The Evolution of the Responsibility to Self and Place:
Looking back on the semester, I fastidiously inspect the various moments my mind was exposed to new insights. The philosophy class has been a period of incubation. Throughout the fall I have allowed my mind to freely explore the legitimacy of novel ideas and weighed their relevance to my life, unhindered by competing feelings of preservation. A burning passion kindles in my chest. I reflect on the philosophers and the discussions that struck deeply, that fanned that flame into a fiery blaze. My thoughts turn to a few readings and philosophers that reinforced and, at the same time, upended my antiquated belief system. In order to illuminate the timid shadows of self deception, I allowed these philosophies early on to serve as a spectacle for all further reflection.
At the start of the year I was enveloped in a dense cloud of confusion. As we progressed in our readings and I accreted understanding, a series of themes began to emerge. The themes, strung individually throughout the weekly readings, later weaved themselves into a vivid tapestry as the semester culminated. They included the conception of self, the genealogy and history of society, the role of belief, and the function of nature as it relates to a sense of place. None of these themes stand alone, but borrow from each other. Of each, I will speak broadly and expound on each philosopher’s contribution to the construction of each theme as it appeared to me.
I believe the core to understanding is primary experience. In an age of information, I believe its role in the modern life has been diminishing. With so many perspectives to read on a subject, who needs to waste time experiencing it for themselves? One can read of the countless errors and achievements and interpretations of each and come away feeling equally wise and judicial. The fault with this, however, is that we rob ourselves the task of exercising our own powers of reason and interpretation. Nevertheless, our lives are short and we cannot possibly indulge all our curiosities so, read we must. With this in mind, we are obligated to read judiciously, choosing texts carefully (preferably primary sources to ensure minimum distortion of interpretation) and reflecting with the intent to incorporate the new knowledge into the faculties of understanding. John Aubrey said, “He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.” Reading must involve contemplation. Thus is the duty of the philosopher.
Socrates and Aristotle were the first philosophers presented in our class readings. What I took away from the dialogues and writings of these was two fold. First, Socrates illustrated the importance of questioning as a method for understanding. Socrates believed that forms are the foundation for understanding experience, and questions acted as a mechanism that clarified forms. The Socratic method of questioning had obvious impacts on Aristotle and contributed to the first empirical methods of scientific investigation.
Secondly, Socrates and Aristotle indirectly illustrated the importance that belief played in the acquisition of knowledge. Aristotle believed that experiencing the particulars of life led to the knowledge of essences, while Socrates believed that the universal forms led to the understanding of particular expressions of the essence. Essentially, Aristotle derived principles of understanding from the natural world via experiences and Socrates relied on an a priori method to approach experiences. By contrasting the methods of Aristotle and Socrates, you begin to understand the consequences of each belief.
When looking at the dialogues of Socrates, it becomes immediately clear that his conclusions are ill rooted, as he rarely arrives at knowledge. By relying on principles that are a priori and not rooted in experience, Socrates conclusions cannot be empirically proven. This method is not unifying because the origin and understanding of these a priori principles are not quantifiable and therefore vary from each man’s own understanding of them. They are incongruent with reality, per se, and therefore do not lead to a universal understanding that relates to the greater human experience.
Aristotle, on the other hand, roots his methods of understanding in the natural world. Through experience, he deductively arrives at conclusions that provide a general essence of guiding principles. Using this essence as a guide, he inductively arrives at new conclusions. This method of acquiring understanding paved the way for empiricism and scientific method.
I mention these two philosophers because of how they influenced my self awareness as a
philosopher. I became poignantly aware of the role that questions play in order to gain test and refine understanding. In addition, I saw that varying beliefs lead to varying interpretations and conclusions. Deriving principles from the natural world empirically is not only quantifiable, but more universal. By using a priori principles, it is difficult to arrive at knowledge that can be universally understood. Aristotle provided a workable framework for progressing towards understanding.
Reading Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy created a new awareness of the dualistic nature of man. His mediations of inquisition and questioning illustrated a humble and honest excursion from biased sensations and inherited beliefs in an attempt to derive an a priori conception of self. Descartes presented a framework that illustrated how man perceives and interprets sensations presented by the external world. He reduced man to a purely thinking being that relies on an innately divine perception of perfection to decipher the external world and arrive at knowledge. As a result, Descartes believed in a perfect reason inherent within man.
Rousseau believed that man was inherently good, and that civilization was directly responsible for man’s corruption and incessant suffering. Emile presented a new perception of civilizations influence in our development. According to Rousseau, civilization contributes to a child’s weakness by exerting its domination. For Rousseau, evil was not a capacity to destroy, but a capacity to perpetuate weakness through domination. He believed that ultimately, man was to live through suffering this domination. His goal in Emile was to eliminate any restraints that hinder a child’s natural upbringing in an effort to portray the ideal natural man as a model for right living. With this natural man in mind, he believed that a more natural culture can be rebuilt free from wickedness. “It is less a question of keeping him from dying than of making him live. To live is not to breathe but to act.” While Rousseau was more concerned with explaining the development of self and learning to truly live, he provided an ideal transition to Freud’s philosophy that accepted man’s condition and was concerned with coping through the suffering.
Like Rousseau, Freud believed that living was full of suffering, but rather than live through the suffering, Freud sought to understand how man can cope. This led to the development of a new conception of conscience. Broadly, this conscience acted to repress the various hostile demands we experience from the external world. To repress these demands, the mind creates reaction formations in defense. The reaction formations act as mechanisms that guide our behavior and assuage anxieties and fears, much like virtues.
The notion of reacting to the world and coping with our transgressions was an interesting theme that presented itself. Throughout the readings, a dichotomy developed between a ‘good’ self and a ‘hostile’ society that I would carry with me. There seemed to be a constant struggle between the internal and the external world. More exactly, the struggle against an external world that manifested as prevailing forces of society. Each philosopher until this point held that man is inherently good natured but society, as a collection of men, was oppressive and hostile. This oppression and hostility acted to turn man into weak creatures. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals served to reinforce this theme. In addition, Nietzsche presents a fascinating model for empirically investigating the origins of morality. This investigation also explains the evolution and relative nature of value systems.
Nietzsche used his knowledge of history and philology to trace the roots of the current moral system of the time. In his first essay ‘Good and Evil,’ ‘Good and Bad’, Nietzsche illustrates the dichotomy between the Master Morality and the Slave Morality. These two camps represent the Knightly Aristocrat, derived from the Aryan race, and the Priestly Aristocrat, derived from the Jews. The master morality, or noble valuation of things, is simple and indifferent and acts spontaneously. It exists in the present and gives little thought to the condition of the slave, other than a careless and impatient afterthought of contempt. The master morality is consumed with the happy and beautiful and noble self, only seeking invented and ‘falsified’ negative (‘bad’) contrasts (these contrasts are not rooted in reality) that would reinforce it more “gratefully and triumphantly”. Meanwhile, the oppressed slave morality is preoccupied with deep resentiment towards the master, a festering and poisoning passion that create an imaginary a world where “hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions”. Slave morality rejects the hostile external world with a resounding no in a creative defiant act. It is in this covert imaginary world of unsatisfied hatred where the idea evil manifests itself, contrary to noble flighty idea of ‘bad’.
In Nietzsche’s description of the struggle, the Slave Morality, through its deep seeded resentiment, invents its own moral system by inverting the Master Morality and creating the idea of evil. As a result, the slave morality defines ‘good’ as being poor, common, humble, and weak. Evil replaces the Master Moralities conception of Good and encompasses all that is proud, rich, beautiful, privileged, and strong. Through the imaginative inversion and creation of hatred, the Slave Morality creates a new depth to his being, producing for the first time a conception of conscience or soul. The internalization eventually produces a bad conscious and generates guilt within the Slave Morality whenever the natural inclination to behave as the Master Morality appears.
Nietzsche’s portrayal of the creation of this value system works to do many things. First, it produces a feeling of the relative nature of values. By breaking down the absolute notion of an ultimate morality, he portrays value systems as subversive acts of the human imagination. These creative acts, however, are necessary outgrowths of man’s desire to survive and overpower. His Genealogy of Morals was particularly relevant when we apply its consequences to the Modern Western Christian Morality.
Secondly, Nietzsche shows how values/morals are inherited ideals from ancestors. These systems are adopted from previous generations without resistance and perpetuate through our offspring. This reflection caused me to question the utility of which values I adopted, not only from my direct ancestors, but from society.
As a paradigm shift began to occur, I realized my obligation to examine my values and belief systems as objectively as possible. I could no longer afford to address understanding and truth with the same frame of mind that I inherited unless I tested its utility and place in my life. Just as this began to occur, we cracked open the philosophy of William James.
William James effectively addressed the role that beliefs play in our acquisition of knowledge. He highlighted how our biases, or what we place our faith in, have tremendous impacts on how judiciously we approach facts and information. James argued that people reject facts if it does not align with our belief systems: if it serves no role in our life, we toss it out. In The Will to Believe, James explains the necessity of belief in our life. Beliefs act to reinforce our desires. James explains that we allocate our faith in knowledge according to the prestige associated with it, as well as society’s ability to reaffirm our desire. If contrary belief serves no use in our life, or would undermine the desire, we dismiss it immediately. We do this in order to protect to uniformity of our belief system. According to James, passions run before reason and serve as a platform on which all reason is based. We do not think, rather, we decide. In an effort to prevent being deceived, many men will avoid a belief altogether. Skepticism, however, is not avoidance of an option. James says it is simply an option that involves the same wager, but different risks according to what you value most. This is foolish, James believes, as it prevents empirical investigation.
Faith in something offers us a platform for thought. Therefore it is necessary to believe in something. In The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, James offers up a philosophy for conduct when evaluating truth claims. Central is James role in will, which he believes to moderate truth claims based on our beliefs. The key is to seek how truth claims can be weaved into a general unity of a stable system. ‘Seek no triumphs,’ says James, ‘else we fail to be judicious. [sic]’
James also rejects evaluating facts as good or bad. He sees them as ‘existing’ or ‘not-existing’. It is our mind, influenced by desires, that makes them so. He also goes so far to say that truth is non-existent, as it assumes a divine standard outside the mind in which we must conform. Morality, he claims, is constructed out of the competing desires between men. The moral law originates from a compromise between men that creates equilibrium in a system. Only sustaining a will of tolerance will ultimately save us.
James’ presentation of the duty of a philosopher resonated with the overarching aim of my pursuit of understanding. That is, remaining objective and free from perpetuating a set of ideals, while seeking to synthesize competing ideals and truths into a functional set of principles that I can use to empirically derive further understanding. His realistic approach to reflecting on man’s habitual nature offered an empowering mode for resisting skepticism (and accompanying existential crisis’) while garnering new understanding insights.
Jane Adams was the first philosopher we read that forced me to look at the importance that our environment provides in having a ‘sense of place’. In her chapter Educational Methods, Adams expounds upon how the environment influences the expectations of society and the meaning we coin to our values. For me, this marked a transition away from philosophies addressing the broad problems of man and society toward a specific focus on environment and its contribution towards meaning and context. While Adams concentrates on how societies educate generations according to work and the development of a society, she manages to illustrate how these effects are detrimental in our formation of meaning. She discusses how people mindlessly fulfill the obligations of society without knowing the significance of their work. In the past, she says, people inherited occupations from parents and communities revolved around a tradition that gave people an incentive to work and provided meaning. In modern times, people are segregated early on in schools according to how society perceives the value of these skills. These values are directly related to the demand of skills to a certain occupation. As a result, students are taught specialized skills instead of a general education that would cultivate them as a member of society who is ‘conscious of his industrial and social value.’
Around this point in the semester, the role of environment evolved into the role of nature as a harmonious ecology where everything has a place. Berry, Thoreau, Anzaldúa, Leopold, Pollan, Virilio, and Abbey contributed to illustrating the dynamics of nature. As I read these philosophers, I became aware of the material that nature is made of. When I speak of ‘material’, I am not referring to its matter. Rather, I am referring to nature as a system of give-and-take relationships, where each organism is helpless in itself without the countless other contributors in the system. The understanding of nature illuminated my understanding of man’s attempt to manipulate these relationships and exploit energy and resources for his ends without a thought of giving back, or what consequences this may have.
I reflected on how the consequences of man’s manipulation and disruption have manifested throughout society. In addition to my pursuit of evidence, class readings provided me with ample evidence of just how enormous the proportions of these consequences have grown. When nature is examined as ecology rather than an entity, one becomes much more sensitive to how delicate the integrity of nature is. It is not about chopping too much wood, spilling too much waste, building too many cities, and burning too much oil. Simply replanting trees will not restore balance. The first law of thermodynamics states: ‘The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added by heating the system minus the amount lost as a result of the work done by the system on its surroundings’, which translates into ‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed.’ Man, however, seems to think that the locomotion of nature can sustain itself infinitely without contributing energy to the system. By destroying nature, man is disrupting the harmony.
This disruption manifests itself physically and psychologically. Berry, Virilio, and Pollan all discuss how these disruptions pollute not only our environment, but harmony. Our very conception of nature is linked to faulty conception of nature as a ‘thing’, rather than a harmonious relationship between space and time and symbiosis. Pollution of space and relationships and harmony should be inspected with the same care used when dealing with the physical environment.
Philosophy is composed of stories that alter our current paradigms and influence our behavior. From the ancients to the modern and contemporary, philosophers have been telling stories. Some are more convincing than others. The intention of each philosopher is to appeal to his own intellect. This is a highly regarded tool. When sharpened, it pierces the mind of men in universal ways, either to let something in or let something out. From the conception of self, to the genealogy and history of society, the role of belief, and the function of nature, this semester has proved to be a rewarding journey of mind. As I think about how these themes have formed a greater awareness, I am left with the weight of responsibility.
In conclusion, I can no longer escape the responsibility that education has charged me. To whom much is given, much is expected (Luke 12). The process of education will continue to bear the additional burdens that knowledge commands. My duty is to embrace my responsibility for knowledge and illuminate the shadows of ignorance with the arsenal of understanding I am equipped.
William Dare 