective. Differently put, the philosopher aims at speaking truthfully -- of reality as it is -- rather than by imaginings or mental contrivances. But the moment he starts distinguishing truth [episteme; scientia] and opinion [doxa; mythos], he will also inquires into what constitutes truthful speaking. He will develop a criteriology of truth. Many men claim to speak the truth; the philosopher has to know what true speaking is, to begin with.

The objective of philosophy: To speak of reality as it itself is, as Plato said, or to speak of reality according to its own principles [juxta propria principia] as Telesio was to say in the second Age of Men [or Reason]. The second phrasing of the point brings home the fact that in the beginning, humans thought of their experienced realities in terms of extraneous powers or forces, rather than according to their intrinsic powers. So, in the 6th century B.C. (in the first Age of Men), Anaximander and then Pythagoras, independently and in different ways, relinguished the mythological world as they probed into that which lies beyond our words, into the universe. They founded the philosophical perspective; they were the first philosophers. Theology, whether prophetic or speculative, was surpassed, but it keeps on coming back as the second Humanistic Age keeps on waning, especially in the center of the world's neo-feudal power, the U.S.A.

Philosophy and the history (searching adventure) of the philosophers are one and the same thing. Poetry and philosophy have already disappeared in the U.S.A., and there is no power on earth that can constrain its capitalistic-zionistic regime (outside the constitutional Republic). I see the new Dark Ages growing around myself and casting deep shadows over the world.