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.
