Important Nonsense

My new work "Important Nonsense / Essays in Philosophy" is available via Amazon.

The weblink is: http://www.amazon.com/Important-Nonsense-Philosophy-Steven-Brutus/dp/0615608809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335480009&sr=8-1

This work explores a number of themes in the psychology of philosophy.  I am investigating the emotions that incite philosophy, the emotions that sustain philosophy, and the emotions in which philosophy results.  My subjects include suffering, which I think of as an important beginning for philosophy; philalethes, or love of truth, which I see as animating the practice of philosophy; and hope, which I think of as an important outcome of philosophy.

One of the main ideas of this work is that suffering upsets the meaning we give our lives.  We cannot live without meaning.  Philosophy responds to moral crisis and struggles to heal what suffering has injured.  The high calling of philosophy has the humble purpose of enabling us to reenter the world and act.  My study of suffering and of philosophy that struggles with it leads me to the conclusion that resilience in the face of suffering is a choice.  There is no explanation for human strength greater than the decision to be strong.  Suffering incites philosophy and philosophy emboldens hope.  My study of hope and of philosophy that awakens it leads me to the conclusion that human beings can only understand what is directly in front of them by imagining it into a still unrealized future.  The core function of thinking is a kind of hoping forward.  This hope meets one obstacle after another and is repeatedly dashed and rekindled.  Philosophy is therapy for this restless, knocked-about, rising and falling, core function of hope.  This book examines several such offers of therapy, narrates several case histories, and assesses the benefits of philosophic interventions.  All these cures propose to liberate us from the past and all count on the power of choice.  But their recommendations are quite different – they answer different problems – they advocate different lives.  Some try to talk us down.  They look for peace, calm, unknowing.  Some try to psych us up.  They try to get us back in the fight, and to love something worth fighting for.  We have to question all these strategies, thinking beyond them, to pose the question about philosophy and the role it should play in our lives. 

The title of the book is drawn from Frank Ramsey’s 1929 essay entitled “Philosophy.”  Ramsey thought that we are driven to philosophize because we do not know clearly what we mean.  Philosophy therefore is a reflection on meaning.  It tries to make sense of things and cut away nonsense.  But he wondered whether philosophy itself is nonsense.  He added that, if this is our finding, we should not trick ourselves into thinking that philosophy is important nonsense. 

I am also trying to understand philosophy by wondering whether philosophy is nonsense, and what drives us to it, and what it is trying to accomplish, and whether it is in any way important.  

Plato's cave

My friend the philosopher Peter Boghossian set me this problem:

If we think about the Allegory of the Cave, it is the world of opinion
and ignorance (an irrational society) that prompts a Socratic figure
to emerge and begin questioning it.  So it is, apparently, possible
for a Socrates to arise in the cave. How can I reconcile this--if he
can arise in Plato's cave, then can he not arise in a completely
irrational society?

--

How can the philosopher emerge in the world of the cave – in the world
of opinion and ignorance – in the world of fanaticism and dogmatism –
in an irrational society?

In brief, how can philosophy emerge at all? – You are asking about the
origin of philosophy.  You are asking: how can reason emerge from
unreason?  How can questioning emerge from a world without questions?

Here is a discussion about this problem – at least some thoughts to begin.

Plato is a source for the saying that philosophy begins in wonder
(thauma) – this is from the Theaetetus.  This seems an odd thing to
say about philosophy in that its problems have such depth and
seriousness about them.  They seem out of joint with such an innocent
and playful thing as wonder or curiosity.  Plato also mentions (Rep
475c) that the philosopher, once he gets going, does not desire just a
part of wisdom, but all wisdom – which suggests that this deep-diving
thing we are calling philosophical questioning could begin innocently
with something like curiosity and quickly grow into an all-consuming
passion.  This suggests that the big problem with philosophy is not
its origin but its growth into a comprehensive attitude – from one
question to all questions.  The two first moments here are: wonder as
a provocation, and questioning that has its own momentum.

It seems clear that for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, philosophy
comes up in the individual, and is impelled by or emergent from
powerful thoughts – thus the first philosophers were amazed by the
natural world and began from this awe or amazement to try to build an
explanation.  The first phase of Greek philosophy is cosmology, which
at first is barely a step away from religious mythologizing and
storytelling.  But cosmology becomes ethics – questions about the
natural world become questions about the everyday world of people and
society – metaphysics becomes political philosophy.  In general the
trend is to get from questions about nature to questions about
society.  This means: people in the cave begin thinking about the
nature of the cave (out of wonder and curiosity) and gradually begin
to question the cave society -- the social arrangements that they
themselves participate in in the world of social life.

If we look at other traditions we get a few more ideas about
starting-points.  In some cases, chaotic social conditions seem to
precede creative thinking about how society should be arranged
(Confucius).  In some cases, a willingness to take an argument from
simple premises to ultimate conclusions – the passion for pursuing an
argument all the way to the end – seems the key factor in the birth of
philosophy (the Upanishadic thinkers).  For the Buddha, thinking
begins with suffering.  Suffering is made into a problem and the kind
of thinking that is created lends itself to all sorts of
problem-making – to philosophical questioning in general.

The Indian tradition seems in many places to suggest the idea that
philosophy begins in the problem of self-control.  By trying to get a
handle on all the different thoughts and feelings and impulses
coursing around in our brains/hearts/bodies, we have created the
conditions for explicit thought and philosophical questioning

The Chinese tradition seems to suggest that philosophy has a social
origin and in effect is the result of the break-up of dynasties --
government officials lose their offices and are scattered into
different provinces, where they begin to teach in a private capacity
what they were once required to do in an official capacity – high
officers become literati, soldiers become moralists, astrologers
become metaphysicians.  This is an ancient explanation for what people
call “the hundred schools” – it comes from Ssu-ma Chien and more
recently was restated by Fung Yu lan.

So: a social origin; a subjective origin; wonder at the natural world;
facing harsh reality and trying to come up with ideas to ameliorate
things, to solve problems.  Another idea that I have written about and
that I associate with African philosophy is the idea that there is
something like a philosophical instinct that comes up in everyone,
especially in children, which then gets repressed and becomes replaced
by religious teaching.  This model suggests that virtually everyone in
the cave has the impetus to become a Socrates, without any contact
with anyone else, simply by being human.  They will get there unless
they are explicitly prevented from doing so.

I think many of us have the experience of growing up in irrational,
dysfunctional families (really, the only kind there are) and out of
the chaos of family life and all its pressures, we begin to hear a
“still small voice” that urges us to think for ourselves.  I think I
had an experience as a child, listening to what the adults around me
were saying, when I suddenly understood that I was the most thoughtful
person under this roof; if anyone is going to do some thinking here,
it’s going to have to be me.  So in the darkness of my little corner
of the cave, philosophy got started one more time.