The Right Way of Thinking (Intro to Philosophy Coursera Week 1)

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen. This is the beginning of a series of responses to the module of the Coursera course from the University of Edinburgh titled “Introduction to Philosophy”. The module specified is the first week module on “What is Philosophy”. In this writing I will specifically respond to the idea that philosophy is the activity of working out the right way of thinking about things. I am commenting in various portions because I want an in depth understanding of all things.

I have established that philosophy is practically the study of truths important to human existence or all of reality. I will show that my understanding is compatible with the proposed understanding by the University of Edinburgh. First, the understanding I am commenting on presupposes the existence of a right way of thinking about things. Then we must also understand what is a way of thinking about things. Next we discern whether there is a right way of thinking and if we can know it and if we can, what is that right way of thinking.

When we think about something, we often don’t just think about what is in front of us. We have other thoughts loaded, our thinking is a loaded thinking. So we think about things in certain or various ways. We can abstract this way of thinking as what relationships do we conjure of when we think of things? What other things do we think of when we think of a particular thing and what is the relationship between the primary object of thought and the secondary object of thought? 

These ways of thinking are many, and there are many ways to classify them which I do not even know. However, we shall focus on the question of the right way of thinking. What does it mean for a way of thinking to be right? There are 2 ways to interpret “right”, that is either correlating with truth or correlating with goodness. However, if we interpret right as meaning true, we must ask why we do it. Therefore, the more proper interpretation is by interpreting right as meaning good. So the question of the right way of thinking can be translated as the good way of thinking.

The good way of thinking is surely the way of thinking which leads us to good, as all good acts are acts which leads us to good. We also know from prior revelation that the Good is precisely God alone. So the good way of thinking is that which leads to God. For God exists, and we have ascertained that it is possible to know God both naturally and then supernaturally, therefore the good way of thinking is that way of thinking in concordance with God. In other words, it is the way of thinking which is based on God, centered on God, and leads us to God.

Now what if we do not presuppose God? There is a still a way to prove that there exists a right way of thinking. A right way of thinking is distinguished from wrong ways of thinking by its result in goodness. A right way of thinking leads to goodness, while a wrong way of thinking results in a lack of goodness. How does the right way of thinking lead to goodness? The right way of thinking must first lead to the truth of the matter, and by that truth one can work out the goodness and attain the goodness of the matter. Therefore, truth implies goodness. Now, we must accept that there is one reality and one truth, from which springs out one goodness. The right way of thinking is that which leads to that truth and thus to the goodness derived from that truth. If all ways of thinking are equal, that would mean there are many truths which can contradict each other. This is contradictory with the foundational presupposition that there is only one truth. Therefore, there has to be a right way of thinking.

The next question is whether such a right way of thinking is possible. We have ascertained that the One Truth is precisely God alone, and so since the knowledge of God is possible through both Natural and Supernatural Revelation, thus the right way of thinking is possible and has been discovered. As a Catholic, the right way of thinking is precisely that of the Catholic way of thinking. For only the Catholic mindset and way of thinking will lead to the Faith which saves us into eternal life. Therefore, philosophy is actually the journey towards the Catholic Faith and way of thinking. Rightly ordered philosophy will lead into the Catholic Church.

My final comment is that this understanding of philosophy as described by the course makes out philosophy as a fundamentally moral activity, which is correct. In my definitions, I define philosophy as merely the study of truths important to human existence, which leads to a lack of emphasis on the ethical nature of philosophy. However, the keyword of “important” is already indicative of the moral nature of philosophy. In fact, this definition of philosophy and the course’s definition of philosophy is fundamentally the same. The right way of thinking is associated with what fundamental nature of reality shall we associate with the particular realities we encounter with life, and the only answer to that is God. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen.