Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow

2020-02-16 0 views

Continental v.s. Analytical

For this last class, we’ll finish with some general remarks. The first general characteristic of philosophy today is the contrast between Continental European and English-speaking philosophy, or contrast between phenomenology and analytic philosophy. The thing however is that just as empiricism has been broaden so that narrow sense of empiricism that you get from Mill and Russell no longer applies thanks to the broadening and loosening up that took place with ordinary language and other things. So the term analytic is now extremely loose. Analytic philosophy is now simply virtually any philosophy that tries to analyze concepts and analyze arguments and in that sense to think in more detail. The phenomenologist as you know is inclined to describe rather than to construct arguments. He takes it that when you see what is being described then you get the point whereas the English-speaking philosopher is more inclined to want to amass arguments and reasons for and against in trying to draw conclusions. These are differences of methodology and differences of intention. This divide which we’ve seen historically continues and I think you have to say with little mutual understanding and oftentimes little mutual respect. And despite the fact that there are some notable individuals who succeeded in keeping a foot in both camps one such is Richard Rorty whom we’ve mentioned before his very postmodern book “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” draws on people ranging from Wittgenstein to Gadmar to Foucault, very much in both camps. And Hubert Dreyfus at Berkeley likewise seems to succeed in keeping the foot in the two. But most philosophy departments in the United States are overwhelmingly analytic in some sense or another some broad sense. There are a few departments that are overwhelmingly phenomenological. There are some who try to hold up both ends, Northwestern University for instance though they have in effect two different graduate programs as a result. The general picture is that philosophy in America is of the broadly empirical broadly analytic sort. It’s in the light of that that I’m inclined to say to people wanting to go on in philosophy don’t unless you can stomach a certain amount of analytic stuff and if you can’t work in that sort of detail and don’t have a mind for it don’t go on in philosophy. If what infuses you in terms you on is the history of ideas rather than working with issues and arguments and concepts and so forth then maybe you should go on in the history of ideas rather than in philosophy.

Dominance of Scientific Naturalism

The second broad characterization is that in Western thought, Western Europe and Anglo American philosophy in terms of general position is largely scientific naturalism. What in pop terminology is secular humanism. When I say scientific naturalism I mean orientation to scientific knowledges and the bona fide variety and philosophical naturalism. But with some qualifications. Christian theism is the dominant philosophy in philosophy of religion in Anglo-American thought. That was not so twenty thirty forty years ago, it was so at the turn of last century(1900s), in between the secularization process increased. In the last what about seven years four of the presidents of the Central Division American Philosophical Association have been Christians in some cases evangelicals, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Alan Donegan and Nicholas Wolterstorff. One naturally hopes that this type of Christian presents and philosophy extended as influentially in other areas of philosophy as it does in philosophy of religion. Now it’s there in metaphysics and epistemology because philosophy of religion gets you into metaphysics and epistemology, it’s there in ethics, but in those other fields it’s simply not as dominant as it is in philosophy of religion. The dominance is still scientific naturalism.

Emergence of Post-modernism

Another qualification that has to be made to this generalization is related to the emergence of post-modernism in its various manifestations. The manifestation of anti-realism in philosophy of science, anti-realism in ethics, anti-realism in epistemology, for example Richard Rorty, and anti-realism in religion but much more in theology than in philosophy of religion. So in number of universities Christian orthodoxy is much more in evidence in the philosophy department than the theology. And who find some historians saying that there is more theology being done by philosophers these days than there is by theologians. But post-modernism then with its various manifestations including the pluralism of religious thought is certainly in evidence, whether it will seriously challenge the dominance of scientific naturalism remains to be seen, I personally don’t expect it to, because post-modernism, pluralism, anti-realism, relativism are simply old hat with new trim and this it’s easter resurrection. That is to say we we have a long long history of skepticism and relativism in epistemology going all the way back to the pre-socratics basically the same position reworked in contemporary form with tremendous epistemological philosophical resources to the contract. I do expect that it will be the key issue for the next decade perhaps two decades.

There are some other recent developments that are likely to remain and grow. The interest in metaphysics as it has outgrown out of developments in philosophy of language. I’m inclined to think that the developments in metaphysics will be self-sustaining rather than being sustained for philosophy of language. A philosophy of language is the sort of thing you need to get going after people have been telling you that metaphysics is meaningless but once you get going it becomes self-sustaining. So I expect that metaphysical development to to keep going with particular emphasis on mind body relationships.

Ethics

Changes in ethics as well are likely to continue. One of the very significant changes as a result of the activism of the 1960s was a return to applied ethics. Ethics was discussed in applied terms through the course of history and certainly by people like Bentham and Mill. What is intervene is the meta ethics discussion the sort of thing represented by G.E. Moore’s Principia ethica where he started asking what is the meaning of the good and developed his intuitionist’s position, the meaning of ethical terms. And that was just reinforced by A.J. Ayer’s declaration that such terms have no empirical referent so that if they have no empirical referent then moral judgments have no the factual significance. And that became essential again to give attention to meta ethical concerns, what is the meaning of our ethical terms if indeed they have meaning. What that amounts to is the fact that perhaps 40 or 50 years at the beginning of the century the overwhelming attention of philosophical ethics was to meta ethical concerns to the virtual Eclipse of applied ethical concerns. But partly because that hurdle was overcome and partly because of the activism of the 60s applied ethics became a vigorous field in its own right. There are however issues to be addressed. One for Christians in philosophy is the relationship between philosophical and theological ethics and I think for a number of years they have been somewhat separate in this regard. The by-and-large theological ethicists have been addressing the dynamics of the ethical life, that is to say bringing to bear concepts like sin and grace, whereas philosophical ethics has been addressing matters of ethical decision making, bringing principles to bear in decision. And because the agendas of the two have been different, there’s been relatively little integration of the theology with the philosophy except certain obvious points like divine command theories or natural law ethics. However the the development of virtue ethics is making a difference. Virtue ethics which you recall precipitated in measure by Alastair McIntyre’s book After virtue, where he sort of hung all of the ignoble things of the Enlightenment onto ethics of principle and decision-making and essentially called for a return to the Aristotelian tradition with virtue ethics that development is obviously having and is bound to have a some effect on the interrelationship of philosophical to theological ethics. Because if you’re talking of the development of virtues, you’re talking of the dynamics of the moral life, matters where sin and grace are involved. And illustrative of that I think is the work of our own Bob Roberts who incidentally is at the cutting edge of what’s going on in virtue ethics. His work is cited in journal articles all the time where you get his clear incorporation of Christian understanding of human nature, sin grace while at the same time that sort of Wittgensteinian analysis of value concepts, virtue concepts, relentlessly trying to get clear about the virtue and how it functions and its relationship to appropriate emotions and so forth.

Christian Presence in Philosophy

In these characterizations and anticipations you see my concern for a Christian presence in philosophy and I hope you have seen that concern running through the whole history of philosophy. In effect this is the story, what were what we’re talking about is a variety of historical traditions and in the tradition of theistic philosophy philosophy done in theistic perspectives there are a variety of types of that. Jewish, Islamic, Christian naming three major theistic religions obviously, and within Christian theistic tradition you find variety likewise.

Perspectival Tradition

So when I talk of Christian philosophy in the past and in the present and in the future I want to characterize it in in four ways. One as a perspectival tradition maybe that’s two ways right in itself. Tradition in the sense there’s an ongoing history of Christian thought in philosophy. Sometimes Christian philosophers have the impression that you do philosophy bracketing your theological beliefs, your own attitudes, values and concerns. And I think that’s not only inhuman, I think it’s impossible for humans. Bracketing, suspending judgment, something that Descartes attempted just is never completely possible. It wasn’t for Descartes it wasn’t for Husserl to take a completely neutral position, to be completely neutral when in your heart of hearts you’re not. It’s self-deception and so it seems to me that the path of intellectual honesty is to fess up, that is to say, to be quite straightforward about where you are coming from, to admit it, to see where that does influence your thinking, to see where other people’s positions influence their thinking. Make allowances accordingly, when the two coincide, well and good, you have some agreement but it’s possible for two people to believe the same thing for different reasons. So I’m talking then not of working on a neutral basis, some people use the term presupposition, a presupposition is sort of a foundationalist premise except that if it’s a presupposition it’s not an indubitable foundation. Insofar as that foundation on his model of deductive systems is connoted, I don’t want to speak of Christian philosophy is working with Christian presuppositions I’d rather say perspective. The term perspective allows me to say that there are not only articulated propositions which I believe to be true but there are certain values and concerns which motivate and guide the selective process as well as the thinking process. Perspective made up of beliefs, attitudes, values.

Exploratory

Second I want to say that Christian philosophy is exploratory, that is to say, it’s a process, not a finished product. The idea of wrapping up the job once and for all belies the ongoing nature of philosophical inquiry where there are new issues and new problems constantly arising. Philosophy is like a historical dialogue between people of similar and different convictions and the dialogue like Plato’s is never finished.

Pluralistic

Third, in addition to those two things I want to say that it’s a pluralistic undertake. I try to use the term Christian philosophy without the definite article. It’s a tradition that is has a lot of diversity. Diversity due to different philosophical methods, perhaps different different philosophical views, certainly due to different theological traditions which are going to make a difference on certain key matters. The whole variety of things which give us intellectual differences and I regard that pluralism as healthy. If you value the kind of built-in critical process that keeps you thinking, growing in a self-corrective way then what you need is people who disagree with you and it seems to me that in some regards at least the diversity within Christian tradition and Christian Church is healthy. It should keep us self-critical, modest, and from getting lopsided as humans tend to.

Holistic

And then I want to add a holistic of all people. It seems to me Christians in philosophy should be thinking that the whole picture in mind, rather than with tunnel vision, blinkers on, working in some subdivision of some subsection of one of the sub disciplines of philosophy. No matter what specifics a person is working with, the Christian surely needs to have the whole picture and look at things as a whole in terms of Christian worldview and focus accordingly. That seems to me has a number of values not the least of which is the the way in which it is likely to guide the selection of what you work on. Let me draw the analogy to your decision as to what you’re going to do after commencement, the question some of us nag you from the moment you declare a major. That’s basically a question you have to address within the context of Christian worldview, the stewardship of your life and gifts in terms of what could be strategic. I think Christianity’s influence is first and foremost in what I select to work on, what is the problem I’m going to address, the strategic problem in terms of the overall nature of a Christian world. Although that have some unfortunate consequences if that’s the only consideration. I had urge some of you to think of moving into metaphysics, philosophy of science and what is the I think the most neglected of all the philosophical fields, aesthetic theory. Simply by way of illustration the thing that I’m working on now, I may have mentioned this before, is the objective basis for moral judgments. What is the basis in objective reality.

Future of Philosophy

And I think the last thing I want to say is that what the future of philosophy holds depends in part on people like you. I’m serious about that. Over the decades that I’ve taught part or all of this history of philosophy course. The you in the class have gone on to do all sorts of things. There are college presidents, there are seminary professors, there are people who’ve been publishing philosophy now for twenty or thirty years, there are people outside of philosophy, people who through their work shaping the history of Christian thought and in some aspects of the history of broader thought, that’s what history is made, history is made by people like you. It’s ordinary people like us who with the stewardship of the gifts that we have contribute in some measure to making the history of philosophy.

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