Kanon Filsafat 20

Introduction

This is a commentary to the handout of week 1 of the coursera course Introduction to Philosophy

Commentary

"philosophy is the activity of working out the right way of thinking about things."

Peter (the guy from Catholic Forum) has said that philosophy is thinking about thinking, as opposed to merely thinking. Therefore, philosophy is a reflective act, you reflect on what you are thinking and determine whether that thinking is good or not. Now, this chain of reflection is actually endless. You can have an infinite amount of layers to it. You can think about thinking, and then you can think about thinking about thinking, and then you can add another layer, and there shall be no end to this activity.

"philosophy is an activity"

This is a philosophical definition of what philosophy is. Standard definitions of what philosophy is calls it an academic study or a science, which is not false, but it fails to recognize the essence of what "study" and "science" is, they are fundamentally activities. Now, what is an activity? An activity is an action, a thing that we do. It has nothing to do with change, but with effect. An act is that we affect a thing, be it another thing or ourselves. You do not necessarily have to produce change to be acting. The act of being is one such act. In respect to philosophy, it is the act of thinking about thinking.

"to understand what philosophy is, you need to ... do it."

This is true absolutely. Simply by thinking about philosophy, you have practiced philosophy. For the thought of philosophy is part of metaphilosophy, which itself is part of philosophy. Though in the sense of the author, which probably means that you have to practice proper philosophy to understand philosophy, is false. You can practice metaphilosophy and have a good understanding of what philosophy is, though studying philosophy proper would give you a better understanding of what it is. In fact there are many ways in which philosophy is not about thinking. 

"Is Philosophy 'Fundamental'?" "Is Philosophy Important?"

In a sense, no. Because apparently a human being can survive without ever becoming a philosopher. The act of thinking is not even necessary to survive. However, in what way is philosophy fundamental, what does fundamental even mean? The handout does not provide any explanation on what fundamental means. In one sense, philosophy is indeed fundamental in the real hierarchy of knowledge. However, mankind has known that a bright light exists some of the time without having to practice philosophy.

In fact, man can probably create a technological and scientific system without ever touching philosophy. As such, philosophy is clearly not fundamental to human life. However, is it necessary for happiness? Apparently, yes. If happiness is said to be the most important thing, then philosophy is clearly necessary for it, at least in the way things are right now. However, happiness itself does not need philosophy to be what it is. Goodness is good with or without philosophy. Though it really depends on what philosophy is and what constitutes goodness and happiness. Anyway, a lot of these questions depend on the current state of affairs and not the highest realities.

"an argument ... is just a sequence of evidence and reasoning designed to support a particular conclusion."

This idea is pretty much the crux of all philosophy. However, this pattern of evidence, reasoning, and conclusion seems to exist only in the human or so I say the finite level. At the level of God, it is all direct knowledge, in fact, there is union between the object and the knowledge of the object. As such the idea that arguments are required for knowledge only applies when knowledge is indirect, as in our case where all knowledge is indirect. There is no essence which we know directly, as to know an essence directly is to know God, and that is a major problem.

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