Philosophy in Seven Sentences E-Book

Douglas Groothuis

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Introductions in Seven Sentences
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 223

Beschreibung

Philosophy is not a closed club or a secret society. It's for anyone who thinks big questions are worth talking about. To get us started, Douglas Groothuis unpacks seven pivotal sentences from the history of western philosophy—a few famous, all short, none trivial. Included are: - Socrates—The unexamined life is not worth living. - Augustine—You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. - Descartes—I think, therefore I am. - Pascal—The heart has reasons, that reason knows nothing of.Protagoras, Aristotle and Kierkegaard round out this quick tour.Since every philosopher has a story, not just a series of ideas, Groothuis also offers a bit of each one's life to set the stage. The seven sterling sentences themselves, while they can't tell us all there is to know, offer bridges into other lands of thought which can spark new ideas and adventures. And who knows where they might lead? The accessible primers in the Introductions in Seven Sentences collection act as brief introductions to an academic field, with simple organization: seven key sentences that give readers a birds-eye view of an entire discipline.

Leseprobe

PHILOSOPHY

IN SEVEN SENTENCES

A SMALL INTRODUCTION TO A VAST TOPIC

DOUGLAS GROOTHUIS

To Gordon R. Lewis, PhD, Senior Professor, Denver Seminary, whose contributions to Christian philosophy and Christian theology for more than six decades have been a godsend to the church and a challenge to the unbelieving world

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Philosophy in Only Seven Sentences?

1 Protagoras

Man is the measure of all things.

2 Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.

3 Aristotle

All men by nature desire to know.

4 Augustine

You have made us for yourself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in you.

5 Descartes

I think, therefore I am.

6 Pascal

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

7 Kierkegaard

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.

Conclusion: What About These Seven Sentences? or, A Final Provocation

Notes

Index

Praise for Philosophy in Seven Sentences

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Preface

Inspiration is an odd beast, enlightening here and deceiving there. Inspiration sometimes comes through epiphany, seemingly out of nowhere and resplendent with originality and beauty. Some works of great music appear in this way. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his anti-Gospel, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in a fit of literary effusion lasting only two weeks. The result has baffled millions for a century.

Philosophy in Seven Sentences came into being rather quickly after a lifetime of engaging philosophy: after many discussions and arguments about philosophy, after three academic degrees in philosophy, after attending (too) many conferences about philosophy, after grading many papers about philosophy (both good and evil), after publishing much about philosophy, after changing some of my views on philosophy, and after sometimes questioning my own ability to do philosophy well.

I was inspired by recent popular books featuring numbers and objects in the titles, such as A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage, and The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objects by Richard Kurin. My object for organizing and introducing philosophy was not a physical object but an object of thought: a sentence. The number seven seemed right, given the alliteration and because I was drawn to just these philosophically pregnant sentences. My hope is that the book will introduce the beginner to the craft of philosophy. A seasoned reader might find ideas worth consulting afresh or even for the first time.

Philosophy is a many-splendored discipline. Miniature books, such as this, must fail to lasso everything and will leave many critters hurdling about in the pasture, unnamed and unattended. To talk shop, Philosophy in Seven Sentences is most concerned with epistemology (how and what we can know) and metaphysics (the study of being). Travelers through the book will also read a bit about moral philosophy and aesthetics.

Philosophers have biographies, although their philosophies are not limited to their biographies. So, each chapter includes a bit of their stories. (A few of my stories appear as well.) Since philosophers argue and agree with other philosophers, I consider their intellectual relationship with others in the guild, particularly those philosophers whose sentences we engage. Dialogue and debate down through the ages is the conversation of philosophy. Overhearing it may spark truth in our souls or at least clear away some errors of thought.

I do not take up theology directly, but each of the seven sentences bears on questions concerning God, the universe and humanity. I am not sure why anyone would be interested in philosophy otherwise.

I have many to thank, but room for only a few. Jason Crowder found references for Augustine and Pascal that eluded me (to my shame). My colleague Sarah Geis gave excellent commentary on Descartes. Elizabeth Johnson contributed some dandy editing. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis prayed for this book project, as she has for all my other ones. Thanks also to the administration of Denver Seminary for granting me a sabbatical during which much of this work was done.

Introduction

Philosophy in Only Seven Sentences?

Can we tackle some of the key questions and answers in philosophy through just seven sentences by seven famous philosophers? I wager we can; so we will. Many other sentences—or paragraphs or books—could have made the cut. Because of this, some will argue that my selection was biased, ignorant or slanted. If so, let them philosophize over it. After all, that is the purpose of this book: to think and act philosophically.

I make no claim that Philosophy in Seven Sentences is representative of philosophy as a whole. I chose these authors and their sentences for several reasons. First, I was familiar with them. As I point out several times, many of these ideas have deep autobiographical significance to me. Second, they raise issues pertinent to our day. Third, each sentence is fairly well known; none is esoteric.1 I also chose these authors because their arguments were clear enough to be well suited to philosophical analysis, even on a popular level.2

Some may think that popular philosophy is an oxymoron, a silly contradiction not worthy of a moment’s thought. Philosophy is, of course, for experts—those who have accumulated vast student-loan debts, after which they have logged long and lonely years in the classroom, studying at their desks, and arguing with other philosophers about philosophy. These strange souls are abstruse, esoteric, recondite and many other long, pompous words not meant for the masses. Philosophers write for each other, argue with each other and often flummox or bore the hapless college students whose academic requirements put them in their presence.

And so it is for many philosophers, but not for all of them. At its most ancient root, philosophy was meant to initiate us into “the good life,” to tutor us for the ongoing experience of knowledge and virtue. Since everyone lives some kind of life, philosophy explored the mind’s abilities to live life in accord with reality. At best, it helps scratch the itch of human existence—or, at its worst, it rubs the wound raw. Even though etymology (the study of word origins) may deceive, it does its work well in understanding the origin of philosophy, telling us that its two Greek parts are love (philos) and wisdom (sophos). Philosophers may not always love wisdom, but that is their discipline’s pedigree. The Hebrew Bible warns in the book of Proverbs that both wisdom and folly call out for reflection and allegiance. The wise are diligent in learning, facing the facts in earnest, while the fool sacrifices character for ignorance and untutored pleasure. But knowledge beckons, nevertheless, at least in our better moments. As Aristotle wrote, “All men by nature desire to know.” (We will examine this sentence shortly.)

Any thinking person may join philosophy’s discussion, which rings down through the ages. That is the aim of this small book, which, I hope, can be read profitably by both philosophical neophytes and seasoned philosophers, whatever their worldview may be. My aims are catholic (universal), however parochial my selections may seem to some.

Philosophy is not a closed club or a secret society. Since we all can think about ultimate questions, let’s do it. For the record, I propose that the requirements for being a philosopher (whether good or bad, major or minor, professional or layperson) are a strong and lived-out inclination to pursue truth through the rigorous use of human reasoning, and to do so with some intellectual facility. But, sadly, even some philosophers disavow the search for truth. In What’s the Use of Truth? French philosopher Pascal Engel writes, “There is . . . no obligation to say or to believe that which is true.”3 If so, why should we read his writings or those of any other philosopher?

Is then everyone a philosopher? Everyone muses a bit on where we came from, who we are and where we are going. But not all do this very well. So, while Johnny Rotten (b. 1956) of the Sex Pistols addressed some philosophical themes in his punk rock compositions and performances, one is reluctant to give him the title of philosopher. This is because it is a kind of merit badge, reserved for the few. I was recently asked by a precocious ten-year-old named Liam if I was a philosopher. I said I was. Then he asked, “What do you do?” My reply was, “I think a lot about arguments.” We then discussed the nature of an argument. With a little coaxing he told me what an argument was: giving reasons for what you believe, often in conversations with those who believe otherwise. I have recruited him for graduate study in my program.

To enjoin the discussion of philosophy, I will appeal to seven sentences, all of which are short, but none of which are trivial. Some are more renowned than others. A few of them are famous. These statements are not impenetrable, deceiving the unwary inquirer with obscurity masquerading as profundity. Sadly, not a few philosophers cloak their ideas with idiosyncrasies and unnecessary jargon. Not so for a Socrates or Jesus, who went about speaking the common tongue in uncommon ways to both common and uncommon people. The public square was their classroom and all comers were their students. Neither wrote a word, but their words are unforgettable, as we will see. Their ideas are affirmed and denied by the simplest and most sophisticated thinkers.

While we cannot directly encounter the likes of Socrates or Jesus—or the more bookish philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes and kindred—we can interrogate them and investigate the perennial questions they address: the nature of truth, how we gain knowledge, the meaning of human existence, death, the source of morality and more. In my many years as a teacher and learner of this antique art, I find to my dismay that too many students too often give up too soon. They face an intellectual difficulty, some demanding reading, or differences of opinion and they cash in their chips, despite my provocations, cajoling, and (on occasion) anger. It need not be and should not be so. T. S. Eliot should kindle a flame in us. “But our lot crawls between dry ribs to keep our metaphysics warm.”4

I first read Eliot’s line in 1977 and never forgot it. Who could, unless he or she were skimming? Martin Heidegger, despite his murky prose, was right in calling our lives a “being unto death,” because our eventual demise—gradual or instant—brackets ­everything we think or do or hope. “No one gets out of here alive” is no tired cliché, unhappily. Samuel Johnson put it well: “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”5 Our mortality sets limits on all our endeavors, including philosophizing. There is, like it or not, a flashing stop sign ahead on the road. So, why not think well now? Or at least try to? We can take or steal some calmly measured time to muse on what matters most, and we have some guides—epitomized by their sentences—to light the way or at least to rebuke our intellectual laziness. Let me introduce them, in historical order.

Surveying the Seven

Protagoras is not a household name. Google him and find out. (The first entry is, not surprisingly, Wikipedia.) Nor do you find many academic titles analyzing his ideas, although he is often grouped with the Sophists. This is considered a disreputable crowd by some wags and is even a byword: “You sophist!” The charge is that Sophists cared nothing for truth but cared everything about being paid to philosophize for a vested interest. More on these philosophers-for-hire later. Even so, this old Greek crystallizes the thought of not a few philosophers and nonphilosophers. Our chosen sentence sums it up.

Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.6

Protagoras gives wings to an idea that many ponder: try our hardest (or not try at all), we cannot break free of ourselves—our senses, our viewpoints, our values, even our “stuff.” The world is our judgment and nothing more. It does not await our judgment; it is our judgment. There is no objective truth but only various views from various places at various times by various people. Things are not our measure, but we are the measure of them. Hence, Protagoras is the spokesman for relativism, sometimes called nonrealism or perspectivism. It is not just that we have no (or limited) access to objective reality. That is skepticism. Reality is pretty much exhausted by our perceptions and thoughts. The real world is our world. Myriads have measured Protagoras wrong at least on this, but no one in pursuit of knowledge and wisdom can ignore him. His ghost haunts us still. Is there a philosophical exorcist about?

Our next sentence is often heard but seldom digested. I unfailingly quote it in my first class of introduction to philosophy: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I attempt to coax my students to live this way—for their sakes and mine. (It makes for better papers too.) Thus said Socrates, the gadfly (or pain-in-the-neck) of ancient Athens. Like Protagoras, we know of Socrates through those who knew his work, but unlike Protagoras we have more substantial sources, particularly Plato. And Socrates is a household name. Not incidentally, the man who was not an author ended up being the inspiration for the prolific Plato, who was the world’s first systematic philosopher. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead discerned, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”7 The footnotes may praise (Augustine) or blame (Aristotle), but footnotes are everywhere, as well as entire volumes.

Taking up Socrates’s philosophical challenge means examining just what his famous sentence means in itself and what it means for us. What might an examined life be, given the distractions and overstimulation of postmodern times? For Socrates there is a way to calm the mind and search things out. But is there a place for Socratic dialogue today, outside the Socratic method of many law schools? Further, old Plato, Socrates’s chronicler and student, may offer us wisdom pertaining to the nagging questions of philosophy as he spurns the work of the philodoxers (lovers of opinion) and promotes the call of the philosophers (lovers of wisdom). Worse yet were the misologists (one of the Platonic corpus’s most winning words), those who took an active role in hating the use of reason itself. We may find some today, even in educated enclaves or even on the bestsellers lists.

But one can also find Aristotle in popular bookstores, always in the philosophy section (along with less prestigious volumes such as Led Zeppelin and Philosophy, which we must pass over without further comment). When Aristotle wrote, “All men by nature desire to know,” he did not mean just the scholars or teachers but “man”—the human race in all its circumstances and variations. That means every person, whatever social standing, vocation or intelligence. Although Aristotle was no egalitarian (he thought that women were inferior to men and that some were born to be slaves), he nevertheless appeals to a universal human condition: the desire to get reality right in the time that we have.

Augustine, the first great Christian philosopher, like Socrates before him, strikes a personal note concerning getting reality right. Having examined himself and the leading philosophies of his day (including Plato and his footnotes), he confesses with a cry of the heart, addressed to God, “You have made us for yourself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in you.” This cry is not commonplace, as in “My spirituality gives me meaning.” It is, instead, the beginning of an argument told in his autobiography. In fact, it may be the first autobiography on record. It is, no doubt, the first philosophical autobiography (if we exclude the book of Ecclesiastes). The irascible Jean-Jacques Rousseau is well known for his autobiography as well, but a short book can only do so much.8

Skipping madly over much philosophical history (without any irreverence or glibness), we arrive at René Descartes, the much maligned but seldom understood “father of modern philosophy.” Descartes was troubled by opinions without backing—those ideas about ultimate matters untethered from certainty. Skepticism was his foe, as it is in one way or another for any philosopher. This is because the question arises, How do you know what you claim to know? Mere social position or historical tradition will not cinch the deal for this philosopher and scientist. In our language (which itself needs interrogation), the man “wanted proof.” While “I don’t know” is often the most knowledgeable answer, it should not be the default response, according to Descartes. This apprehension led him on a quest that began with himself. Like Augustine, but in briefer scope, he put this in autobiographical form in Discourse on Method and to some extent in Meditations on First Philosophy. But Descartes’s quest did not end with himself, unlike so much contemporary self-help literature. He is famous for the sentence “I think, therefore I am.” But God himself has something to do with that sentence. For Descartes there was no leap of faith in it either. Reason was the guide. But how far can reason take us?

A contemporary of Descartes had an idea: “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of,” wrote Blaise Pascal, who was the best phrasemaker of the lot of our philosophers. This statement is a window into a worldview. Humans have the capacity to calculate and reason methodically, but they may also know some things by tracing out the contours and resources of “the heart”—another organ of knowledge. Philosophers study many thinkers, but few come to love few of them. (My graduate seminar on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was well worth it, but was no love affair.) Pascal, on the contrary, is much loved by many. He is so loved that people even love things he never actually said, such as “There is a God-shaped vacuum that only God can fill.” But this paraphrase is not far off the mark, though it should be placed within a larger perspective of Pascal’s philosophy.

The French polymath’s philosophy is far more fascinating than the CliffsNotes version allows. Pascal did not put faith in place of reason, and he was not a one-trick philosopher (Pascal’s wager). Slander and libel have fouled the air about him, obscuring his sophisticated treatment of the cost-benefit sense of believing in religion or not. Yet he was neither knave nor poser. The founder of probability theory and the inventor of the first working calculating machine had reasons for faith. Like Descartes, he was bugged by skepticism, and, like Descartes, he appealed to human nature as a place to start the discussion.

Our last sentence is not as well known as the previous ones, but it opens a door of inquiry for us.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.

It was penned by an idiosyncratic and famously melancholy Dane named Søren Kierkegaard, a philosopher intensely interested in the self in relation to ultimate reality. This should sound familiar, since all philosophers have expressed this interest in one way or another. But Kierkegaard’s way was, in a sense, as much psychological as philosophical. He intrepidly limned the inner workings of the self, of consciousness, in philosophical categories. Like Pascal, Kierkegaard wanted to strip away, through existential analysis, the layers and dynamics of the self that keep reality at bay. Unlike Pascal and the other philosophers, he was more interested in the analysis of the self than presenting it with arguments for an abstract objective reality. This may sound a bit unphilosophical, but it is not. But that takes time to tease out properly, as I hope you will see.

Our seven sentences may be viewed as several doors into worlds previously unknown. Or they may be our irritants to prod us to move away from facile factoids—“Do your own thing,” “Follow your bliss,” “Keep Calm and Carry On”—to more sobering reflections.9 Perhaps the sentences are bridges to other lands of thought. These philosophical sentences do not sum the thought of any of the philosophers, for these thinkers are far too deep for that. Nor do the seven sentences aim to summarize the history of philosophy. That would be a pompous and laughable claim. Some things cannot be put into a nutshell, including the nutshell itself. But I claim that philosophical activity can be sparked by just seven sterling sentences—and who knows where it might lead?

- one -

Protagoras

Man is the measure of all things.

Protagoras, quoted in Theaetetus

Greeks could do philosophy! The basic questions of existence have never been far from the human mind, but the ancient Greeks excelled at this, and their musings—some fragmentary or secondhand—have been preserved in written texts. However much philosophy occurred in exclusively oral cultures, the Greeks valued writing in addition to oral memory and tradition. Socrates, you remember, wrote nothing, but generated a vast literature though his dialogues. A lesser-known figure who came after him did write a few things, and his famous adage is worth considering.

Protagoras (fifth century BC) is not to be confused with like-sounding ancient Greek thinkers named Pythagoras or Parmenides, who along with others were pre-Socratic thinkers. (This shows the significance of Socrates, since philosophy is dated with respect to his life.) These thinkers are worth interrogating as well, and I studied them with profit in a year-long course in ancient philosophy forty years ago. Protagoras stands out to us, though, because of his adage about absolute assessment:

Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.1

His claim is not simply that people measure things—such as character, chariots, boats and fish—but that each human is the measure. Each person is the assessment or judgment. What could this mean? No person is a slide ruler or scale or Geiger counter, although we avail ourselves of such things.

What Is the Measure?

We tend to think that people use a standard of measurement outside of themselves. Even inadequate and one-dimensional measures such as one’s IQ score are not determined by how we feel about them—and Mensa is very picky about this.

On the other hand, Protagoras has Shakespeare’s Hamlet on his side, at least concerning morality: “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”2 That is, morals do not have objective standing; rather, they are judged differently by different people. This quote is from a discussion about Denmark, which Hamlet, unlike his interlocutor, Rosencrantz, said was “a prison.” If Hamlet is right, then both Hamlet and Rosencrantz are right about Denmark.

What then was Protagoras’s point? (We’ll put serious Shakespearian interpretation aside.) To find out we need to take a step back into the Greek philosophical scene and not rush to judgment—or rush to endorsement either. Protagoras would approve of this deliberation.

Protagoras was considered the chief of the Sophists, intellectuals who were paid to defend the views of their sponsors. They were accomplished orators as well as thinkers. Originally, the term sophist meant something like our “professor,” but later a Sophist was deemed a hired gun, a philosopher for hire and one having no principles of his own. Their arguments, supposedly, were merely the instruments of the will of their bosses. One may argue over the virtues of the Sophists, but it is certainly not true that being paid for philosophizing necessarily disqualifies the employee’s arguments. On the other hand, if we think of a Sophist as something like a political speech writer or the like, our judgment will change. Whatever the intellectual rectitude of Protagoras, he was a perpetual lecturer who articulated and debated ideas in the marketplace, a marketplace of ideas that yet exists. We may join in the discussion.

Mythology and Philosophy

Protagoras was one of a spirited group of fastidious thinkers who tired, or at least grew skeptical, of Greek mythology, with its pantheon of gods. Yes, the stories of the gods were often riveting and worth repeating. A recent volume by Luc Ferry is called The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life.3 There was always a moral to the story. Hercules, the last son of Zeus, was a dashing and dramatic character who started as a mighty mortal and became a god upon death. Although a bit impetuous and lacking in sobriety, he plays well as a hero. Zeus himself is the apotheosis of power, but acts largely without moral authority. Even the might of Zeus does not support the idea that “might makes right,” since might may make for divine mischief. My point is not to survey or psychoanalyze the denizens of Greek mythology but to make a general point. Mythologies may inspire and guide, to some extent, our relation to the hard facts of family, life, death and sexuality (and some of the gods tended to be naughty in this way).

Nevertheless, the problem with Greek mythology (or any mytho­­­logy, Eastern or Western) is simply that it is mythology; it is neither history nor clearly articulated philosophy. In too many ways the gods, despite their thespian résumés and magical powers, were not much more than semi-glorified mortals. This was the objection of a growing group of Greeks who were mere mortals—mortals with meaning, metaphysics and morality on their minds. And what might the mind do when free to explore life and its questions apart from the venerable stories of Greek fascination? It might philosophize, and so it did.

Protagoras and his cohorts quested for explanations of a more abstract but also compelling sort than the old tales could afford. They sought principles to explain facts in a universal and logically coherent manner. To be a little unfair to the mythologies, consider the tooth fairy. She adds some magical benevolence to the loss and placement of a baby tooth for children, but the fairy story adds nothing about the nature of benevolence, the significance of teeth or the significance of the humans who grow and lose these teeth, whether through development (teething) or decay (the toothless).

Thus, to give one example, Thales of Miletus tried to find a cosmic commonality to all things. He divined it as water. Yes, water, which was more than rain, oceans, lakes and puddles. It was everywhere, so perhaps it was the root and branch of every