The Contemporary Task of Philosophy

The world we live in is described as modern, or sometimes post modern. It has an expanding population of six billion needing to be clothed and fed, and ecology in need of greater care in countless ways. Not only common sense but technical expertise is needed to keep everything running.

Behind the world of technical expertise is an ongoing world of scientific discovery which leaps forward remarkably. There is also an ongoing world of historical, sociological, and psychological scholarships which deals with what has stirred man in various ways at various times and places. Religion could be subsumed under religious studies here, so that it might become a matter once vital for various peoples, but now fading away.

Or it should be noticed that for some, religion is alive and well and a vital matter in personal and group contact. So we find, beyond the common sense world, a world of science, scholarship, and religion. Keats wrote “Ever let the fancy roam, pleasure never is at home” and in the roaming of fancy we find the realm of art, which can bring refreshment to the human spirit.

Human meanings develop in collaboration so we find developments in science, scholarship, religion, and art. The creation of terminology belongs to the group so we witness a Tower of Babel effect, wherein scientists live in one theoretical world, scholars another, religious people another and artistic people another and the idea that there should be some sort of communication which runs across these developing areas seems impossible.

Philosophy produces different stances. Some think that the only truth lies with empirical science and so the age of philosophy is over. Or some think its purpose is to chart the different meanings of terms as they are used in ordinary speech. Some think human studies should be value free whereas others are open to values so long as God is excluded. The phenomenologists would describe and the existentialists decide. Is there some way of bringing the philosophical world together so that it can address the world we find with its huge tasks and its specialised developments?

The recognition that there are different sorts of norms to be recognised in different sorts of activities is perhaps a starting point. So if you are riding in a bike race you need to look to your diet, or you won’t have enough energy. If you are looking after children, there are again norms about diet and also about conduct. The children might set the house on fire. There are norms around what it is to be a responsible parent. A failure to fulfil responsible norms which one recognises leads to a feeling of guilt.

So, according to one’s goal an appropriate norm is to attend to the data. If you are a bank clerk, you should count the notes in the wad carefully, but if you are a painter, you should note how the sunlight falls on the wad. We all live in the same world but we notice things differently according to the purposes which occupy us, “our memories, associations, a structure and one’s emotive and expressive reactions”. Sensation is rarely just raw sensation but rather a perception of some sort, and the perception to be worthy needs according to one’s purpose, to fulfil certain norms.

So sometimes I set myself the task of doing some reading, but sometimes I find I am quite distracted so that as the words pass before my eyes, I find I am not there, I am somewhere else. I have a choice – somehow to recall myself to the task in hand, or set myself the different task of finding out what it is that is occupying me, and preoccupying me. To read without taking in what is said, fails to fulfil the norm ”be attentive”.

One might say that the norm of being attentive is purely subjective, but if a painter only occasionally noticed the little matter of light and shade, his colleagues and critics would point out the fact and make him aware that his subjective fault had an objective set of consequences which, attended to, would bring him round to a better performance. I think one can see that in the scientific world and the scholarly world, the example of others and their advice helps subjectively to attain a better standard, to recognise the norms of subjectivity.

In a social discipline such as science, one can recognise the influence of others, but it is perhaps not out of place to note the development from the id to the ego, from the ego to the self, and from the self to the affirmation of individual identity. The id is the subconscious ordination to pleasure, survival and procreation and so the source of instinctual unfolding. The ego is that unfolding coming under the influence of archetypes which are sociologically carried. There are things appropriate for a boy or for a girl. Sex is here an archetypal controller. Or “Every little boy or girl that’s born alive is either a little Liberal or a Conservative”. I heard of a little boy wild about dressing up, and I felt sorry for him, for somehow the archetype had not been communicated through the subtle world of praise and blame. The ego then is shaped by archetypes. Imagine a little king – everyone should bow to him! The ego could rule a life, but the emergence of the self is something different. The self has projects and sacrifices to make to bring an achievement to fruition. It takes its cue from the world it finds and the opportunities presented. A sense of identity may be achieved and a reputation established. The affirmation of identity is not just a matter of the present and the future, but also of the past. I am the same one who has passed through infancy, the carelessness of schooldays, the discipline of study, a marriage, successful or not etc, etc. Potencies have been unfolding, but all along the same one has been engaged. There have been mistakes – I bear the scars. There have been sins – there is the task of repentance and reparation. There is the dawn of holiness. I recognise this identical self in its development is set for eternity.

So man inescapably finds himself set in a religious context. Facing fearsome problems in time one may seek to escape but can you escape from being the self that you are? Religion brings a transformation of that self to a self that is loved and, through the vicissitudes of life, learning to love. The transformation, so full of meaning, gives rise to a further specialisation as it is reflected upon, so in addition to commonsense, science, scholarships and art, we find theology, resulting from “in loveness” dominating the meaning of life.

If one remains with the scholastics and the priority of metaphysics, then one would be able to conclude that the supernatural infinitely outweighs the natural. The natural is its own order, but the supernatural is the middle ground between infinite divinity and mortal and indeed sinful humanity. There is upon man, the endless task of conversion from a simply natural set of demands to the demands and gifts of God Himself, whose ways are not our ways.

If one shifts from the metaphysical outlook, which gives one first, principles from which to make valid deductions, to the outlook which recognises the human subject himself in his authentic recognition of the norms governing subjectivity, then the infinite outweighing of the natural by the supernatural becomes the fact that it is love and God’s love that gives meaning to one’s life and there is nothing else, even a metaphysical first principle, that can outweigh the existential fact.

Such a realisation is not automatically matched by a flawless performance, for life has many demands and distractions and so the love of God when realised, sets in motion a process of conversion lasting over a lifetime in which the gift of love is more profoundly acknowledged and more efficaciously responded to. One can blandly say that washing up is part of God’s will but one’s motivation easily descends to the pragmatic, whereas conversion is concerned with that motivation as consciously moving. There is then, a luminous intensification possible and monastic life might help it. Intensification is a taking thought, a getting interested, a gaining of insights and a context in which to express them, a coalescence of insights so that a person’s inner structure develops and changes moving towards Christian, or other religious maturity in a development which may be experienced as crushingly slow. Still, understanding does develop and moves towards fullness as it embraces in the mystery but increasingly clearly all that God has made and plans. With concern for one’s development, others and the world a clear moral dimension emerges. Concern with values and the invisible ground of love brings awareness of the potency of mind and so also an intellectual conversion.

A metaphysical analysis reveals the mind as capax omnia, as unlimited in its scope but awareness of the priority of love gives mind its task in discerning the right order of things against “all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men”, and so the task of overcoming evil with good and lies with truth. The world is in greater measure than one realises, a conspiracy which consents to evil.

The spirit blows where it will. The above analysis is derived from a Christian context, of course, but is philosophical rather than theological and so might be acceptable to any person of a different tradition. It shows philosophy to be not just the love of wisdom, but the wisdom which acknowledges its grounding in love. It is a wisdom which recognises subjective norms, which are objective and binding and shows such norms to exist where consciousness is differentiated scientifically, in a scholarly way; in an artistic way; in a religious way and indeed, in a philosophical way which is authentic and recognises norms arising from consciousness itself. So there is a norm not to waste one’s life sleeping!