Way to Wisdom

An Introduction to Philosophy

Karl Jaspers, Ralph Manheim

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839746178
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

One of the founders of existentialism, the eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers here presents for the general reader an introduction to philosophy. In doing so, he also offers a lucid summary of his own philosophical thought. In Jaspers' view, the source of philosophy is to be found "in wonder, in doubt, in a sense of forsakenness, " and the philosophical quest is a process of continual change and self-discovery.—Print ed.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I—PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE{4}

PHILOSOPHY HAS FROM its very beginnings looked upon itself as science, indeed as science par excellence. To achieve the highest and most certain knowledge is the goal that has always animated its devotees.

How its scientific character came to be questioned can be understood only in the light of the development of the specifically modern sciences. These sciences made their greatest strides in the nineteenth century, largely outside philosophy, often in opposition to philosophy, and finally in an atmosphere of indifference to it. If philosophy was still expected to be a science, it was in a different sense than before; it was now expected to be a science in the same sense as those modern sciences that convince by virtue of their accomplishments. If it were unable to do so, it was argued, it had become pointless and might just as well die out.

Some decades ago the opinion was widespread that philosophy had had its place up to the moment when all the sciences had become independent of it, the original universal science. Now that all possible fields of research have been marked off, the days of philosophy are over. Now that we know how science obtains its universal validity, it has become evident that philosophy cannot stand up against judgment by these criteria. It deals in empty ideas because it sets up undemonstrable hypotheses, it disregards experience, it seduces by illusions, it takes possession of energies needed for genuine investigation and squanders them in empty talk about the whole.

This was the picture of philosophy as seen against science conceived as methodical, cogent, universally valid insight. Under such circumstances could any philosophy legitimately claim to be scientific? To this situation philosophy reacted in two ways:

1) The attack was regarded as justified. Philosophers withdrew to limited tasks. If philosophy is at an end because the sciences have taken over all its subject matter, there remains nevertheless the knowledge of its history, first as a factor in the history of the sciences themselves, then as a phenomenon in the history of thought, the history of the errors, the anticipated insights, the process of liberation by which philosophy has made itself superfluous. Finally, the history of philosophy must preserve the knowledge of the philosophical texts, if only for their aesthetic interest. Although these texts do not make any serious contribution to scientific truth, they are nevertheless worth reading for the sake of their style and the intellectual attitude they reflect.

Others paid tribute to the modern scientific trend by rejecting all previous philosophy and striving to give philosophy an exact scientific foundation. They seized upon questions which, they claimed, were reserved for philosophy because they concern all the sciences; namely, logic, epistemology, phenomenology. In an effort to refurbish its reputation, philosophy became a servile imitator, a handmaiden to the sciences. It proceeded to establish in theory the validity of scientific knowledge, which was not questioned anyhow. But in the field of logic it developed a specialized science which because of the universality of its purpose, i.e., to define the form of all true thinking, to provide a mathesis universalis, seemed capable of replacing all previous philosophy. Today many thinkers regard symbolic logic as the whole of philosophy.

This first reaction seems today to have given rise to the view that philosophy is a science among other sciences, a discipline among other disciplines. And like the others, it is carried on by specialists, it has its narrow circle of experts, its congresses, and its learned periodicals.

2) In opposition to this infatuation with science there has been a second reaction. Philosophy attempted to save itself from destruction by dropping its claim to scientific knowledge. Philosophy—according to this view—is not a science at all. It is based on feeling and intuition, on imagination and genius. It is conceptual magic, not knowledge. It is élan vital or resolute acceptance of death. Indeed, some went further and said: It does not behoove philosophy to concern itself with science since it is aware that all scientific truth is questionable. The modern sciences are altogether in error, witness the ruinous consequences for the soul and for life in general of the rational attitude. Philosophy itself is not a science, and for that very reason its element is authentic truth.

Both reactions—submission to science and rejection of science conceived as cogent, methodical, and universally valid knowledge—seem to spell the end of philosophy. Whether it is the slave of science or whether it denies all science, it has in either case ceased to be philosophy.

The seeming triumph of the sciences over philosophy has for some decades created a situation in which philosophers go back to various sources in search of true philosophy. If such a thing is found, the question of the relation between philosophy and science will be answered, both in a theoretical and in a concrete sense. It is a practical question of the utmost urgency.

We shall appreciate the full weight of this problem if we consider its historical origin. It developed from three complexly intertwined factors. These are a) the spirit of modern science; b) the ancient and ever recurrent attempt to achieve universal philosophical knowledge; c) the philosophical concept of truth as it was first and for all time elucidated in Plato.

Ad a) The modern sciences, developed only in the last few centuries, have brought into the world a new scientific attitude which existed neither in Asia nor in antiquity nor in the Middle Ages.

Even the Greeks, to be sure, conceived of science as methodical, cogently certain, and universally valid knowledge. But the modern sciences not only have brought out these basic attributes of science with greater purity (a task which has not yet been completed), they have also given new form and new foundation to the purpose, scope, and unity of their fields of inquiry. I shall indicate certain of their fundamental characteristics:

1) To modern science nothing is indifferent. In its eyes every fact, even the smallest and ugliest, the most distant and most alien, is a legitimate object of inquiry for the very reason that it exists. Science has become truly universal. There is nothing that can evade it. Nothing must be hidden or passed over in silence; nothing must remain a mystery.

2) Modern science is by definition unfinished, because it progresses toward the infinite, whereas ancient science in every one of its forms presented itself as finished; its actual development was in every case short lived, and it never set its own development as its conscious goal. Modern scientists have understood that an all-embracing world-system, which deduces everything that exists from one or a few principles, is impossible. A world-system has other sources and can only claim universal validity if scientific critique is relaxed and particulars are mistaken for absolutes. Such unprecedented systematizations as those achieved by modern physics cover only one aspect of reality. Through them reality as a whole has become more split up and deprived of foundations than it ever before seemed to the human mind. Hence the incompleteness of the modern world as compared to the Greek cosmos.

3) The ancient sciences remained scattered, unrelated to one another. They did not aim at constituting an all-embracing body of specific knowledge, whereas the modern sciences strive to be integrated into a universal frame of reference. Though a true world-system is no longer possible for them, a cosmos of the sciences is still conceivable. Our sense of the inadequacy of each special branch of knowledge demands that each science be connected with knowledge as a whole.

4) The modern sciences attach little value to the possibilities of thought; they recognize the idea only in definite and concrete knowledge, after it has proved its worth as an instrument of discovery and been subjected to infinite modifications in the process of investigation. True, there is a certain similarity between ancient and modern atomic theory, in so far as the general pattern is concerned. But the ancient theory was merely an intrinsically finished interpretation of possibilities, based on plausible explanations of available experience, while the modern theory, in constant association with experience, undergoes perpetual change by confirmation and disproof and is itself an implement of investigation.

5) Today a scientific attitude has become possible, an attitude of inquiry toward all phenomena; today the scientist can know certain things clearly and definitely, he can distinguish between what he knows and what he does not know; and he has amassed an unprecedented abundance of knowledge (how very little the Greek physician or the Greek technician knew by comparison!). The moral imperative of modern science is to search for reliable knowledge on the basis of unprejudiced inquiry and critique, without any preconceived ideas. When we enter into its sphere, we have the sensation of breathing clean air, of leaving behind us all vague talk, all plausible opinions, all stubborn prejudice and blind faith.

Ad b) Modern science shares the age-old striving for total philosophical knowledge. Philosophy had from the first set itself up as the science that knows the whole—not as infinitely progressing, factual knowledge but as self-contained doctrine. Now modern philosophy since Descartes has identified itself with modern science but in such a way that it still retained the philosophical concept of a total knowledge. It can be shown, however, that for this very reason Descartes did not understand modern science, the investigations of Galileo for example, and that his own work had in spirit little to do with modern science, although as a creative mathematician he helped to advance this science. The ensuing philosophers, even to a certain extent Kant, were still caught in this totalist conception of science. Hegel once again believed that he was achieving the construction of an authentic total science and that he possessed all the sciences in his cosmos of the mind.

This identification of modern science and modern philosophy with their old aspiration to total knowledge was catastrophic for both of them. The modern sciences which, by a self-deception common to all of them, looked on those great philosophies of the seventeenth century and on some later philosophies as pillars of their own edifice were tainted by their aspirations to absolute knowledge. Modern philosophy has done its greatest work only “in spite of” all this, or one might say, by a constant misunderstanding.

Ad c) Neither the modern concept of science nor science in the sense of a total philosophical system coincides with the strictly philosophical conception of science which Plato formulated in a way that has never been surpassed. How far removed is the truth, the knowledge of which Plato interprets in his parable of the cave and touches on in his dialectic, this truth that applies to being and to that which is above all being—how fundamentally different it is from the truth of the sciences, which move only amid the manifestations of being without ever attaining to being itself, and how different from the truth of the dogmatic system which holds itself to be in possession of the whole of being. What a distance between the truth which can nowhere be set down in writing but which, according to Plato’s seventh epistle, though it can only be attained by thought, is kindled in a favourable moment of communication among men of understanding, and the truth which is written, universally cogent and intelligible, distinct and available to all thinking creatures!

Three so different conceptions of scientific knowledge—the first patterned on the method of modern science, the second derived from the idea of a total philosophical system, and the third related to faith in a truth which is directly apprehended by the intellect (Plato’s truth being an example)—all contribute to the present confusion. An example:

Its inquiries and investigations in the economic field have made Marxism an important force in scientific development. But this it shares with many other trends, and its scientific contribution does not account for its influence. Marxism also represents a philosophical thesis ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• I-WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
• II-SOURCES OF PHILOSOPHY
• III-THE COMPREHENSIVE
• IV-THE IDEA OF GOD
• V-THE UNCONDITIONAL IMPERATIVE
• VI-MAN
• VII-THE WORLD
• VIII-FAITH AND ENLIGHTENMENT
• IX-THE HISTORY OF MAN
• X-THE INDEPENDENT PHILOSOPHER
• XI-THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIFE
• XII-THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
• APPENDICES