I have a few ideas which I've been tossing around to post here, including a discussion of whether math is created or discovered with reference to Schelling's aesthetics (in short, it's both), as well as working on some arguments from Plotinus to the effect that there must be more than the material world to explain the beauty of this world. And I just finished Crime and Punishment; perhaps I'll jot down some thoughts on that. Maybe I'll actually get around to posting those at some point. But for now, I'm just going to think out loud as to what I'm trying to accomplish in my field, to try to recover some sense of what my purposes are. It'll be a bit of a hodgepodge.
So, I'm committed to searching out the truth through intellectual analysis. What does this entail? What does this leave out? It means that I will never really be able to commit myself to anything involving a substantial historical component; history can never be well-enough established for complete committal.
I'm skeptical about what reason can attain; I don't use it because my own reason is a great tool, but simply because it's the best one that I have and the views of most other people have not shown them to be trustworthy enough. Even if I "prove" another side wrong, it could always be my own lack of insight and imagination which leads me to my conclusion. Great minds in the past have often blatantly misrepresented their intellectual opponents, so why should I think that I will necessarily do better?
While reason and history don't really satisfy me, they are what I have. Proving someone wrong or right may not really prove anything, but it is a way to get deeper into the issues; Shankara may have completely missed the point of Buddhist and Jainist arguments, but his refutations still helped to delimit his own views and increase his insight into reality. So reasoning does have a point, if I leave aside my foibles about really being correct in all my references (but more on that in a moment).
In addition, historical analysis helps me to see the human side of thinking, how many people have struggled with these issues; this struggling itself seems to be where I can really see the issues, rather than in some proposition or in some single argument from some single source. Plus, I tend toward odd views; just because they aren't popular or even considered viable today, doesn't mean that they aren't deserving of attention. If nothing else, a revival of odd views helps to challenge reigning orthodoxies.
Both the historical and the philosophical sides of my work, though, are in vain if they are for me to get things right. I probably won't. Instead, my goal really should be to further our knowledge as a human community; I'll be one step in that process, just like all those authors which I read and appreciate, or even like those who have been forgotten but who were necessary at one point. My goal should not be to get the arguments and the scholarship right; it should be to make a worthy contribution. Sometimes that comes about better by being wrong, but being wrong spectacularly. It's hard to look for the truth while simultaneously knowing that it will most likely only be found long after one is dead; but it is some comfort to think that progress is possible and that one's work may be a step in the right direction. And easier to justify as being possible.
If I really am committed to the truth, this can either be as something for myself to possess or something which I want o be made clear. The former is selfish if taken on its own; the latter is what is truly important, that I can help to make the truth clear to others. And that does not require that I understand it all myself.
So, that is how I think that I should see my goal of pursuing the truth, and to some extent the pursuit of it by intellectual analysis. But why intellectually? I would want this pursuit to be open to all. Regardless of the Bhagavad Gita's whole view of the caste system, it does have one uplifting analysis of it toward the end: people from all walks of life can attain the religious goal without leaving their natural inclination. Rulers attain Brahman by ruling well, servants by serving well, and so on. In fact, if one is by nature a servant, one should not try to attain the goal by intellection, nor should the intellectual by war and ruling. While there is much to dispute about the caste system as a caste system, this insight of the multiple ends for the human person seems attractive.
More than attractive; I look around, and it is a good thing that non-intellectuals can attain the ultimate end of human life. Intellectuals often do not seem to be the best role models out there, while there are many non-intellectuals who do seem to be exemplary (St. Francis of Assisi, anyone?). If only intellectuals could attain the human end, than this does not bode well for humanity.
But there are also reasons for why the intellectual life seems worth pursuing, and why it seems to be more tightly connected to living the good life. It is only (at least as a necessary, though probably not sufficient condition) through the analysis of reasons that one can attain to a non-accidental understanding of the good. It might happen to be that we can trust our intuitions and feelings, it may be that we can trust Religious Authorities X Y and Z, but these do not in and of themselves show the necessary connections between themselves and the good. Thought does not make walking the path any easier, but it is the only tool we have for mapping out that path with any degree of accuracy.
What does this say for the role of the intellectual in the community? How does this work, if there are multiple ends open to humanity but only reason can really test the paths to see what is good (or at least, reason does it better than any other tool we have)? Does this mean that the community lives and dies by both the quality of its intellectuals and the degree to which it listens to them (for good or ill depending on the ideas proposed)? Or is there another path which not only gives a subjective feeling of certainty (shared by many of the opposing views in any case), but also provides the necessary connections to ground that certainty?
It would seem that the good is ultimately something immanent; if you can't tell that it really is good itself, then how is it good? Reason is necessary then to show what will be good in the future, say, or what would be a better good, but everyone has access to what the good is right in front of themselves. So the intellectual isn't quite as important. But I'm still uneasy about jumping from here to saying that everyone has access to the knowledge of their ultimate ends with the same degree of accuracy as the intellectual. It seems that even if I have established that the good is immanent for every person, and that everyone can understand that immediately within their own position, it still would take reason to establish that point and keep it from merely being some whim.
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