The Limitations of Western Philosophy

When reading western philosophy - I was looking for answers, but I discovered that there none to be had.

In most western philosophy textbooks, the issue of "progress" in philosophy is gently sidestepped. At most authors who touch upon this issue mutter something about there never being definitive answers to questions, and what definies a "classic" is but a novel approach to the same question, which will spur discussion for centuries to come. This, coupled with the unfortunate retreat of of the analytical school into increasingly archane logical convulsions, sub-divided into a greater number of specialized schools which have little bearing on the everyday life of people has led to the role of philosophy being greatly diminished.

Continental philosophy has fared as badly, with a tendency for authors to prize jargon and obfuscation over lucid prose. The tendancy for philosophers to posture and preen has obscured the weight of their ideas. The madness of Louis Althusser, Michel Foutcault has overshadowed their valid contributions to philosophy.

This is not to say that Western Philosophy does not illuminate problems or see situations in a different light, or provide a suberb underpinning for science, but it does not seem to offer any solutions to my initial problem.

The problem with Western philosophy is a deep seated one, and it has deep consequences for the philosophy of religion and epistemology (not to mention political philosophy and Western Culture as a whole). The problem stems from the work Renee Descartes and his use of systemic doubt, and this problem was further highlighted by Immanuel Kant. Many of our present problems can be traced to this fact.

Briefly stated Descartes posited the existence of a demon that controlled the sense data that entered your brain. His question was how we knew the external world exists, given the existence of illusions and dreams show that we do not always hold true beliefs about the external world. Using his intellecut to doubt and discard what we cannot have a firm grounding of he tried to find a firm basis from which we could rebuild our belief of the world. Inhis Mediations he came to the conclusion that we can only be sure of the fact that we think and because we think, we exist. Cogito ergo sum. However he has opened up a huge gap between our self and the external world. There is no way to know that the external world is accurately represented by what be perceive. We could be brains in vats which were stimulated through electrodes with the same result. It is this severing of the self from the external world has led to many ills which have manifested in modern society. In contemporary culture this vision has been explored in the movie, the Matrix.

Kant took this still further by stating that we cannot even be sure of our self - when we look inwards we are but a bag or random thoughts and feelings, there is no self as such that we can grasp onto. There are many parallels here with Buddhist philosophy but more on that later.

Having retreated into the shell of the shelf and created a yawning abyss between himself and the external world, and having turned his powerful intellecutal doubt on everything, including himself - Man is left with a nihilism leads him to despair and meaninglessness. Because Man has become so divorced from the external world, there are several by-products of this:

1) Man began to cultivate a detached, dispassionate attitude to nature. It is seen as a commodity to be exploited, to be experimented upon. Everything is assigned a value and inherently tradeable. The philosophical trends of the enlightenment lay the groundwork for the eventual take off of the capitalist economy.

2) The essential connection between people has been lost. Each person is perceived as an atomized Other, leading to a retreat into the protection of the rights of the individuals and a de-emphasis of the duties and obligations that people may have to other people. Some totalitarian philosophies have tried to take it to the opposite extreme, by treating people as Others and as commodities where they are conflated into a mass and are thus exploited by a privileged class. Obviously both tendancies can and do exisit in a given society, but it does not change the essential fact that the connection between people has been lost.

3) Spiritual pursuits and religiosity are either denigrated or abused through a fundamentalist belief in an anthropomorphic God. By turning the light of the intellect on and trying to find and prove the existence of God, God is nowhere to be found. Intellectual proofs of God fail to convince and thus people either retreat into saying that there is nothing to belive in or live on Faith alone with a fundamentalist approach to religion and claim to have a special relation with a human God. (For a good treatment please read Karen Armstrong's History of God)

Please note that the tendancies above a direct or indirect result of a dualistic world-view. (A good introduction to the issues dealt with in this blog is the chapter on "The Devil" in Roger Scruton's Modern Philosophy.) And if we are unable to breakaway from this flawed initial assumption we will continue to spin in circles within the stale boundaries that Western Philosophy has set itself. (One good book which allows us to step back and look at our past through different eyes is David Loy's A Buddhist History of the World)

So what can we do about all of this? I was almost driven to depair at the fact. One answer that Roger Scruton suggested was the redeeming power of Art and Aesthetics. I had subconciously tried to take this path but it only afforded me temporary relief which I will deal with in my next post.