Introduction
We have written elsewhere that philosophy is about reflecting on how we see things when we see them through such or such ideas, and about reflecting on which ideas allow us to see things in a more rich and complex way. It is also – we would now like to add – about producing new ideas by which we can see things in a new light.
We want to further comment on this today. Additionally, we want to make clear what philosophy is not.
Philosophy Is Not Logic
It is relatively easy to think about this and that in purely-abstract terms. It is what the logician does. There are two simple rules for it: not to contradict oneself and not to incur in paralogisms. If I say: “It is now 6:00am and it is now 6:00pm,” I contradict myself. If I say: “The column is cylindrical, therefore yesterday,” I make a false deduction, that is, I incur into a false reasoning, or paralogism. How, then, must we formally build and connect our judgments to one another, and how must we eventually separate them from one another, when we affirm and deny whatever? This is what logic is about. Logic, then, does not teach us about anything in particular – it does not provide our knowledge with new content. It teaches about the formal rules and laws of thought.
The importance of logic for philosophy notwithstanding, identifying philosophy with logic would be a mistake, and a rather serious one for that matter. Yet it is an extended mistake, especially in the Anglo-American world.
Philosophy Is Not Information
Another mistake would be to identify philosophical knowledge with the received knowledge about something, be it sensorially perceived or intellectually transmitted. “I see a left curve before me and I know that X has won the past general elections, so that I am informed of when to turn the steering wheel and of what type of policies I might expect the government to enforce.” These and other similar news inform us about the world, that is to say, they inform us about such and such states of things. Today’s so-called “information society” has many channels through which up-to-date information reaches us; and we are becoming increasingly used to compulsively consume information about almost anything: the more information we have about it, the more we feel we are in control of it (we have largely forgotten what it means to see a painting, to experience the encounter with a work of art; we prefer to listen to the information supplied by the museum’s audio-guide). Also, we feel empowered when we can establish our own opinions on the basis of such and such information about no matter what; in fact, to make our opinions be heard and, eventually too, to listen to and discuss the opinions of others, is what, driven by our unconscious dogmatism, we mostly do (“I’m of such opinion because I know this to be like this and that to be like that!, don’t you agree with me?”).
Philosophy, however, has nothing to do with this either.
Philosophy Is Not Science
Unlike logics, science has a content (each science has its own content); hence, even if it is only with the help of logics that each science can succeed in settling its peculiar set of rules (which are not the same in chemistry than in Indo-European philology, for instance), no science can be said to be exclusively formal.
Unlike mere information, which is based on superficial knowledge, science produces a more thorough type of knowledge, with which we do not suddenly get to know about something like when we turn on the news, but get to know it more closely and in depth.
It is clear, therefore, that (a) to think abstractly about something, (b) to know of something in the sense of being informed about it, and (c) to know something in the sense of getting to know it actively, are three different things. We have linked the first one with logics; the second one with information; the third one with science.
Philosophy demands an in-depth and very careful investigation of any subject, yet philosophy is not science.
So What Is Philosophy?
Unlike mere information, philosophy does not bring to us any news about anything. Unlike science, it has no content of its own. And unlike logics, it is not a purely-formal discipline. And yet, philosophy’s object is the production of knowledge. What does this mean?
Philosophy investigates what it is to know. Thus it is neither a formal discipline nor a material discipline but, as Kant would have it, a “transcendental” discipline in the sense that inquires into the “conditions of possibility” of knowledge. It is this that we meant to say by saying that philosophy reflects on how we see things when we see them through such or such ideas, on which ideas allow us to see things in a more complex way, and that it aims at producing new ideas by which we may see things in a richer light.
Also, philosophy is an inherently critical discipline. In two senses: firstly, it submits to criticism any unrevised notion (this makes philosophy uncomfortable to any dogmatic mind); secondly, it traces almost infinite divisions and distinctions, that is to say, it proceeds by variations. In fact, philosophy is a practice that – as Deleuze suggests – consists in a multi-faceted (i.e. complex or non-reductive) theoretical delimitation of notional problems and their corresponding components and “variations” via the creative production of “concepts,” in which it differs from the scientific production of “prospects” through the selection of “variables” that enable to operate in the world under a specific (i.e. reduced) set of circumstances, and from the artistic production of “percepts” and “affects” through which the sensible “varieties” of the real can be experimented and explored.
And yet, at the same time, philosophy is all about life. For it is important to examine how we see things when we see them through such or such ideas, and which ideas allow us to see things in a more rich way, in order to live more intensely and consciously.
Thus, for example, the “principle of sufficient reason” (there is a reason for everything that is) and the “principle of no-contradiction” (something and its negation cannot be given at the same time) do not only help us to understand the actuality of all things and their possibility, respectively. Bearing them in mind helps us to live as much happily as it is reasonably possible, for they encourage us to unravel the causes of all things and not to confuse them with others.
Like science, however, philosophy is not wisdom, which has nothing to do with logics, informations, and opinions in turn. Wisdom is knowledge acquired through prolonged experience – knowledge in the sense of the Latin term sapere, which is the present active infinitive of sapio, “to taste.” Therefore, it can only be acquired with age. Unlike the moderns, who put their elders in nursing homes, indigenous peoples are very-much aware of it: for them the elders, having lived as much as they have, have turned the world in their world; this is the reason for which you ask them about no matter what, before asking anyone else.
Philosophy’s basal intuitions, however, open to something else, as well: they open to a sort of “essential thinking” – as Heidegger calls it – that lies at its root, and which is linked in turn to both poetry and mythology. But on this we will write another day. Suffice it for now to point to it and, thereby, to underline that philosophy has non-philosophical origins which are not its past, though, but its living root. It is important to stress it, we think, in a time in which philosophy is not only often confused with logic, information, science, and wisdom, but also with a discipline put into the service of finding out the material genealogy of such and such ideas, that is to say, which political positions they allegedly reflect and how do they contribute to class struggle (Marx), and whether they conceal some kind of irrational will after all (Nietzsche) – which, in short, makes of the philosopher a mere Kulturkritik.
Kant’s statue in Kaliningrad (former Königsberg) splashed with pink paint in 2018 after his name was nominated for relabelling the city’s airport – Kant was not only accused of being “unpatriotic” because of being German instead of Russian (!); he was also accused, perhaps more importantly, of having written “incomprehensible books that no one reads.” Isn’t it beautiful?