Why the History of Philosophy Matters to Philosophy (guest post)

“Finding out the historical past of philosophy may help us see ourselves from the skin and that may assist us inhabit philosophy from the within.”

Within the following visitor submit, David Egan, prompted by our discussion final month of Hanno Sauer‘s article, “The End of History“, takes challenge with the image of philosophy it appears to be working with (the “perennial questions” view of philosophy in line with which “the questions stay the identical, the solutions bend towards the reality”), and argues that the historical past of philosophy permits us to higher perceive the historic scenario during which we, now, are doing philosophy, which in flip helps us “see latent prospects within the current {that a} narrower focus may obscure.” (That is an edited model of a submit that first appeared at Egan’s blog.)

Why the Historical past of Philosophy Issues to Philosophy
by David Egan

Why research the historical past of philosophy? Listed here are two causes. First, it makes for some good studying. Philosophers have written all types of fascinating, lovely, confounding, edifying, difficult stuff and studying it looks like a grand journey. Second, studying lifeless philosophers is a sort of cultural archaeology. Phrases like “Cartesian dualism” or “Platonic type” are a part of modern discourse. Some bits of philosophy are so embedded in that discourse that most individuals don’t even understand their origins—do you know Plato gave us “swan song” and Atlantis? If you wish to perceive the forces and phrases which have formed the discourse, learn the canon.

However how a lot does the historical past of philosophy contribute to truly “doing” philosophy? That is the query posed in a recent paper by Hanno Sauer (he gives a abstract here, which is the place I first encountered his argument). His reply is: not a lot. The historical past of philosophy, Sauer argues, has as a lot relevance to modern philosophy because the historical past of physics has to modern physics. We’ve got all types of causes to admire Plato and Kant, Galileo and Newton, however they’re not particularly useful in driving present analysis. The self-discipline has progressed since their time and we have now rather more superior instruments at our disposal, to not point out way more shiny minds interacting in a a lot richer community of mental alternate.

Hovering within the background of this argument is a set of assumptions about what “doing” philosophy includes. The analogy with physics is telling: like scientists, philosophers are involved with a bunch of entities—issues like information, justice, the thoughts, linguistic which means, and so forth—whose properties are just about secure over time. When Plato was asking concerning the nature of data, he was asking the identical questions as modern epistemologists, simply with much less refined instruments and fewer accrued expertise to construct upon.

This mind-set about philosophy is widespread these days, and I wrote about how its assumptions formed the current PhilPapers survey in a blog post final yr (which was subsequently printed in barely modified type in The Point). From that perspective, I can see how learning the historical past of philosophy may seem to be an antiquarian curiosity. However I believe it’s a perspective that dangers alienating us from plenty of what’s priceless about philosophy. To place it crudely, philosophy isn’t nearly “stuff”—information, justice, minds, and many others. It’s about us.

To place it much less crudely, there’s a reflexive facet to philosophy that you simply don’t discover in lots of different disciplines. The query of why you’re looking for solutions to the philosophical questions you’re asking—and why you’re looking for them on this method—is itself a philosophical query. To the extent that my very own curiosity in philosophy is a part of what I’m submitting to philosophical scrutiny, it helps to grasp how these pursuits have been formed by its historical past.

*

Hanno gives a pattern listing of issues that philosophers concern themselves with: “what’s information and the way can we purchase it? What constitutes a simply society? How does the human thoughts work? What are pure legal guidelines? The place does linguistic which means come from?” He then provides: “Changing into acquainted with the historical past of philosophy contributes little or no to enhancing our understanding of these issues and their potential options, so we might be higher off doing a lot much less of it.”

Name this the “perennial questions” view of philosophy: the questions stay the identical, the solutions bend towards the reality.

This mind-set belies how a lot the questions shift over time, and the way fluid the ideas are that philosophers use to grapple with them. Plato requested what constitutes a simply society however he didn’t ask whether or not human beings have free will or how consciousness arises in a bodily universe. The idea of free will doesn’t enter philosophical discourse till Roman occasions, beginning with Epictetus or St. Augustine, relying on whom you ask and what your standards are. And philosophers don’t begin speaking about consciousness till the early fashionable interval.

Have been there acutely aware beings who might or might not have had free will all alongside and Plato and Aristotle simply did not comment upon this? I believe the reply is sophisticated. It’s clearly not the case that Plato, Aristotle, and co. weren’t acutely aware. However it’s value asking why nothing fairly just like the idea of consciousness featured within the philosophical discourse till pretty lately.

A part of the issue with the “perennial questions” view is that it obscures simply how a lot our net of ideas is listed to our personal sense of salience. The issue of free will turns into particularly salient whenever you’re working in a theological framework during which you’re a sinful creature who has the chance to search out redemption by aspiring to know and love God. That framework additionally makes salient the thought of a conscience, which, each etymologically and conceptually, feeds into an image of self-aware consciousness. When you begin creating a mechanistic conception of the cosmos, the query of how that immaterial consciousness suits right into a bodily universe turns into much more salient too.

The questions we ask, how we ask them, and what types of ideas we deploy in making an attempt to reply them (and the way) all mirror our sense of what’s vital to us. It’s simpler to see this when wanting on the previous than at this time as a result of the issues of previous generations aren’t our personal. We’re inclined to speak about their pursuits by way of what appeared vital to them whereas we’re inclined to speak about our personal pursuits by way of what is vital. We don’t have the space from ourselves to see our pursuits of their historic context.

Getting that context in view will be salutary as a result of it may assist us see extra clearly that the questions that concern us aren’t perennial. We’re not asking these questions as a result of these are the questions which were set for us so, darn it, we’d higher get all the way down to answering them. We’re asking these questions as a result of they converse to wants and pursuits which can be specific to our scenario. Seen on this mild, we are able to see extra clearly how and why these questions matter to us within the first place.

*

Early in his Family tree of Morals, Nietzsche launches a scathing assault on what he calls “English psychologists.” It’s not solely clear who he has in thoughts, however a possible candidate is his non-English frenemy, Paul Rée. Rée’s The Origins of Ethical Sensations (1877) offers a quasi-Darwinian rationalization of altruistic behaviour. Altruism proved to be socially helpful, Rée argues, and was bolstered over generations via a means of choice to the purpose that we’ve now come to suppose it’s an goal ethical crucial.

Nietzsche had lately accomplished his Premature Meditations when Rée’s guide was printed and his later criticism of Rée focuses on how well timed Rée’s pondering is. Influenced by the Darwinian and utilitarian pondering of his personal time, he reads that pondering again on to the previous. You may say that Rée seeks to cultivate the previous by assimilating it to modern conceptual frameworks. Nietzsche’s Family tree tries to do the reverse—to make our modern modes of thought appear all of a sudden unusual and alien by tracing their family tree. Reasonably than utilizing the current to measure the previous, Nietzsche makes use of the previous to sound out the current. Doing this helps us see extra clearly what our present values and preoccupations quantity to, and permits us to reply to our current predicament with larger readability and creativity.

I lately completed studying two very completely different books that each try to present big-picture accounts of “how we received to be this manner”: Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World and Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self (a bit of late to the get together on that second one). Taylor’s guide is historical past of philosophy at its best, tracing the evolution of the fashionable idea of the self and the competing units of values that drive us and divide us. Taylor dives deep into texts from historical Greece to the 20 th century to grasp how folks have articulated their understanding of the world and their concomitant understanding of what issues and why.

Henrich’s guide attracts totally on anthropology, psychology, and historical past written within the final twenty or thirty years with the odd citation from older sources thrown in for native color. He desires to indicate, to begin with, that WEIRD folks (folks from Western, educated, industrialized, wealthy, democratic international locations) are psychological outliers throughout the human group by all kinds of metrics, after which to hint their WEIRDness to a set of largely unintended institutional improvements within the Western church that broke down conventional kinship networks.

I discovered lots studying each books however I couldn’t assist feeling that Henrich’s guide was lots shallower than Taylor’s. This isn’t to knock Henrich’s scholarship—he attracts on an enormous literature and reveals every kind of creativity in ferreting out the solutions to his questions. However there’s one thing weirdly (or WEIRDly) unselfconscious about Henrich’s strategy. On one hand, he does a terrific job of displaying how folks like himself and me are psychologically uncommon in comparison with the human norm. Then again, he appears completely incurious about how his strategies and strategy might sound from a perspective that isn’t his personal. That is notably evident early on when he offers the sort of breezy account of faith and tribal perception techniques that might solely be given by somebody who doesn’t take them in the least severely. Henrich is fairly assured that God and faith will be defined away and doesn’t appear concerned with how these beliefs and practices is likely to be skilled from the within.

Henrich looks like a latter-day Paul Rée, confidently taking his personal mental framework because the one by which we are able to see issues clearly as they really are, after which treating different mental frameworks diagnostically, as symptomatic of specific folkways and social buildings. It’s a typical sufficient perspective however it’s weird in a guide whose central lesson is that our personal methods of pondering are psychologically peculiar.

Taylor thinks it’s vital to learn the philosophers and different thinkers of previous ages as a result of he desires to grasp them from the within. He doesn’t simply need to clarify that Plato or Descartes or Rousseau thought such-and-such. He desires to grasp why these ideas may need appeared the proper ones to them, and why they had been moved to articulate these ideas within the ways in which they did.

However his curiosity in understanding these previous thinkers can’t be separated from his curiosity in understanding our personal predicament. He desires to indicate how their issues have turn out to be our issues via a tremendously complicated sequence of variations and modifications over time. And tracing this family tree helps us perceive ourselves extra clearly. I had epiphany after epiphany whereas studying the guide as my very own values and preoccupations got here into clearer view and I may see their deep historical past extra clearly.

So learning the historical past of philosophy isn’t merely a method of understanding the previous. It’s a method of understanding the current. Heidegger talks about taking on our historical past authentically. As I perceive him, understanding my historical past and my place in it helps me reply to the current with larger precision, readability, and creativity. Understanding my very own historic scenario helps me see latent prospects within the current {that a} narrower focus may obscure.

*

Right here’s a technique of placing it. I believe learning the historical past of philosophy may help us see ourselves from the skin and that may assist us inhabit philosophy from the within. By situating my very own pondering inside a broader historic custom, I can see extra clearly how my specific issues and preoccupations are mine moderately than simply the objectively and timelessly vital ones that every one folks with philosophical inclinations may flip themselves to. And that sense of possession additionally helps me undertake a stronger sense of duty for these issues and preoccupations.

My argument right here is couched in a selected concept of what philosophy is and what it’s for. I’m tempted to say that it’s the concept that philosophy is intimately linked to the challenge of self-knowledge. However I don’t assume that’s fairly proper. Placing it that method may recommend that philosophy ought to be involved with figuring out myself moderately than the world or not less than that it ought to be primarily involved with figuring out myself. What I need to say as an alternative is that philosophy implicates me in the whole lot I attend to. What I philosophize about and the way I do it reveals lots about my specific issues and preoccupations. And critically scrutinizing what’s revealed on this exercise is itself a part of the exercise of doing philosophy. (Examine that to physics, the place the query of why you’re concerned with elementary particles isn’t itself a query to be answered by doing physics.)

Historical past performs an vital function on this self-scrutiny. If a part of what I’m making an attempt to grasp in doing philosophy is why I’m making an attempt to grasp issues in the way in which that I’m, it helps to see my understanding in its historic context. For one factor, that broader perspective offers me a clearer view of the current. And for one more, it helps me higher perceive how simply these issues and preoccupations have come to look salient.

Absolutely this isn’t the one method to consider philosophy, and even concerning the historical past of philosophy. However philosophy conceived as a self-discipline that examines abstracta like information, minds, causation, which means, and so forth with out implicating me simply strikes me as a far much less fascinating endeavor.