Does Philosophy Require Faith?

Everybody, welcome to the Firestone Files. I am Dr. Chris Firestone. Today on the files, we have part two of a three-part series addressing the question, what is philosophy? All right. Well, welcome back everybody to the second lecture. I hope you're enjoying this series as much as I had in creating it. You'll notice that I have these series of three lectures and um they were ones I prepared a number of years ago when I was working at a different institution. And uh but my position hasn't changed on these issues. And in the first lecture, we landed on a definition of philosophy that I think is really insightful, really clear.

And um it is the perspective of the self based on reason and freedom. So, I'm going to talk about that and flesh that out here in lecture number two. Now, my approach in lecture two is a little more historical. We're going to look at the history of philosophy in the West and talk about how it developed from the ancient world through the Christian era right into the Enlightenment and into post-modern philosophy. And really, there's kind of two parts to this story. Part one is the life and death of philosophy because it eventually begins to dig its own grave in the 21st century.

And then I'm going to talk about kind of rejuvenate, resuscitate philosophy from this impending death. And that is through the discussion of good philosophy versus bad philosophy. And um I'm going to make the argument that good philosophy will always be peppered with seasoned by faith. And that faith isn't always, let's say, religious faith, although I think it very well might culminate there. Um but it's faith of all sorts that our perspective as philosophers when we use the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom is limited. We're situated in space and time. The horizon of our understanding is limited by the conditions of our existence.

And yet that doesn't mean that wisdom stops starts or ends stops right there. It actually bids us to communicate, to converse with other thinkers who have different perspectives. And from that vantage point to collect the best of the best, to to gain wisdom. And I guess I'm going to argue here by the end of this lecture that good philosophy is faith seeking understanding. And so let's go ahead and uh get to it. Part two of the series, what is philosophy? Hope you enjoy.

Hi. I'm Dr. Chris L. Firestone, Professor of Philosophy at Trinity International University. And this is lecture two addressing the question, what is philosophy? In the previous lecture we looked at some of the common assumptions about philosophy. And although they're partially true they failed to grasp what is unique about the discipline of philosophy. Then we looked at some of the ancients. We looked at Socrates and his focus on knowing oneself as the primary task of philosophy. The unexamined life is not worth living and so forth. Then we turned our sights to Plato his disciple and Plato's emphasis on philosophy asking the big question, what is the nature of ultimate reality?

Of course, Plato's going to land on ideas or forms. And then Aristotle will follow him with a slightly different conception and that works itself out in the history of ideas after that. Aristotle slightly alters Plato's emphasis on the nature of ultimate reality. He believes it's the movement from wonder and the recognition of our ignorance to a kind of knowledge, a kind of scientific knowledge wherein we understand the fundamental causes and principles um undergirding the universe. And uh then we looked at some of the contemporary definitions of philosophy which are a far cry from the Greeks.

People like um like uh Henry Sidgwick who thought that it that philosophy was kind of like the referee in the academic environment. No longer really having anything uh constructive to add to human knowledge, but making sure that those sciences that have emerged um in the in the history of uh of of the West have uh are playing fair in the sandbox with one another and so forth. Well, I'm going to backtrack a little bit here and kind of walk through a little bit of the history of ideas, just a survey of that, and look at the various approaches to the question, what is philosophy?

I made an argument at the end of the last lecture, not an argument, I guess I made a claim and maybe I'll make the argument today that philosophy at its very root or very the the very basic nature of philosophy is to a perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom. That is, we wake up in this world in a particular space and time and um historical context and so forth. And we ask ourselves, if you're being philosophical why me? Why here? Why now? Um and this is the perspective of the self. We we don't know who to trust. We don't know which voices are true, which are false.

We you know, we see that for example in the philosophy of Descartes and others that really don't know uh you know for sure where the truth is to be found, where goodness is to be found where beauty is to be found and so forth. And so um philosophy is all about trying to decide those fundamental questions and and and so forth. So, the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom.

But we didn't go there immediately in the history of ideas. After the Greeks, of course, we have the Judeo-Christian period uh in the West. Christianity becomes sort of the dominant world view. And uh much of the Patristic era in the medieval period is dominated by theology, if you will, as first philosophy. And philosophy is sort of the handmaiden of theology because there are these fundamental revealed truths about the person of Jesus Christ and the uh how God has worked in history and what the human condition once fallen, how it can be redeemed and so forth. And that narrative, those those basic truths of theology dominated the Western intellectual landscape.

And philosophy was thought somewhat like Sidgwick said to be helping with the with the method uh and um uh in the in the means for doing theology. And so, philosophy became essentially a Christian enterprise for a lengthy period of time. Now, there are all sorts of counterexamples to that. Um but the mainstream philosophical uh discourse was was primarily a Christian one for quite a lengthy period of time. And I think of of some of the major players, uh of course, Augustine reigns uh right at the top, it's kind of a culminating watershed figure of the Patristic period.

He argued faith seeking understanding was the fundamental way of doing philosophy. That is, we understand certain truths revealed to us in scripture. And we try to understand, extrapolate those out, create a world view that helps us to live life and so forth. Um and so this is sort of the classical Christian culmination, if you will, of the enterprise of philosophy. Um and that of course works its way out throughout this entire period until we arrive at Aquinas. And of course, that's a big leap, but there's a lot of theological extrapolations, metaphysics as first philosophy, reinventions of Plato and Aristotle along the way. And in in Aquinas we for the first time begin to see philosophy getting its own self-identity back.

Um Aquinas famously had uh the position that reason itself didn't really have noetic effects of sin. It had a kind of autonomous sphere from which it could work. And so, we had faith in reason. And in Aquinas's philosophy, they work uh hand in hand with one another uh as two sides of one coin, you might say. But what that did was it freed philosophy for the first time in many, many years to um to use reason to answer the big questions of life from its own perspective.

And of course, that takes some time to percolate, but that autonomous sphere uh beget the possibility, if you will, of of modern science. Not that it was divorced from a Christian worldview, but that philosophers and uh scientists and mathematicians could reason their way using the basic axioms of these fields in order to make progress in these areas. And by the time we get to Francis Bacon and René Descartes, philosophy is showing signs of not being able to keep up with science. Or with uh mathematics. And so, in the famous turn from metaphysics as first philosophy to epistemology as first philosophy, Descartes embodies that whole notion that reason is the supreme authority in our quest for truth.

It's the ultimate measuring stick, if you will, in book four of the Meditations. He says reason is reliable if we carefully employ it and we subdue the will and so forth. And so, in Descartes's philosophy, reason uh takes takes uh center stage. And so, that's you know, and anybody who's looking at my definition of philosophy, the perspective of the spell self based upon reason and freedom, will recognize a strong Cartesian component to it. That is, philosophy, if it's going to be autonomous, is about the human individual, an alien in the strange world, trying to figure out the answers to the big questions, not knowing who to rely upon or what field of of of discourse is most appropriate, but learning as you go along. Using freedom of inquiry, open rational discourse, and so forth, uh to help find our way forward.

Now, this of course comes to ultimate culmination in the modern period in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant is the one who really argues that philosophy's most basic nature is the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom. So, those of you who are uh checking in on the history of philosophy with me understands that my definition of philosophy is broadly speaking a Kantian one. Now, that doesn't mean it's the normative discipline in the university.

I don't think that's the way Kant thought about it, but he did think that we had to take stock of reason, that reason had to be critical of itself and ask what contributions it makes to the field in order for it to uh to to to be doing the job of philosophy. And so, Kant's transcendental philosophy says that it's the perspective of self based upon reason and freedom in which the philosopher asks the transcendental questions, what is the nature of reason that uh that is required for the possibility of experience. And so, that's where where that's where that discussion, of course, goes. Philosophy as reasoned autonomy.

Now, after Kant, philosophy breaks into a number of other uh approaches and and fields. The sort of post-Kantian environment is really quite complicated and so forth. One way to simplify it is to talk about the two major streams of thought that emerge out of Kant's philosophy, and that is analytic philosophy versus continental philosophy. And analytic philosophy focuses on logic, careful reasoning, asking and answering questions using syllogisms, and uh and uh open rational discourse uh to try to figure out the problems that still plague philosophy. Continental philosophy is a little bit different. It too believes in analytical reasoning, but it suggests that reasoning is at least in part synthetic in its in its uh nature.

That is, we we progressively, as a human race, come up with better and better answers to questions as we continue to think and discourse about them. There's a kind of a progressive notion in synthetic continental philosophy that is not really present in analytic philosophy. In other words, we're making some kind of headway in understanding our world the further we go along in our uh uh great conversation in philosophy and so forth. Now, um this brings us to the kind of 20th century, 21st century, where philosophy's been really under siege. If I had to put my finger on the period, it's probably the 1900s, um 1800s, uh really starting with Nietzsche and some of the what the um philosophers following Kant that weren't necessarily happy with his solutions to the big questions of life.

And uh Nietzsche, of course, suggests that Kant was on his game when he discovered freedom, but off his game when he tethered it to the moral law. And that freedom, if freedom is going to be freedom indeed, is about the will to power coming to self-understanding in and through the human spirit. Now, I mention all of that because philosophy in the 19th and 20th century began to in itself self-destruct. That is, it broke into more and more myopic kind of fields, you know, logical positivism and existentialism and phenomenology and so forth, various perspectives on how philosophy can be and should be done.

But, um what's happening in the university is that all these other fields are growing, knowledge is growing, we're giving PhDs in chemistry, we're giving PhDs in psychology, and so forth, and the space for philosophical questions appears to be shrinking. It's not that we've answered all the big questions, but we've answered quite a few questions. And if you remember my first lecture, one of the things I said in that lecture was that the problem is not that there's no definite answers, that there's too many answers.

And now that we've broken up the field into many, many different fields, all you have to do is go to a major university today and see all the majors that they have, they used to be three, now it's more like 300. Uh you can see why the space for philosophy seems to be shrinking. And so, when we get to the definition of philosophy by William James, that philosophy is the uh how does he put it? Um is those set of questions that have not been answered to the satisfaction of those to whom they have been asked. And so, you see in William James's definition that philosophy has progressively eaten itself up.

And it is left with questions that we don't have a lot of agreement on, and that they're really difficult and big questions. Now, some of them are still in the mainstream in terms of how science and philosophy um are are are are trying to answer them. So, for example, the mind-body problem that was initiated by René Descartes has continued to resonate in the field of philosophy and in science and so forth, because it's deemed to be a really important philosophical question, and we don't have a universal agreement, as it were, on how to answer such a question.

I think of the problem of evil is another one of those questions that have not been answered to the satisfaction of those who've asked them. But, there aren't that many of those left that people may think we can ever have uh agreement on. And so, as Richard Rorty was prone to say, philosophy has dug its own grave. As it's continued to expand in these other fields and as we're giving PhDs in all these other areas, the PhD in philosophy has very limited space. Very few things that we feel like as a human species we're going to be able to make headway on. And so, it's kind of dug its own grave.

Of course, that fits the narrative of Nietzsche very well, that really what we're about now are narratives themselves, about the will to power, about uh logic and power in kind of a reciprocal relationship, and that philosophy, if it's anything, it's about generating uh power narratives. And so, we see that in certain philosophers in 21st century. Uh one of them I think of is Cornel West, um great contemporary philosopher, and he argues that the definition of philosophy, I know in one of his I watched one of his one of his movies or videos where he talks about it's philosophy is about wrestling with desire in the face of death. That's kind of the existential part of philosophy, the realization that life is short, and that we have desires and things we want to do, and yet we're going to be cut off at some point.

He says that philosophy is about wrestling uh with dialogue in the face of dogmatism. That is, we have systems of thought and dialogue with those systems of thought that are already established, but we're not necessarily satisfied with them as a species. And then he says, it's about wrestling with democracy in the face of structures of domination. So, Cornel West is looking like Nietzsche and like a number of these uh say, postmodern philosophers at the very nature of philosophy being about deconstructing these these superstructures of domination. So, philosophy has come a long way in its self-understanding and certain philosophers have dominance at certain periods of time.

If we think of Richard Rorty and the death of philosophy that Rorty thinks has happened, we could also put into that same category Michel Foucault who argues for the death of history based upon similar reasoning, Jacques Derrida and his death of the author. And all of these things are falling because of philosophical systems that have emerged which are rejecting the meaningfulness of life outside of freedom and the will to power and sort of these Nietzschean insights.

So, where we have here now? Well, we have a definition of philosophy and I've suggested to you that the definition of philosophy that we can all agree upon is that it is the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom. It's going to be hard to argue against that. If there's somebody who's beginning to study philosophy for the first time, they're going to have to do it from where they sit. Do they trust Professor Firestone or do they trust Socrates or do they trust Nietzsche or do they trust Rorty or do they trust Immanuel Kant and so forth? And those are ultimately going to be decisions that are made by us.

The perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom. Now, to supplement that, I would argue that there's two types of philosophy underneath this definition. There's good philosophy and there's bad philosophy. Good philosophy is about recognizing that we're finite situated beings. That our perspective, the perspective of the self, may not and likely is not the best perspective on which or by which to answer some of the big questions or many of the big questions. And so, we are if we're wise, if we're good philosophers, we ultimately are going to have to trust somebody.

We're going to have to look at the history of ideas, look at science, look at morality, look at art, look at various proponents of these things and look at the arguments themselves using reason and freedom. And I would suggest to you that good philosophy based upon the perspective of the self, reason and freedom, will make judgments, good judgments, wise judgments about who to trust.

And that's a basic component to the philosophical quest to understand ourselves and our place in the world. Simple examples of this in everyday life I think would be enough to prove that I'm right on this and that is let's say that you get ill. You have some unique ailment. You can do some reading up on it yourself. Perhaps you could even operate on yourself. But wiser might be to look for an expert in the field. A doctor. Look at their ratings, look at their performance, look at their track record and so forth. Ask questions as a philosopher would. And then at some point, you're going to have to trust somebody.

You're going to have to give yourself over, give your perspective over to that person. The same thing is true of the mechanic. If your car gets some kind of problem, you may know something about these things, but ultimately, you'll have to make that determination whether or not it's worth your time to try to become a mechanic yourself or to give yourself over to a mechanic. And now, in doing that, you could be wise if you ask the right questions, if you get advice, if you seek counsel about where where the best mechanic is in town and you ask some questions, you listen to their answers, you and then you make a judgment. And then ultimately, if you're a good thinker, good philosopher, you give yourself over to that perspective. This happens in every area of life, by the way.

Part of navigating life well, being wise in philosophy, is learning the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom and making sound judgments about what perspective to give yourself over to. Now, this will ultimately, I suggest to you, play itself out in other areas as well, including theology and religion and so forth. That ultimately, you're not best situated answer these questions, but you do have to figure out who to trust. And so, philosophy, I've suggested to you, has gone through a lot of historical changes, but fundamentally, it is the perspective of the self based upon reason and freedom. And when we give ourselves over to other perspectives, we're becoming doctors, we're becoming lawyers, we're becoming mechanics, we're becoming theologians and so forth.

And that may well be a wise thing to do. All right. Well, I'm going to try to wrap up this in the third and final lecture and I'm glad to have you on board. Look forward to to bringing the question, what is philosophy, to conclusion. See you then. Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files.

I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspectives on life. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions. And remember, the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.