Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy

(Written 23 June 2013)

I wrote an entry on the main sorts of motive that might lead one who takes religion seriously to take up the  study of philosophy.  I distinguished five main motives: the apologetic, the critical, the debunking, the transcensive, and the substitutional.  But there is also the move away from philosophy to religion and its motives. One motive is the suspicion that philosophy is a snare and a delusion, a blind alley; there is the sense that it cannot be what its noble name suggests, namely, the love of wisdom, and that he who seeks wisdom must forsake Athens for Jerusalem.  There is the sense that philosophy is, in truth, misosophy, the hatred of wisdom.  This is an ancient theme, that of the irreconcilable antagonism between religion and philosophy, one traceable back to Tertullian at least. (See Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, Charles Scribners, 1938, Chapter One.)

Anthony Flood has been an off-and-on correspondent of mine since the early days of the blogosphere: I believe we first made contact in 2004.  I admire him because he "studies everything" as per my masthead motto, "Study everything, join nothing."  As far as I can judge from my eremitic outpost, Tony is a genuine truth-seeker, a restless quester who has canvassed many, many  positions with an open mind and a willingness to admit errors and change his positions. (The man was at one time a research assistant for Herbert Aptheker!)  Better a perpetual seeker than a premature finder.  Here below we are ever on the way: in statu viae. 

Tony's views have changed over the years I have known him and it is his present (2013) attitude toward philosophy that  I wish to examine here.  In particular, I will evaluate his claim that philosophy is misosophy.  Is this right?  Or is it rather the case that religion when opposed to philosophy is misology, the hatred of reason?  Is philosophy misosophy or is religion misology?  That is  a stark, if somewhat inaccurate, was of defining the problematic. I will quote liberally from Tony's position statement and then comment.

The position I've come to has been percolating in my mind for years.  It intruded upon my thinking intermittently, but until recently I was unable to remove certain obstacles to my assent. [. . .] The critique of philosophy worked out by   Gregory L. Bahnsen . . .  however, has at last won my allegiance . . . 

[. . .]

The gist of Bahnsen’s critique is that philosophy as it has been practiced is virtually at enmity with Christ, who is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).  To the degree that it is op-posed to Christ, to that degree it is misosophy, the hatred rather than the love of wisdom.  For the Christian, wisdom is not an abstract virtue, but a divine person.  To pretend indifference to Christ is pretend indifference to the only Wisdom worth having; to hate Christ is to hate wisdom, that is, to hate him in whom all the treasures of wisdom are hid (Col 2:3); and to hate wisdom is to love death (Prov 8:36). Christians may continue to use “philosophy” and its cognates, but they reserve the right to qualify that usage.  Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis.

Tony hasn't given us the "gist" of Bahnsen's critique but the conclusion at which he arrives; the gist of the critique would have to contain a summary of the reasons for the conclusion.  Setting that quibble aside, I move to a substantive point.  While it is true that for a Christian Christ is the source of all wisdom and therefore, in a sense, wisdom itself, saying this is consistent with maintaining that philosophy is the love of wisdom.  The philosopher qua philosopher seeks wisdom using his unaided reason, unaided, that is, by the data of revelation.  It is not that the philosopher qua philosopher rejects the data of revelation or the very idea that there could be such a thing as divine revelation; it is rather that he makes no use of it qua philosopher.  (To save keystrokes I won't keep repeating the qualification 'qua philosopher' but it remains in force.)  To borrow a term from Edmund Husserl, the philosopher 'brackets' revelation.  I see nothing in the nature of philosophy to prevent a philosopher from arriving at the conclusion that wisdom is ultimately a person.  So my first question to Tony would be: Why must philosophy be opposed to wisdom when wisdom is taken to be a divine person?

Admittedly, philosophy cannot bring us to Wisdom in its fullness, especially if wisdom is a divine person, but it hardly follows that it cannot serve as a propaedeutic to a participation in this Wisdom.  Here is a crude analogy.  The menu is not the meal.  But the menu is not opposed to the meal.  The menu provides access to the meal via verbal description, the very same meal that one goes on to eat.  It is not as if there are two meals, the meal of the menu writer and the meal of the eater.  There is exactly one meal accessed in two ways, the first obviously inferior to the second. (If you don't get the analogy, forget it.)

There is an important point of terminology that we need to discuss.  Tony claims that Christians have the right to use 'philosophy' in their way as meaning the love of Christ.  (After all, if wisdom is Christ, then the love of wisdom is the love of Christ.)  I deny this right.  'Philosophy' means what it means and that is to be discerned from the practice of the great philosophers beginning with the ancient Greeks.  To know what philosophy is one reads Plato, for starters, and not just for starters.  Philosophy is what is done in those dialogues and what has arisen by way of commentary on and critique of what was done in those famous discussions.  "Philosophy is Plato and Plato philosophy." (Emerson)  I characterize philosophy here.  My characterization begins with this sentence: "Philosophy is not fundamentally a set of views but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to know the truth, applies discursive reason to the data of life in an attempt to arrive at the ultimate truth about them." 

The Christian, therefore, is not free to use 'philosophy' and cognates in an idiosyncratic way.  Or rather he is free to do so but if he does he causes confusion and makes communication difficult if not impossible.  'Philosophy' does not and cannot mean 'love of Christ.' This is not to say that one cannot move beyond philosophy to Christian faith.  One can, and perhaps one should.  But nothing is to be gained by tampering with the established sense of 'philosophy.' 

Tony writes, "Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis."  I object to this sentence because of the misuse of the word 'philosopher.'  Tony has decided that the philosopher, in his sense, is a lover of Christ, and that a philosopher (in the proper sense) is a misosopher and thus a hater of Christ.  But he has no right to hijack the terminology, nor, as regards the substantive question, has he shown that philosophy is opposed to Christian wisdom.

Autonomy versus Heteronomy/Theonomy

We now come to the crux of the matter: the tension between the autonomy of finite reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith.  This is, in essence, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem.  Whether this tension is an opposition or contradiction, as Tertullian thought, and as Tony seems to think, remains to be seen, and cannot be assumed at the outset. (I set aside the tension between Athens and Benares, the discussion of which does not belong here, even though that too is a tension between philosophy and a kind of religion.)  Finite reason, reason as we find it within ourselves, presumes to judge heaven and earth and everything in between; it would play "the spectator of all time and existence," to borrow a beautiful line from Plato's Republic.  But it must be admitted that the results have been meager.  Has even one substantive philosophical question been resolved to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners in two and one half millennia?  No.  What we have instead are endless controversies and the strife of systems.  Magnificent in aspiration, philosophy is miserable in execution.   Philosophy has proven impotent to provide us with the knowledge we seek, the knowledge of ultimates, and in particular salvific knowledge, knowledge that caters not merely to our theoretical needs but to our deepest existential ones as well, knowledge that does not merely inform us, but transforms us.

To make up for the infirmity of finite reason we must look elsewhere to a source of succor lying beyond the human horizon.  And so reason, while remaining within the sphere of immanence and autonomy, raises the question of the possibility of revelation, the possibility of an irruption into the sphere of immanence from beyond the human-all-too-human.  The possibility is entertained that the true nomos is theonomos, and that what at first appears as heteronomy is in reality theonomy.  The possibility is entertained that the prideful intellect must fall silent and humbly submit to God's Word.

But at this juncture we encounter what Josiah Royce calls the religious paradox or

The Paradox of Revelation. Suppose someone claims to have received a divine communication regarding the divine will, the divine plan, the need for salvation, the way to salvation, or any related matter. This person can be asked, "By what marks do you personally distinguish a divine revelation from any other sort of report?" (Josiah Royce, The Sources of Religious Insight, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912, pp. 22-23)

How is a putative revelation authenticated? By what marks or criteria do we recognize it as genuine? The identifying marks must be in the believer's mind prior to his acceptance of the revelation as valid. For it is by testing the putative revelation against these marks that the believer determines that it is genuine. One needs "a prior acquaintance with the nature and marks and, so to speak, signature of the divine will." (p. 25)

But how can a creature who needs saving lay claim to this prior acquaintance with the marks of genuine revelation? The paradox in a nutshell is that it seems that only revelation could provide one with what one needs to be able to authenticate a report as revelation.  Royce:

Faith, and the passive and mysterious intuitions of the devout, seem to depend on first admitting that we are naturally blind and helpless and ignorant, and worthless to know, of ourselves, any saving truth; and upon nevertheless insisting that we are quite capable of one very lofty type of knowledge -- that we are capable, namely, of knowing God's voice when we hear it, of distinguishing a divine revelation from all other reports, of being sure, despite all our worthless ignorance, that the divine higher life which  seems to speak to us in our moments of intuition is what it  declares itself to be. If, then, there is a pride of intellect, does there not seem to be an equal pride of faith, an equal pretentiousness involved in undertaking to judge that certain of our least articulate intuitions are infallible? Surely here is a genuine problem, and it is a problem for the reason. (103)

Is it a genuine problem or not? Can the church's teaching authority be invoked to solve the problem? Suppose a point of doctrine regarding salvation and the means thereto is being articulated at a church council. The fathers in attendance debate among themselves, arrive at a result, and claim that it is inspired and certified by the Holy Spirit. But by what marks do they authenticate a putative deliverance of the Holy Spirit as a genuine deliverance? How do they know that the Holy Spirit is inspiring them and not something else such as their own subconscious desire for a certain result?  This is exactly Royce's problem.

The problem, then, is this.  Reason is weak and philosophy, whose engine is unaided reason,  cannot deliver the goods.  The salvific wisdom we seek it cannot supply.  It remains an interminable and inconclusive seeking, but never a finding; it remains forever the (erothetic) love of wisdom, not its possession.  So we look beyond philosophy to the data of revelation.  But how do we authenticate such data?  How do we distinguish pseudo-revelation from the genuine article?  By what marks is it known?  We are thrown back upon our infirm reasoning powers to sort this out.

So, while confessing in all humility the infirmity of reason, we have no option but to rely on it as we do when, by its means, we come to admit the infirmity of reason.  Though weak, reason is strong enough to acquire a genuine insight into its own weakness and limitations  and the need for supplementation ab extra.  But this supplementation by revelation cannot go untested.  Tony may be right that we need to "repent" and submit our wills to God's, but what that will is has to be discerned, and there is no way around the fact that it is up to us to do the discerning using the God-given equipment we possess, as infirm as it may be. 

But let's hear what Flood has to say:

From 1969, when I first began to read philosophy (as it is commonly called), I had very rarely questioned the presumption of autonomy exhibited by my models in that field, whereby the human mind posits itself as the final judge of what is real, true, and good.  I did not question that presumptive stance even when the provisional conclusions I arrived at were professedly Christian-theistic and therefore incompatible with it.  The way I approached “God” did not ethically comport with wanting God.  I played it safe, hedged my bets, looking for nothing more than a piece of metaphysical furniture to complete the interior design of my latest philosophical mansion. The irony of this discrepancy was lost on me, at least until recently.

What Tony seems to be saying here is that when we approach God via philosophy, i.e., via finite discursive reason, relying only on those evidences that can be validated from within the sphere of immanence, eschewing any such exogenic input as the data of revelation, what we arrive at is not the true God, but 'God,' a mere furnishing in the mansion of immanence, a mansion that is perhaps better compared to a doghouse.  Tony thus seems to be sounding a very old theme, that of the opposition of the God of the philosophers to the the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I myself do not accept this opposition for reasons I supply in Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers. 

To revert to the crude analogy presented above, there are not two meals, the meal of the menu-writer and the meal of the eater.  One and the same meal is 'accessed' in two different ways, via description and via 'ingestion.' What the menu-writer describes, assuming the accuracy of the description,  is not something that exists only in his mind, a bit of mental furniture, but something that exists in reality.  Similarly, when the philosopher speaks of God , he is not speaking of something that exists only in his mind, but of something that exists in reality.  But let's hear some more from Tony:

As I now see it, that loss was not innocent and my present insight is wholly of grace. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), however, not something tacked on at the end of one’s system.  (Part V of Whitehead’s Process and Reality comes to mind.  So does Chapter XIX of Lonergan’s Insight.)

Human beings, Christian and non-Christian alike, do know things.  They do reason.  They do calculate, induct, deduce, plan, accuse, exonerate, interpret.  They do write histories, novels, and plays. They do compose symphonies and conduct experiments.  They do creatively improvise on canvas, in the sculpture studio, and on the band stand.  But their attempts to account for these facts apart from their dependence upon God have been marvelous failures, for they cannot secure the experience-transcending universal claims on which they rely when they engage in any of those activities.  They ought to acknowledge the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, moral absolutes as gifts of God.  Unless God grants them the spirit of repentance, however, this they will not do, for it is offensive to their posture of autonomy.  But they pay a price for this posture in the coin of rank foolishness.

Ironically, such a critique of philosophy is what one would predict professing Christian philosophers to produce, informed as they are by their awareness of the covenantal relationship they bear to God. Historically, however, what comes under the label “Christian philosophy” is compromised.  Christian philosophers have generally given their blessing to pretenses of neutrality and autonomy, content to conjecture how far the human mind can go under its own steam before grabbing the supernatural rope to take them the rest of the way.  

They can give that blessing, however, only by suppressing awareness (that they otherwise happily acknowledge) that the human being is a created, covenant-bound bearer of the image of God.  That is, Christian philosophers join their enemies in “testing” the hypothesis that Christian theism is at least as “reasonable” as anything else on offer in the marketplace of ideas.  As though any inference at all could be reasonable if Christian theism were not antecedently true.  As though an impersonal matrix of possibility were Lord of all.  I understand why Christianity’s opponents “load” the argument against Christian theism.  But why do Christians follow them? 

In this last paragraph, Tony raises a couple of fascinating questions.  One is whether (to put it in my own way) the necessary truth of the laws of logic presupposes the existence of God.  There are those who have argued such a thing, but, if Tony is right, why bother?  If Jerusalem supplies all the needs of man, who needs Athens?  If reason cannot be relied upon to bring us to any truth at all, then it cannot be relied upon to show that logic presupposes God.  The other question concerns the relation between the modal framework, standardly articulated in terms of 'possible worlds,' and God.  Analytic theists standardly maintain that God exists in all possible worlds.  Does such talk subject God to the modal framework, thereby compromising the divine sovereignty?  Is God lord of all, including the modal framework, or is God subject to the modal framework?  Or neither?

These questions cannot be pursued here, but one comment is in order, and an obvious one it is:  Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents.  For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably antagonistic  and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem.  He is free to make these assumptions of course.  No one is compelled to remain within philosophy's smoky rooms.  The door is unlocked and one is free to pass through it.  But then one should not attempt to explain or justify one's exit.  For any such attempt will entangle on in the very thing one is trying to get away from.

Addendum (13 November 2018) 

Re-reading and re-evaluating five years later I find that I still object to Flood's linguistic recommendation that 'philosophy' be used to refer to the love of Christ. Granted, philosophy is the love of wisdom and the pursuit of wisdom. But it is the pursuit of wisdom by means of  reason unaided by divine revelation.  The italicized phrase is an essential ingredient in any adequate definition of 'philosophy.' It may well be the case that Wisdom is incarnate in the person of Christ; but that this is so cannot be known by the philosopher qua philosopher.  It is a revealed truth if it is a truth.

Furthermore, a philosopher does not hate wisdom if he finds that he cannot, qua philosopher, accept the Christian revelation.  Such a philosopher simply does not acknowledge Christ as the ultimate wisdom.  It is therefore wrong to call him a misosopher and philosophy, properly and traditionally understood, misosophy.

But what I have just written leaves untouched the fundamental problem of how to reconcile the autonomy of reason with the heteronomy of obedient faith. Some will say that they cannot be reconciled, that one must opt for one or the other, for the Athenian life of autonomous reason with its demands for evidence and justification, or for the Hierosolymic life of heteronomous faith and obedient love.

Flood above opts for the latter.  But what could motivate this free opting?  Don't the claims of revealed religion need to be examined and assessed?  Given a plurality of putative revelations, how decide which is the true revelation?  Must not reason play a role here?  On the other hand, reason is weak and unavailing. The conclusions of the philosophers are inconclusive. Great minds have tried to put philosophy on the path of strict science, but without success.  

I don't know what the solution is.  But a mere opting for one 'city' or the other strikes me as no solution at all.  So I still think I was right when I wrote:

Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents.  For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably antagonistic  and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem.  

Peter Unger on Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy

Written 20 June 2014

This from a reader:

In one portion of Grace Boey's interview of Peter Unger, Unger discusses what Russell had to say about the value of philosophy, and I was a bit taken aback because that particular quotation by Russell resonates with me a lot, and Unger's swift dismissal of it as garbage left me almost wounded.

What Unger appears to be saying is that claims about the value of philosophy are either quasi-mystical nonsense, or these are claims which can be empirically tested, and therefore should not be assumed a priori. We can only say philosophy has value if we take a bunch of philosophy students, measure parameters such as their dogmatism, creativity, rationality etc at the start and then at the end when they graduate, see if learning philosophy has improved these parameters, and whether this improvement is more than the graduates of other subjects like psychology and literature. Only then we can say that there is value in studying philosophy.

Your thoughts appreciated.

This is what Unger says:  

This quote is from a small book that Bertrand Russell wrote, from 1912, which is still used as a textbook today: a little book called The Problems of Philosophy. He talks here about the value of philosophy:

Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves. Because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all that because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

The second part, after the ‘above all’ seems like complete nonsense. What the heck does all that mean? It’s mystical nonsense, no? This from one of the two founders of modern logic, second only to Gottlob Frege in laying down the foundations of symbolic and mathematical logic.

Let’s go to the first part, before the ‘above all’. He says that these questions, and not questions about, say, chemistry, or ornothology, enlarge your conception of what is possible. I hardly even know what that means. But he goes on and says things which are less hard to understand, like, it enriches your intellectual imagination. And a second thing it does, which I take to be distinct, is it diminishes your dogmatic assurance.

These are things that can be tested for, as I said before! Whether it’s a treatment effect, or a selection effect. There are tests for how creative people are, or how dogmatic they are. You test them, at the end, the day after they graduate. And you see whether this is true.

Bertrand Russell never even bothers to think about whether, or what, these things might have to do with any test you can give to human people, or what’s going on. It’s so full of nonsense, the guy was always full of nonsense. He read up on relativity theory, but you would think he would think of some psychological testing that had some bearing on the smoke he was blowing. He never gave it a thought.

In dismissing mysticism as nonsense, Unger merely advertises his own ignorance and spiritual vacancy and falls to the tabloid level of an Ayn Rand who displays no more understanding of mysticism than he does.  Mysticism is a vast field of ancient yet ongoing human experience and endeavor and one that earlier American philosophers such as Josiah Royce, William James, and William Ernest Hocking, to mention just three philosophers of high distinction, took very seriously indeed.  See, respectively, The World and the Individual, First Series, 1899, lectures II, IV, and V; The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, lectures XVI and XVII; Types of Philosophy, 1929, chapters 30, 31, 32, 33.  It is worth noting that all three luminaries were professors at Harvard University. 

In those days Harvard was still far from the over-specialization and hyper-professionalization of philosophy that breeds people like Peter Unger, who though "terribly" clever -- to use one of his favorite adjectives -- appear to view philosophy as a highly rarefied academic game without roots in, or anything to say about, one's life as an "existing individual" (phrase from Kierkegaard, but I am thinking of all the existentialists, as well as  Augustine, Pascal, the Stoics, the ancient Skeptics, and indeed all philosophers from Plato to Aquinas to Kant and beyond for whom philosophy has something to do with the search for wisdom).

The institutionalization of philosophy in the 20th century, though not without some benefits, has led to the following.  Empty gamesmanship without existential anchorage.  Hypertrophy of the critical and analytic faculty with concomitant atrophy of the intuitive faculty. Philistinic dismissal of whole realms of human experience and endeavor.  Technicality and specialization taken to absurd lengths not justified by any actual results.  (If extreme specialization and narrowing of focus led to consensus among competent practitioners, then that might count as a justification for the specialization.  But it hasn't and it doesn't. See here.)

Bertrand Russell, you will recall, published a collection of essays in October 1910 that in the second edition of December 1917 was given the title Mysticism and Logic.  The lead essay, "Mysticism and Logic," which originally appeared in the Hibbert Journal of July 1914, displays a serious engagement with what Unger the philistine dismisses as "complete nonsense."  What Russell writes about mysticism is penetrating enough to suggest that he may have had some mystical experiences of his own.  In the end Russell rejects the four main tenets that he takes as definitive of mysticism, but his rejection is reasoned and respectful.  He grants that "there is an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling, which does not seem to be attainable in any other way." (p. 11)

But of course that essay dates from the days of our grandfathers and great grandfathers.  Times have changed, and in philosophy not for the better.  The analytic philosophy that Russell did so much to promote has become sterile and ingrown and largely irrelevant to the wider culture.  There are of course exceptions, Thomas Nagel being one of them.  

There is a lot more to be said.  But for now I will simply oppose to Unger's nauseating view the following quotations:

The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man. (William James, Pragmatism, Harvard UP, 1975, p. 56)

Maximae res, cum parvis quaeruntur, magnos eos solent efficere.

Matters of the greatest importance, when they are investigated by little men, tend to make those men great. (Augustine, Contra Academicos 1. 2. 6.)

See here for a different critical response to Unger.

Boey's interview is here.

Solubility Skepticism, Religion, and Reason

Written 7 May 2014

R. C.  writes,

There is much depth in your short post on religion and reason from 6 May. Here are two points I often ponder about this topic:

First, I appreciate the difficulty of solving philosophical problems, but I wonder about the claim that they are insoluble (I suppose “insoluble” means “insoluble by humans alone”). If the problems are beyond mere human knowledge, how could we know this? One may inductively suspect insolubility by reflecting upon his experience of practicing philosophy, but how could he know the unknowable? If we can’t solve philosophical problems by philosophizing, then it seems we can’t conclude insolubility by philosophizing because this very conclusion would be a philosophical conclusion.

BV:  I hold that the central problems of philosophy are most of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but all of them insoluble.  And you are right, by 'insoluble' I mean insoluble by us or by beings of a similar cognitive architecture, ectypal intellects in Kant's jargon. Furthermore, pace Nicholas Rescher, I don't count a 'solution' that is relative to some set of background assumptions and cognitive values as a solution.  Of course there are solutions in this sense.  Nominalists solve the problem of univerals in one way, realists in another, conceptualists in a third, etc. But those are merely intramural solutions.  What is wanted are solutions acceptable to all, solutions that hold outside the walls of self-reinforcing enclaves of the like-minded.

You ask a very important question:  How could one know that the central philosophical problems are insoluble?  You yourself supplied the clue:  by induction from philosophical experience.  The best and the brightest have been at this game for thousands of years but not one single problem has been solved during this period, solved to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners. Everything is up for grabs, even the most elementary and picayune topics.  Take a look at what is going one as we speak in the thread on logical form.  Philosophers can't even agree on the most basic concepts of deductive logic.  There is controversy everywhere.  This is a plain fact.

The strife of systems and the ubiquity and longevity of controversy need explaining and I offer the insolubility thesis as the best explanation.  Why haven't the problems been solved?  Because they are insoluble.  I agree with Benson Mates on this point.  Of course, the following is an invalid argument form:  Such-and-such has hitherto not been accomplished; ergo, such-and-such will never be accomplished.  But then every inductive argument is invalid.  Some inductive arguments, however, do quite reasonably support their conclusions.  

But you can and should press your objection.  If I maintain that the problems of philosophy are insoluble, then, given that the metaphilosophical problem of whether or not philosophical problems are soluble is itself a philosophical problem,  it follows that the metaphilosophical problem is insoluble.  Is this a difficult for my position?  Not obviously.  I simply 'bite the bullet' as they say.  I accept that the meta problem is also insoluble.

In fact, the insolubility of the meta problem is further evidence of my thesis.

In other words, I am not dogmatizing.  I am not claiming to know with certainty that the problems of philosophy are insoluble.  I am not claiming to have solved the meta problem.  I am merely claiming that the insolubility thesis is very reasonably maintained.  Not every truth is such that we can know it to be true.  With some truths the most we can expect here below is reasonable belief.

Compare God and the soul.  I do not claim to know with certainty whether either exists.  I claim merely that it it is reasonable to affirm both.  

Second, I agree that it’s wise to intelligently practice religion and mysticism -- which, by the way, rules out superstition and group-think! Take religion: religious practice does not exclude reason, as Mates’ quote implies. It is a false dilemma to say “One can seek truth either by reason or religion, but not both.” Why not both? If I try to lift a stone and realize I can’t manage alone, this would not entail that I can or should stop lifting. If a stronger person assists me, and I trust his assistance, I can still lift. He may request my help. He may even require that I give it my all, and I may grow from the effort. Likewise, intelligent religion requires reason.

Consider Christianity: The biblical conception of faith is “trust based on good reasons”. This point is clear in passages such as Hebrews 11:1 and 1 Peter 3:15. In the Gospels, Jesus himself reasons and encourages others to do the same. Christian faith calls for the whole self: heart, mind, soul, and strength.  

I’d be interested in your thoughts on reason and intelligent religion.

BV: I basically agree with you.  Reason in the end must confess its own infirmity.  It cannot deliver on its promises. The truth-seeker must explore other avenues.  Religion is one, mysticism is another. 

From Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives for Making the Move

People come to philosophy from various 'places.'  Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts.  There are other termini a quis as well.  In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy.  What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy?  I count five main types of motive.

1. The Apologetic Motive.  Some look to philosophy for apologetic tools.  Their concern is to clarify and defend the tenets of their religious faith, tenets they do not question, or do not question in the main, against those who do question them, or even attack them.  For someone whose central motive is apologetic, the aim is not to seek a truth they do not possess, but to articulate and defend a truth, the "deposit of faith," that they already possess, if not in fullness, at least in outline.

2. The Critical Motive.  Someone who is animated by the Critical Motive seeks to understand religion and evaluate its claim to truth, while taking it seriously.  To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, evaluate, assay, separate the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable.  The critic is not out to defend or attack but to understand and evaluate.  Open to the claims of religion, his question is: But is it true?

3. The Debunking Motive.  If the apologist presupposes the truth of his religion, or some religion, the debunker presupposes the falsehood of a particular religion or of every religion.  He takes the doctrines and institutions of religion seriously as things worth attacking, exposing, debunking, unmasking, refuting.

The apologist, the critic, and the debunker all take religion seriously as something worth defending, worth evaluating, or worth attacking using the tools of philosophy.  For all three, philosophy is a tool, not an end in itself. 

The apologist moves to philosophy without leaving religion. If he succeeds in defending his faith with the weapons of philosophy, well and good; if he fails, it doesn't really matter.  He has all the essential truth he needs from his religion.  His inability to mount an intellectually respectable defense of it is a secondary matter.

The critic moves to philosophy with the option of leaving religion behind.  Whether or not he leaves it behind depends on the outcome of his critique.  Neither staying nor leaving is a foregone cnclusion.

The debunker either never had a living faith, or else he had one but lost it.  As a debunker, his decision has been made and his Rubicon crossed: religion is buncombe from start to finish, dangerous buncombe that needs to be unmasked and opposed. Strictly speaking, only the debunker who once had a living faith moves from it to philosophy.  You cannot move away from a place where you never were.

4. The Transcensive Motive.  The transcender aims to find in philosophy something that completes and transcends religion while preserving its truth.  One way to flesh this out would be in Hegelian terms: religion and philosophy both aim to express the Absolute, but only philosophy does so adequately.  Religion is an inadequate 'pictorial' (vortstellende) representation of the Absolute.  On this sort of approach all that is good in religion is aufgehoben in philosophy, simultaneously cancelled and preserved, roughly in the way the bud is both cancelled and preserved in the flower.

5. The Substitutional Motive.  The substitutionalist aims to find in philosophy a substitute for religion.  Religion, when taken seriously, makes a total claim on its adherents' higher energies.  A person who, for any reason, becomes disenchanted with religion, but is not prepared to allow himself to degenerate to the level of the worldling, may look to invest his energies elsewhere in some other lofty pursuit.  Some will turn to social or political activism.  And of course there are other termini ad quos on the road from religion. The substitutionalist abandons religion for philosophy.  In  a sense, philosophy becomes his religion.  It is in her precincts that he seeks his highest meaning and an outlet for his noblest impulses.

Some Questions

A. What is my motive?  (2).  Certainly not (1):  I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking the religion of my upbringing , or any religion, as simply true without examination.  I can't suppress the questions that naturally arise.  We have it on high authority that "The unexamined life is not worth living."  That examination, of course, extends to everything, including religion, and indeed also to this very examining.  Note  that I am not appealing to the authority of Socrates/Plato since their authority can be validated rationally and autonomously.

Certainly not (3): I am not a debunker.  Not (4) or (5) either.  Hegel is right: both religion and philosophy treat of the Absolute.  Hegel is wrong, however, in thinking that religion is somehow completed by or culminates in philosophy.  I incline to the view that Athens and Jersualem are at odds with each other, that there is a tension between them, indeed a fruitful, productive tension, one that accounts in part for the vitality of the West as over against the inanition of the Islamic world.  To put it starkly, it it is the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith (cf. Leo Strauss).  Jerusalem is not a suburb of Athens.

Nor do I aim to substitute philosophy for religion.  Philosophy, with its "bloodless ballet of categories," is not my religion.  Man does not live by the discursive intellect alone.

My view is that there are four main paths to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality.  They are separate and somehow all must be trod.  No one of them has proprietary rights in the Absolute.  How integrate them?  Integration may not be possible here below.  The best we can do is tack back and forth among them.  So we think, we pray, we meditate and we live under the aegis of moral demands taken as absolute.

This theme is developed in Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom. 

B. Have I left any types of motive out?   

Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy or the Humanities?

The place of philosophy in college curricula is often defended on the ground that its study promotes critical thinking.

Now I don't doubt that courses in logic, epistemology, and ethics can help inculcate habits of critical thinking and good judgment. And it may also be true that philosophy has a unique role to play here. So, while it is true that every discipline teaches habits of critical thinking and good judgment in that discipline, there are plenty of issues that are not discipline-specific, and these need to be addressed critically as well.

What I object to, however, is the notion that philosophy needs to justify itself in terms of an end external to it, and that its main justification is in terms of an end outside of it. The main reason to study philosophy is not to become a more critical reasoner or a better evaluator of evidence, but to grapple with the ultimate questions of human existence and to arrive at as much insight into them as is possible. What drives philosophy is the desire to know the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. Let's not confuse a useful byproduct of philosophical study (development of critical thinking skills) with the goal of philosophical study. The reason to study English literature is not to improve one's vocabulary or to prepare for a career as a journalist.   Similarly, the reason to study philosophy is not to improve one's ability to think clearly about extraphilosophical matters or to acquire skills that may prove handy in law school.

Philosophy is an end in itself. This is why it is foolish to try to convince philistines that it is good for something. It is not primarily good for something. It is a good in itself. Otherwise you are acquiescing in the philistinism you ought to be combating. Is listening to the sublime adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony good for something? And what would that be, to impress people with how cultured you are?

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such responses are patently lame. You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school."  You should not acquiesce in the philistine's values and assumptions, but go on the attack and question his values and assumptions.  Put him on the spot.  Play the Socratic gadfly.  If a philistine wants to know how much you got paid for writing an article for a professional journal, say, "Do you really think that only what one is paid to do is worth doing?"  

Admittedly, this is a lofty conception of philosophy and I would hate to have to defend it before the uncomprehending philistines one would expect to find on the typical Board of Regents. But philosophy is what it is, lofty by nature, and if we are to defend it we must do so in a way that does not betray it.

It might be better, though, not to stoop to defend it at all, at least not before the uncomprehending.  It might be better to show contempt and supercilious disdain. Not everyone can be reasoned with, and part of being reasonable is understanding this fact.

The Concept of 'Standoff' in Philosophy

The following two propositions are collectively logically inconsistent and yet each is very plausible:

1. Being dead is not an evil for any dead person at any time. 

2. Being dead at a young age is an evil for some dead persons.

Obviously, the limbs of the dyad cannot both be true.  Each entails the negation of the other.  And yet each limb lays serious claim to our acceptance. If you have been following the recent Epicurean discussions in these pages, you know that very plausible arguments can be given for both members of this pair of contradictories.

If philosopher A urges (1) and philosopher B urges (2), and neither can convince the other,  then I say that A and B are in a standoff.

On the other hand, there cannot be sound arguments for both limbs. This is because there are no true contradictions. A plausible argument needn't be sound. And a sound argument needn't be plausible. A sound argument, by commonly accepted definition, is a valid deductive argument all of the premises of which are true. It is easy to see that every such argument must have a true conclusion.

So I say that the above standoff is dialectical, not logical. 

This means that what generates the standoff or impasse are not logical norms and notions taken in abstractoand applied to propositions taken in abstracto,  but logic embedded and applied in a concrete dialogue situation playing out between two or more finite and fallible agents who are trying to arrive at a rational resolution of a difficult question.  I will assume that the interlocutors are sincere truth seekers possessing the intellectual virtues.  There is thus nothing polemical about their conflict. Of course, some standoffs are polemical, most political ones for example, but at the moment I am not worrying about polemical standoffs. Nor am I concerned with physical standoffs or the sort of standoff that occurs in a game of chess when neither side has sufficient mating material. 

A second example. 

3. God by his very nature as divine  is a concrete being who exists of metaphysical necessity.

4. Nothing concrete could exist of metaphysical necessity.

By 'concrete' I mean causally active/passive. The God in question is not a causally inert abstract object like a number or a set-theoretical set. Clearly, (3) and (4) form a contradictory pair and so cannot both be true.  And yet one can argue plausibly for each.

This is not the place for detailed arguments, but in support of (3) there are the standard Anselmian considerations. God is ens perfectissimum; nothing perfect could be modally contingent; ergo, etc. God is "that than which no greater can be conceived"; if God were a merely contingent being, then a greater could be conceived; ergo, etc.

In support of (4), there is the difficulty of understanding how any concrete individual could exist necessarily. For such a being, possibility suffices for actuality: if God is possible, then he is actual. But this possibility is not mere possibility; it is the possibility of an actual being.  (God is at no time or in any possible world merely possible, if he is possible at all.) The divine possibility -- if it is a possibility at all and not an impossibility -- is a possibility that is fully actualized. Possibility and actuality in God are one and the same in reality even though they remain notionally distinct for us.  (In classical jargon, God is pure act, actus purus.) Equivalently, essence and existence in God are one and the same in reality even if they must remain notionally distinct for our discursive intellects.  It is God's nature to exist. God is an existing essence in virtue of his very essence. God's existence is in no way subsequent to his essence, not temporally, of course, but also not logically or ontologically. So it is not quite right to say, as many do, that God's nature entails his existence; God's nature ishis existence, and his existence is his nature.

If you think this through very carefully, you will realize that the ground of the divine necessity is the divine simplicity.  It is because God is an ontologically simple being that he is a necessary being.  If you deny that God is simple but affirm that he is necessary, then I will challenge you to state what makes him necessary as opposed to impossible. If you say that God is necessary in virtue of existing in all possible worlds, then I will point out that that gets us nowhere: it is simply an extensional way of saying that God is necessary.  

Divine simplicity implies no real distinctions in God, and thus no real distinction between essence and existence. It is the identity of essence and existence in God that is the root, source, ground of the divine necessity. The problem is that we, with our discursive intellects, cannot understand how this could be.  Anything we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as nonexistent. (Hume) The discursive intellect cannot grasp the possibility of a simple being, and so it cannot grasp the possibility of a necessary concretum.  Here then we have the makings of an argument that, in reality, every concretum is contingent, which is equivalent to the negation of (4).

So if one philosopher urges (3) and his interlocutor (4), and neither can convince the other, then the two are in a standoff.

Now you may quibble with my examples, but there are fifty more I could give (and you hope I won't).

Philosophy is its problems and these are in canonical form when cast in the mold of aporetic polyads.  The typical outcome, however, is not a solution but a standoff.

The Inquirer, the Dogmatist, the Theoretical and the Practical

I have so far characterized in a preliminary way what a standoff in philosophy is, and I have given a couple of examples in support of the claim that there are standoffs in philosophy.  But there are those who are loathe to accept that there are such standoffs.  These are people with overpowering doxastic security needs: they have an irresistible  need to be secure in their beliefs.  They don't cotton to the idea that many of the deepest problems are insoluble by us. These are people in whom the dogmatic tendency wins out over the inquiring/skeptical tendency.  Among these are people who think one can PROVE the existence of God, or prove the opposite. Among them are those who are CERTAIN that there are substances in the Aristotelian sense of the term. It would be easy to multiply examples.

As I see it, the spirit of genuine philosophy is anti-dogmatic.  A real philosopher does not bluster. He does not claim to know what he does not know, and in some cases, cannot know. A real philosopher does not confuse subjective conviction with objective certainty. He has time and he takes time. He can tolerate suspense and open questions. But his suspension is not a Pyrrhonian abandonment of inquiry, but is in the service of it. His happiness is not a porcine ataraxia, but the happiness of the hunt. Unlike the dogmatist, however, he has high standards with the result that is hunt is long and perhaps endless as long as he remains in statu viaewandering among the charms and horrors of the sublunary.

And yet we are participants in life's parade and not mere spectators of it. Curiously, we are both part of the passing scene and observers of it.  To us as participants in the flux and shove of the real order a certain amount of bluster has proven to be life-enhancing and practically necessary. To live is to maneuver, to position oneself, to take a position, to adopt a stance, to grab one's piece of the action and defend it, and in the clinch to shoot first and philosophize later.

As so we are torn. It is a broken world and we are broken on its samsaric wheel. To put it grandly,  the human condition is a tragic predicament. We must act in conditions of poor lighting, maintaining ourselves in the Cave's chiaroscuro, with little more than faith and hope to keep us going. At the same time we seek light, light, more light and the transformation of faith into knowledge and hope into having. 

Are Burden-of-Proof Considerations Relevant in Philosophy?

1. The question this post raises is whether it is at all useful to speak of burden of proof (BOP) in dialectical situations in which there are no agreed-upon rules of procedure that are constitutive of the 'game' played within the dialectical situation.  By a dialectical situation I mean a context in which orderly discussion occurs among two or more competent and sincere interlocutors who share the goal of arriving as best they can at the truth about some matter, or the goal of resolving some question in dispute.  My main concern is with dialectical situations that are broadly  philosophical.   I suspect that in philosophical debates the notion of burden of proof is out of place and not usefully deployed.  That is what I will now try to argue.

2. I will begin with the observation that the presumption of innocence (POI) in an Anglo-American court  of law is never up for grabs in that arena.  Thus the POI is not itself presumptively maintained and subject to defeat.  If Jones is accused of a crime, the presumption of his innocence can of course be defeated, but that the accused must be presumed innocent until proven guilty is itself never questioned and of course never defeated.  The POI is not itself a defeasible presumption.  And if Rescher is right that there are no indefeasible presumptions, then the POI is not even a presumption.  The POI is a rule of the 'game,' and constitutive of the 'game.'  The POI in a court room situation  is like a law of chess.  The laws of chess, as constitutive of chess, cannot themselves be contested within a game of chess.  In a particular game a dispute may arise as to whether or not a three-fold repetition of position has occurred.  But that a three-fold repetition of position results in a draw is not subject to dispute. The reason there is always a definite outcome in chess (win, lose, or draw) is precisely because of the non-negotiable chess-constitutive laws. These laws, of course, are not inscribed in the nature of things, but are conventional in nature.

As I pointed out earlier, defeasible presumption (DP) and burden of proof are correlative notions.  The defeasible presumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty places the onus probandi on the prosecution.  Therefore, from the fact that the POI is not itself defeasible in a court of law, it follows that neither is the BOP.  Where the initating BOP lies -- the BOP that remains in force and never shifts during the proceedings -- is never subject to debate.  It lies on the state in a criminal case and on the plaintiff in a civil case.  If you agree to play the game, then you agree to its constitutive rules.  Since these rules are constitutive of the game, they cannot be rejected on pain of ceasing to play the particular game in question.

3. But in philosophy matters are otherwise. For in philosophy everything is up for grabs, including the nature of philosophical inquiry and the rules of procedure.  (This is why metaphilosophy is not 'outside of' philosophy but a branch of same.)   And so where the BOP lies in a debate between, say, atheists and theists is itself a matter of debate and bitter contention.  Each party seeks to put the BOP on the other, to 'bop' him if you will.  The theist is inclined to say that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of the truth of theism; but of course few atheists will meekly submit to that pronunciamento.  If the theist is right in his presumption, then he doesn't have to do anything except turn aside the atheist's objections: he is under no obligation to argue positively for theism any more than the accused is under an obligation to prove his innocence.

Accused to accuser: "I don't have to prove my innocence; you have to prove my guilt.  I enjoy the presumption of innocence; you bear the burden of proof." 

Theist to atheist:  "I don't have to prove that God exists; you have to prove that God does not exist.  Theism enjoys the presumption of being true; atheism bears the burden of proving that theism is not true." (This assumes that BOP and DP are legitimately deployed within broadly philosophical precincts -- which I am denying.)

Note that if the theist invokes the above presumption he needn't be committing the ad ignorantiam fallacy.  He needn't be saying that theism is true because it hasn't been proved to be false.  Surely the following deductive argument is invalid:

No one has ever proved that God does not exist
ergo
God does exist.

Just as the presumption of innocence does not entail that the accused is innocent, the presumption of truth does not entail that the proposition presumed true is true.  So the mere fact that I have the presumption on my side does not amount to an argument that what I am presuming is true.  If I have the presumption on my side, then my dialectical opponent bears the BOP.  That's all.

4. Now we come to my tentative suggestion.  There is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies in any dialectical context, legal, philosophical or any other: it is a matter of decision and agreement upon what has been conventionally decided.  In chess, for example, the rules had to be decided and the players have to agree to accept them.  No one thinks that these rules are inscribed in rerum natura.  The same goes for BOP and DP. It had to be decided that in court room discourse and dialectic the accused enjoys the DP and the accuser(s) the BOP.

In philosophical discourse, however, there are no procedural rules regarding DP and BOP that we will all agree on. 

For example, according to Douglas N. Walton, ". . . the basic rule of burden of proof in reasonable dialogue is: He who asserts must prove." (Informal Logic, p. 59) That is clearly false.  If I assert that that you left the door open, there is no need for me to prove my assertion.  A proof is an argument having premises and conclusion.  Surely there is no need to argue for matters evident to sense perception.  In fact, it would be unreasonable to do so.  Or suppose I assert the Law of Noncontradiction.  There is no way I can (non-circularly) prove it.  So I cannot be under any epistemic obligation to prove it.  'Ought' implies 'can.'

And how would this work in a dispute between theist and atheist?  I assert that God exists and you assert that God does not exist.  We both assert.  So we both bear the BOP, and we both enjoy DP?  But then BOP and DP have no application in this area.

I have heard it said that the BOP lies on the one who makes a positive (affirmative) assertion.  But surely both theist and atheist make positive assertions about reality.  'Reality is such that God exists.' 'Reality is such that God does not exist.'   Both propositions are logically affirmative.

Suppose our atheist denies God by saying 'God is an unconscious anthropomorphic projection.'  Logically, that is an affirmative proposition.  Will you conclude that the BOP is on the atheist?

Some say that presumptions are essentially conservative: there is a presumption in favor of the existing and the established  and against the novel, the far-out, and what runs contrary to prevailing opinion.  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  Suppose I give the following speech:

There is a presumption in favor of every existing institution, long-standing way of doing things, and well-entrenched and widespread way of belief.  Now the consensus gentium is that God exists.  And so I lay it down that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of theism and that the burden of proof  lies squarely on the shoulders of the atheist.  Theism is doxastically innocent until proven guilty.  The theist need only rebut the atheist's objections; he needn't make a positive case for his side.

Not only would the atheist not accept this declaration, he would be justified in not accepting it, for reasons that are perhaps obvious.  For my declaration is as much up for grabs as anything else in philosophy.  And of course if I make an ad baculum move then I remove myself from philosophy's precincts altogether.  In philosophy the appeal is to reason, never to the stick. 

The situation in philosophy could be likened to the situation in a court of law in which the contending parties are the ones who decide on the rules of procedure, including BOP and DP rules.  Such a trial could not be brought to a conclusion.  That's the way it is in philosophy.  Every procedural rule and methodological maxim is further fodder for philosophicalForschung. (Sorry, couldn't resist the alliteration.)

My tentative conclusion is as follows.  In philosophy no good purpose is served by claims that the BOP lies on one side or the other of a dispute, or that there is a DP in favor of this thesis but not in favor of that one. For there is no fact of the matter as to where the BOP lies.  BOP considerations are usefully deployed only in dialectical situations in which there is an antecedent conventional agreement on the rules of procedure, rules  that constitute the dialectical 'game' in question, and  that are agreed upon by the players of the game and never contested by them while playing it.

(Originally posted 25 October 2014)

The Consolations of Philosophy

I feel a little guilty at deriving so much intellectual stimulation from the events of the day.  It is fascinating to watch my beloved country fall apart. What is a calamity for the citizen, however, is grist for the philosopher's mill. Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  And if the philosopher is an old Platonist who has nearly had his fill of the Cave and its chiaroscuro, he is ever looking beyond this life, and while in no rush to bid it a bittersweet adieu, is not affrighted at the coming transition either.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk.  The old Platonist owl lives by the hope  that the dusk of death will lead to the Light, a light unmixed with darkness.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however; it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, 
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey -- no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

On the other hand, it ain't over until it's over, and as citizens we must fight on, lest our spectatorship of all time and existence suffer a premature earthly termination.  The joys if not the  consolations of philosophy are possible only in certain political conditions.  We are not made of the stern stuff of Boethius, though we are inspired by his example.

The Punctum Pruriens of Metaphysics

Man is a metaphysical animal. He does not live by bread alone, nor by bed alone, and he does not scratch only where it physically itches. He also scratches where he feels the metaphysical itch, the tormenting lust to know the ultimate why and wherefore. And where is that punctum pruriens located? What is it that arouses his intellectual eros?

. . . das Böse, das Uebel und der Tod sind es, welche das philosophische Erstaunen qualificiren und erhöhen: nicht bloß, daß die Welt vorhanden, sondern noch mehr, daß sie eine so trübsälige sei, ist das punctum pruriens der Metaphysik, das Problem, welches die Menschheit in eine Unruhe versetzt, die sich weder durch Skepticismus noch durch Kriticismus beschwichtigen läßt.

. . . it is wickedness, evil, and death that qualify and intensify philosophical astonishment. Not merely that the world exists, but still more that it is such a miserable and melancholy world, is the punctum pruriens of metaphysics, the problem awakening in mankind an unrest that cannot be quieted either by scepticism or criticism. (Schopenhauer, WWR II, 172, tr. Payne)