Preface

Preface

“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”                                                     “eli, eli, lama sabachthani?”

Where are you looking? Look over there.

Man is on the Cross. If you seek another place you will find nothing. There is one place to dis-cover, the Place of the Skull. There is one existential-analytic to be done, the nausea of the Cross.

Do you seek? Or will you be sought?

 

We begin, as all do, with the wrong question. [We must always begin where they are (das Man), not where they ought to be. We must learn anew the question to be asked, but first, we ask the wrong question and follow wherever the descent leads, to whomever it may go.]

What is man? The question is mine. What is it to be me?

The historiography of the question aggressively conceals its importance. [For we do not wage this existential-analytic without resistance, but rather drag into light the elusive, intricate, and powerful force of History so as to make a clearing (Lichtung) for illuminatio. The force of History must be reckoned with; we cannot accommodate it nor pretend it is not here. There is no moment of vision without coming to terms with historiography, it is unavoidable; it is here, and we will reckon with it.]

The historiography of the question, first, revealed in its own prejudice of linear clock time, and second, in its relevant content, is meant to obfuscate, to distance and to finally throw us off the trail [entanglement]. Yet, unfolding in time we are nevertheless witness to the force of History in its magnificent splendor and grandeur. We are witness to that long anticipated pride of the present course, namely, the force of History throwing itself over and against itself, entangling verum existens with vanum existens. Presumed in this entanglement is verum as nostalgia, the act of wrestling free as foreign and strange as the will for verum existens itself. In the present situation we are delivered to the frontier of this new possibility, one piloted not by a progress toward liberation (Hegel), but by the disinterest of nihilism. We stand, not as victors over the beleaguered past, but as victims of it. We stand, not on the noble ends of progress, but on the ash heap of its ruins. The result of the force of History throwing itself against itself means one thing: we have become cannibals of History. The mark of the present age is one of consuming the very flesh of the past. The enlightened concepts produced by the force of History have now become the place of feeding for the book-philosophers, nibbling on the leftovers of the past. This spectacle, this entanglement, can only be described as the cannibalism of History. This is where the tide of dialectics has left us, marooned on a remote and barren isle, left to fend for ourselves. [What will arise from this abandonment? From where do they go after they find their fill on History?]

Yet, at the intersection of this grand contradiction we happen upon a possibility previously unknown. In the cannibalism of the force of History there arises a new potential, a new hope – a possibility yet to be realized. This is a faint possibility to grasp the reigns of a new direction, a possibility previously unheard of and unimaginable.

Nevertheless, for now our mission is to untangle entanglement. If we are to eventually ask the right question, we must first see the failure of the wrong question.

The question has been asked, and, therefore, we are led to believe, presupposes some particular answer. [We are not ready for the right question, therefore is it surprising the force of History answers its own question by devouring itself?] Descartes knew the question best and developed it in a determined manner. The question for the force of History is held tightly to his protected bosom.

We begin where they begin. Could that History be imaginary, a folksy tale or gassy bloating of the mind? Or better, could it be the consequence of nefarious minds, upward and outward of the questioner? Sure, but, even as History knows, that is to patrol the trotted path of the frequent and philosophically neutered. We do not need to rehearse this aspect of his failure, its evidence is already on beautiful display.

To be sure, we could travel down the path of Descartes in a different way. He did not so much blaze a new path as much as he exposed an already existing possibility. But, nevertheless, because he marched forward along his exposed way, without holding in position, he missed the very essence of the question at hand. [This is what the force of History cannot admit.]

What is man? Man is me. Shall we tend to the small garden of Fichte? We could, but what fruit would be left to harvest? I am I is no different than I am me. Tautology was the center of reality for Aristotle, why do we think it is different for Fichte? This obscures more than it discloses.

Man is god. This seems very reasonable. Curious it was never taken seriously by the civilized pagans and all their progenitors. Why aren’t I god? I ask the only question that rings through the entire universe as truly my own. Am I not enthroned upon all the mysteries of the universe when I pose myself as both the question and answer? In truth, God is as distant here as I am from myself. This obscures more than it discloses.

What is man? Answer does not come back. There is no response, no echo in the dark which suggests an answer, there is only silence. What is man? We expect an answer, but instead are given silence. What is man? Our expectations are startled. Why would this come to us? This is not the answer we expect.

What is this silence and why do we fall away from this new possibility? Why do we not let it fill us? Is not the silence which returns to us a possible answer for us?

Stand revealed in the silence.

Here Descartes is helpful, he exposes us to his [and all] failure like nowhere else. Here we locate the failure the force of History does not want to see, the failure it cannot accept. The silence does not beckon us forward along a way. The silence does not portend a directionality upward and outward. The silence does not entail context, content or any other watchword. How could it, it is silence? In the silence we are passive, we receive. The silence acts upon us. The silence obstructs us, frustrates and impedes our movement. The silence holds us against ourselves, placing us over the precipice of own previously unrecognized, unknown, and fear-provoking interiority. It certainly does not tug us at the collar towards some predetermined end.

Stay with the silence. Silence is the answer given. The silence rebukes the questioner; it forces us to push against ourselves while revealing our lust for content. Do not yield to the temptation to fill the silence. We yearn for stuff, for that which will obscure the silence. But the silence will not abide. The silence rings hollow in us, it throws us against ourselves, and if we allow it to, it destroys all but who we are.

Here we see the blessed fruit of silence: the dethroning of Man. In silence we finally taste defeat. What is Man? Man is defeated.

We find in silence, sheer power of destruction. This destruction renders us powerless. The tide turns away from us, the centrality of the content of our lives is eradicated by the power given as silence.

Descartes took a path; he stared into the silence and succumbed. He asked: where do I go? He answered: I go here. In that offense he navigated the force of History to the world of the here and there making it unable to be silenced.

We are tempted to ask: what do we do in the silence? Kierkegaard rings loudly in our ears: take a leap. Do we leap out of the silence? But from where are we leaping? To God we leap, but from nothing we leap. Do we create ourselves in the leap? Have we such awesome power that we create ourselves ex nihilo? God is as obscure here as I am before I have even leapt.

No, order is revealing. I asked and then silence came. I existed before the silence; the question had meaning even before the silence, for I asked before the silence came. Silence revealed me, it did not create me. Meaning is presupposed in the question and confirmed in the silence. It is meaning which binds together the questioner and the question, the question and the silence.

I am in the silence with my meaning. Meaning is important to me; it may have even been the basis for the question. Where does this meaning come from? Meaning presupposes my question. First there was meaning, and then there was I asking the question. I stand on meaning, am I formed by meaning as well?

I am a being in which I find the meaning of myself in silence.

Am I one with my meaning? Clearly no, the meaning preexisted my question. Therefore, I am not alone, I have finally dis-covered. I have dis-covered meaning and I have dis-covered it exists before me.

I am a being which dis-covers, as I have dis-covered meaning.

I am that being in which it matters to mean.

The meaning of my existence is revealed in the silence, in the silence I mean. In the silence I dis-cover, and with this discovery of dis-covery there is something to uncover beyond what we already have before us.

There is something out there, and I intend to dis-cover it.

 

The Cross churns the tide of temporality, it is contemporaneity that unfolds non-contemporaneity and promises the future. The Cross is the equiprimordality of this temporal unity. The Cross is beckoning to be dis-covered within temporality. Will you seek it? Will you face the nausea of Golgotha? Or will you disunify the horizons of temporality and remain.

You must choose between time and temporality, disunity and equiprimordality, the nausea of the World and the nausea of the Cross. You must dis-cover the meaning of silence, or the nausea of being-thrown [Geworfenheit] into the World will be your undoing.

 

“The nausea has not left me and I don’t believe it will leave me so soon; but I no longer have to bear it, it is no longer an illness or a passing fit, it is I.”

“It is hard to fight with one’s heart’s desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.”

“Everything flows…Nothing abides.”

Where do we begin?

Spinoza once wrote, “The scholastics start from things, Descartes from thought; I start from God.” And, as Étienne Gilson observed, “He [Spinoza] could not have said anything more true, and the name of Spinoza is enough to remind us why in fact the scholastics do not start from God.” But, where do Thomists start? Do we start with Thomas Aquinas himself? Perhaps, with his works? Which interpretation does a Thomist follow? Or, do we begin with contemporary concerns? As Gilson correctly points out, one glimpse at Spinoza reminds us why methodology, and the starting point of inquiry, remains so important to philosophy.  
To be clear: recognizing methodology is not ceding ground to epistemological relativists, it is taking seriously the human person and historicity. 
The problem of where we begin reminds me of another very old problem. Most analytical philosophers will have you begin philosophy with epistemology, what is your basic belief(s) is the question you will be asked. And yet, I cannot think of a question more akin to the heart of Descartes. The clever (and theistic) analytical philosophers will say you begin with metaphysics and the existence of God. But, if they are truly analytical philosophers, you can push back and ask why start there? And then suddenly you are thrown epistemological answers again, reliablism or coherence theory. What truly, really, is first philosophy? For analytical philosophers it is epistemology (or at least, theistic epistemology). 
For many continental philosophers first philosophy is epistemology as well, although hidden within the contours of the self. Do we begin with the ego or the primordial grounding of the self? Where do we begin these continental thinkers ask themselves? We begin by peeking into the limited contours of the individual.
Heidegger saw this dual (analytical and continental) problem as alienation, specifically an utter failure to see ourselves as persons.
 He was right. 
 

Two Worlds Meet: Martin Heidegger and Thomas Aquinas

Here is a snippet of my new work:

To understand the Heideggerian place for Thomism is to first understand the place for Heidegger’s philosophy itself. Principle to the early Heidegger’s project, to which this work is intentionally limited, is the discerning role of Destruktion. In Sein und Zeit [SZ], Heidegger aims to tear down the edifice of being, a concept contorted by the rust and corrosion of the Western normative tradition. The wrestling away of being from those who would keep it hidden is, in an important way, a stripping of the future by those who would seek to determine it [das Man]. The consequential result is that Dasein must take control of itself, it must in a way, become master of its own self so as to make a clearing [Lichtung] for disclosedness. In this way we are to be offered a glimpse into being. The order here is significant. It is through the existential analytic of Dasein that we peek into the hidden contours of being, it is not through being that we peek into the hiddenness of Man. For Heidegger, the stake of philosophy is not finally anthropology, but ontology. This has been obscured by those, especially the “children of Heidegger,” whom in their excitement for the existential analytic obscure the very understanding which stands center to the entire Heideggerian project. Thus, do we now have, in a precisely Heideggerian way, a contemporary obscurity of Dasein, ironically produced by those who have proclaimed Dasein the loudest.

What is being for The History of Ontology? Here Heidegger is instructive. It is the actus ens, the individual instances of being. The primordial grounding upon which any ens is given understanding is a nonsensical question to our history. Or at least so we are told. From Aristotle onward, Heidegger teaches, the drowning of being under the auspices of individualized ens results ultimately in a metaphysically-retarded nominalism that, in its rare logically consistent form, substitutes the ego for being. The disaster of English strict empiricism and the embarrassment of Continental occasionalism are merely symptoms of the larger disease of alienation, of separating the human person from the larger question of being. In short, we have forgotten how to think. We must learn anew how to think, and consequently, what to think on. We have stayed too long in the wilderness, we have substituted temporality for time, Being for being, Dasein for ego. This is the “onto-theo-logical” tradition.

So we turn back to the method of Destruktion. It is only by a process of clearing away that we can find a place and space for Lichtung, that is, for the illuminating light to find its way through the clearing. This is not always a pleasant experience, purification, even intellectual purification, is painful. There has been a tendency in some circles to belittle the pain involved in Destruktion, this is a mistake. There is a tearing down component to Destruktion that must occur if we are truly to seek out the unrealized potentiality of Dasein. How could it be any other way?

The reverse is also false. Heidegger does not teach anything so obstinate as to create rubble so as to create something entirely new out from its ashes. The equiprimordiality of temporality necessitates the threefold unity of historicality, contemporaneity and possibility. The critical-historical assessment of the past is a wrestling loose of non-contemporaneity, precisely so that it may impact contemporaneity.  This is not blindness to the historical; it is the only way in which we see the historical as historical. This is an appreciation for the past as past, as non-contemporaneity. There is a criticism to be laid bare against Heidegger in terms of his larger use of the temporal unity, but I have done so elsewhere and is irrelevant to our aim.

What, then, is the Heideggerian place for Thomism? Heidegger places Thomas Aquinas as representative of the apex of scholastic ontology, of the fruition of Aristotelian ontology and the turning point that led to the Cartesian esse as res cogitans. To Heidegger, Thomas is another causal-ontological-philosopher which hangs on to the ens understanding of being. Is this true? Is Thomas merely the greatest of the ens philosophers?

The Council of Nicea and Power

“Hi XXX, sorry about that, my reply was aimed at a response to XXX, but I must have hit the wrong button. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading your response. I find your questions regarding the Council of Nicea quite justified, and I have asked them as well. All Councils, especially Nicea, were deeply imbedded into the political landscape of the time. You might already know this but when Constantine called for the Council of Nicea he was intending to have the bishops give him full authority of Church doctrine. In the end the bishops not only rejected that, they even told him (the most powerful man in the world) that the Church has the right to question the state! Talk about guts. The major politics at work at Nicea was who had authority over the Church? The emperor or the bishops? The Council once and for all said not only is Christ the head of the Church, but that the Church was independent of the state and had the right to rebuke it. Was there infighting between the bishops (over power, turf, etc), of course, and you are right in pointing that out. Nevertheless, I am constantly humbled by the fact that God seems to bring forth good out of people who seem to me the least capable of it. If that happens in my little world, how much more good could God bring about at the most important council in Church history? God can use us, even despite ourselves.”

Max Scheler: Person as Bearer of Values

          Max Scheler in his work, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, broadly attempts to unearth phenomenological insights from the human person with special attention to values. One of the larger projects of Scheler’s phenomenological examination of the human person is to understand how the person is constituted as that which is a bearer of values. It is here where Scheler believes the phenomenon of the person can be disclosed through intuition. From this position he is able to begin an analysis of values and preference that isolates the primordial person as a bearer of values with possibilities for concern, that is, the ability to allow value preference to lead to choice and direct one’s formal values. Rejecting the material values of Nietzsche (as well as Umwertung aller Wert) and the formal values of Kant, Scheler wants to develop a middle ground that holds both material values and formal values as intrinsically correlated in the person who is constituted by both experience and acts, yet governed by universal and necessary values. The question that will be raised must be, is it possible for Scheler to advance a truly phenomenological appropriation of the person, which requires the phenomenon (and hence for Scheler not the existential) to dictate the terms of inquiry, and at the same time present a middle ground between the formal values of Kant and the material values of Nietzsche without yielding to ontology? In answering this question it will become apparent that although Scheler desires a phenomenological approach to the human person his postulations require ontology.
          Values never occur in isolation, they are always in relation to other values. In other words, in the disclosing of values one does not merely intuit an instantiation of a singular value, but rather a world of values that form a vertical transcendence of the person. However, the question arises, how are these values disclosed to persons? Here Scheler wants to hold a middle position, namely, holding together the noumenon with the phenomenon. In this regard, Scheler wants to reject both a Kantian nameless abstraction and a form of substantialism and instead offer up a phenomenological approach that accounts for subjectivity and the unity of act-essences. For this reason, he recognizes that part of the process of forming values is subjective, varies from culture to culture, and generation to generation, yet still, he argues, can present a normative experience that highlights a given reality which truly exists. In this way it is possible to describe various societies and cultures as holding different values, for example as being more hedonistic, or more utilitarian. But, nevertheless these subjective and culturally accepted social values are not enough for an ethics which intends to get beyond a nameless noumenon and instead offer up a positive approach to the human person. As Julius Bixler notes, for Scheler “We must first know what good and bad are in themselves, not in their social setting but in their nature…” Scheler writes, “For ethics does not try to make understandable what is considered good and evil according to social validity; rather, it seeks to make understandable what good and evil are.” In other words, it is not enough for ethics to merely present social validity based on a culture based system-program of values, but rather must be able to articulate a legitimate hierarchy, or order to values.
          This interesting component of Scheler’s personalism, namely his commitment to a hierarchy of values, is the most difficult for him to prove given his sole commitment to phenomenology. Yet it is fundamental to his system as a whole. As Perrin writes, “The hierarchy of values is itself absolutely invariable, while the order of preference in history is itself variable.” Hence, Scheler does not wish to diminish historicality or the subjective role in values, but rather counterbalance it with an appeal to an a priori order. The hierarchy of values inherently implies an order of rank that is on the noumenon side, but is disclosed through the phenomenon. Scheler writes, “The most important and most fundamental a priori relations obtain as an order of ranks among the systems of qualities of non-formal values which we call value-modalities.” Hence, these value-modalities form an inherent hierarchy which enables value systems to be evaluated and determined as higher or lower. But, given that values are disclosed to persons, who as Scheler recognizes are subjective, what are the criteria in which to adjudicate the a priori order of values once they are instantiated into the social order?
          Scheler argues that there are five criteria, or modalities, for determining the respective merits of competing values. The first criterion for determining the merit of a value is to test for its permanence, that is, for its value over time. Here Scheler gives us a typical scenario in which he believes the longevity of a value can be disclosed easily. “If, he asserts, I affirm my love for someone, I do not qualify my testament by saying ‘I love you now’ or otherwise indicate that this love is momentary. Rather, the notion of duration is conveyed in the affirmation itself. And if I find at some point that this love is gone, I must conclude that I misunderstood and misstated my original sentiment, that I never really loved this person.” In this criterion, Scheler is able to thematize the person as intrinsically tied to values that are transtemporal, as seeking values that do not remain on the level of the fleeting, but on the level of permanence. The second criterion for adjudicating competing values is the extent to which a value is diminished or consumed in its various expressions and manifestations. In this criterion, a value can be understood as higher the less it is able to be divisible among the individuals that participate in it. An example of this type of value would be beauty, as beauty is never lessened by the amount of individual things which participate in it.
          The third criterion for adjudicating values is when the “value is higher the less it is dependent upon the existence of another value for its own worth.” Here the criterion is whether the value itself is universal enough that it is not isolated to particulars. An easy example would be a tool which only has value because it was designed to serve. In other words, just as a tool is used for a means to something else, a high value would be the end value itself, not merely a means to another value. The fourth criterion is the quality of satisfaction in the value. Here Scheler does not have in mind merely a utilitarian sense of pleasure versus pain, but a fulfillment of experience, a sense of purpose. It is this criterion, more than any other, that Scheler’s interpretation of values opens up to claims of subjectivism. What is a sense of fulfillment but a subjective experience that varies from person to person? Here Scheler seems to anticipate the subjectivist critiques by arguing that these criteria are merely the phenomenological intimations of a much deeper lying principle. However, it seems a legitimate critique to pose the question of what is the difference between Kant’s nameless X and Scheler’s ‘phenomenological intimations?’ We will explore Scheler’s Kantian problem in fuller detail below.
         Finally, the fifth criterion for adjudicating between competing values is the higher the value is on the hierarchy, the less relative it is in value. It is important to note here that Scheler is not using the term relative is subjectivist meaning, but instead is using it as a term that expressing a dependence within some values. In other words, relative values rely in a subject for their meaning, as in the values of nobility, vulgarity, etc. In contrast to relative values, absolute values are not contingent upon a subject but instead completely valuable of its own merit.
          After articulating the criteria in which the hierarchy of values can be adjudicated, Scheler separates values into two levels. On the lowest level of values are those which are sensible, namely, pleasure, pain, enjoyment, and suffering. “These values appear in sensuous feeling. The entire class of values is ‘relative’ to beings of a sensuous nature.” Just above the modality of the sensible, Scheler places the modality of life, namely, health, disease, vigor, joy, grievances, etc. Moreover, by separating these two levels of values Scheler directly rejects hedonism and utilitarianism. By placing a higher value on life, as opposed to the sensuous feelings that are derived from that life, Scheler rejects a value system which prioritizes usefulness. For Scheler, the error that utilitarianism commits is the conflation of life values to sensible values. In other words, life is more than the sum of preferences and desires toward pleasure and the avoidance of pain and suffering. Here we can see an important feature of Scheler’s personalism, namely that the lower values, that is, pleasure, pain and suffering are only a derivative of the person. Nevertheless, both modalities are values that are still correlates to a person and hence are not absolute.
          In explicating the absolute and highest values on the hierarchy, Scheler presents the modalities of the spiritual and the holy. Spiritual values do not necessarily require an ego or a body. Nevertheless, in spiritual feelings there must be a recipient, some subject in which the spiritual values are disclosed. It is here where the person is disclosed, a person who is psycho-physically indifferent and hence opposed to any form of reduction of the person to an ego and the corresponding Cartesian dualism. Furthermore, it is here in these higher values that the person will be disclosed as receiving values which transcend time, place and context, and instead reach into the very pure and absolute hierarchy of values itself.
          After presenting the value hierarchy, Scheler is able to then formulate the person, as one who is neither a noumenon nor a subjectivist phenomenon. For Scheler this was the biggest error of Kant. In Kant, the person-in-itself falls into the noumenon and only the intelligibility of the phenomenon remained as cognitively available for appreciation. Hence, for Kant, the person functioned merely as a logical tool, as a postulation of something which has been reduced to a homo logos or homo noumenon. Instead, for Scheler, to “locate the person, we must look beyond every experience which is manifest or apparent to us towards the being which is having that experience.” Nevertheless, this understanding of person reveals a major problem in Scheler’s phenomenological articulation of the human person. As Perrin puts it, “by locating the person at the centre of all acts of valuation, Scheler honours Kant’s dictum that, as neither substance nor thing, the Person can never be treated as an object without doing violence to its elemental nature.” Here we can reveal the problem that Scheler leaves unaddressed, namely the requirement of an ‘elemental nature,’ and a unity of experience, yet no ontological framework in which to ground that phenomenological insight into reality. In other words, Scheler is unable to escape his own critique of Kant, as without engaging in any ontological commitments, and outright rejecting ‘substantialism,’ the outcome of Scheler’s personalism slides into a Kantian noumenological namelessness of the X, or a subjectivist bundle of experience-acts which have no suppositum in which to be grounded.
          Scheler does have a role for essences, but they are always limited to individuals. Scheler writes,

Essence, as we mentioned earlier, has nothing to do with universality. An essence of an intuitive nature is the foundation of both general concepts and intentions directed to particulars. It is only when we refer an essence to an object of observation (“the essence of something”) and inductive experience that the intention through which this reference occurs because something that pertains to either a universal or a particular. Therefore there are essences that are only given in one particular individual. And, for this very reason it makes good sense to speak of an individual essence and also the individual value-essence of a person.

However, as demonstrated above, Scheler does not believe that the person is merely the sum total of one’s acts. The individual essence of a person is necessarily an ontological statement about the qualitative necessity of a being in whose experiences are realized. Hence, Scheler writes, “It is that love which incorporates these qualities, activities, and gifts into its object, because they belong to that individual person.” Note that for Scheler it is not the acts of the person which substantiate the person, but that they belong to a person. Nevertheless there remains a major problem: how can Scheler appeal to an ontological status of a being in which such a value-essence is grounded?
          The argument we began with was that Max Scheler presents a phenomenological appreciation of the human person, yet in so doing cannot escape his own criticism of a Kantian subjectivism where the person is eradicated into a homo noumenon. The personalism of Scheler has no room for ontology and metaphysics, yet requires it for his own postulations. However, this is not to say that a preliminary and foundational theory of ontology is not already embedded into the presuppositions of Scheler’s own philosophy. Rather, much of his own work is threaded with ontological and metaphysical presuppositions that are either unrecognized or minimized in attempt to thematize and prioritize the phenomenological.
         Nevertheless, Without an appreciation for the ontological grounding of reality, there will be no escape from Kant. Hence, Scheler’s personalism necessitates an exploration into the existential component of the human person, not merely the phenomenological. And this can be accomplished with the work of Martin Heidegger.

What is Ancient Greek Philosophy?

Many times I have been asked the question: What is Ancient Greek philosophy? In the same vein as the post on Kantian epistemology that everyone seems to enjoy I here present an easily digestible view of Pre-Socratic ancient Greek philosophy. Is it wise to reduce centuries of intricate philosophical thought into a few short paragraphs? Probably not, but hopefully I keep out of enough trouble to make it work.

            One modern characteristic of many historians of philosophy is the desire to look back upon previous philosophical ages with an eye toward any particular unifying features that can readily mark a specific age. The goal of such an approach to the history of philosophy is to be able to abstract the essence of thought being discussed at a particular time in history so as to provide a gateway into the issues of concern for people long ago deceased. Its process requires that the minutia must be past over for the generic, the all encompassing for the unique. This general descriptive manner of examining the history of philosophy can be helpful for the overall digestion of a large period of philosophical thought. However, this all encompassing approach to a given period of history can lead to an oversimplification of thought and a harmonizing of belief. It is tempting to look back upon the history of philosophy and to examine in it from the present something which it itself never would have claimed for itself. Here the temptation is to read into a specific age a common motif, presupposition, or argumentative goal that seems to transcend specific personalities. But such a reading of history can lead to a prescriptive lens of viewing the past instead of the descriptive lens that is needed. The historian of philosophy must not reinvent the past, but allow the past to determine itself. This is a difficult task. I do not presume to have mastered it, nor even anything close to it. However, it is a warning that I believe is too many times left off from these sorts of exercises. In my experience ideas, and especially people, are always more complicated than we first think, perhaps most especially when we think they are simple or in this case, their ideas to be archaic.

            It is with this caution that I now turn to an examination of Pre-Scoratic Greek philosophy. Here we can properly ask are there any descriptive common motifs that arise from individuals and form a common “Greek” philosophy? Or, are the personalities too disparate, too varied in philosophy and in time that any characterization of “Greek” philosophy quickly turns into a caricature of Greek philosophy? To begin to answer these questions, I will briefly examine three major philosophical movements that occurred in the Greek-influenced context, probing one major representative for each movement. In the end, I believe that we will make evident that there are a selective few common motifs that characterize these Greek philosophers, yet that any broad understanding of “Greek” philosophy is flawed if it does not take into account not only similarities, but perhaps more importantly, their many differences.

 Heraclitus: Physical Change and the Cosmos

           An Ionian philosopher, Heraclitus is typically considered the “weeping philosopher,” referring to his physical infirmities and his deep and unsettling philosophical prose. Heraclitus is most famous for his belief that the world was in a state of complete flux, stated famously as “It is not possible to step twice into the same river.” Seemingly, Heraclitus took the world to be as it presented itself to the senses and as the entirety of the material cosmos. Furthermore, given that the cosmos seems to be in complete disarray, it would make sense to postulate that everything was in flux. However, this belief only makes sense if you first ask the question: what is the principle by which the cosmos operate? What is the world? Here in answering this question Heraclitus looks for an all-encompassing principle that can account for the reality of the world as present to the senses. For this reason, Heraclitus answers that “This world-order did none of the gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.”  What is important to note in this statement is not so much the explicit content, although it is important and will have influence over Plato, but rather the presupposition it holds, namely that there is a singular principle by which the entire cosmos can be explained. Here we can see Heraclitus as searching for a singular explanation for the manner in which the world presents itself, as posing the question of reality and locating it within a singular principle.

            Moreover, Heraclitus presents a philosophy that has its core an appreciation of a basis for knowledge for which all are able to use and employ. He writes, “For although all things happen according to this Logos, men are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is…although the Logos is common the many live as though they had a private understanding.” Here it is important to note several interesting implications. First, Heraclitus presumes there is a universal, underlining truth in the world in which all people have access to, yet most ignore. This is interesting because it is a presupposition that will carry onward in much of Greek philosophy. Second, Heraclitus assumes that for the few that do understand this universal knowledge, they ought to use perception to find answers. “The things of which there is seeing and hearing and perception, these do I prefer.” Hence, for Heraclitus, the world of sensation provides the foundation for human knowledge.

           Finally, Heraclitus argues that individuals are subject to fate. He writes, “…all things happen by strife and necessity.” Here Heraclitus is discussing the complete flux of the cosmos and the world fire as encompassing the change of reality. For Heraclitus, the cosmos is a dark and changing place, one of constant flux, of ignorance, and of a disastrous fate. Yet, there is hope in Heraclitus as there is truth to be found through perception, and a principle by which humanity can know the cosmos.

Pythagoras: Abstraction from the Physical

           Pythagoras is typically, and rightfully, associated with mathematics and geometry; he is presented as a figure deeply concerned with numbers and formulas that might explain the physical world. This is indeed an important factor in Pythagoras’ thought, but its oversimplification can easily conceal a more important insight developed by Pythagoras, namely that through mathematical formulation one can abstract from the material causation of the world and understand the principles that lie behind it. Rather than staying with the merely perceivable, as we see in Heraclitus, Pythagoras takes the physical world and looks past it towards a ratio of geometric formulation in order to understand the truth of reality beyond just the strictly observed. It is for this reason that he is able to postulate areas of inquiry such as the salvation of souls, the notion of asceticism, and conception of body/soul, all of which could never be achieved in the physical philosophy of Heraclitus. Pythagoras presents a philosophy that is not satisfied with the changeableness of the world, but seeks the underlining reality within.

            Nevertheless, this does seem to have parallels in Heraclitus’ thought, which should not surprise us as Heraclitus was Pythagoras’ contemporary. Heraclitus too understood the cosmos to be holding a principle by which truth can be learned, just as Pythagoras looked to geometric principles to explain the form of all things. Pythagoras sets up the following analogy, “Life, he said, is like a festival; just as some come to the festival to compete, some to ply their trade, but the best come as spectators, so in life the slavish men go hunting for fame or gain, the philosophers for truth.” While Pythagoras does not explicitly use the term Logos, his philosophy nevertheless reflects a deep appreciation for truth and for the human mind’s ability to ascertain knowledge of the world that is not subjective, but available for all. Hence, we can derive several interesting philosophical presuppositions that naturally flow from Pythagoras’ philosophy. First, for Pythagoras there were geometrical principles that naturally flow out of the cosmos and allow the human mind to understand the reality of the changing world. Hence, for Pythagoras the changing world had principles by which it operated as a nature. Second, those principles were abstracted from the material cosmos; they were understood as embedded into the world, yet not identical with the world. Hence, while the material world operated under these deterministic principles, the principles themselves were not isolated to the material world.

 Protagoras: Sophism and the Beginning of Socratic Dialogues

            We find in the Sophist movement an interesting moment in the history of philosophy. With the sophists we see influence of the pre-Socratics, yet foreshadowing of the Socratic dialogues to come. Hence, in Protagoras we can see the influence of the Pre-Socratics, yet also the coming of something new. Protagoras is famous for his saying that “Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.” This has been interpreted by Plato, and much of the tradition, generally as a position of relativism, which if understood as a statement affirming that all knowledge is subjective, then such an interpretation would be valid. Yet, more interesting than his apparent relativism is that he does seems to believe in knowledge and the human mind’s ability to achieve it. For he writes, “About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life.” There are several interesting components to this understanding of knowledge. First, even though Protagoras does not seem to believe that gaining knowledge is easy, he does posit something which is knowledge, and hence the possibility of knowing. Second, he postulates the “obscurity of the subject” as a reason for not knowing whether the gods exist. Here Protagoras seems to be aware of the limitations of some knowledge, and hence a criteria in which to adjudicate beliefs. While he does not set forth what such criteria might look like, he implies that such criteria must exist.

What is Greek Philosophy?

            We began this article with the questions, are there any descriptive common motifs that arise from individuals and form a common “Greek” philosophy? Or, are the personalities too disparate, too varied in philosophy and in time that any characterization of “Greek” philosophy quickly turns into a caricature of Greek philosophy? Now we can preliminarily provide an answer. There are several characteristics that seem to repeat themselves in the above philosophies and point toward a common theme among Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. First, Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy tends to share a common presupposition that there exists an intelligible world in which the senses have some access to, and by which knowledge (even if limited severely) is somewhat possible. We see this in Heraclitus in his understanding, even if a bit cryptic, of the Logos. “…although the Logos is common the many live as though they had a private understanding,” Heraclitus laments. In other words, there is knowledge out there to be had, if only the will of the person to achieve it. We see this also in Pythagoras as through mathematical formulation, which is universally applicable, the changeable world is able to be understood and properly articulated. Even in Protagoras, who often is understood as a pure relativist, still presumes that this knowledge, even if the criterion for that knowledge is subjective to the person, exists and is knowable. Hence, we can rightfully conclude that for the Pre-Socratics, there was a basis for knowledge that was accessible for the human mind, derived through principles, and typically restricted to those who were willing to achieve it. Second, the Pre-Socratics believed that there was a reality that existed in the material world and isolated to it. While the criterion for judging what that reality consisted of, in terms of its principles, varied among philosophers, the idea that there was in fact a reality, and that it was materially composed, remained. Even in the most staunchly limiting philosophies, such as Gorgias or Heraclitus, there remained something which could be articulated, a reality by which something could be said to exist, even if all that could be said was that it was incomprehensible. Hence, while the reality itself was contested, what was not contested was that there was a reality.

            Yet, this is not to argue that Pre-Socratic philosophy agreed on everything. As seen above, there are remarkable differences between these philosophies. While for Pythagoras the stability of the world allowed for geometrical certainty, for Heraclitus such a postulation was unfounded, as the world was always in flux. Moreover, while for Heraclitus the world was deducible to a Logos by which knowledge was tested, for Protagoras humanity was the judge by which knowledge was tested. Hence, we must conclude that while it is possible to speak of particular “Greek” Pre-Socratic themes, it must be recognized that there are just as many, if not many more, disagreements.

A New Religious Pluralism? Let's Hope Not

I have elsewhere discussed the failures of a weak ecumenism which slides into pluralism. Here is an excerpt from my review of Diana Eck's book, "A New Religious America."


However, on the other hand, the presupposition that religious pluralism (advocated by Eck), as understood as a level playing field of truth in all religions, leads to the neglect of real, tangible differences in propositional statements of reality. There are in fact very real, philosophical and theological differences between orthodox (and yes, even liberal) Christianity and that of Hinduism, Buddhism and the Abrahamic faiths of Islam and Judaism. These differences in articulating what each position believes is reality should not be held at arms length or tossed aside for the sake of a new "American pluralism." To do such would be a detrimental activity to both sides of the discussion, it would be to undermine the belief systems of both religions in dialogue. One need not reduce the world’s religious differences to societal context, nor rationalize them away as needless obstacles to inclusion, in order to engage in interreligious dialogue, nor to have fruitful exchange of ideas, even where both parties vigorously disagree. Pluralism, especially the one advocated here, attempts to equate religions as having the same ontological status of each other, as merely different, yet equal, approaches to the one reality, as if these differences are not really differences. This pluralism ignores the real, tangible differences on both sides of the religious divide. On purely logical grounds (I'm not necessarily advocating this myself, but on a purely logical level) a stronger pluralism would recognize those differences and instead of rationalizing them as obstacles that need to be removed, rather embrace them as real differences, ones that do not have to cease in order to have dialogue. Would such a pluralism still be a pluralism or would that enter the realm of what we loosely and vacuously call ecumenism? I do not know, and here I am not interested in that. Rather, in this particular case I argue against Eck who encourages a religious pluralism that is a ghastly combination and mixing of different religions (the image of America as the great melting pot should come to mind here). If this doesn't disgust you, then you probably aren't a member of one of those religions, in which case why do you care? As someone invested in a religion I know that true dialogue must at the least include the defining parameters of each religion in discussion, and only then can one have fruitful exchange of ideas. To empty the real, tangible differences of each religion and prop up what is left as a representation of a religious enterprise does neither side any good.

Can you imagine having a political debate with your friend on the other side of the political spectrum and telling him or her that what she really believes doesn't matter, what truly matters is only the few superficial things you and they agree on? Your friend would be right in pointing out your utter arrogance, if not your out right naivety. Why, then, would we expect that of all things on the planet, something as important and controversial as religion would be something where such gutting of beliefs could occur? The proclamation of truth on both sides of the religious divide should be articulated and not shied away from. A religious position void of the truth on which it believes it stands loses any significance. And from this position, truth is lost in the attempt at unity in the midst of diversity, where those who seek unity drown out diversity in their very attempt at inclusion. In reality what Eck is actually arguing for is the creation of a new religion, the great American Religion.

There really is nothing quite as exclusivist as a pluralist demanding inclusion is there?