Trinity of the Philosopher's God
Truth - Epistemology
Beauty - Aesthetics
Good - Ethics
Three separate and distinct entities, or just differing aspects of a unified entity?
21.5.07
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"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically." - Thoreau
8 comments:
Curious that my inclination is to play Ontology.
And why not, if they exist? In fact, I don’t know why you didn’t include ontology (or metaphysics) in the list. I don’t see why aesthetics needs to be there anyway, as it seems to be a very subjective and minor branch of philosophy. Perhaps it belongs to ethics, as humans define what ought to be beautiful.
Epistemology seems to be the philosophy which unites/gives foundation to the other branches (in the philosophising sense). But metaphysics is probably the root philosophy (in the existence sense), as it concerns itself with what ultimately is. I suppose the unifying ‘entity’ then, would be existence itself.
I guess I'll answer my own question by way of addressing your comment. Truth, Beauty and the Good do not really come apart. In each of the fields the address them, it is not surprising to find that we can use language from the others to cogently describe things. I.e. When someone behaves morally, we can just as well say they acted truly, or beautifully. Thus, philosophy properly understood does not come apart into these three distinct fields of investigation. Each of them can be, and is, the focus of a study, hence epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics. However, any true understanding achieved in those particular studies will come from understanding the greater picture.
I think they also highlight the fundamental practical commitment that philosophy has. This isn’t surprising because philosophy is necessarily practiced by subjective subjects. Our objectivity arises from inter-subjectivity, not from some external perfect point of view.
I think a more glaring omission than ontology is logic. Far from being the root of philosophy, metaphysics as ontology follows from the successes in the above three disciplines. What is worse I think is that it often oversteps philosophy and ends up as complete nonsense. The fact that the fundamental question in contemporary analytic philosophy concerns ‘what is’ suggests to me that it is broken in some way. My first comment to myself was mostly just to point out to myself that I’m trained as an analytic philosopher.
I also believe there is unity between the three, but in a different sense perhaps. May I ask, why shouldn't an immoral act also be a true act, if it really occurs? Do you not consider truth/'is' to be quite seperate from ethics/'ought'? An ultimate 'ought' may exist, and thus be true, but then so must the existence (and thus truth) of 'ought not'.
Why should philosophy have an (inherent) fundamental practical commitment to anything other than the search for truth? I agree that we seek to know so that we may be correct in our acting/being, but that is more of an external application of philosophy, rather than something inherent to it. Otherwise we may wish to call it philopraxy.
I find it interesting that you say, "Our objectivity arises from inter-subjectivity". I was under the impression that our objectivity was external to us, in actual reality or 'what is', and by assuming that the universe is logical, we use logic as our objective lens to build a picture of this universe. Through logic then, it is inherent that our fundamental question becomes, 'what is'. I would instead agree with the statement that, "Our current (incomplete) picture arises from inter-subjectivity".
You mention that true understanding comes from understanding the greater picture. Surely the greatest picture is that of 'what is'. If a part of that picture are 'oughts', then we may practice them, but understand that if they are true 'oughts', they are still just a part of what really is.
If you feel that the fundamental question ought not to be 'what is', then perhaps your definition of philosophy is quite different to what it should be (or at least was), and perhaps you should adopt a new name to describe your new philosophy.
If we both agree that philosophy is concerned with finding truth, it may be that we have different views of what truth is.
Having read your latest post I think the defence of what I'm doing as philosophy should be pretty straight forward. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Wisdom as you point out is practical. Thus, philosophy has a deep connection to the practical.
The rest of my answers to your questions will follow in due time. They're very good though, thanks.
Thanks. I appreciate your opinion and look forward to your answers :)
Just to clarify some points – you have mentioned, and I have questioned, philosophy's "fundamental practical commitment". I would like to emphasise the term, ‘fundamental’. I don’t consider philosophy to have no practical commitment… on the contrary, I think it is very much a part of philosophy, as you picked up in my post.
Our difference, I think, is where we place the practical commitment in the scheme of things. I do not consider it to be more fundamental than knowledge. In my post, wise practice follows from wise knowledge/beliefs. Indeed, we practise philosophy, and to practise it well is to be in accordance with rationality. And so knowledge follows from existence, existence being ordered and rational.
So here is the order of fundamentality:
(1) Existence -> (2) Knowledge -> (3) Practice
As humans, we are primarily practising living. A part of our living may also involve thinking and philosophising. So it makes sense perhaps to start at the right hand side of the diagram. So we see how philosophy may grow from our efforts to understand the universe… we wish to know so that we may act truly.
But how truly do we want to act? Philosophy concerns itself with finding ultimate truth, so that we may truly act truly (or at least know). To do so then, we begin our philosophy with the ultimate question, ‘what is?’. We end our philosophy with the question, ‘what then, shall we do?’. That answer will finally come to depend on the ultimate answer.
Our practical motives may drive philosophy, but philosophy itself is inherently and ultimately concerned with truth.
I notice that I used the term “act truly”, while I had previously questioned your use of it. I do consider it to be an acceptable term. When I use it, I mean acting according to what is ultimately true, anything less would not truly be ‘acting truly’.
The reason I questioned your use of it is that, it seemed to me that your position does not wish to refer to ultimates, in which case you would not be able to mean “acting according to what is ultimately true”.
If, for example, a = b (1) is ultimately true, and a ≠ b (2) is ultimately false, then:
(a) I would say, “(1) is truly true, and (2) is truly false”. In both cases my term ‘truly’ refers to the ultimate truth of (1).
(b) Without a reference to an ultimate, I could only say, “both (1) and (2) are” since they both exist. I may wish to add “…are true in their existence”, but even then I am referring to the ‘ultimate truth’ of existence, which I am not allowed to.
So it becomes clear that without ultimates we begin to arrive at nonsense… we can’t avoid their necessity. Clearly ultimates are required, whether we choose to allow them or not, hence philosophy’s (ultimate!) question should be, ‘what (ultimately) is?’
(Previously I had asked, “why shouldn't an immoral act also be a true act, if it really occurs?”. I asked it from what I perceived to be your no-ultimates perspective, as in (b), to draw attention to what, in that case, would be a problem in saying, “a moral act is also a true act”.)
While I think. Running with this ultimate/absolute line of understanding, what is time?
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