Notes from the boundary: Peter Hart: Fragments of philosophy: questioning received wisdom

Plotinus, 204–270 CE

Philosophy as a subject is unlike any other – with the possible exception of some aspects of mathematics. It is unique in that it consists almost entirely of “thought experiments”; requires no laboratories or field trips; and has no visual equivalents or artefacts that can be illustrated or seen in what is called “the real world.” Further, there is scant evidence that philosophy is of the slightest use to professionals in any field: science, medicine, psychology, law, and etc. However, the same can be said of art, literature, and history. Through family connections and work I know of lawyers, doctors, and surgeons who are at the top of their profession, and yet whose knowledge of history is perfunctory and to whom literature is a closed book. This flies against everything that I want to believe, but it is so, and I can do nothing about it. Even so, I regard it as a great impoverishment.

“I haven't got time to read.”

“But you watch Match of the Day and East Enders!”

Philosophy is not an easy subject. Quite a lot of it has to do with epistemology – or the theory of knowledge. We see the world as mediated through our senses, and are subject to suppositions and presuppositions; our minds are clouded by a great deal that we were taught, but which turns out not to be true; and the world is discontinuous with our consciousness. How then can we be certain of anything? Strictly, we cannot. Surprisingly, Jane Austen illustrates this perfectly in Emma: “Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken . . .” However, it is not particularly fruitful to be too concerned with this, but healthier to note that philosophy asks questions: often very tough questions that require hard thinking, and it is what is learned on the way that matters, not the solving of the problem to everyone’s satisfaction.

I am not too sure that philosophy might thrive rather better than it does if parents were more open to the kinds of questions that their children tend to ask:

“Daddy, what keeps the earth from falling?”

“Don’t ask silly questions . . . where’s your mother got to . . .”

Well, the Presocratic philosopher, Anaximander, was deeply interested in this problem – as it was perceived at the time – and he came up with a very ingenious answer:

There are some (including, among the philosophers of long ago, Anaximander) who say that the earth stays where it is because of equality. For something which is established in the centre and has equality in relation to the extremes has no more reason to move up that it does down or to the sides; it is impossible for it to move in opposite directions at the same time, and so it is bound to stay where it is. (Aristotle, On the Heavens)

Robin Waterfield, the translator of The First Philosophers – from which this extract is taken – writes in the introduction, “This is remarkable as an early preference for theory over the evidence of the senses, where the two conflict; for surely the senses would seem to confirm that nothing just hangs in place in mid–air.”

It might be thought from the above example that all philosophy will gradually become redundant, as science answers more and more of the questions that philosophy poses. But I do not think this will be so. You might as well say that science will eventually replace poetry. But poetry, science, and philosophy are all separate entities (or activities). Moreover, the business of science is not to answer the questions posed by philosophy. We are in need of another example:

Plotinus has observed that every entity aspires to the Good and believes itself to have achieved the highest state of being when it participates in it; so long as one does not possess it, one wishes for something else, but when one possesses it, one wishes oneself: thus, being and willing coincide. (Maria Luisa Gatti, Plotinus: The Platonic tradition and the foundation of Neoplatonism. In the Cambridge Companion to Plotinus.)

Well, the language is not easy, and we may well doubt that “every entity aspires to the Good.” However, the core meaning seems to be that if we lived in accordance with the Good, and therefore within the true bounds of our nature, we would not be restless in seeking those things which are unnecessary to our wellbeing. I am sure that it is impossible to fully realise such a state of being. Nonetheless, the idea is powerfully suggestive. We tend to be plagued by all manner of idiocies, but this need not be the case, if only we would think more deeply about things. Fiction, drama, and film can and do teach us these lessons, but there is something in Maria Luisa Gatti’s succinct exposition of this aspect of Plotinus’ thought that concentrates the mind, and has universal applicability. And what she says is echoed by another contributor to the same Oxford Companion, who refreshingly quotes Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality (as well as Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium):

Aesop’s fable of the dog who lost his real bone because he jealously required the bone he saw reflected in the water would have appealed to Plotinus. We are “here” because our souls mistook reflections for the Real, and our only escape is to recall what truly is, and whence we came.

Hence in a season of calm weather / Though inland far we be / Our souls have sight of that immortal sea / Which brought us hither.

(Stephen R. L. Cark Plotinus: Plotinus: Body and soul. In the Cambridge Companion to Plotinus.)

It is not easy to “recall what truly is, and whence we came.” And if we follow Kant, then we must accept that the direct pursuit of happiness plays no part in the effort that must be made:

. . . the problem of determining certainly and universally what action will promote the happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble; and consequently . . . in regard to this there is no imperative possible which in the strictest sense could command us to do what will make us happy, since happiness is an Ideal, not of reason but of the Imagination – an Ideal resting merely on empirical grounds, of which it is vain to expect that they should determine an action by which we could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is in fact infinite. (H. J. Paton, The Moral Law. Paton’s translation of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals)

This is a complex passage – and it should be said that the original German is so difficult – that many German speaking scholars prefer to read Kant in English translation (some of his sentences being of paragraph length, so that his series of “ifs” and “thens” need to be underlined if they are to be grasped). There is more in this passage than I can unravel, but the primary point – that we have no means of determining precisely what will make us happy – seems sound. “Happiness is an incidental blossoming” writes Aristotle, and so it is. Yet see how many lost souls queue up to buy lottery tickets and scratch cards – thinking that a sudden access of fortune will solve all their problems and make them happy.

Imagine that you pass a skip in the road, and notice that it is full to overflowing with £50 notes. This is of course highly improbable, but for the purposes of a thought experiment is unproblematic. Well, you do not have to be a philosopher to realise that the money is not yours, and your first duty is to inform the police. But, if you have studied philosophy – particularly, say, Aristotle or Kant – then you will not even be tempted to take so much as a single note. You will not say to yourself “no one will miss £50”– knowing that such argumentation is utterly beside the point. Or, as Aristotle would express it: “You cannot steal the right amount from the right person under the right circumstances at the right time. Stealing is simply wrong.” Yet imagine the pandemonium, fighting, and sheer greed that you would witness should the skip be discovered by others before the police arrived!
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