Defensa de la filosofía

by Josef Pieper, Alejandro Esteban Lator Ros (Translator)

El inter?s b?sico del libro reside en que es una defensa de la filosof?a desde la filosof?a, seg?n sus propios criterios, y no seg?n otros de utilidad o cientificidad, a los cuales tratan de acomodarla quienes la critican desde fuera. Para Pieper, la filosof?a tiene sentido en s? misma, y no tiene por qu? ser asimilada a otros modos de conocimiento: es una pregunta constitutiva del ser del hombre.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

148 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

Josef Pieper was a German Catholic philosopher and an important figure in the resurgence of interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas in early-to-mid 20th-century philosophy. Among his most notable works are The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance; Leisure, the Basis of Culture; and Guide to Thomas Aquinas (published in England as Introduction to Thomas Aquinas).

Reviews

[David Haines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Josef Pieper sets out to defend the role of philosophy in contemporary society. In the process he comes up against, and effectively defends philosophy against, modern scientism, the all encompassing idea of the necessity of progress and practicality. He finishes with a discussion on what the philosopher is, what the philosopher does, and specifically with a discussion of what a Christian philosopher does (thus discussing the relation between faith and reason). An interesting read for anyone who loves thinking about reality, and asking the question, "What is it all about?"

[Linards Jansons · Rating 5 out of 5]

*** 4.5 ***

I’ve got plenty of misgivings about Christianity, but a lot of time for the kind of Christian (Catholic) philosophy Josef Pieper enunciates in this pleasing little book.

Pieper was writing in the mid 1960s in West Germany, not only in physical proximity to the communist East but also within its intellectual zone. He defends a classic (i.e. Platonic) form of philosophy in the face of a materialist reductionism where everything is empirically measurable and where all forms of knowledge are instrumentalized for some practical, social or economic end.

Pieper reasserts an older, and significantly broader, view of philosophy which he summarizes as follows: ‘To engage in philosophy means to reflect on the totality of the things we encounter, in view of their ultimate reasons…philosophy (therefore) is a meaningful , even necessary endeavour, with which man, the spiritual being, cannot dispense.’ More colloquially, philosophy asks ‘What is it all about?’

Here is my summary in 10 paragraphs. I’ve limited myself to his claims, not his supporting argumentation. After this I’ve jotted down a few thoughts of my own.

(1) Philosophy reflects on the totality of life and existence. Unlike modern science which examines a slice of reality “under a certain aspect”, philosophy’s goal is to consider the whole of reality under “every conceivable aspect”. If philosophy has a specialty, it is this “totality”. Nothing can be ruled out. Philosophy takes into account all that the sciences have discovered about the external world and objective reality. But it also includes less-empirical and more subjective sources of knowing, such as faith, tradition and myth.

(2) Philosophy is non-utilitarian and impractical. It stands outside the world of production. Philosophy is not about means and efficiency, but about ends and ultimate reasons. Attempts to make philosophy relevant, or to press it into a social agenda, weaken and corrupt it. Philosophy is counted among the liberal (that is, free) arts because it remains free from all agendas but its own.

(3) Philosophy is ‘theoretical’ in that it desires to ‘see’ (theoria = ‘contemplation’). The goal of philosophy is to contemplate reality in its true being and to behold its goodness (“All that is, is good”). Such reflection is not good for anything except to bring us ever closer to ‘the Good’ so that we may feast on ‘Being’. Philosophical contemplation is the ultimate nourishment. This is possible because the human spirit is not only immaterial, but universal: “the spirit itself is…this relational energy oriented towards the totality of all things”.

(4) The philosopher therefore needs to cultivate a contemplative disposition. While scientific investigation involves ever more questioning, philosophical contemplation involves a kind of silence. While science relies on mental capacity, philosophy also requires a spiritual or existential receptivity. Only then can one be open to the self-revelation of reality. Nevertheless, philosophy differs from religious contemplation in that it prioritises the way of inquiry and argumentation.

(5) Philosophy is a meaningful and even necessary human endeavour. While most “people are not commonly disposed…to reflect on the ultimate meaning of reality as such”, a life lived purely in the pursuit of immediate and practical goals will not sustain us. But life itself can make philosophers out of us. When we are shaken up by significant events (such as death or loss) the ‘what is it all about?’ question awakens in us. This is also true for the practising philosopher whose insight only arrives through personal growth. Unlike science which builds on past discovery, there are no ‘results of philosophy’ that one can dip into without having personally travelled the path.

(6) Philosophy walks the boundary of the knowable and the unknowable. As ‘love of wisdom’, philosophy implies both a negative aspect (an absence of knowledge) and a positive aspect (the love of wisdom). One the one hand, all that has being is knowable, a consequence of originating in a creative Mind. On the other hand, we do not experience the knowability of all things empirically. But we will never reach a limit where questions cease. Philosophy – like existence itself – is structured on hope.

(7) Science and philosophy have different concepts of what constitutes perfection in knowledge. Science values ‘precision’ (which like ‘incision’ implies a cutting away). Philosophy cuts nothing out. While science rejects a hierarchy of being, philosophy accepts higher and lower articulations of reality on which basis Aquinas could say: “The smallest amount of knowledge about the most sublime realities is more desirable than the most perfect knowledge about the lowest things”. Science aims at progress by overcoming the realm of the unknown. But there is no more progress in philosophy than there is in poetry. Philosophy, instead, is remembrance. It seeks to recall that which is ever present yet forgotten, "the illumination of something already vaguely and darkly known". This is why philosophy is always going on about the same old things (freedom, guilt, death, meaning, etc).

(8) Science and philosophy have different ideas about the use of language. Science values clarity and commends Wittgenstein: “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence”. The philosopher responds that clarity is relative to what one seeks and that not all topics can be expressed with scientific clarity. Philosophy bears kinship to poetry as both are grounded in the realm of wonder. While philosophy, with science, has often resorted to formal and technical language, philosophy does better using everyday language, as this keeps the totality of life in view.

(9) Science and philosophy have different ideas about the nature of experience, that is, what counts as ‘empirical’. While philosophy steps beyond the empirical, it always starts with actual or potential experience. If by experience we mean “knowledge coming from direct contact with reality” this is not limited to individual sense perceptions, for “the whole living human body acts as an infinitely differentiated and sensitive receptacle of this direct contact with reality and thus forms one whole organ for possible experiences”. Nothing this ‘organ’ perceives either externally or internally can be disregarded. I have abbreviated Alfred North Whitehead’s eloquent declaration of ‘what counts’:

Nothing can be omitted, experience drunk and experience sober, experience sleeping and experience waking, experience drowsy and experience wide-awake, experience self-conscious and self-forgetful, experiences intellectual and physical, religious and sceptical, anxious and carefree, anticipatory and retrospective, happy and grieving, dominated by motion and under self-restraint….experience in the light and experience in the dark, experience normal and experience abnormal.

(10) A believing philosopher cannot bracket out their faith if they want to consider the totality. Religious faith is not inimical to rigorous philosophical questioning. Both philosophy and faith presuppose the absence of assured knowledge, and it is the elusiveness of any final answer that enables the questioning to go on. In any case, all forms of philosophy - ancient or modern, believing or atheistic - have operated with presuppositions taken on faith. But there are no fixed rules for the correlation between faith and (empirical) knowledge. In the end, demarcating the boundaries of faith and knowledge is less important than the actual pursuit of the questions and the nature of reality.

+++++

I really appreciated Pieper’s ‘everything belongs’ approach to philosophy which excludes neither scientific rigor nor more intuitive ways of knowing. Both are necessary as we pursue the ultimate human question. ‘what is it all about?’

I think it was Nietzsche who said that all philosophy is autobiography; Pieper implies the same but makes it sound less problematic. Essentially, there is no philosophy without the personal investment of the philosopher. And to the degree that one can step out of the daily routine and gaze at the heavens, everyone philosophizes. Philosophy begins, but also continues, in love and wonder. The growth of the individual philosopher is the only way philosophy ever makes ‘progress’.

I was struck by Pieper’s discussion on the ‘appropriation’ of reality. Have you ever looked at a scene, say a brilliant blue sky, and wished you could somehow just take it all in and make it yours? Pieper reminds us that we can make nothing our own by mere acquisition or ownership. Instead "anything we wish or imagine to possess is 'part of us' only to the extent that we keep it in our presence: by beholding it ever new, by contemplation, reflection and recollection". This is what philosophy is about, feeding on reality itself.

Anyway, clearly I need to start reading Plato/Aristotle, and not just about them, although it goes without saying that much modern philosophy is premised on the overturning of the western Platonic heritage and its (supposedly) misguided views of ‘being’.

But even if you’re on board with Pieper, the context today is quite different. Today Pieper might find himself defending the right of science to pursue its goals objectively and without political and economic interference. In today’s climate of deep distrust, it is not faith based ideas which are under threat as much as objective and empirical standards of knowledge. Pieper’s insistence that "nothing can be left out" might need to reckon with an upswell of reactionary and contrarian views which now act as wrecking balls of all previous forms of knowledge. In other words, some beliefs and ‘experiences’ do not contribute to our view of reality. Instead, they corrode and delegitimise it.

Pieper might also need to answer the charge that philosophy’s goal to embrace the ‘totality’ only perpetuates a centuries old form of cultural hegemony, even philosophical colonialism. What gives philosophy the right to include everyone’s experience, culture and perspective, let alone the presumption to speak for ‘every human being’? Is not Pieper’s inclusive philosophy in fact just a veiled bid for power?

Still, I’d like to think that philosophy conducted in the spirit of this little book would rise to such challenges and questions.

[Daniel Stepke · Rating 5 out of 5]

lucid, clear, with all of Pieper's learning on display

brilliant exposition of what it means to be a philosopher--one who listens, who takes the whole vision of the totality of reality, one who draws on art, science, poetry, and religion while performing his own unique philosophical work, always on the way towards the truth but never fully reaching it

aside from a few confusing passages, i have one worry: how do we meld this with the stoic conception of philosophy as living well? is this the defense of metaphysics? perhaps we just need one more idea--to live well is to live in accordance with reality, and the philosopher is pieperian and takes it onward into his life

[Zeke Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Josef Pieper 💯

[Javier Redding · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Calen Brantley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ashley

[Weellow ,, · Rating 2 out of 5]

realmente no lo terminé, pero di su evaluación habiendo leído la mitad en el bus y me fue bien jj