I have been contemplating this colossal edifice for some time now. Though philosophy, philosophical discourse or philosophical debate does fascinate me; I find far more intriguing the sense of fear I feel among most of the people I have come into contact with whenever this topic is broached. I am fascinated by how people treat this branch of knowledge.
Many a time, I have had this thought that philosophy is inextricably linked to science, technology and life in a way that I can't even begin imagine. But I feel I have a faint glimmer of a grasp on this relationship. It stems from my first understanding that life depends on technology. Now, before you disagree with it, remember that even the clothes you wear come under the purvey of technology. Without technology we wouldn't be any different from the animals we so romantically consider ourselves superior to.
Technology in turn depends heavily on science. Rather, I'd go so far as to say that without science there'd be no technology. For in order to be able to manipulate the elements of our environment and use them to fabricate various devices (technological innovation or invention), we'd require considerable knowledge about the elements of our environment; a collection of facts if you will. Now, facts are collected first by searching for and then analysing phenomena that occur in our environment. Ergo, I feel I can safely categorize science as a search and analysis tool.
But a search in an arbitrary manner would end up being sub-optimal to the extreme. Ergo, this search and analysis tool requires directions of where and how to search for whatever is being sought. But this presumes that one already knows what one is looking for. This is the purvey of philosophy. Philosophy analyses the environment, and conveys to science the location (in the field of knowledge) where the solution being sought is most likely to be found. Ergo, science depends on philosophy.
In order to facilitate philosophy's search for a place where that which is sought is most likely to be found, one has to be able to determine that something ought to be sought. That can only be determined via the sense of some kind of shortcoming. Life's shortcomings alert us to the absence of something that would reduce the difficulty of some aspect of our life (perhaps one of our daily chores). This shortcoming would alert us to the presence of a problem that ought to be solved. Ergo, life tells philosophy that something ought to be sought: philosophy depends on life.
Assuming the accuracy of the above mentioned relationships, one can come to the conclusion that philosophy is a very important link in the cycle that facilitates the growth of our knowledge of our environment. Assuming the accuracy of the preceding statement, why do some people still fear philosophy? Philosophy does alert us to the absence of absolutes. Some people acknowledge and accept this absence, some people do not accept it, yet others refuse even to acknowledge it. The two latter categories tend to live in a varying measures of fear. But I have seen that people fear philosophy irrespective of their attitude towards the absence of absolutes.
I have invested quite a lot of my time in the study of philosophy and I find that there are five kinds of philosophies. I make no claims as to the exhaustiveness of, or the mutual exclusivity of the elements in the following list.
Philosophy of science.
Philosophy of society.
Philosophy of space (or matter or the tangible universe).
Philosophy of mind (or soul or god or spirits or the intangible universe).
Philosophy of time.
I have differentiated the various philosophies into these five categories on the basis of the concepts dealt with within their domains. E.g. the philosophy of science conducts discourse on the concepts of (among other things) optimization of process, efficiency (or economy) of operation, and so on. Philosophy of society mostly conducts discourse on the concepts pertaining to the functioning of a society.
The formation of a social structure by say the division of society into various strata could be seen as the result of a mild influence of concepts falling under the purvey of the philosophy of science onto the concepts falling under the purvey of the philosophy of society. This could be ascribed the natural tendency of man to attempt to bring order to chaos. But when this tendency gives way to obsession, and the philosophy of science is imposed on the philosophy of society, cruel social doctrines and inhumane practises come into being. The most apt examples I can think of are ethnic purges, experiments in eugenics and our own caste system (which I consider a failed experiment in eugenics).
These phenomena notwithstanding, the use of concepts from one kind of philosophy to obfuscate the nuances of concepts or even whole concepts of any other kind of philosophy is not inconceivable. Ergo, it is my hypothesis that the fear of philosophy stems from the fear of the absence of absolutes among those who find cause for fear in this absence. And those who accept and acknowledge said absence, do fear philosophy because they realize that there is ample opportunity for the employ of insidious tendencies within philosophical discourse.
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