INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY:
1.0 Introduction
What 'philosophy'
might be and its relation to theology.
Welcome to this course!
Have you ever had a conversation about what's wrong with the country and
how it might be fixed up? Or thought
about whether there was such a thing as a 'soul' or 'God' and whether we really
survived death? Have you ever sat down,
perhaps at the end of a party or barbeque when only the regulars are left, and
in company with a few good friends 'solved the problems of the world'?
If you have, then you should be rather set for this
course. The Republic, which is probably the most famous of the Dialogues of the Greek philosopher Plato
(427 - 347 B.C.) is about the first of the above questions, more or less, and
it is set over dinner or after dinner.
Another of his Dialogues, the Symposium
or Feast, is quite specifically set at the end of a dinner party after numbers
of wines when those remaining take it in turns to share and discuss what
genuine love is. Some of them are rather
more serious in their setting. For
example, Socrates is waiting to be given the hemlock to drink, this being the
method by which he is to be executed by the Athenian democracy (399 B.C.). The conversation just has to be about death
and the after-life! Whatever, it is all
along the same lines, people engaged in thinking matters of individual and
common concern through more deeply, in a more or less sophisticated fashion,
beyond the everyday taken for granted, a search for insight and wisdom,
typically in conversation, in dialogue with others.
To cite someone more modern, how about this, from the
great Scottish philosopher David Hume
(1711- 1776 A.D.), towards the end of his Enquiry
concerning Human Understanding (Section XII): "Those who have a
propensity to philosophy, will still continue their researches; because they
reflect, that, besides the immediate pleasure attending such an occupation, philosophical decisions are nothing but the
reflections of common life, methodized and corrected." (EHU 162, my
emphasis). Or the notion of philosophy
as the conversation of human kind put
forward by the contemporary American philosopher Richard Rorty. Though this latter may go a little bit too
far.
Whatever, philosophy is not just a university subject or
a university department. It is something
that engages, or may engage you and people with whom you associate. Indeed, from very early on, it has been
regarded by many in both East and West as useful for everyone and a necessity
for some, a part of one's spiritual journey and a vitally important ingredient
particularly for anyone inspiring for leadership or public office. Interestingly enough, from the very
beginnings in the early circle of Pythagoras (about 500 BC) this included
women, as also in the circle of Plato at least in theory.
The object of the course you are about to enter is to
help you/us widen the conversation, to give us a whole heap of new dialogue
partners so to speak, derived mostly for the Mediterranean basin and European
traditions.
Philosophy, conceived as a continuous tradition of
thinking, a 'conversation of human kind' expressing itself in various forms of
literature, has been with us in both East and West since before 500 B.C. Indeed, it is very interesting that three of
the key early people in different parts of the world were all alive at the same
time: Pythagoras, c. 575 - after 500
B.C., Confucius, 551- 479 B.C. and the Buddha, 560 - c. 480 B.C.. It's as if something new was happening all
over the world, as if humanity as such suddenly broke through to a new level of
self-reflection. Needless to say,
something like this has been going on, in both East and West, in a variety of
different forms ever since.
Our word 'philosophy'
comes from two Greek words, philia,
meaning 'love' as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love; and sophia, meaning 'wisdom', in something
like the sense of, life enhancing knowledge.
So a philosopher is someone who is in love with wisdom, and strives
after it with the powers at his or her disposal. The word seems to have been first coined by
the Pythagoreans.
According to Aristotle (384 -322 B.C.) philosophy begins
in wonder. One might say that it
continues to be sustained by wonder.
While it always takes place in some culture and some tradition of
previous thinking, e.g. the one you are in at the moment, it proceeds by
reference to the experiences available to the participants, the best reasoning
they can muster at the time, and more or less open dialogue with each other and
with its own past. It is something you
have already been engaged in and which you are invited to engage in some more,
albeit in another, probably a bit more 'academic', mode. ['Academic' by the way comes from the name of
the philosophy school set up by Plato, the Academy).
Finally, there are at least three reasons why a person
interested primarily in Christian theology might be interested in this unit:
1)
Firstly, there is a large degree of overlap
between problems and mysteries that philosophers probe and those that
theologians are interested in. For
example, freedom and determinism, souls and minds and bodies, right and wrong,
life after death, how we construct ourselves or are constructed as the people
that we are, God. There is plenty of
room for cross-fertilization, for each to draw on the other.
2)
Secondly, in the classic phrase from the early
Middle Ages, philosophy is the 'handmaiden' of theology. Theology is Faith Seeking Understanding (St
Anselm, also early Middle Ages) or something like that. While philosophy is not enough for a person
taken up in faith, theology typically makes judicious use of the resources of
philosophy, the best that it knows at the time, in its project of
understanding.
3)
Thirdly, the history of Christian (and indeed
Jewish and Islamic) doctrine, theology, ethics and even spirituality, is
incomprehensible without a knowledge of the philosophical thought world in
which it was formed. (In the case of
Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism they are close to being continuous with each
other, with the philosophical paths being elements within various kinds of
knowledge and meditation yogas.)
In conclusion, Good Luck, and Happy Thinking! Keep your mind open, your critical faculties
at work, and don't believe everything you read.
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You might like to take a little time now filling in two columns
side by side, with the word Hopes on one side and the word Fears on the
other. What would you most like to get
out of this unit?