Reflecting upon human beings and their relation to the outside
world (nature, culture, society) constitutes a determined form
of philosophical experience. It involves awareness of oneself
and others, and the ability to identify similarities and
differences, to explain the changing dynamics of existence, and
to project the acquired understanding into the practice of
formulating new questions. Practical implications of
philosophic systems are manifold. Such systems affect scientific,
moral, political, cultural, and other human practical
experiences of self-constitution. They accumulate wisdom more
than knowledge. To this effect, we can say that the classic model
of philosophy remains a science of sciences, or at least the
alma mater of sciences. Philosophic systems are concerned with
human values, not with skills or abilities involved in reaching
goals defined by our rationality. Nevertheless, this status has
been continuously challenged from inside and outside philosophy.
The decline of respect for philosophy probably results from the
perceived omniscient attitude philosophers have displayed and
from their unwillingness to focus on aspects of human reason.
Philosophy has never been a domain for everyone. In our day, it
has become a discourse expressed, if not in painfully contorted
language, in a multitude of specialized languages addressed to a
relatively small circle of interested parties, themselves
philosophers for the most part. The change in the pragmatic
condition of philosophy is reflected in its current linguistic
equivocations. "My philosophy" is an expression used by anyone
to express anything from a tactic in football to investments,
drug use, diet, politics, religions, and much more.
Misunderstood cultural exigencies, originating in the
civilization of literacy, and political opportunism maintain
philosophy as a required subject in universities, no matter what
is taught under its name, who teaches it, or how. Under communism
in East Europe and the Soviet Union, where free choice was out
of question, philosophy was obligatory because it was identified
with the dominating ideology. In most liberal societies,
philosophic abstraction is as much abhorred as lack of money.
Philosophic illiteracy is a development in line with the
deteriorating literacy manifested in our days. But what affects
this change is the new pragmatic framework, not the decline in
writing and reading proficiency.
The specialization of philosophic language, as well as the
integration of logico- mathematical formalism in philosophical
discourse, have not contributed to recuperating the prestige of
philosophy, or of the philosopher, for that matter. Neither did
it contribute to resolving topics specific to the discipline, in
particular, to human experience and conscience. In fact,
philosophy has disappeared in a number of philosophies practiced
today: analytic, continental, feminist, Afro-American, among
others. Each has constituted its own language and even
perspective, pursuing goals frequently rooted in the philosophy
of the civilization of literacy, or in its politics.
The relevance (or irrelevance) of philosophy cannot be
ascertained outside the practice of questioning and answering, a
practice that made philosophy necessary in the first place.
Indeed, as a practice of positioning the human being in the
universe of human experience, philosophy is as relevant as the
practical results of this positioning. There are scientific
theories, such as the theory of relativity in physics or gene
theory in biology, that are as philosophically relevant as they
are scientifically significant. And there are, as well,
philosophic theories of extreme scientific significance. Many
components of Leibniz's system, of Descartes' rationalism, and
Peirce's pragmaticism can be mentioned. Each originates within a
distinct pragmatic framework of practical experiences through
which reason comes to expression and questions specific forms of
rationality.
Philosophy, as we know it from the texts in which it was
articulated, is a product molded through the experience that
initially made writing possible (though not universally
accepted) and, later, literacy necessary. Its fundamental
distinctions- subject/object, rational/irrational, matter/spirit,
form/content, analytic/synthetic, concrete/abstract,
essence/phenomenon-correspond largely to human practical
experiences in the framework of language. The traditional
gnoseological approach reflects the same structure, as does
formal logic, based on Aristotle's syllogistic theory. The
fundamental linguistic distinction of subject/predicate marks-at
least for Western civilization-the entire approach. Expectations
of efficiency pertinent to the human scale leading to the
Industrial Revolution affected the condition of philosophy. At
this juncture, philosophers realized the practical aspect of the
discipline. Marx thought that it would empower people and help
them change the world: "Until now philosophers interpreted the
world; it's time to change it." And change it did, but in ways
different from what he and his followers anticipated. The hard
grip of reified language turned the workers' paradise into a
mental torture chamber.
Once the underlying structure (reflected in the requirements of
literacy) changed, philosophy changed as well, also freeing
itself from the categories of language that molded its
speculative discourse. Nevertheless, its institutions (education,
professional associations and conferences) continue to pursue
goals and functions peculiar to literate expectations. This
prompted a strong movement of philosophic dissidence (Feyerabend
and Lakatos are the main representatives), attuned to the
practical need of a philosophic praxis aware of the relative
nature of its assertions.
Multi-valued logic, the logic of relations, fuzzy set theory, and
computation in its algorithmic and non-algorithmic forms (based
on neural networks) allow philosophers to free themselves from
the various dualisms embedded in the language of philosophy.
Significantly better answers to ontological, gnoseological,
epistemological, and even historic questions have to reflect
such and other cognitively relevant perspectives of knowledge.
Philosophy undergoes a process of mathematization in order to
gain access to science and improve its own efficiency. It has
become logic oriented, more computational. It has adopted
genetic schemes for explaining variation and selection,
extending to the current memetic conversations and methods. It is
not unusual for philosophers to abandon the pattern of rehashing
older theories and views, and to attempt to understand pragmatic
exigencies and their reason. The scientification of philosophy
could not have happened under the scrutiny of language and the
domination of literacy. Neither could we expect, within the
literate framework, anything comparable to Plato's Dialogues, to
the great philosophical systems of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and
Marx, to the literary seduction of Heidegger, Sartre, or Martin
Buber.