Steve Jobs, former Founder and CEO of Apple Computer, while delivering his commencement address on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University, said, “Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
I am lured to quote a part of his address, first, to establish a relation between philosophy and life. Steve Jobs, who died of cancer on October 5, 2011, had his own impression about his life that he shared with the young graduates through his address, reviewing the ups and downs of his life to arrive at the conclusion. Second, we cannot lead our life like an animal without taking care of our future based on our past experience and present situations. It forces us to formulate our own way of living based on the aim that we choose in course of our life.
Modes of life:
There are two ways in which we can view our life: common and academic. Ordinarily, every individual leads his life in accordance with the way he determines by his thinking or philosophy, which he develops in course of his life based on his own experience and his beliefs and conditions of life. There are academic philosophers, who develop their own principle (philosophy) based on their critical thinking in order to explain the world and live accordingly. Some of them live in accordance with the philosophy they have and some do not take the trouble to adopt it in their lives, as they treat it merely as an armchair thinking.
Philosophical thinking, as a guided mental mechanism, is one of the ancient rational acquisitions of mankind. There seems to be no concrete achievements, as it does not provide any substantial material gain to them, who are busy in such speculations. Interestingly, there is no unanimity among thinkers about its origin. In the west, philosophical thinking is held to have originated out of curiosity and wonder, whereas, in the East, it is commonly considered to be the product of actual need of life to get emancipation from sufferings, providing a mode of life. Thus, it is a rational interpretation of life on the one hand, and a path to lead one’s life, on the other.
Defining relations leads to science and philosophy:
It seems that approaches to life change with the development of mind and body. A child, after his birth, is not only surrounded by his mother and other members of his family, but also by other things including an environment in which he is being brought up. A child cannot realize his being or existence, although he lives or exists, because his self-consciousness is not duly developed to realize his existence. Here lies a contradiction between his being and his knowledge/consciousness of his being. His being has no knowledge and his knowledge has no existence for all practical purposes. The issue has both ontological and epistemological implications to be taken care of. At the earliest stage, he does not recognize any one but gradually starts recognizing his mother and other family members. He starts adjusting himself to the environment he has been placed in, for which he is not responsible.
With his gradual mental development, he tries to identify himself, and starts defining his relations with other (living and non-living) things and conditions including his family members. In defining his family relations, he is generally guided by his needs, emotions and feelings. With his growth, he encounters many things and both natural and artificial conditions around him. While confronting them, he defines and determines his relations with them.
At this stage, he is now conscious of his existence as to how these objects and conditions affect his very existence. He takes interest in them and starts knowing more about the things around. The curiosity and necessity both lead him to develop scientific mindset and reasoning capacity to have deeper studies in those subjects. Thus, sciences evolve and scientific studies grow.
On the contrary, in dealing with his relations with family members, society, communities, religious groups and political alignments, he has to look within first and sets himself as to what he is for himself and for others. Ordinarily, he defines himself as a son of his parents, grandson of his grandparents having a proper name to be called and addressed by. When he gets maturity, goes further to define him and is vexed with questions like the purpose of his birth.
His experience of suffering, pain and old age, ultimately prepare him to face his death from where he cannot return. These questions force him to define what actually he is? Is he the body he carries or his body is he? Is there something within him that is different from his body? What is inside his body that experiences pain and suffering? Or are these questions irrelevant to his curiosity or investigating mind?
These questions lead him to think deeper and deeper in search of suitable and convincing answers. And these subject matters form the starting point of any philosophical speculation. Perhaps, in this context Lao Tzu rightly says,”Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.” With the advancement of age he becomes both subject and object of the knowing process. Like an individual, human civilization too has developed gradually from the ritualistic stage to meeting the practical needs of society to exist and flourish.
Frailty of life:
Human life has evolved in course of millions of years. Plants too have evolved and their growth and decay are the natural conditions of plants. Similarly, Birth (life) and Death, which are the two natural phenomena of human life, are equally and invariably related to any living being including animals.
Animal mind might feel the agony of life by way of facing challenging in meeting the needs of life, but cannot explain and express it in the way human beings can feel, grasp and express it. However, whatever explanations there might be, these have tormented human mind since humankind started thinking about life.
To explain a situation is to provide sufficient and appropriate reasons for it. Human mind gets bogged down as no logical ultimate explanation comes forward in explaining these two. Generally, an individual’s birth can be explained in terms of parents responsible for it and death can be explained by a state when the living being ceases to have consciousness. The biological sciences are engrossed in finding its final cause and have succeeded in furnishing some explanations. However, the ultimate cause of life and death remain indefinable, at least for the time being.
Finally, their unexplainable nature makes life meaningless. There are several absurdities pointed out by many existentialist thinkers. The concepts of life and death are interdependent, as we cannot have the notion of death without an idea of life. Similarly, the concept of life has no relevance without any reference to death. As anything that has beginning must have an end, life and death are related to any finite being.
Philosophy: a process of Internalization and Externalization
Philosophy can be interpreted as an attempt to internalize in life what one has externalized and then to externalize what have been internalized. It becomes a process that moves through Externalization, Internalization and Externalization (E-I-E).
Thus, it is a circular traffic. For example, prince Siddhartha experiencing the realities of life in the form of old age, disease and death, renounces the princely comforts and even leaves his wife and son to internalize it in quest of truth and becomes Buddha by obtaining enlightenment. He externalizes his enlightenment (the internalized) through his preaching the eight-fold noble path, the fourth noble truth, throughout rest of his life to the people to realize Nirvana or release from sufferings. Socrates too internalizes what he externalized and externalizes what he internalized by holding knowledge as virtue and preferring his death- by drinking hemlock to fleeing away from the jail for which his friends had made all arrangements.
Similarly, following the above process of E-I-E, Jean-Paul Sartre, who during the Second World War experiences his country suffering from humiliation while himself participating in the resistance movement during German occupation of France, develops his philosophy of nothingness taking life as meaningless and nauseating. To Shakespeare, life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, might have been based on the E-I-E process. The Persian poet, who holds life as a book that has lost its pages at the beginning and also at the end, might have arrived at the conclusion after undergoing the same process.
Literally, the word “Philosophy” means love of wisdom. Why do we love wisdom? We love wisdom because of our necessity to live with wisdom that organizes life. It is developed gradually through our experience and also through the study of philosophy, a branch of knowledge that tries to interpret life and the world as a whole.
Wisdom is, by far, different from and superior to knowledge. It is in this context, Will Durant, quotes Thoreau, who holds, “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.” (The Preface, The Story of Philosophy, (the second Edition 1961, p.xii”)
Existence versus consciousness/Essence:
In philosophical discourses, the issue of existence (‘felt’ or of an individual) and essence (humanness) has been engaging the attention of philosophers resulting in founding of different schools of philosophy. Existentialism has been propounded on the basis of the thought, individually by Jean Paul Sartre ,that ‘existence precedes essence’, which means man exists before its essence. Man first of all exits, encounters himself, surges up in the world and defines himself later. There is no definite humane nature. Man simply is. Man is nothing else than what he makes of himself.
Existentialism has developed just against the saying of Descartes who declares, ’Cogito Ergo Sum’ that “I think, therefore I exist”. Though, it appears contrary to the existential view, the ‘Cogito’ of Descartes is, in fact, not his philosophical conclusion but the starting point of his philosophical doubting method to reach universal and necessary truth.
He propounded his philosophy on his saying Existence means consciousness of something always not in essence or pure consciousness. The positions held by Existentialists and Descartes are related to the very issue (raised earlier) related to the being and knowledge of being, which involves both ontological and epistemological contexts.
Real and Unreal
To define, ‘What is real?’ is one of the most important issues that philosophy has to deal with. In western philosophy, in order to get true knowledge and truth, there is a tendency to pass from one conception to another like individual to general, existence to essence and real life to unreal life.
The early Greek thinking is centered round external nature like Form or Number, Universal Consciousness and Pure existence, etc,. It is Protagoras who brings human being at the center of philosophical speculation by advocating ’Man is the measure of all things (Homo Mensura)’. In other words, only human related things are real and things, which are unrelated to human beings, have no existence. Against his subjectivism, Socrates takes consciousness as reality and uses the word ‘Concept’ and ’General’ making it universal but mental. His theory of concept distinguishes between the sense experience and knowledge.
The object of sense experience is non-eternal, momentary and unreal; where as, the object of knowledge is eternal, permanent and real. The object of knowledge is, ’General’; where as, object of sense experience is ’Particular’. In short, Socrates shifts the center of philosophy from precepts to general concepts, and existence to essence.
Plato begins his philosophy by holding that no absolute and true knowledge is possible of perceived world. The world is unreal as the objects of the world have mutually contradictory qualities. To him, real knowledge is possible only of concepts, or forms or ideas as they are infinite, general, eternal and the essence of objects and not of empirical world, which is untrue, relative and doubtful. Plato does not accept ideas as only mental or subjective but also independent and real units, which are the essence of the objects of the world. Hence, ideas are the material cause of the empirical world.
Aristotle retains the changeless eternal forms, the idealistic principles of his teacher Plato, but rejects their transcendence. Forms are not apart from things, but inherent in them; they are not transcendent, but immanent.
Universal is objective since it is immanent in all objects. Universal is not separate from particular object being real. To him, every substance has Matter and Form. Form as Universal is inherent in every substance, where as; Matter is the constructor of Particularity. These two cannot be separated from each other. Matter is dormant or sleeping power in which there is possibility of evolution. If it attains any form, it becomes real or attained.
In western philosophy Socrates and Plato retain ‘General’ as real by separating it from Particular. However, Aristotle combines these two in one by allowing Particular to participate in General to acquire existence. In modern western philosophy, Immanuel Kant distinguishes between Noumena (things- in themselves) and Phenomena (things-as they appear to us). Things to be known must come to the senses through space and time and Understanding brings them under twelve categories to form a judgment. The judgment is systematized under the three ideals of reasoning.
Hegel differentiates between real and actual. Actual is known through sense experience and liable to change, whereas, real persists through all changes.
In eastern philosophy, especially in Indian philosophy, Generality and Particularity have been treated as substances by the Vaishesika philosophy. There is one more substance known as “Inherence” (Samavaya), which accepts eternal relation between two entities, like between threads and cloth. The dualistic Sankhya philosophy holds self or ‘Purusha’ as many accepting particularity and also believe in infinite ‘Prakriti’ as matter, which evolves into particular.
The Individual, as real, is the integral part of eastern philosophy. The very concept of salvation postulates the existence of the individual in the form of Self or Atma, a conscious being, who seeks and attains emancipation through his action. The Buddhist philosophy does not believe in a permanent conscious being as Self.
The unqualified Monism of Shankara accepts the reality of the individual self as real only in practical sense, not in ultimate sense. In the contemporary Indian philosophy, however, thinkers have admitted the individual existence. It is obligatory to accept the existence of individuals any activity including philosophizing is to be accepted.
Contemporary Critical issues
Previously, issues of ontology, epistemology, ethics, social philosophy, cosmology, theology etc were used to be the subject matters of philosophy. There were similarities between the west and the east regarding the subject matters of different branches of philosophy. However, presently these two differ in their approaches and sometimes, in the subject matters too.
For example, the contemporary western philosophy is engaged in dealing with sociological, political, cultural, moral and legal questions. Moral questions, like, Does determinism eliminate responsibility? Are criminals responsible?, are discussed. Questions related to theology too find place in philosophical discourses, such as, should we believe in God without evidence? Cultural questions like, How should we behave?, Is abortion right? And How far can one help others?, are the subject matters of philosophical discussions.
Political questions that are raised like: What are the limits to immigration? Should government censor art? Ethical questions that cover modern philosophical deliberations include: Are men machines? , What is the value of science?, What is the role of moral philosophy in social media, etc? In the east, contemporary issues raised earlier hardly figure in philosophical debate and discourses. It seems philosophy, in the east, has distanced itself from social, cultural, political and legal contexts, as questions related to these fields are rarely discussed. However, some perennial moral questions continue to form part of philosophical deliberations and all other questions seem to be the matters outside the scope of philosophy.
Faith in God and Soul:
Birth and death, the two events in life, are not without causes. Like other things, these two have their sufficient causes to happen, as effects. A cause is defined as a sum total of both positive and negative conditions taken together. The presence or absence of conditions is interpreted as ‘Chance’ by many including scientists. If, a ‘Chance’ stands for ignorance of cause that produces results, it does not explain an event, which is an effect of a cause.
If ‘Chance’ is treated as an unknown cause, it is like accepting that any thing can happen without any cause that dismantles the theory that nothing is without cause. Philosophical speculations that exist since hundreds of years are not without any cause. Sometimes, in order to determine its cause, it transcends the present life and believes in another life to explain the present one by attaching meaning to it. It is, in this context, it seems that despite Buddha’s silence on metaphysical questions, he finds the cause of misery and suffering, which an individual suffers in course of his life, forms part of his first noble truth. He analyzes the chain of causes of suffering and is inclined to accept ‘Sanskara’, the impressions of the experience of past life as the eleventh link of the chain of twelve links “Dvadasa nidan” of suffering.
However, he also accepts ignorance of truth (avidya) of the past life as the last link. The concept of other worldliness seems to have developed when human mind fails to explain the cause of life and suffering one experiences every now and then in life.
Human life is complex. Its complexities, at times, takes us to a transcendental world where we are obliged to take recourse to trans-empirical beliefs like believe in the existences of God, soul and its immortality to explain things, happenings and conditions in and around ourselves.
Even the modern physical sciences are interested in finding through the Large Hadron Collider the Higgs boson, the ‘God particle’ that might be one of the foundational bricks on which the standard model of particle physics rests. The concept of God is related to life and death. After failing to explain life and death, human mind creates the concept of an external factor in the form of God with infinite attributes to make Him an infinite being as described in several religious scriptures. He is taken as a creator, sustainer and destroyer of the universe. He is also regarded as the moral governor of this world.
Apparently, the concept of God has evolved in course of time, from the primitive period to the present. In primitive period men used to worship natural phenomena like fire, water, thunder and wind etc to get their favour to avoid hardships in life.
Gradually, it found a place in human mind that without its grace nothing could be acquired. There were a number of philosophers who were atheist. Nietzsche declares, ’either man is the blunder of God or God is the blunder of man.’ The renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud holds the feeling of dependence as the root cause of the formation of the concept of God. He states, “Man created god and thinks he has been created by God.” The existence of God can be explained in terms of a force that cannot be ascertained but plays a final role in accomplishing an act. The world is before life.
Like Heidegger, who holds that life finds itself meaningless in the world, as it has been thrown in the world, Albert Camus holds meaninglessness as ‘pointlessness of life, as the perception of the feeling of’ being-thrown-away-into-a-world-of-no-meaning’. Ram Adhara Mall, who enlists the following conditions that give rise to the feeling of Absurd are: nature and man both are callous to individuals; nature is sometimes terribly indifferent to man; temporality is the horizon of human existence; there is the misfortune of all misfortunes, namely, the phenomenon of death; there is a peculiar phenomenon of ‘unavoidability of certain situation in life’; the world is before life; life may be characterized by the character of ‘thrown-ness’ and life consists of ‘situations in life’
In modern Western Philosophy, for the existence of God, three proofs have been advocated : ontological, cosmological and teleological. Rene Descartes tries to prove the existence of God on the basis of the idea of god. According to him, some ideas are innate like the ideas of God, soul, and causation etc.
He calls ‘idea’ a causal proof. Kant too tries to prove the existence on the basis of ontological, cosmological and teleological proofs. In eastern philosophy one more proof has been forwarded. It is moral proof. God is supposed to regulate human behavior and he rewards the doer who does virtuous act and punishes one who commits sin.
There is yet another unique concept of soul which is accepted to control human body and its activities. Commonly, soul symbolizes an individual. It is regarded as different from mind and consciousness of a body. It is considered as immortal as it does not die but changes the body like a cloth. After death, it enters another body and starts life afresh as per his last karma (action), which he had performed in his last life.. We hear about a few cases relating to children narrating their stories of their past lives. Even if we accept them, there are not enough instances to be verified and accepted as truth.
Consciousness is inherited genetically not directly. The offspring inherits some characteristics of his parents and thus indirect continuity is carried on. It has also been proved by modern science. It is common in human being, animal and plant as well. There remain some questions to be answered. Should life be taken as or equated with consciousness? Has consciousness more than one Stages and Levels (Id, Ego and Super Ego, (Conscious, Subconscious and Unconscious)? Is it a store of memory traces? What is its position during sleeping period? Does it sleep too? What about dreams? Some dreams foretell the future? These questions are explained to some extent by psychologists like S. Freud and by other sciences in terms scientific terms.
The concept of soul has figured in both western and eastern philosophy. When one thinks of life and death, he has to imagine a substratum behind body, which leaves the body after death or when leaves the body dies. Similarly, a birth too envisages an entity, which takes his birth. Of course, it is a controversy in ontology and epistemology as we name the entity to distinguish between one another. It has an ontological attribute, which has epistemological significance. Death and birth are related to this entity. Hence the concepts of death or birth are related to a being or an existent reality that takes birth and breathes his last. Here is a confusion that creates problem in explaining these concepts. Is it a life or an individual who is born or a developing consciousness is born? If a developing consciousness is born, it can explain that a soul is a substratum of consciousness, which has been called “Alaya Vijnana”(The house of consciousness” by ‘Vijnanavadins’ or the Yogachara school of Buddhism.
David Hume states about Soul in these lines,” For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception of other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hate, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception…If any one upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself.” Kant repudiates the very basis of Hume as these false conclusions are the result of false premises as Hume assumes that all knowledge come from “separate and distinct sensations”(a posteriori percepts). These cannot give us necessity, or invariable sequences. Sensations are received by mind through time and space, which are a priori modes or organs of perception or ways of putting sense into sensation.
These perceptions are classified and molded into the ordered concepts of thought (synthetic judgment a priori) by twelve a-priori concepts or categories. But it is not complete as knowledge till these judgments are placed under three headings of Reason to make Rational cosmology, Rational Psychology and Rational theology possible. Kant, therefore, holds that knowledge begins with sensation, proceeds thence to Understanding and ends with Reason. However, any attempt to prove soul, world and God leads us to paralogisms, antinomies and ideal of reason.
Kant, therefore, holds that physics is but metaphysics is not possible. And ultimately, he is obliged to say, ’I abolish all scientific knowledge for the sake of faith’ Truly, we do not have the knowledge of God, but we can have faith in him. Faith cannot be challenged by any argument. There are events in life that force you to believe in a power other than the individual.
There are things, which are done not by human personal efforts alone but with the aid of some external force that can be named as God. Even if we do not know God and are not sure of His existence, the imagination of his presence gives some short of confidence to man. By having faith in god, he feels encouraged in doing any work successfully and is not disheartened even if he fails in his efforts. The imaginary baking of God, if any one has, it has a kind of utility for human life. This is the net benefit from the imaginary existence of god.
Making life meaningful:
Man lives through actions. He performs voluntary, non-voluntary and habitual action. Out of these three, only voluntary action is the subject matter of ethics. It is judged as moral in terms of good and bad since it is done with free will of the doer. If the doer is not free in performing his action he cannot be held responsible for his action. It is for this reason, freedom of will has been considered as one of the postulates of moral judgment.
It is commonly asked whether a man is free to perform his action or he is only a helpless agent in the hands of fate or any other external conditions. To answer the question we have to study the very nature of the human being. Eastern philosophy accepts the theory of causation in the field of morality also, as nothing is without caused.
There are actions, which bear fruits immediately, and some take time. Some results are supposed to be related to the “Karmas” (actions) of the past life of the doer as well. However, contemporary thinkers have tried to make distinction between that part, which is beyond control in human nature and that, which can be controlled and molded by our motives and intentions providing ground for judging whether man is free or not in his action. As for instance, we have no control over the time, place and condition of life where we are born. But we have control over our actions, thoughts and sentiments. In spite of all limitations we are free to make our choice. We have freedom of will. The philosopher president of India Dr. S. Radhakrishnan compares,“Life is like a game of bridge. We did not invent the game or design the cards. We did not frame the rules and we cannot control the dealings. The cards are dealt out to us whether they are good or bad. Determinism rules to that extent. But we can play the game well or play it badly. A skillful player may have poor hand and yet win the game. A bad player may have a good hand and yet make a mess of it.” (The Bhagvadgita, p, 49.) He further writes,” Our life is a mixture of necessity and freedom, chance and choice. By exercising our choice properly, we can control steadily all the elements and eliminate altogether the determinism of nature.”
Life is like a road. It is already there. It is up to us to use it for roaming or with an objective or a mission to reach the goal or fulfill the mission of completing our morning walk or meeting our friend or whatever we decide for ourselves.
Thus, in spite of the limitations we come across in life, we can lead our lives as per our wisdom based on well thought of plan to make our lives meaningful. We have no control over our lives, but we try our best to improve the condition of life. However, since it may be difficult for many of us dedicate our lives to the service of humanity, we can, at least, make our lives meaningful by making even one person smile for a while by caring for his need, which he does not expect from you.
Human efforts should not be confined to the interest of human beings but should be broadened to save all living beings and the atmosphere in which we all breathe to survive. Hence, man should not be the measure of all things (Homo Mensura). He should own responsibility towards all being and all existences, living and non-living.
As per traditional Hindu orthodox system, there are two ideals of life—the negative ideal of renunciation and the positive one of active life. The first is called ‘Nivritti’ or detachment, which advocates the giving up of all ‘karmas’ (actions) and withdrawing from the work-a-day world entirely. The second is known as ‘Pravirtti’ involvenet, which recommends living in the midst of society undertaking all obligations implied thereby; but it does not exclude the element of selfishness altogether. However, the Bhagvadgita teaches the middle path by advocating not renunciation of action but renunciation in action (Ibid, p121) that signifies selfless action.
We can view our life either philosophically or ordinarily, as we lead it. To live is to act and to act is to choose and to choose is to create value. Creating value is to make life meaningful. Meaningfulness is not abstract; it is always related to some other than the doer or to which it is meant for.
To make life useful, it has to be used the sense of betterment of at least one person or in the condition in which s/he is placed. To achieve the objective, it seems to be better to adopt the following three principles. First, do not put your interest in the forefront while taking any decision on the matters involved others including yourself. Secondly, treat every body as important as you are. No body is inferior or superior to you. Do not leave any thing to be done by others that you can do yourself. It entails that one should not use another as a means to attain any end, be it his own or others. Thirdly, try to make others smile even for a while by helping him unexpectedly. If he seeks or expects help from you, the help is limited in giving his smile. If one is helped unexpectedly, his pleasure or happiness is unlimited and his smile is unbounded. By making some one smile, even for a while, is like performing a “yajna”, worshiping God and serving the humanity as a human being. Of course, attempting to relieve any one from pain and suffering is also equally important but it has minus value, as relief from pain may not lead the person suffering to smile.
