Faith and Reason

Richard Rorty’s incessant attack on Platonism would lead one to believe that philosophy is a useless enterprise.  He described the whole history of philosophy in the West as Platonism.  Though he claimed that he never disparaged the person of Plato, but of course, I’m sure he recognized Plato as one who fathered this school of thought. 

Platonism, Rorty claimed, is the philosophical belief responsible of separating two different kinds of worlds: the world of material things and the world of ideal forms.  In epistemological sense, a distinction is drawn between the phenomenal world and noumenal world, as Immanuel Kant termed centuries later after Plato.  Plato’s concern was to look for grounds of what is real.  The phenomenal or material world (the world of senses) is in constant flux, which is a common human experience.  In a day-to-day life, we commonly experience that things keep on changing.  Nothing is permanent.  Everything will pass away even how individual persons keep and value them.  Everything is fleeting like clouds in the skies.  Human beings too are temporary.  This experience of temporariness of life and of things leaves them a feeling of anxiety, which aspires them to look for something eternal –something which does not change, immutable.  Plato found it in the world of ideas, which is accessible only with the mind.  We don’t have any direct/immediate access of it, though.  Yet, its existence is a rational necessity –that is, reason necessarily sees it as real.  At the outset, a distinction between the world of senses and the world of reason is drawn.  The two faculties of man, namely the senses and reason, intend separately to these two different worlds.  Senses seek specifically the objects in the material world.  Reason, on the other, seeks objects properly dwelling in the world of ideal forms.

Plato’s analysis of these two worlds creates great division among philosophers.  There are some philosophers who are faithful to Platonic notion of the world of forms –though they put some modifications of it.  They are usually considered as rationalists or under the camp of rationalism.  Other philosophers reject the ideal/formal world and affirm the sensible world.  These philosophers are commonly known as empiricists.  Rationalists believe that the real is grounded in the ideal world.  Thus, their conviction is that the real world is the ideal world (the world of ideas), and all other realities like of the self, society, knowledge are to be found in the real ideal world.  Empiricists, on the other hand, believe that the real is grounded in the sensible world; there’s no other world besides the material world.  Since this world is fleeting, these philosophers are convinced that other realities like the self, society, knowledge are fleeting.  Perceptual experience is fleeting; so as one’s knowledge which is sourced from it.

This restless history of philosophy –characterized by a tug-o-war between empiricists and rationalists, is what Richard Rorty calls Platonism.  All these philosophers –whether rationalists or empiricists, are fooled by Plato into believing that there is an apparent distinction between appearance and reality.  This appearance-reality distinction undermines the fact that there is such a thing as reality out there, which serves as the foundation of talking what is real.  Rorty is somehow accusing Plato that if that distinction was never conceived, the “myth of the given” may not have fooled Plato’s predecessors in talking about it or writing voluminous books about it for the sake of academic pursuit.  Appearance or reality is a myth.  Like the deconstructionists, Rorty claims that appearance and/or reality doesn’t exist outside the consciousness of man.  So, what he is doing is “de-mythologized” this myth, that has mystified a number of philosophers in the history of philosophy.  He is helping philosophers get out from this "mythical" entanglement.  

Rorty's critic is exasperating!  Yet, in deeper analysis, Rorty seems like feeling discontented of what human reason is capable of.  Plato and his predecessors have been confident that reason can establish what is real --whether through purely rational or empirical demonstration.  They have been confident that reason can "mirror" the exact external reality, as Rorty termed it.  The problem, however, is that it isn't possible.  It isn't possible that human mind "mirrors" exactly what is in the outside world.  It isn't possible for the external, material object to become one of a mental (spiritual) entity as captured by the human mind.  Every philosopher is aware of this problem.  Rorty is very aware of this problem.  And, every philosopher --except Rorty and his cohorts, knows that it's part of the limits of human reason.  Human reason has limits since its operation is subject to its own framework, specifically the conceptual-linguistic framework.  Meaning, one thinks according to his frame of understanding and his frame of language.  He does not think beyond his capability to think.  He does not think of anything else outside his linguistic reference.  It seems to me that Rorty has missed the point of Platonism.  I agree with him that reason will eventually fail to look for such a thing as reality.  But, there is no point to agree with him that there is no such thing as external reality.  What, I think, we miss to recognize, which Rorty fails to recognize, is that human reason has limits.

If we accept the fact that reason has limits, that's where faith comes in.  Faith leaves us some space to wonder that not everything we want to know can be known exactly like seeing the image reflected in the "mirror" (or the human mind).  Faith gives us hints to ponder that we are not "omniscient" knowers. 

In conclusion, Rorty's critic on Platonism is, once and for all, an affirmation that human beings are not purely beings of reason but also beings of faith.