As far as the humanities are concerned, philosophy is more concerned with the future of humanity than any other discipline because it is "the essence of the zeitgeist." The so-called "essence of the spirit of the times" should contain two meanings: one is the summary and summary of the spirit of the times, and the other is the shaping of the spirit of the times.
If the former is regarded as the "owl of Minafa" that takes off at dusk, the symbol of the latter is the "rooster of the dawn". However, this also means that if something goes wrong in this era, philosophy is certainly to blame. Therefore, the future of philosophy is closely related to the future of human civilization. With this in mind, this article is intended to highlight the conundrum of the "future of philosophy." According to the scientific way of thinking of Western classical philosophy, the future is ultimately determined by the past, so there is no real future, so it is necessary to try to change our way of thinking.
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The question of the "future of philosophy" should of course be discussed from a philosophical point of view, and the "future view" of philosophy can have two different perspectives——— backwards and forwards. The so-called "backward look" means that the future of this understanding is ultimately determined by the past, and can also be called "the inevitable way of thinking" or "the deterministic way of thinking".
The existential dimension that emphasizes man's orientation to the future, trying to guide and change reality through the understanding of the future, we call it a "forward-looking" perspective, which can also be called a "possibility way of thinking" or a "free way of thinking".
It is inappropriate to say that the theoretical basis of the former perspective is classical philosophy, while the latter perspective stems from a turn in modern philosophy (which is, of course, not merely a turn to language), although this shift is not sufficient enough to be finalized. Because of this, 20th-century Western philosophy is seen as a transitional period for Western philosophy, and the future of philosophy is also at stake.
The fundamental purpose of philosophy, from Greek philosophy to modern Hegelian philosophy, is to prove the rationality of the universe on the basis of the rationality of the universe. When the Greeks first engaged in philosophical thinking, they adhered to the historical mission of "saving phenomena.".
They firmly believe that everything in the universe is reasonable, and that everything that exists must have its reasonable basis for existence, but many phenomena are chaotic, so people need to find or explain the reason for the existence of things to "save the phenomenon" in order to ensure that the rational overall system of the universe will not collapse as a result.
Therefore, the work of the philosopher is to explain the reason for the existence of things, and thus there is the philosophical pursuit of knowledge and truth. Thus, for a long time thereafter, philosophy and science (the natural sciences) were studied on the same object, both as knowledge of the nature of the universe; the difference between the two was that the natural sciences described the world, while philosophy devoted itself to explaining the meaning of the world.
Thus, although philosophy and science share the same scientific way of thinking (abstract thinking or theoretical thinking), the two approaches are quite opposite: the natural sciences are usually "bottom-up" ——— from the special to the universal, thus gradually grasping the nature or law of things, while philosophy is often committed to "discovering" the highest universal principles and constructing philosophical systems "from top to bottom" to explain the meaning of the world.
Science knows things in relative space and time, and the existence of anything cannot be exhausted in such a causal relationship; philosophy knows things from the necessity of the divine of nature, and is therefore the highest knowledge. Only in this way can we finally understand the nature of the existence of things.
The turn that took place in Western philosophy after Hegel was a fundamental one. However, freezing three feet is not a cold day. Western philosophy has been on this path for more than two thousand years, and it is easy to turn to talking. Philosophers have had to make profound reflections and critiques of the ideas of traditional philosophy, and perhaps we are still in the process of turning.
What we can be sure of, however, is that it is precisely because of this turn that philosophy is separated from science, and that the greatest loss of philosophy is that it has lost its former field of study and has become a marginal discipline. In this case, it becomes necessary to discuss the future of philosophy.
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After discussing the prospects of philosophy from a "backward looking" perspective, it is discussed from a "forward-looking" perspective, because it involves a fundamental change in philosophy.
Although philosophy and science share the same scientific way of thinking, this way of thinking contradicts the nature of philosophy. The nature of philosophy lies in its idealism——— justify the universe. Or it can be said that philosophy tries to restore or construct an ideal model of the universe, thereby justifying the universe, and thus determining the direction of human society, and thus establishing a basis for human survival.
Regardless of whether the rationality of the universe itself can constitute the premise of philosophical thinking, the biggest problem with proving the rationality of the universe based on the rationality of the universe is that it is always pushing and limiting the future with the past, which almost constitutes the tradition of classical philosophy.
For example, Aristotle interpreted "ousia" as "totieneinai" (what its past was); Hegel's Logic, in its transition from "existentialism" to "essentialism," interpreted "Wesen" (essence) as "gewesen," the german "sein" (being) past participle, called "past existence" (essence is past existence).
This may seem like nothing more than a game of concepts, but in fact embodies the basic idea of classical philosophy that the existence of anything is based on the nature of things that have passed before. They are in the same vein, thus embodying the eternal existence of essence. Therefore, the manifestation of this scientific way of thinking in philosophy is that the past determines the present, and the present determines the future.
That is, everything is determined by the past, so we don't actually have a future in the true sense of the word. The question now is, if the universe is not rational, but a blind, irrational, contingency of natural processes, can we have a future in the true sense of the word?
There is no doubt that the scientific way of thinking has achieved almost perfect success in the natural sciences, so much so that Western civilization has become a model for all civilizations to emulate, and has forced all peoples to embark on the road to modernization. However, no matter how successful and effective the way in which the natural sciences interpret the world, it is not the only way to explain the world, let alone that it is impossible to provide meaning to the world from it.
The natural sciences pursue the basic principles of a nature, a kind of knowledge, a truth, but we may forget that before the natural sciences (mainly physics) formed a unified "paradigm", the natural sciences were not different from other ways of interpreting the world (such as alchemy, astrology, etc.) between the higher and the lowest, and science formed a dominant position in the world for only a few hundred years.
The problem is that this scientific way of thinking has certainly created a brilliant material civilization, but it has also forced us into a desperate situation——— and while we enjoy the fruits of science and technology, we may also destroy ourselves. The reason why we need to consider another way of explaining it is because this modern approach to science has encountered difficulties.
Of course, this is not the fault of natural science, but our fault of using natural science to understand and transform the world. Or rather, it is the consequence of our radicalization, absolutization, and extremization of this way of thinking that explains the world. We can succeed physically (despite the cost of such success), but on the spiritual level——— we lose our spiritual home.
The natural sciences are by far the most fruitful way of explaining the world, but it is problematic if it is regarded as absolute truth, as the only way to explain the world. Before the natural sciences came to dominate, humans interpreted the world in a variety of ways. Even after the natural sciences have taken over, people still need to maintain different ways of interpreting the world.
As an inappropriate example, the cup can be used to drink water or as a weapon to hurt people; the cup can become the object of painting, where it becomes art, and in certain cases it may become a sacred object (holy grail) that people worship. If we say that the cup can only be used to drink water, and other uses are wrong or impossible, I am afraid it is a bit of a sentiment.
There is no doubt that there are many or even endless possibilities for cups, only one of which is the scientific way. We cannot deny or abandon other possibilities just because the scientific way of explaining it is the most efficient, precise, and even essential way, because the world of explanation does meet scientific standards but is not a real world.
Here it is necessary to recall Kant's "Copernican revolution". While proving the universal necessity of scientific knowledge, Kant also limited the cognitive capacity of human reason, thus retaining a field of possibility, unconditional, and freedom.
From this point of view, we may look at the world in such a way that science's explanation of the world forms an inevitable natural world, but "before science explains the world", the world is originally a world of possibilities, and science only reveals one of the possibilities and turns this possibility into necessity (or this possibility does have a certain necessity).
Not only that, but science's explanation of the world is not the ultimate explanation; it is meant to describe phenomena. Whereas in the past we have solidified many possibilities into a single necessity in an extremely effective way, it may now be necessary for us to keep possibilities open as possibilities while enjoying the fruits of science. This should be the task of philosophy.
Mankind can have a future because the opening of possibilities opens the door to the future for mankind. From this possible way of thinking, it is possible to look forward to the future of philosophy.
As mentioned earlier, the scientific way of thinking of classical philosophy follows the way of thinking of the necessity of the past determining the present and the present determining the future, according to which human beings actually have only the past and no future. Even according to this way of thinking, human beings do not have to worry about the future, everything will be natural, logical, and natural, and all people have to do is to "conform to the trend or law of history".
If people change their way of thinking, not only with possibilities as the foundation, but also with possibilities as the guide for the future, they can realize that the future is open, the future has many possibilities, the future can be changed, and human beings have a real sense of the future.
But what deserves attention and should be pondered is that the way of thinking that looks like possibility has a liberating effect on the way of thinking of necessity, and also pushes mankind into a dangerous situation. In a sense, opening up possibilities may mean opening a "Pandora's box," which is why people have always resisted possibilities.
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The scientific way of thinking is admired because it gives a reasonable explanation for all things, making it feel as if it lives in an orderly world; however, in the face of the realm of possibility, human beings encounter uncertainty, the unknown and danger. In a word, facing possibility is equivalent to facing the threat of nihilism.
According to Nietzsche, so-called nihilism is the loss of absolute value. Human beings are a being who needs meaning——— cannot stand a meaningless world and hope that everything he does is meaningful.
Thus he regards the meaningless world as a meaningful world, that is, the establishment of a meaningful world on a meaningless wasteland——— regards it not only as an objective reality, but also as the basis of his own existence, and regards this meaningful world as an objective world that can be reached by means of cognition or realization, and the problems related to this are closely related to the so-called problem of ultimate care.
However, the emergence and development of natural science, especially the success of forming a unified paradigm in modern times, has left a deep imprint on this meaningful world, and even become the dominant one of this meaningful world, which seems to meet the needs of people in the pursuit of truth, objectivity and even completeness, but because of its outstanding success, the traditional values have fallen into a deep crisis.
Since philosophy and science face the same world, the difference is that science seems to describe the world objectively, while philosophy is dedicated to explaining the meaning of the world. When philosophy tries to explain the meaning of the world through scientific thinking in the attitude of natural science, it actually regards the meaningless natural world as a meaningful world of value, or regards man's ideal world as an objectively existing world.
As far as Western philosophy is concerned, when the illusion of this objective world of value was shattered in the second half of the 19th century, rationalism was questioned, and irrationalism came to the philosophical stage, all because natural science was too successful, in Nietzsche's words: God died. Science killed God, the balance between value rationality and instrumental reason was lost, and people fell into an era of value pluralism and moral relativism, which Max Weber called "the paradox of reason."
Human society is becoming more and more modern, more and more organized, and everything is becoming more and more rational, but people's way of life has fallen into an irrational dilemma. To paraphrase an advertising slogan, this is an era of "nothing is impossible."
Unfortunately, whether it is a good possibility or a bad possibility, it is possible. Faced with this world of possibility, human beings, accustomed to the inevitable way of thinking, feel overwhelmed and at a loss. Here's the paradox: people live in the world of possibility, but they make their home in the world of necessity; and they are forced to face the world of possibility and think it is the world of aliens.
Idealism is the nature of philosophy. In the past, people interpreted the idealism of philosophy as necessity, and the philosophy of the future should understand this idealism as possibility. However, if so, how humanity overcomes the threat of nihilism becomes a top priority.
Because traditional thinking of necessity seems to be able to help people resist the threat of nihilism, while possibility implies relativism and pluralism, thus completely exposing humanity to the threat of nihilism. In short, the shift from necessity to possibility seems to mean a shift from optimistic rationalism to pessimistic nihilism, from the known to the unknown, from safety to danger...
Why are humans keen to explore extraterrestrial civilizations or extraterrestrial intelligent creatures? The archaic reason is that human beings want to be not alone in the universe. However, if you think about it carefully, you will know that the loneliness of a certain person is possible, but the so-called "loneliness of human beings" is impossible——— we cannot all go alone together.
There must be another reason why human beings are enthusiastic about this: they hope that their existence in the universe is not accidental. Imagine if human beings were nothing more than accidental beings in the universe, what would that mean? That means that human beings exist without reason, without basis, without basis, without meaning... This is the root cause of humanity's difficulty in any case to accept a meaningless world full of possibilities. People have tried to escape this dilemma through the inevitable way of thinking, but they are eventually forced into this dilemma.
Camus described this dilemma as "encountering absurdity": "A world that can be explained even for the most inconspicuous reasons is a world that people feel familiar with." However, once the world loses its illusions and light, people will feel that they are strangers. He became an exile without support, because he was deprived of the memory of his lost hometown and lost hope for the future world.
This separation between the man and his life, the separation between the actor and the stage, truly constitutes a sense of absurdity. "This world is not a reasonable world but a world of absurdity, which means that it does not make sense.
Thus, people seem to be forced into a dilemma: on the one hand, the way of necessity leads to value nihilism; on the other hand, the way of possibility has to confront the threat of nihilism. It seems that there is no way back and must accept the challenge of nihilism, and the traditional way of thinking that tries to retreat to necessity (unity) will obviously not solve the problem. At the right time, the turn of the century and the acceleration of globalization may offer some kind of opportunity.
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In this regard, the conundrum is highlighted: how can philosophy change the world and change the future, based on its current social influence alone?
Philosophy has always been revered as the "essence of the zeitgeist", and at a time when things are changing, philosophy should have done a lot, but it is not, why?
In fact, philosophy is not not "prosperous" enough, in our time, the number of philosophical practitioners and the richness of achievements can not be compared with any era, but the "prosperity" of philosophy is inversely proportional to its social impact, which cannot help but be surprising.
The increasing technical content of philosophical works to make the world respected, may be one of the reasons for the high and low level of philosophical composition, but it is not the key. Because historical philosophical works have always been known for their obscurity, they have not affected their theoretical and practical significance.
Therefore, there must be another reason for the decline of the influence of philosophy, one of which is the rise of mass culture in the modern era. For a long time, human culture was dominated by an elite culture, so that, despite its obscurity, philosophy did not affect it from becoming the essence of the zeitgeist; now it is different, and we have entered the era of mass culture.
In this era, the sublime is ridiculed, deeply spurned, self-reliant, ignorant and fearless has become fashionable, and commercial values such as click-through rate and ratings have become the highest standards for measuring everything. Philosophy, in addition to appreciating each other in the small circle of the "academic community", has lost its effective influence on society, so making philosophy more "prosperous" obviously cannot solve the problem, and we must pay attention to and study the way philosophy affects society and the public.
This goes back to the original question: How can it be possible not to speculate about the future from the present, but from the future to guide the present? While there is no perfect answer yet, the establishment of a certain "way of thinking about possibilities" or "worldviews of possibilities" is not without trace. Because the theoretical basis of the "backward looking" perspective is classical philosophy, and the "forward-looking" perspective stems from the turn of modern philosophy. Silu edit
For example, Heidegger's existential analysis of the situation in which "Dasein" is thrown into the possibility of being thrown into existence, the postmodern emphasis on diversity and heterogeneity, and the consensus reached by Western philosophy in the 20th century on the issue of anti-essentialism are all listed here.
In fact, when Marx pointed out in his Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers only explain the world in different ways, and the problem is to change the world", it shows that Marx's philosophy has begun a philosophical turn. The reason is simple: the idea of "explaining the world" follows the scientific way of thinking of necessity, while the premise of "changing the world" is that the future does not come from the traditions of the past, but the present should come from the ideals of the future; otherwise, the possibility of changing the world does not exist.
Source: Academic Monthly (article abridged)
The Future of Philosophy: The Future of Mankind
Author: Zhang Zhiwei
Your time is being encroached upon by the complicity of capital and technology
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