Let us take up philosophy. Let me start with Kierkegaard: one cannot philosophize from the absolute point of view, because one cannot be indifferent to the impact of one's speculations on one's own fate. There is a fundamental bad faith to a comprehensive philosophy that does not recognize the true situation of the philosopher...
Second, let us bring in Nietzsche: the connection of truth, beauty, and the good is an assumption that regulates most philosophy. As such, it limits what can be contemplated, and therefore calls into question the trajectory of any philosophy which takes it as a starting point. What if truth is ugly? What if it is inimical to human values? What if life thrives on illusion? Since the stakes involved in speculating on the meaning of everything are so high, how could we possibly guarantee objectivity?...
Third, let us bring in the irreducible problem of post- Cartesian philosophy: granted that we encounter objects in consciousness, and that consciousness itself has its own forms that determine how objects are presented to us, how can we be confident that our intuitions and inferences adequately reflect the reality independent of consciousness? Kant tried to make a virtue out of agnosticism about the Thing- in- Itself, but Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were dissatisfied, and Hegel developed an elaborate theory that made history the development of the Absolute, through human consciousness, and thus enabled the philosopher to take the Absolute viewpoint at the end of history, which he construed to have essentially fulfilled itself in the concept of ordered liberty present in constitutional monarchy. Of course, the simplest objection to Hegel is to say that there was plenty of ideologically driven strife to go, and therefore it does not look as if he had attained the absolute standpoint. But in addition, the question is merely begged by the development of several more or less likely narratives and thematic elaborations, as in "The Phenomenology of Spirit", "The Philosophy of History", and "The History of Philosophy". In other words, in the final analysis he assumes the principle, and than organizes the facts to make his case...
On the other hand, Kant is unsatisfactory, and it is clear that some reality about the Thing- in- Itself must be reflected in consciousness, since even in Kant the object supplies the "matter" and the consciousness supplies the "form" of phenomena. Therefore, we are somewhere between pure agnosticism (or skepticism) and the possibility of an absolute standpoint. But before we go on, we must decide if we think the universe is ultimately hospitable to human concerns, or indifferent and/or hostile to them. This is such a fundamental choice, because it has to be made before we can claim anything like knowledge of the matter, and we can never be sure of the extent to which it biases our subsequent speculation, that on the most important matters, philosophy is more like a way of clarifying our options then of answering our questions, and choice is finally unavoidable... |
