Revolutionary Philosophy

Introduction

Since the days of old, mankind has always pondered with the questions of “What is the meaning of life?” and also “What is reality?” To question the meaning of life and to question reality are the most essential attributes of a human. In fact, it is what separates man from animal. Some may say that love is what makes man stand out, yet animals care for their offspring for the sake of collective survival. However, no beast can question their reality or their goal as humanity has. For to question reality is to question our identity.

In history, humans have found various ways to answer these critical questions. Beginning with the polytheism of tribal societies and other traditional beliefs, then into a local wisdom shrouded in darkness. And within the cities of Greek, emerges philosophy as an effort to search for the most essential truth, and from philosophy emerges the empirical sciences. Yet from the three sciences, philosophy is still the most important science, for philosophy searches for the roots, independent of anything else and the most pure.

However, philosophy has experienced a terrible regression and in fact a division. The analytics degrade philosophy into a slave of empiricism, and the continentals continue the tradition in continual divide. The pressures of empiricism that often seem to provide more comfort and clarity dissuade people from philosophy which tends to be abstract. In fact, the view that philosophy is dead or perhaps useless is not entirely abnormal in the modern age. Regardless, philosophy is still important for it is what separates man from animal, and as such we must seek to understand the importance of philosophy.

Essence of Philosophy

An understanding of the importance of philosophy begins with an understanding of what is philosophy. As the study has long been ignored and left behind with the other sciences, the definition of philosophy itself is hazy and unclear. Compared with biology which is the study of life, or chemistry the study of matter, and physics the study of the most basic universal mechanics. Some say philosophy is the search of truth, some say philosophy is the clarification of thoughts. Regardless it is still that there is no defined answer.

By essence philosophy is different from empirical sciences and also different from religious sciences such as theology or sacred texts. However philosophy retains some similarities with the two. For one, philosophy is a rational and skeptical science just like empirical science, but also considers immaterial objects as discussed by religion. Of course, all three sciences have the same goal, that is to find the highest truth of this world, not just humans but of the entire world.

As such, it can be said that philosophy is a study which has the task of finding the most basic and highest truth of everything in this world. Yet has not the two studies of empiricism and religion provide their answers? Then what separates philosophy from them? Of course, there is one difference, philosophy has no one clear answer, there has never been a single answer agreed by all philosopher about what is right. Perhaps it may be argued that philosophy analyzes the roots of this world, but does empiricism and religion not do the same? From there begins the regression of philosophy.

Regression of Philosophy

In the current ages philosophy has shrunk into a sort of science only known by professionals and no longer the attention of public. One of the reasons is that philosophy is too abstract and unclear. Many philosophical texts are made with language that are highly academic, professional, and abstract that can not be understood by the average citizen. The ideas tackled by philosophers are so detached from the real word, and can not be related with daily life. The complicated language of philosophy merely complicates its understanding.

Aside from its abstractness, the lack of certainty makes this study undesirable to search for the truth. Many philosophers rebut each other, and with the complicated language they use, the problems and conflicts of philosophy becomes harder to resolve. Unlike empiricism and religion which often has a standard of truth, philosophy tends to not have a standard of truth. The only criterion is if a concept does not lead to contradiction, and searching for contradictions is not as effective as we think.

Apart from the above difficulties, perhaps the greatest factor in the regression of philosophy is the rise of empiricism. Religion and tradition may have been more established since long, but empiricism still has greater pressure on philosophy. Empirical sciences tend to be clearer in their theory, as what is observed is something that can be observed, or an extension towards something that can be observed in daily life. Obviously superior to philosophy which goes in circles and lacks clarity. As a result, empiricism is the better choice compared to philosophy. Yet empiricism admits that it has no answer towards the problem of ethics, and that is where religion and tradition comes in.

Religion here refers to more than organized religion, that is to the traditional and cultural views of ethics. It’s just that religion is the public face of cultural ethics. Unlike empirical sciences, cultural ethics doesn’t have a single universal answer, but is tasked to each respective cultures to organize their own society. This is much more comfortable than philosophical ethics, as a universal ethics equate the destruction of the old social system, and for many people that is the loss of their identity. For that reason, local culture and personal identity is more comfortable as an ethical guide than philosophy.

With that, isn’t philosophy no longer important? For empiricism and tradition is sufficient to provide a generally accurate view of this world. For the problem of ethics, simply follow what has been done by our ancestors traditionally, and keep to our own kind. From a glance philosophy is obsolete in the search of truth, but again, in a glance. Because in truth, empiricism and traditional ethics can not be sustained as a methodology to search for truth for the reasons below.

Beyond Empiricism

Empiricism that is the view that all truth can be know only through sensory experience is a dangerous view. As clearly empiricism denies all things immaterial that is things that can not be sensed, and of course it means empiricism is against tradition and wishes to destroy the current social system, replaced with a more “scientific” one. Of course that is not the main problem, but the shallowness of empirical views.

Empiricists act like they are the skeptical and rational folk, when they believe all their sense without a shred of doubt. A genuinely skeptical person should question their senses, and based on empirical research it is proven that human sensory experience is inconsistent and generally untrustworthy. Of course it is not wrong to rely on our senses, but to trust it without doubt is wrong and misleading.

As said, empiricism alone can not produce a consistent and genuinely-good-for-all-beings system of ethics. Because in the eyes of empiricism, ethics does not exist and can not be proven at all. About the scientific truth claimed by empiricists, these truths rely on the assumption that the senses actually exist and sensory experience can be trusted. Such assumption has no logical basis and thus we can not claim sensory experience as the only source of knowledge.

Moreover, simple empirical facts prove that pure empiricism is just wrong. That the existence of ideas and also the ideas themselves are more important than mere physical sensation. For example, an idea of an apple is clearly separate and independent of the media of information about that apple. An empiricist may argue that the idea of apples exist empirically as electrochemical reactions in the brain, but clearly that is just some arbitrary media for the idea of apples. The media may be empirical, but the pure idea can not be comprehended empirically and is in fact, transcendent.

In conclusion, empiricism can not stand alone as a source of knowledge let alone to find the truth. Scientific and empirical methodology is indeed important and good to be used for a mechanical understanding of this world, however it is not the only source of understanding and must be perfected with other sources. This other source of knowledge is philosophy, while empirical science analyzes the sensible and form conclusions of the sensible, philosophy analyzes “nonsense” and forms “nonsensical” laws.

Against Tradition

If empiricism can not provide a complete answer towards reality, then tradition which is based on heart and human emotion would do even worse. The most critical issue of letting each cultures decide their own ethics is the resulting contradiction. Because in essence, each culture will have ethnocentric and xenophobic tendencies, unless such culture explicitly teaches world peace and love such as Jesus or Buddha. As such we can not take a relativistic approach towards ethics.

Tradition is also not analyzed to its very roots to examine its truth. The preservation of culture and tradition is more often than not based on reasons of emotion and historical preservation, not because the social norms contained are actually good for humanity. The preservation of culture for intellectual reasons is not a false goal, but as a way to find the truth it is not right. As there can not be two things that are true yet be contradictory. X can not be –X , there can only be one truth, but different expressions.

Regardless, tradition will not help in achieving the truth of mankind. In fact some traditions and cultures become evidence of the darkness and evil of men. Of course, this does not make tradition and culture as useless, merely the role of it must be adjusted. The search for truth can be open to different expressions, or towards immaterial objects but must always be made rational. Before going for expression, the pure forms of truth must be seeked first, so we can have a standard of truth.

Failure of Contemporary Philosophy

What of the analytic and continental schools of philosophy in the contemporary age? To be honest, contemporary philosophy has also failed in finding the truth. Especially analytic philosophy which sides with empiricism and degrades philosophy itself. The view that all knowledge comes from sensory experience is the death of philosophy, which is supposed to be our primary method of searching nonsensory truths. What of continentals? They are much better, but still tends towards ambiguity and confusion.

Some branches of continental philosophy such as phenomenology attempts to create an integration based on collective human experience, but this requires an empirical method just more interpretive and addressing transcendental issues. From this analysis, we can know that contemporary philosophy is unreliable to search for the truth. An epistemological anarchism has spread across the sciences, and we need a revolution. A revolution of philosophy.

Revolutionary Philosophy

In the search for truth, we require a new philosophical methodology, a revolutionary philosophy one might say. Revolutionary for this new philosophy must fight all previous sciences, and change it towards what is right. With this we can redefine philosophy as a clear and independent study as well as clearer goal of philosophy. And through this revolution, all science must be reunited and be made obedient towards the absolute truths.

The goal of revolutionary philosophy remains, that is to seek for the truth of reality, or the purest knowledge of reality. What differentiates philosophy from empiricism is philosophy is the study of the purest knowledge, which is independent of our senses. A knowledge that can be known just with our minds alone, a rationalist knowledge or a priori. Revolutionary philosophy must also be clear in its answer and the rest are merely different expressions. And of course, the revolution must be able in uniting all conceptions and knowledge into a concrete form that can be understood by humans, not abstract.

Closing

The needs of a revolutionary philosophy has been made clear. And thus our task is to dive into that philosophy and assemble it one by one. With a new methodology of philosophy, we hope for the revival of philosophy among the sciences. For it is what differentiates man from animal. And through the revolution, we will know the goal of our existence. God bless.