Just today afternoon I happened to be casually reading through a popular style book on continental philosophy (Continental Philosophy - A very short introduction by Simon Critchley) where he has summed up, very briefly, in the first chapter the evolution in thought from the ancient Greeks onwards. In this blog post I lift extensively from his book to illustrate a particular point I want to make.
As he puts it, for Socrates and nearly all ancient philosophers that came after him, philosophy tried to find out "... what it might mean to lead a good human life. For them a good life meant a happy life. Early philosophers of the west felt that philosophy is the reflective life, the examined life, the assumption being that the unexamined life is not worth living.
It is also true that for the early Greek thinkers, philosophy was not divorced from the practical life of every day. "If the unexamined life was not worth living, the unlived life was not worth examining" (Simon Critchley). Philosophy was an eminently practical activity. This is markedly different from what philosophy has become since the late 17th century - a theoretical enquiry. In the ancient picture the wisdom that philosophy teaches us to love is identical with the pursuit of the good life - a life of happiness marked by reflection and contemplation.
These days modern philosophy does not seem to be so much concerned with wisdom as it is concerned with knowledge. Knowledge of what? Of how things are the way they are! The Latin word for knowledge is Scientia. The question of knowledge - of knowing how things are the way they are, is essentially a scientific one.
All of us are acutely aware that we live in a Scientific World - meaning that we provide empirical evidence for our claims or find those claims rightly rejected. This attitude defines the way we see things and the way we expect to see things. In such a world of science, philosophy becomes a theoretical enquiry into the conditions under which scientific knowledge is possible. Philosophy becomes a handmaid to science - clearing away the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge and scientific progress.
With rapid advancements in Science and its helpmate - technology our lives have been transformed to an extent that is unimaginable to someone from the ancient world, or indeed even to our great-grandparents. Science is therefore not only effective but it is also wonderful.
Yet despite all this OR rather because of all this, the question of Wisdom still nags us. Does the scientific conception of the world eradicate the need for an answer to the question of the meaning of life? Does the body of knowledge require the appendectomy of wisdom?
To be continued...
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