Why and How We Study Philosophy

Summer 1952

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Can man be an authority? Can everybody be an authority? From where could he have gotten that idea of authority at all? From where could he have that abstract idea of authority? We must also ask along with this, because it is related to this question of authority: how could man have conceived of the idea of god at all? What was originally meant in Abraham's concept of God? And what gave God the claim of absolute authority? Abraham's original concept of God was that of the God-Creator, the Creator who was the beginner, the Creator who created the creation. This immediately brings in the question of authority because what does creation make the creator of what he creates? The supreme authority of it, of course. This is what sustains the claim of absolute authority and what originally entitled the Creator to claim that authority in the first place--He was the author of it. But since we assume here that the idea of God was conceived by man, we still must go back to ask: What made it possible for man to conceive of a God-Creator? What metaphysical reality in man's own life made it possible for him to get the idea of a beginner, a creator? And what metaphysical reality made it possible for him to get this idea of authority that is related to creation? It was possible for man to conceive of the idea of a creator because of his own human experience that he himself was an author, that he could originate things. Just that gave him the idea of authority and provided the real foundation for it.

When reflecting on an idea in a methodological line, we always try to find out how that idea was given to man and from where; we try to find out how man was able to make it and how it was possible for him to have such an idea at all. A believer would say this whole discussion is senseless, that man's ability of authorship is only eassible because God gave it to him, but if we do not use God as an argument, as we cannot, then it would seem that man could not conceive of the idea of authority without the hidden but original idea of his own authorship and from that he derives his idea of authority. We find too that while this also provides the foundation far the claim of the absolute authority of God, man himself can never claim absolute authority and that such a thing as absolute authority is impossible because man is a being of becoming. He can become a man or a woman, he can become a more and more creative creature who is capable of more and more authorship--but he is not that; he can only become that.

But this is the hardest proposition that man can put to himself--to make himself a man or woman, to make himself a real, whole free parson--and to say that the hardest task is to develop the I or the self, which all modern philosophies are concerned with, is sheer nonsense. This is all within the self-experience of man (I know that I exist as an I because you exist as an I); the real task is how to make that I or self into a he or she, into a human being of certain quality. As long as I am concerned about how to become myself (which is a psychological matter), I can never become anything. Unless I attack the metaphysical problem and solve that, I am not even entitled to talk about myself. Other people viill tell me what I might be; I will find out what kind of a human being I am becoming from other people.

And here we get rid of psychological philosophy--not psychology itself, which as a science has to be concerned with the individual and not the person (and it is easier to find out about the individual when he is sick)--which tried to make out of the I and the self, out of the individual (as it was tried from Kierkegaard to Sartre) an existential philosophy that made it a metaphysical task for an individual to become himself--which is the most nihilistic proposition that can be put forth. One cannot become something when he can never know what it is—and if one tries to, it means to go into an infinite demonic process of self-ruin. If man tackles the real metaphysical task, he discovers that only by not wanting to become himself, only by disregarding this and trying instead to become more and more of the quality of man, and living up to that quality in the highest degree possible, can he become himself. That is his metaphysical task--and the paradox of human development. To try "to become one's self" means for man to enter into an endless labyrinth full of mirrors in which he seems to be that or that or that. He engages in a mental process of self-reflection where all substance gets destroyed. It is the very process of self-destruction itself and as such a substance destroyer.

A psychological proposition taken as a metaphysical task--or rather taken as a pseudo-metaphysical one--is one of the most dangerous propositions of our age and if it becomes the cement of a kind of philosophical and theological reasoning (which has nothing to do with philosophy or theology) one result is modern theological writing which throws in theological and philosophical prepositions cemented together by psychological propositions. This is found in all the so-called theological writing from Barth to Maritain, including Jewish theologians like Buber. In all of them we see the same method of mixing up three different methods and lines of thinking--religious, scientific and philosophical--which here we are trying to keep pure. This is an age where any combination can be made—even artistic thinking with the use of beautiful figures of speech and metaphors (and which artistically might be very sensitive too) can be thrown into the mélange—to produce a book which is, as the Americans say, "very stimulating," but never constructive. Nothing can be proved--we can only feel fine until we need the next book to make us feel better. These writers never seem to ask why human beings are so wonderful--which they are--but even if they did, they could never prove it by a method of combined thinking glued together by psychological errors.

There is only one way to freedom and that is the way of pure philosophy because philosophical thinking is the only human thinking concerned with freedom and truth, and to become a philosophieal man is the only way to become a free man. When we reject authority, we have to accept authorship--the authorship of everyone and common. As soon as we respect ourselves mutually and have become those authors, taking responsibility for it in a community based upon a constitution built upon mutual agreement, then we can take a kind of relative authority within that state we have built, and we can delegate relative authority to our representatives—an authority which is controlled by a never-ceasing authorship of authority by ourselves. Metaphysically speaking, if man creates a government to which free men try to govern themselves, it could never be regarded as an absolute authority. If it were, it would have to be abolished because it would run against this constitution we are talking about. By establishing the metaphysical foundations for a constitution and by showing what it would mean to establish a free state not based on a higher authority like God but on the authorship of free men, we would have a safeguard that unfortunately we do not have in the American Constitution--which was designed to be such a constitution but was never metaphysically established.

We see then that a free state supposes that everyone is a free man, and since everyone can only become so by pure philosophy, could we then not reverse the formula of Plato that philosophers have to be kings and kings have to be philosophers to the proposition: everyone has to be a philosopher--and a king. This second condition--"and a king"'--we have to add because we have found that a philosopher can never claim any kind of authority (or to be any kind of an expert or authority) whatsoever--and, of course, a certain amount of delegated authority under the conditions we have proposed is necessary.

In science and art, for example, a certain authority has to be agreed upon (which derives also from authorship) and both rely upon certain skills (although they have to be accounted for) that require a certain basic respect. Philosophy on the other hand not only has to give up any claim to authority, but also any claim to respect because of skill—and philosophy requires perhaps the richest skill of all. Nevertheless, the philosopher can never claim respect for his skill, and has to reject it again and again at every new step he makes. In skill there is only contained a certain mechanical guarantee for the performance itself and since philosophical skill involves logic, it is particularly dangerous. Philosophical skill can become, and without the beholder or student being able to realize it, pure fake if it is exerted as a mere skill. In enabling the philosopher to proceed on merely logical lines, it makes it possible for him to reason against reason; it makes him able to turn around every statement of the other person in his very mouth by mere dialectical skill--splitting up terms and falsifying them by the mere process of reasoning itself. Therefore, it is a most dangerous skill and one that has always to be controlled as to its very performance--or it makes a man an empty faker or betrayer who loses his ability to convince and gains instead a tremendous ability to talk people into anything.

Reason itself by the skill it has developed (the skill of reasoning itself) can turn into reasoning against reason--which is an inherent danger of philosophical skill and has been used by all the positivistic nihilistic thinkers of our age. It can be used by philosophers of pure intentions, and has been used by philosophers of pure intentions, who thought that by the discovery of that quality within the performance of philosophical skill itself, substance could never be lost. But the more men got into that line of reasoning, the deeper they were caught. That was all the result of Hegel, who discovered it and started it with his mistake that the mere gift of reason was the highest gift of man.

Of all the schools of philosophical thought--the Medieval (scholastic), the Jewish (Talmudic), etc.--the Jesuit and Hegelian schools are the greatest schools of the skill of thnking created on earth and anyone who has to acquire the highest possible skill of reasoning--that is, anyone who is going into productive philosophy to become a philosopher who tries to make new discoveries of possible new ways of life--can do so in those two schools: the Jesuit and the Hegelian. But if he does not become aware of the fact that in the very process engaged in substance can finally be last, he will get lost himself and become an involuntary faker who interprets on into infinity. The real metaphysical thinker, the free philosopher, finds himself mostly in a situation where he considers himself lucky if he can separate a handful of hair into a few bunches, let alone split one hair into seven parts--which has been a charge so often made against philosophers. But there is a truth in this charge nevertheless. A philosopher can engage in an infinity of reasoning for the sake of the matter of the skill of reasoning itself and simple people have felt that--although unfortunately they also have mistaken infinity of reasoning, which can be the result if philosophy is mishandled, for philosophy itself.

So the philosopher must always guard against letting his skill lead him into that infinity of reasoning which in the end can become a kind of political demogogery with endless arguing and only the concern to be right. If a man wants to be right at any price and has a good pair of lungs and a tireless tongue, then it only depends on how long he keeps on reasoning. Such a man no longer is evaluating the statement or taking into account the fact that a contradiction does not necessarily show the statement wrong, but only that an opinion has not been conveyed exactly. He is not concerned with that, but only with showing that the contradiction makes the statement untrue--which means he merely is performing an empty skill. This is just the danger inherent in this highest skill that human thinking can acquire, and therefore, the philosopher has to forfeit any claim of authority and has to say: "I am the one who always wants to be checked on according to content so I will not fall into the error I am most likely to fall into--the error of a more logical performance without regard for content where I can go on reasoning endlessly. That means I can make no claim of authority, but must stick only to the claim of authorship--and to that only so far as I can show that I can author some thought valuable to you, only so long as I can show performances according, to substance and not an empty skill."

And with this we come back to Socrates. He was the first to conceive of the idea that the only possible way to author truth might be in a dialogue with another thinking person and he meant by that a philosopher could be sure he was really seekin g after truth only so long as he was after substance--and he could be sure he was after substance only so long as he could control it by going along with another thinking person: that is, as long as the other person understood, the philosopher could be sure he was talking about substance and that it was a matter of convincing and not just talking someone into something. Socrates always attempted when he tried to bring out the thoughts of his pupils--their own thoughts, which is the sense of the term "midwife" used by Socrates--also to show them what substance really meant: “Now let’s see what you have born here. Let’s see if it is not merely a wind-egg.” And then Socrates would proceed to dissolve the whole thing to show that it was empty, a mere logical statement that did not pertain to any matter of thought. He was the first to discover this trap--without knowing about the real dialectics (logical dialectics) which can bring the philosopher and the so-called philosophizing man into a circular movement of pure reasoning itself which can lead nowhere but into pure reasoning and is again a demonical process.

The original choice of man is either to become a man or to become demonic; man can become a human being or man can become a demon--that is his real choice. And of all men the one who is in the greatest danger to fall into the trap of demonic reasoning is the creative philosopher—just that man who moves in the very center of creative thinking which enables a man to become a creative human being or a demon. (There is no question of the diabolical here with all its indications of the terrific pride of man who can sin against God and risk eternal damnation; there is no question of the still human qualities involved in the diabolical.). That means the creative philosopher has to be the one who is most aware of the danger and that he is the one who has to pay the price of always leaving himself absolutely open. He is not entitled to play his cards in this hand; he has to play them open on the table--otherwise he himself cannot be sure. Therefore, he last of all can claim authority--and yet up to 1800 the philosopher claimed the highest kind of authority. It is small wonder then that he has become, though involuntarily so, the creator of the nihilistic trend of modern philosophy with its reasoning against reason--where (after Kant) philosophy itself for the first time fell completely into that trap end became a performance of infinite reasoning.

So here the ends meet again. That holds true for the possibilities and dangers of a single human mind also holds true for the human mind represented in the central part by philosophy (which too fell into that trap). But if the dangers are there for philosophy, the possibilities are there too--which means specifically for philosophy the possibility to come to a concept of pure philosophy and the possibility to find out at last what philosophy really is. Jaspers tells us that the philosopher is characterized by the very definition he gives of philosophy. And here Jaspers is right and not right. There have been so many definitions because of so many attempts to give a definition when philosophy was struggling to come into its own, but the moment philosophy was freed from the other creative abilities of man (freed in the sense of the conglomerate and the intermixture that existed up to 1800) a definition became more and more possible and it became more and more possible to perceive of philosophy in its pure form. That means that the attempt of Kant is still the point of absolute revolution and departure in philosophy. For the first time with Kant philosophy tried to find out what it was and for the first time became critical of itself—no longer taking itself for granted but raising instead the question: What is philosophy?

Kant felt that we did not yet know what metaphysics was and that we could not yet account for its foundations (and he tried—but did not succeed—to give those foundations)—but he did more with his criticism: he destroyed heavenly authority. It is quite true that by destroying heavenly authority he made it possible for those who fell back into authority to claim it even more so and to become even bigger (and much more dangerous) authorities; but it is equally true that without Kant no further steps in critical philosophy would have been possible either. So since Kant, on the one hand we had had, especially with the positivistic philosophers, steps in sheer reasoning where mere ideas have been taken as authority, but on the other hand with pure philosophy (which also became possible with Kant) we now have the possibility to go to the very source of the idea of authority itself (which we have found was authorship) and to find that authority cannot be absolute. Real philosophy leads only to the relative authorship of free human beings—who by being creative and by being related to each other gain the possibility of a relative authorship of authority providing they do not want to change it by this into absolute authority to be used as a power over other human beings. The only absolute remaining then is the absolute of human intention in human beings with a transcendental relationship to the Absolute (that unknown Absolute that is eternal, not infinite, and which we must always keep in mind just because it is unknown and can never be known to the full--not only because the limits of human reason are reached just there but also to insure man's possibility of transcendence).

The conclusion from there on is this "must" that I have already established: Man must philosophize; he must philosophize, or so I think, because it is only with free philosophy that man can gain the sense of his freedom--and without this man cannot be man; man must philosophize because without free philosophy he cannot make sure of himself, thereby becoming a human being, becoming more creative and more reliable for other human beings--and without man's being reliable to absolute purposes, he cannot build a conmunity but will fall into anarchy; man must philosophize because philosophy is the beginning of life (as distinguished from existence) with the transformation of given existence into a real life related to the Absolute--and only by a relation to the Absolute can it become life.

The Absolute has been conceived of as God, but the crucial question is not so much a question as to how the Absolute is conceived of as a question of whether man's relation to the Absolute is there--for only then does man have the possibility of transforming existence into life, of becoming men, of becoming a free whole person with the capability of transforming the given into something with meaning. Since man's former relation to God, metaphysically speaking, was a relation to the Absolute, man had that possibility in religion (though in a rather restricted way), but the minute God was gone he put into Hia place a false absolute: society, nature, history. Now to fix such an idea, to make it absolute authority means--since the Absolute as eternal is timeless and a false absolute with (its absolute authority is only infinite--to replace a concept of eternity with just an idea in time and it means to break absolutely man's relation to the Absolute and with it his possibility to transform existence into life and his possibility of transcendence. He no longer has to overcome himself, but only to subjugate hi-self to a higher authority--which means an absolute loss of freedom.

Now that religion is gone, man has only the possibility of going in one of two directions: either in the one of becoming more and more of a human being or in the other one of becoming demonical. The demonical lies in the way of an infinite direction in time because every infinite movement will always turn out to be circular (and thus dereonical) --which means for man the way of infinite reasoning and the possibility of man to destroy himself as a human being. The first basic task of philosophy and the philosopher is just to make man aware of this danger and to help him avoid falling into that trap by waking him metaphysically aware when such a trap opens: that means to make him able to become aware whenever the line of an absolute idea is being proposed that can only lead to an infinite movement of slavery. The second task of philosophy is to lead man on to the only other way that is possible for him now: the way where he can develop substance of his own, where he can become more and more free--always in relation to the possibility of the Absolute and eternity. To keep man in this relation—as far as it can be done--is the positive task of philosophy.

So once again the "must" I put forward is there: man must philosophize because without philosophy--unless he goes back to religion (which is a very tough proposition indeed, as we have seen) where he has a relation to the Absolute and at least a restricted relationship to freedom--he is in danger of losing the creative ideas and principles that can make him a free man. Only by becoming a philosophical man can he establish and keep a relation to the one thing that can help him to become more and more of a human being: that unknown Absolute that becomes more and more known with each new step man gains toward it, but never knowable to the full; that unknown Absolute that man must never cease to think of as an absolute toward which he can always move—giving him the possibility to become more end more creative and the possibilty to establish more and more all those eternal principles (freedom, truth, justice, beauty)—but can never get entirely hold of.

Lecture XI*

*(Note: The following is an excerpt taken from class discussion since the entire lecture period was spent in discussion.)

One of the great difficulties for the philosopher in formulating a concept--and especially in certain languages that do not seem to be as well designed for philosophical concepts as others (for example, two of the best languages for philosophy are Greek end German)--is to find words that can be redesigned to carry a certain meaning or distinction he wants to make. To indicate a qualitative difference in the meaning of power, for example, there is one word we could use to make the distinction: might. Might could be used to mean power only intended to be creative, inherent in which is the fact that it will not be misused. Might also can mean "I might do that."--implying possibility and also the capability of a human being to do something. Might also can he used--in a sense combining both meanings here--to describe God: The All-Mighty. So we seem to have a word in hand that can really carry the meaning implied when we say power can be used as a means for might, but when power is used as an end in itself, we have fallen out of might.

A word can be loaded with many meanings: first, as a symbol which stands for that thing; second as a metaphor--which mean that a word in the form of its letters has also to be pictorial in a way (take the word “chair” for example: the curve has been imitated metaphorically to give an image of the thing and to give meaning to be received sensuously--as a poet can use it); and third, the intention, which goes together with the other meanings of the word, that this thing shall be such and such (understanding) . All this goes into the creation of a single word. As myth was a conglomerate which tried to get all implications at once into one thought, one picture, so it also happened in language.

When we go about philosophically to dissolve myth, the task is to bring out of the conglomerate a working planetary system, so to speak, of all the human creative abilities of men that went into the myth and one of the means we have for this is the redesigning of concepts—and thus of words. To redesign a concept means also to put a different meaning into a word and to agree upon it for a better understanding of that word. This shows then that we are thinking directly as to the matter at hand and not as to the word. In the long development of language, bound to our living in myth and religion, we used to think that the word itself was holy, not merely the carrier of meanin—but words must be our servants not our masters. That means for the philosopher, when he sometimes is almost at a loss to find an available word to carry a certain meaning in philosophy, that he is able to create a combined word or to take a word with little meaning and by filling it with meaning redesign it.

Heidegger in trying to overcome the nihilistic predicament found himself in a situation of trying to show a certain position that the nihilists had not taken into account. To help him do this, he tried two ways: he dived back into Medieval German, fumbling around to find a word to fit his meaning, and he also took upon himself the task of re-discovering archaic Greek meaning. His rediscovery of the original “physis” (of both the pre-Socratic and the post-Socratic meanings) gave me the possibility to use “physis” for the distinction I make as to the physical and metaphysical. Heidegger uses it merely for something emerging into existence, coming just now—using it for a mystical event. To find a word to carry the meaning of the mystical event he was after, having experienced that it happens in existence, he had to go back to archaic Greek for a word to carry his meaning—and I follow in his footsteps here.

Sometimes a thinker comes into such a situation, having only substance in mind, when he does not want to be irritated by words that carry other implications with them—because by using a particular word he can be brought into another line of inquiry by the word itself. Words are also able to conduct our thought and if they could not, tradition could never be established. Take the Jewish people—what a wonder that a people could endure in a similar direction for over 3000 years. It is one of the greatest historical phenomena and one that we now have the possibility to look into and to find out how it was possible. One very great clue to this is the fact that the Jewish people have also been a people who established absolute faith in the word and created a tradition of interpreting the word. To be able to conduct thought by words, and by that to be able to create tradition by handing over to the following generation almost the exact meaning of those thoughts crystallized in those words, is man’s most powerful means of education. We start first by aping words, and then by following tradition, listening to what is told to us. Before we can learn to redesign meaning, we have first to take over meaning—which would not be possible wihtout the power of words to transmit meaning and tradition. The word is just so powerful because it always has implications of meaning that can be interpreted indefinitely—and there is certainly nothing wrong with this, but there is always the danger that they all will become empty words eventually if we stop the process of designing words in the philosophical sense.

Since Kant we have done just this—with no basic redesigning of words being done until lately. When this happens tradition then becomes usage and the word gets more and more empty of meaning until just the symbol is left (then something like semantics becomes necessary and a new science is created). But while words cannot convey and transmit meaning unless they are being refilled by new meaning gained out of fresh human experiences, they still can rule by transmitting synbolic power as mere symbols, as mere patterns of thought; and since we move according to those patterns of thought, it boils down in the end to mere reflection of thought. The moment we feel we have no obligation to face problems of life and forget to think creatively, it means we think mechanically in mere patterns of thought and behavior. This is the process of the dying of thought of generations who have left the metaphysical and this is the process where thought dies together with language. This is not, as some people seem to think, because we print newspapers and language gets worse evryday—that is only an effect. There simply could not be so much empty writing produced if the language were not in a process of losing meaning and could not be handled mechanically.

To lose, as we have lost, our will to put new meaning into words (because we ourselves can experience and create new meanings) means to forsake the realm of meaning itself--the metaphysical--and it means as far as language is concerned, that language can serve us only to indicate merely physical things, becoming less and less intentional and more and more functional until it becomes so emptied of meaning it can be indicated by mere symbols and what we call cliches. We can--since language is both a means of communication and understanding—communicate our opiniong (though not make others understand them) very easily by using symbols that we handle as apparatus and can finally even replace them with mathematical formulas (which has been done by semantics and symbolic logic). This is a valid use of language when used for scientific purposes, but the moment it is used for philosophical purposes it means never to use language or words for any transmitting of meaning or any forming of common will—or in other words never to use language for the purpose of understanding.

To use language only got the purpose of the physical, so to speak, means also to deprive ourselves of one of the most important meanings carried in words: the metaphorical content—which can only be brought to mind by poetry. Certain words through poetry can carry such an association of experiences that they never become entirely empty. Poetry can load a word like “evening” with such metaphorical content that it will even carry over into “Good Evening.” But without poetry and the richness of meaning it can bring, words can become mere cliches and language so empty that initials serve us as words—as in the long line of agencies and organizations designated simply by letters (AAA, AMA, NATO, etc.). The meaning of the words has been emptied out to such a point that they are not even symbols any more—they are almost signals. This is a sad commentary because language is the mainstay of creative thought.

Along this line of inquiry, we cannot help but wonder why certain languages seem to retain more meaning than others. Why, for example, does the French language have the least amount of cliches—in spite of the fact that this language coming firectly from the Latin was designed as the most exacting prose language possible? This is due simply to the fact that the French love their language so much and have taken such good care of it, so to speak. Ever since Richelieu, for instance, at certain intervals a new dictionary of the French language has been put out in which the greatest scholars have tried to go deeper into the meaning of each word; for decades past now in one of their newspapers there has even been a half-weekly column on the purity of the French language where every fault, every vulgar expression has been criticized; the French school system has been designed so that any fault in language is a major fault—and certainly, I could not afford to give in France a lecture in French, such as I do here in English (which I can do because I can think in English). To a Frenchman even for a foreigner to speak the language grammatically is not enough: the pronunciation is most important too. Any any one who tried to give a lecture in French without meeting those requirements simply would be listened to because it would be the same as Chinese to the French. They just cannot stand to have their language spoken incorrectly. It may mean that the Frenchman hates foreigners in respect to that, but it also means that by such feeling for their language, the French have managed to keep the French words from being emptied of meaning to such a degree as the English words, for example. By this discipline they have put brakes on this process of degradation and decay of their language and it shows how much can be done by mere negative criticism by a people who love their language almost above everything else.

But for the purpose of the actual recreation of a language (which is possible) even this slowing down of the process is not enough; the whole process itself of languages becoming more and more mere patterns of thought, more and more emptied of meaning has to be stopped first—and stopped at its source: man himself who creates language and man himself who by losing contact with the metaphysical loses also his capability of creating---and by the means of fresh human experience, recreating—meaning in language. Language as a creation of man can hardly have more than man himself can put into it. Thus we are brought back once again to the central position of philosophy and the "must" I have proposed. Through philosophy--and only through philosophy whch is the only creative human performance that can do this--can we start the procedure of redesigning words and changing patterns of thought into meaning by being able to to create new meaning in our own lives. Then by and by we would start to speak language as a language and not just empty words.

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