Text: Russell
Translation: Zhang Putian
We might as well consider what the value of philosophy is and why philosophy should be studied. Under the influence of science or practical affairs, many people tend to wonder how good philosophy can be compared to trivial distinctions that are harmless but useless, and to argue about the impossibility of knowledge. Given this fact, this question is all the more necessary to ponder.
This view of philosophy seems to stem partly from a false understanding of the purpose of life and partly from a false understanding of the good that philosophy strives to attain. Through various inventions, the physical sciences are useful to countless people who know nothing about it. Therefore, the study of natural science is popular not only because (or above all because) its impact on researchers, but also because of its impact on humanity as a whole. From this point of view, function does not belong to philosophy.
If philosophical research has any value to others other than to be valuable to the person who studies philosophy, then this value can only be indirect, that is, to function by influencing the life of the philosophical researcher. Therefore, the value of philosophy must first be found in these influences, if such a place exists.
But further, in order to succeed in determining the value of philosophy, it is first necessary to free our minds from the prejudices of those who are mistakenly called "practicals." In common usage, the "utilitarian" refers to a person who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that man must feed the body, but forgets that he must provide food for the mind.
Even if all people become rich, even if poverty and disease have been reduced to the lowest possible level, much remains to be done to build a worthy society; even in the existing world, the benefits of the mind are at least as important as the benefits of the body. The value of philosophy can only be found in the benefits of the mind, and only those who do not ignore these benefits will believe that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time.
Like all other studies, philosophy is primarily aimed at knowledge. The knowledge it pursues makes science as a whole unified and systematic, and comes from a critical examination of the bases of our beliefs, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be said that philosophy has had great success in trying to provide clear answers to its questions.
If you ask a mathematician, mineralogist, historian, or any other learned man what definite truths his science has pinpointed, he will keep talking about them as long as he wants to hear. But if you ask a philosopher the same question, and he is frank, then he will have to admit that his research has not reached the definite conclusions that other sciences have reached.
Admittedly, this is partly due to the fact that once explicit knowledge of any subject is possible, the discipline ceases to be called philosophy, but becomes an independent science. The whole study of the celestial realm, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy, and Newton's great work is called The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
Similarly, the study of the human mind was once part of philosophy, and now it has been separated from philosophy and become the science of psychology. To a large extent, therefore, philosophical uncertainty is more superficial than real: questions that have been able to be answered definitively are classified as science, and only those questions which cannot yet be clearly answered remain to constitute so-called philosophy.
Yet this is only part of the truth about philosophical uncertainties. It seems to us that unless the capacity of human reason is very different from what it is now, there are many problems — some of which have a profound meaning for our spiritual life — that human reason cannot solve.
Does the universe have some kind of unified plan or purpose, or is it just an accidental aggregation of atoms? Consciousness is an eternal part of the universe that offers hope for the indefinite growth of intelligence, or is it just a fleeting accident on an asteroid where life will eventually become impossible? Are good and evil important to the universe? Or is it only important to humans? These questions are raised by philosophy, and different philosophers give different answers.
But whether or not the answer can be discovered by other means, none of the answers given by philosophy seem to be proven to be true. However, no matter how little hope of finding answers, part of the task of philosophy is to continue to ponder these questions, to make us aware of their importance, to examine all the ways in which they can be solved, and to maintain a speculative interest in the universe that can easily be stifled by limiting us to knowledge that can be clearly determined.
It is true that many philosophers believe that philosophy can establish the correctness of certain answers to these fundamental questions. They expected that the most important things in religious beliefs could be proven correct by rigorous argumentation. In order to judge these attempts, it is necessary to examine human knowledge and form an opinion of its methods and limitations.
It would be unwise to express opinions arbitrarily on such a subject, but if the research in the previous chapters does not lead us astray, we will have to give up the hope of finding philosophical evidence for religious beliefs. Therefore, we cannot regard any definitive answer to these questions as part of philosophical values. This also shows once again that the value of philosophy must not depend on any knowledge that the philosophical researcher seeks to acquire that is believed to be unambiguously certain.
In fact, much of the value of philosophy lies in its uncertainty. The uneducated man is imprisoned all his life in prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual convictions of his time or nation, from convictions formed in his mind without the cooperation or consent of prudent reason. For such people, the world often becomes clear, limited, and obvious; ordinary things do not lead to problems, and strange possibilities are dismissively rejected.
However, once we begin to think philosophically, we will find that, as we have seen in the first few chapters, even the most ordinary things can lead to questions for which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though it cannot tell us exactly what the correct answers to the questions it raises, can offer many possibilities which expand our minds and free us from the tyranny of custom.
Thus, while philosophy diminishes our sense of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge of what things might be; philosophy eliminates the arrogant arbitrariness of those who have never stepped into the realm of free doubt, and maintains our curiosity by presenting familiar things in unfamiliar ways.
In addition to being able to show unexpected possibilities, philosophy has a value—perhaps its chief value—and that is the greatness of the object of its contemplation, and this contemplation frees the person from narrow personal goals. The life of the person subject to instinct is confined to his own selfish interests: family and friends may be included, but the outside world is not concerned, unless it may contribute to or hinder the fulfillment of instinctive wishes.
There is something fanatical and limited in such a life, and in contrast to the philosophical life is calm and free. The world of private instinctive interests is very narrow, and it is placed in a great and powerful world that sooner or later will turn our private world into ruins.
Unless we can extend our interests to encompass the entire outside world, we will be like a garrison trapped in a fortress, knowing that the enemy is blocking the way and surrender is ultimately inevitable. In such a life, there is no peace, only a constant conflict between the persistence of desire and the weakness of the will. In any case, for life to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this conflict.
One way to escape is to engage in philosophical contemplation. Philosophical contemplation in the broadest sense does not divide the universe into two opposing camps—friend and foe, good and bad, good and bad—but treats it as a whole without bias. Pure philosophical contemplation is not intended to prove that the rest of the universe is similar to man. All knowledge acquisition is an extension of the self, but this expansion is best achieved when it is not directly sought.
We can achieve this expansion when only curiosity is at work, through a study that does not presuppose its objects to have properties of one kind or another, but adapts itself to the characteristics of its objects. If we try to show that the world is so similar to the self that we can know it without acknowledging anything that seems strange, then this extension of the self cannot be achieved. The desire to prove this is a form of self-assertion, which, like all self-assertion, is an obstacle to self-growth; the self desires this self-growth and knows that it can grow.
In philosophical speculation, as elsewhere, the self-assertion sees the world as a means of achieving its own ends. Thus, it makes the world less important than the self, and the self sets limits on the greatness of the things of the world. In philosophical contemplation, on the contrary, we proceed from the non-self, through the greatness of the non-self, expand the boundaries of the self; through the infinity of the universe, the contemplative mind realizes a certain division of the infinite.
Therefore, the greatness of the soul is not cultivated by philosophies that compare the universe to human beings. Knowledge is a form of union of the self and the non-self, and like all unions, it is damaged by dominant forces and therefore by any attempt to force the universe to conform to what is in our own self.
A general philosophical tendency holds that man is the measure of all things, that truth is man-made, that time and space and the universal world are properties of the mind, and that if there is something that is not created by the mind, then it is neither unknowable nor important to us. If our previous discussion is correct, then this view is untrue, but apart from being untrue, it deprives philosophical contemplation of everything that gives it value, because it confines contemplation to the self.
Its so-called knowledge is not a union with the non-self, but a set of prejudices, habits, and desires that cast an impenetrable veil between us and the outside world. People who find pleasure in this theory of knowledge are like people who never leave the house for fear that their words are illegitimate.
True philosophical contemplation, on the other hand, is satisfied in every extension of the non-self, in everything that magnifies the object of contemplation and thus the contemplative subject. In contemplation, anything personal or private, anything dependent on habits, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object and thus undermines the union which the intellect seeks. By creating obstacles between the subject and the object in this way, these personal and private things become a cage of reason.
The free intellect will see things as God does, without the here and now, without hope and fear, without the shackles of habitual beliefs and traditional prejudices, and with a calm and objective view in pure intellectual curiosity—knowledge that is independent of personal feelings, purely contemplative, and possible to man.
Thus, the knowledge brought about by the senses must depend on a completely personal point of view, and on a body in which the sensory organs are both revealed and distorted, while free reason places greater emphasis on abstract universal knowledge in which the contingencies of private history do not intervene.
The mind, accustomed to the philosophical contemplation of freedom and impartiality, will remain equally free and unbiased in the world of action and emotion. It will see its own purposes and desires as part of the whole, and will cease to be stubborn because it sees them as infinitesimal fragments of a world in which all the rest of things are not affected by the actions of anyone. Impartiality is a quality of the mind that, in contemplation, is pure desire for truth, in action justice, and in emotion a universal love that can be given to all, not just those who are considered useful or worthy of praise.
Thus, contemplation expands not only the object of our thoughts, but also the object of our actions and emotions: it makes us citizens of the universe, not just citizens of a city of wall-settings at war with everything else. Man's true freedom lies in this cosmic citizenship and liberation from the shackles of narrow hope and fear.
Our discussion of philosophical values can therefore be summed up in this way: we study philosophy not to give any definite answers to philosophical questions, because it is generally impossible to know whether they are true or not, but for the sake of these questions themselves, because these questions expand our knowledge of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination, and reduce that assertive self-confidence, so that the mind can be opened to thinking; but above all, because, through the greatness of the universe contemplated by philosophy, the mind will also become great, and can be combined with the universe, and this union constitutes the highest good.
01 20 philosophers daigo-inspired life strategies
Ordinary people study philosophy, not to learn, but to get inspiration from philosophy, and then match it to their own life experience, constantly thinking, doubting, reflecting... Thus organizing into your own philosophy and finding ways to deal with various problems.
This philosophy course will focus on 20 "big problems" in life, such as loneliness, love and hate, life and death, confusion, and desire, each of which is divided into 5 lectures, telling you about the thought systems of 20 ancient and modern philosophers such as Heidegger, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, Plato, and Sartre, and explore their own life strategies.
02 104 wisdom courses spanning the 2000 history of philosophy
This course does not pursue "efficiency", does not throw textbook introductions to philosophy directly to you, but carefully "grinds" difficult ideas into vivid stories and easy telling, and takes you a little bit to understand the long history of philosophy and the essence of philosophers' thought through 104 courses in a whole year.
The presenter will analyze the essence of 20 classic philosophical works such as "Existence and Time", "Republic", "Meditations", and "Drinking Chapters" for you. It covers ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, early modern Western European philosophy, German classical philosophy, existentialism and postmodernism.
03 Philosophies and inspirations of 100+ literary and artistic works
At the beginning of each lesson, the presenter will cut in with a movie, a novel or a piece of music, on the one hand, in order to start from vivid emotional experience and realization, and then rise to philosophical questions and reflections, so that the audience can more easily open the door to philosophical thinking.
On the other hand, in addition to the function of entertainment, good literary and artistic works also contain a life experience and a possibility of life. Deeply understand the connotation behind literary and artistic works, do not stick to the self, better understand others, and understand the external world.
Source: Yi Xuan Ge Painting
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