Philosophy is one of the ancient rational acquisitions of mankind. However, there is no unanimity among thinkers about its concrete achievements and they do have divergent opinions regarding its origin.
In the West, philosophy is held to have originated out of curiosity. 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 the life, on the other.
Philosophy, therefore, can be viewed from two angles — common and academic. Ordinarily, every individual leads his life in accordance with his philosophy that he develops on the basis of his faith and culture. Academic philosophers construct their own rational philosophy; some of them live accordingly and some do not as they treat it as a mere armchair thinking.
Socrates defines philosophy as ‘love of wisdom’. Plato says,’ Philosophy is the knowledge of reality or being as such, of that which is. It is the knowledge of the universe’. In Aristotle’s view’ “Philosophy is the science which investigates the nature of being, as it is in itself’.
Immanuel Kant holds philosophy as the metaphysics of experience and the science and criticism of cognition.’ Hegel takes it as the metaphysics of Reality of a knowledge of that which is eternal’ Herbert Spencer accepts it as synthesis of the sciences, a universal science or a super science and also as a completely unified knowledge’.’. Paulsen regards it a sum total of all scientific knowledge’. Wittgenstein treats it in a different way by holding it as a logical analysis of the propositions of science or critique of language.
Philosophy, as a child of wonder, is accepted to spring from the curiosity around us regarding the universe warranting an intellectual exercise to understand it on the one hand, and on the other, it is a love of wisdom indicating that people have been craving for wisdom to regulate their conduct. That is why Socrates holds knowledge as virtue. Thus, Western philosophy has its roots in intellectual exercise and in conduct that aims at defining human place in the universe and also to facilitate human existence as well.
Galina Kirilenko and Lydia Korshunova, while holding the world as boundless, state: “Philosophy embodies man’s striving to engage in a constant search in order to cognize the infinite, the “roots and causes” of all things existing, and to call in to question everything he has achieved”. It has been virtually made subservient to science by some groups including the logical analysts in the last century.
Western Philosophy:
The earliest development of Western philosophy is traced back to Greece. The early Greek thinking seems to center round external nature. Although, Pythagoras makes Form or Number, Heraclitus makes Universal Consciousness and Parmenides makes pure existence the center of their philosophical thinking, it is Protagoras who brings human being at the center of philosophy by advocating ’Man is the measure of all things (Homo Mensura)’.
He brings subject (the knower), at the center of philosophy. In other words, only that those things are real that are human related and those things are unrelated to human beings have no existence. He, thus, encourages relativism and individualism and makes his philosophy subjective. He accepts sense experience as the only source of knowledge and to him all knowledge is personal and particular. There is no objective standard of truth and individuality or particularity is the only standard. By ’Human’ he means empirical or existent individual and ‘by ‘standard’ particularity and ‘object’ only sensations. He, thus, destroys the very basis of knowledge and morality.
Socrates tries to direct it to self. He takes consciousness as reality and the nature of man that has to be realized. Moral life helps realize it and consciousness is the basis of moral life. Socrates gives it another shape by using the word ‘Concept’ making it universal but mental. His theory of concept distinguishes between the sense experience and knowledge and holds sense experience as conduct and knowledge as ultimate.
The object of sense experience is non-eternal, momentary and unreal; whereas, the object of knowledge is eternal, permanent and real. The object of knowledge is, ’General’; whereas, object of sense experience is ’Particular’. ’General’ and ‘Concept’ are synonymous. For example, the knowledge of ‘man’ is the knowledge of general concept of ’man’. Studying particular individual, differentiating between general quality and particular quality, forms concept on the basis of general quality. In short, Socrates shifts the center of philosophy from percepts to general concepts.
Socrates wants to know the meaning of morality. For him, the most important questions before him are: how to organize own life and what is the way to rational life? As a rational animal how a man should behave? The essence of his moral thinking is -knowledge is virtue. Good thought is essential for good behaviour. To navigate a ship, the knowledge of structure and functions of ship is required and for governing a state, to know the nature of the state, is essential. Similarly, to be virtuous, to have the knowledge of what the virtue is, like, self-control, courage, justice, and duties is essential.
Plato develops his own philosophy on the basis of the main tenants of the philosophy of his teacher, Socrates. He begins his theory of ideas with the conviction 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 the 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. Ideas are not the abstract imagination of soul but independent objective existence along with soul.
According to Frank Thilly, ”Aristotle retains the changeless eternal forms, the idealistic principles of the teacher, but rejects their transcendence. He brings them down from heaven to earth, so to speak. Forms are not apart from things, but inherent in them, they are not transcendent, but immanent.” To Aristotle, Form as Universal is not the imagination of reasoning but really true. Universal is objective since it is immanent in all objects. Universal is not separate from particular object being real. According 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. But there are pure form and pure substance.
Pure substance is fundamental nature (Materia Prima) and pure form is god. Matter is dormant or sleeping power in which there is possibility of evolution. If it attains any form, it becomes real or attained. His theory of cause and effect is the basis of his philosophy of Form and Matter. There are four causes of any effect,-efficient cause, final cause, formal cause, and material cause. He ultimately reduces the efficient cause (who gives a form), formal cause (which sets the form), and final cause (which determines the end or purpose of the form) to formal cause or form as all these three causes lead to the formation of the substance and only material cause is left which is turned into an object. Thus, form and matter together constitute substance as an effect.
In the medieval period, philosophy becomes the handmaid of religion. Saint Augustine and Saint Aquinas are pioneers in establishing Christainity as the guiding foundation of philosophy.
In modern times philosophical knowledge is made to be universal and necessary like arithmetic and geometry. Rationalism and empiricism dominate philosophy for centuries. There appear new trends like pragmatism in late 19th century and early 20th century. In 1930s logical positivism comes with a bang with two aims, ’to provide a secure foundation for the sciences, and to demonstrate the meaninglessness of metaphysics. The method for realizing this double aim is logical analysis, especially of language.
Between the two world wars and especially after the first war, Existentialism, like Marxism, stirs the cool philosophical thinking as a movement. It denies the priority of ‘essence’ to ‘existence’ calling the movement as existentialism. In ethical and social outlook, it is individualistic advocating the utmost freedom and responsibility for the individual in ethical, religious, political, cultural and social matters. It seems to be a revolt against authority. In epistemology, it is usually anti-rationalistic, anti-intellectualistic and anti-objectivistic. Now philosophical problems are no longer real problems but are pseudo problems.
Philosophy is a broad subject with several branches. Hear Keyserling holds, ”Philosophy is essentially the completion of science in synthesis of wisdom…. Epistemology, phenomenology, logic, etc., certainly are important branches of science) precisely; certainly are important branches of science, like chemistry or anatomy.)”
But it was an unmitigated evil that as the result of this, the sense for the living synthesis should have disappeared”. Will Durant, in the Preface to his book, The Story of Philosophy, quotes Thoreau, who holds, To be a philosopher, “said Thoreau,” 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.” We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us.” “Seek ye first the good things of mind, ” Bacon admonishes us, “and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt” Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces the death rate in retail and kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom-desire coordinated in the light of all experience-can tell us when to heal and when to kill. Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
In this connection, very relevantly Aldous Huxlay holds “ Men live in accordance with their philosophy of life, their conception of the world. This is true even of the most thoughtless. It is impossible to live without a metaphysics. The choice that is given us is not some kind of metaphysics and no metaphysics; it is between a good metaphysics and a bad metaphysics”.
Eastern Philosophy:
In the East, Nepal is proud of having rich culture and ancient civilization. It is commonly believed that philosophy is the product of culture and civilization. More than two and half millennia ago, prince Siddhartha renounced all his royal comforts to discover the truth. He attained enlightenment –‘Buddhatva’ — and realized that the world is transitory and full of suffering. He preached the path to the people to attain release from suffering throughout his life.
Long before Buddha, contrary to his renouncement of the world in order to achieve enlightenment, King-sage (Rajarsi) Janak, renounces every lust of life and royal power while sitting on his throne. There use to be philosophical discourses in his court and he uses to teach philosophy to all learned sages, who use to assemble there.
Historically, the germs of philosophical speculation are found in the Vedic literature. In the Upanishads, the seers centred their philosophical thinking upon the inner aspect of human body (the soul) from the outer aspect of human life. Their intellectual exercises found different Vedantic schools by teachers (Acharyas) like, Shankar, Ramanuja, Madhav, Nimbarka and Ballava etc, which still pervade the philosophical world. These schools interpret the unity and the diversity around us.
Since culture has no border and civilization any political boundaries, it will be impractical to draw a line of demarcation between Nepalese philosophy and Indian philosophy. Keeping these facts in view, the context of the east has been dealt with in this paper. Of course, other philosophies like Chinese philosophy, Japanese philosophy and Islamic philosophy have not been included in order to limit the length and scope of this paper. Philosophy has been treated as an attempt to explain life and the world as a whole.
1. M. Bhattacharya defines philosophy as an attempt to explain and appreciate life and the universe as a whole’. Y. Masih too, holds it almost in the same way. To him, philosophy is a resolute and persistent attempt to understand and appreciate the universe as a whole’ Of course, in the east, philosophy is called Darshana or vision, which stands for developing the capacity to give a vision of reality. It is not only concerned with the reality of the world but also to some extent, with the life, which an individual leads. It has the vision of the actual and the practical problem of pain and suffering.
There is a common belief in different ancient Indian philosophical systems that suffering is on account of ignorance regarding the nature of the real. We suffer when we fail to distinguish between real and unreal and wrongly develop an attachment for the unreal and the transient. However, the contemporary thinkers view differently by believing that philosophy is an attitude, a way of looking at things. Philosophical knowledge enables us to cultivate a different attitude towards the life’s situations from what we perceive normally earlier. For example, a child when comes to know what a bank note is, he does not treat it like any other paper.
Similarly, when we consider ourselves as separate egos, we consider life in one way treating the world as if it is meant only for us. But once philosophical understanding enables us to realize that we are one with all, this reparative tendency of acquiring and possessing vanishes. Thus it can be held that contemporary thinking is still struggling with the same old problems like the concepts of Karma, rebirth, immortality, bondage and salvation, etc.
With regard to the common features of Indian philosophy S.C.Chaterjee and D.M.Datta enlist them in the following way: (1) Philosophy is regarded as a practical necessity to be cultivated in order to understand how life can be best led…The reason why the practical motive prevails in philosophy lies in a kind of speculation by a spiritual disquiet at the sight of the evils that cast a gloom over life in this world and it wants to understand the source of these evils and incidentally the nature of the universe and the meaning of human life, in order to find out some means for completely overcoming the miseries of life. (2) The philosophy springs from spiritual disquiet at the existing order of things. Pessimism is initial not final. (3) There is belief in an eternal moral order’ in the universe, which is expressed through the law of karma. (4) The third point entails that there is belief in the universe as the moral stage, where all living beings get their due of their moral behavior not only in present but also in the future. (5) Ignorance is the cause of bondage and knowledge is necessary for liberation….. By ‘bondage’ is commonly meant the process of birth and rebirth and the consequent miseries to which an individual is subject.
‘Liberation’ means, therefore the stoppage of this process. It is the state of perfection and can be attained in this life… (6) It has been accepted that continued meditation on truths learnt is needed to remove deep-rooted false beliefs…. Our habits of thought, speech and action have been shaped and coloured by these beliefs, which in turn have been more and more strengthened by those habits. To replace these beliefs by correct ones, it is necessary to meditate on the latter constantly and think over their various implications for life.(7) Self-control is needed to remove passions that obstruct concentration and good conduct. Self-control implies the bringing of the control of the higher. It does not kill the natural impulses, but trains them to the yoke of reason. (8) Belief in the possibility of liberation, which is regarded as the highest good, is common to all systems.
It is significant to quote elaborately M. Hiriyanna, who with regard to philosophy in general and Indian philosophy in particular, finds two basic principles of philosophy.. It is commonly believed that religion and philosophy do not stand sundered. They indeed begin as one everywhere, for their purpose is in the last resort the same, viz. a seeking for the central meaning of existence. But soon they separate and develop on more or less different lines. The differentiation does take place, but only it does not mean divorce. This result has in all probability been helped by the isolated development of thought, and has generally been recognized as a striking excellence of it.
But owing to the vagueness of the word ‘religion’, we easily miss the exact significance of the observation. This word, as it is well known, may stand for anything ranging from what has been described as ‘a sum of scruples which impede the free use of our faculties’ to a yearning of the human spirit for union with God. It is no praise to any philosophy to be associated with religion in the former sense. Besides, some doctrines are not religion at all in the commonly accepted sense. For example, early Buddhism was avowedly atheistic and it did not recognize any permanent spirit. Yet the statement that religion and philosophy have been one is apparently intended to be applicable to all the doctrines.
A necessary corollary to such a view of the goal of philosophy is the laying down of a suitable course of practical discipline for its attainment. Philosophy thereby becomes a way of life, not merely a way of thought.
It has been remarked with reference to Jainism that its fundamental maxim is’ do not live to know, but know to live’ and the same may well be said of the other Indian schools also. The discipline naturally varies in the two traditions; but there is underlying it in both an ascetic spirit whose inclusion is another common characteristic of all Indian doctrines, except Charvaka.
Critical Issues:
John R. Burr and Milton Goldinger in an anthology, ‘Philosophy and Contemporary Issues’ have tried to enlist some of the problems troubling contemporary humankind and how philosophy illuminates them to help solve them.
There are similarities between the west and the east regarding the problems of philosophy, but these two differ in their approaches. There are some common basic topics like freedom and determination, God and religion, morality and society, state and society, mind and body, and knowledge and science, etc., that cover such traditional fields of philosophy as metaphysics,, philosophy of religion,, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of science.
Each of six parts includes contemporary issues that are critical in nature are being discussed today, such as, does determinism eliminate responsibility? Are criminals responsible? Should we believe in God without evidence? How should we behave? Is abortion right or wrong? How far should one help others? What are the limits to immigration? Should government censor art? Are men machines? And what is the value of science? Can corruption be eliminated?
However, I have preferred to dwell upon the issue of freedom and determination in this article. Ethics is a normative science, which deals with passing of moral judgment. Any moral judgment has three postulates-person, reason and freedom of will. It is, in this context, scholars like Martinue have held that either freedom of will is a fact or ethics is a delusion. It suggests the value of freedom of will.
Very often, a question is asked whether a man is free to perform his action or he is only a helpless agent in the hands of fate. In other words, whether his actions are pre-determined or determined by his own will, From early times, there has been a tendency to recognize an authority other than human beings which not only controls our thoughts but also determines our actions. This power is known as Fate or Time (“kala”).
Sometimes, gods are regarded responsible for our actions because they are supposed to shape human destiny. There is another view, which opposes fatalism and accepts the potency of human efforts, as it is only trough efforts any goal is achieved and each and every thing depends on action and exertion for its existence. If destiny is accepted there is no meaning in performing actions. There is yet another view that tries to reconcile between the two as it holds both destiny and exertion necessary in bringing about the final fruit.
Success is the result of the cooperation of many causes, which are themselves the sum totals of all conditions taken together. It cannot be doubted that a man controls his own actions to a great extent. However, he cannot be sure and confident of the success of his actions. It is simply because success depends on several grounds and circumstances. No doubt, some of these circumstances are beyond one’s control and some are under his control. Human effort is, therefore, accepted as one of the important factors in the final outcome but not the only factor.
According to John R. Burr and Milton Goldinger, the issue of whether human behaviour is free or determined has been generated by the development of the natural sciences since the sixteenth century, as they assumed universal causation: that is, the principle that every event has a cause. Further, it was held that occurring of events in orderly patterns could be formulated as causal or natural laws, and accurate predictions would be made, on the basis of these laws and knowledge of the actual causes at work.
Thus, in principle, any event could be predicted, and if any limited prediction is found, it is due to the lack of knowledge of the laws or the present causes at work. The theory asserting universal causation and total predictability traditionally has been called ‘determinism’.
For the determinist, human actions are events as predictable as any other type of event. Just as the behaviour of water heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit can be predicted, so, in principle, can the behaviour of a person given a million dollars. However, he would admit that such reliable prediction may not possible till we have the necessary exact laws of human behaviour, of course, someday the social sciences may find such laws, and correct predictions will become possible. (To be continued)
(This is the first of two-parts article. This article is an edited version of the key-note address made by the author at a seminar organized by Nepal Academy in collaboration with Malta University on December 19, 2016. The key-note address was later included as a chapter of a book on philosophy written by the author.)
