Saving Philosophy!

Contemporary philosophers with post-modernist orientation reject outright the legacy of the philosophical tradition in the West.  Post-modernism is usually identified with philosophers in 19th century onwards and often characterized with non-dualistic perspective.  Friedrich Nietzsche is known as the prophet of post-modernism with his nihilist claim, “God is dead.”  (Nihilism –from the Latin word meaning “nothing.”)  In Christian tradition, God is said to be the “alpha and omega” (beginning and end), and foundation of everything that exists.  God is also the source of man’s knowledge and morals.  But with Nietzsche’s pronouncement that God is dead, man is left with nothing –no foundation of his being and the criterion of his knowledge and morals.  To overcome the death of God, he should become an “ubermensch” (superman) and shall be able to “fly without wings,” like the one we see in the series of Superman movies.  This Nietzschean philosophy is entirely “nihilist” –in the sense that it is non-foundationalist.  It rejects altogether the idea of all foundations of existence, knowledge, meaning of life, morals, among others.

Philosophy has been one of the celebrated sciences –if we mean by science in its literal sense, that is, a body of knowledge.  In the tradition of the ancient Greeks, philosophy –identified then with metaphysics, became the highest of all sciences (again, in its literal sense) and shall perch in the pedestal because philosophizing is a god-like activity.  Gods and goddesses dwell in Mount Olympus –the holy mountain in ancient Greek civilization.  Thus, they are apart from the habitation of the mortals.  While the mortals struggle against the vicissitudes of life, they stand on top of the mountain as spectators watching and intervening at times the affairs of the mortals.  To stand on top of the mountain like a god is a privilege.  It is on top of the mountain where one can see everything below as one unified whole.  It is on top where one can tell stories about the affairs of the mortals.  A mortal obsessed in a day-to-day concern has no place and time to stop, look, write and tell his own stories, his fellow mortal’s stories as well.  To scribble stories can only be done when a mortal is not directly engaged in the daily affairs of all other mortals.  That is exactly what is meant by philosophy as a “god-like activity.”  A philosopher is privileged to perch on top of the mountain like a god and sees everything below as a “unified whole,” and articulates his vision of the whole as a “theoria.”  Philosophizing, then, is simply having a “perspective” higher than the ordinary.  Since philosophizing is taking a higher perspective, it implies that a philosopher is (1) willing to break his ties from obsession of the day-to-day concerns, (2) willing to take the higher perspective, (3) willing to have the vision of the whole, (4) willing to articulate his vision of the whole, and (5) willing to defend his articulation of the vision of the whole.

Plato, however, made philosophy a search for something metaphysical to ground all realities.  Distrusting the physical world as a fleeting reality, he speculated of a world, which is the real, the unchanging and the eternal –the “World of Forms.”  At the outset, Plato divided two kinds of world: the world of senses and the world of forms.  The world of senses does not provide us the true knowledge but only opinion, since all perceptual experience of it is fleeting, keeps on changing –thus, perception is deceptive.  The world of forms, on the other hand, is the source of real knowledge since it is immutable and can only be accessed through reason.  Contemporary philosophers like Richard Rorty accuse Plato of introducing dualistic sort of philosophizing in the West.  And, all philosophies after Plato are caught up under the thrall of Plato.  Rorty also charged Platonism as foundationalist, aside from being dualistic.  One assumption of Platonism is that true knowledge must consist of a correspondence between language and reality, or the spoken word and the outside world.  For example, when I say, I know that the sun is hot is certainly true if and only if the sun is hot.  What I claim I know with certainty like “the sun is hot” is true if and only if it corresponds to the outside world. 

Richard Rorty rejects this sort of philosophy which is dualistic and foundationalist.  This sort of philosophy does not help for the improvement of humanity.  The betterment of human conditions does not rely on the search of what is true but on social hope.  Thus, there is a need to redirect one’s philosophical search for the “ideal form,” which will make the future of humanity better, instead of scrambling for something which doesn’t exist at all like the Platonic ideal forms.  It's futile to look for the ideal forms to ground for knowledge since in the first place there is no such thing as the World of Forms.  It is rather helpful to divert one's energy and attention to search for something that makes future humanity a better one.  Rorty wants to replace knowledge with social hope.  Rortian critic against Platonism is really and disturbing.  He dethrones philosophy from its place as the highest of all sciences.  Philosophy, therefore, shall be treated like one of the other disciplines.   And, he thinks he's right when he gives up teaching philosophy -a position where he becomes renowned worldwide, and holds position in teaching literature instead.

With this attack against philosophy, is there any way to save philosophy? 

In deeper analysis, what Rorty is ferociously attacking is not the whole philosophical tradition in the West.  He is particularly against Platonism.  Saving philosophy is possible if philosophy is still understood as a "god-like activity," not a metaphysical one like that of Plato.