Philosophy as a Striving toward Universal sophia in the Integral Sense.

 

Dorion Cairns.

New School for Social Research.

 

Edited by Lester Embree[1]

 

 

Editor’s Preface

 

In his 1911 manifesto, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) distinguished between strictly scientific philosophy and world-view philosophy, the former being fundamentally concerned with epistemic matters and the latter being equally concerned with axiotic and practical matters. He furthermore distinguished between finite and infinite tasks, the former being achievable in an individual’s lifetime and the latter not. Then he identified the two distinctions so that, in contrast to finite world-view philosophies, only phenomenology is a strict science with infinite philosophical tasks.

            In the manuscript edited below, Husserl’s possibly closest follower, Dorion Cairns (1901-1973), in effect differentiates the two distinctions that Husserl had identified and goes on to develop a concept of philosophy with an infinite axiotic and practical as well as epistemic goal. This is not so much a revision—much less a repudiation—of the powerful tradition of theoretical philosophy as it is a reversion to the whole of philosophy of which the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, and others seem only to have pursued parts. Even so, since the account is grounded not only in philological study of previous and especially Ancient Greek thought but also in, as Cairns puts it, “a critical examining of possible mental lives,” the effect of the research is a broadening of the telos of phenomenological philosophy. One can well imagine that Cairns would have been pleased to have this ineditum offered to the memory of the friend he first met in Husserl’s kitchen in 1931.

            The source text for this edition was found among Cairns’s papers in a separate folder with the above title on the cover. It is registered as “B 1" on the Finding List for the Cairns papers in the Archival Repository of The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. The contents were worked on several times. Most of them come from a larger MS. Since the outlining method changes toward the end of that ms. and its second segment is marked “Copy of MS dated June 19, 1951,” it derives from at least two earlier MSS. Judging by the handwriting and ink used, it was worked on at least twice later. The earlier handwritten changes were probably made in connection with teaching, since the author presen6ted the contents of this MS. in courses on “General Theory of Value” and “Advanced Theoretical Ethics” taught at the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School during the 1960s (from an internal allusion to “former lectures” in the typescript, it would also seem to have been first developed in connection with teaching). The later handwritten changes, including the title on the cover of the folder, appear to have been made in relation to a lecture given at Northern Illinois University on April 29, 1971. None of the handwritten changes are substantial. The contents of this MS. were nevertheless developed over more than twenty years and were considered acceptable by the author less than a year before his death.

            This MS. has been easy to edit. The author followed a complex but explicit and clear outline that located discursive content within a framework of numbered and lettered headings and sub-headings. A sample of the original structure is included as the penultimate paragraph of the main part below. The first editorial task consisted in removing the outline and thus leaving paragraph-sized units of expression. Then the whole was articulated into an Author’s Preface, Introduction, two main parts, and Conclusion, including the author’s own headings in the latter two cases. The segment I have called “Author’s Preface” was composed by hand for the presentation at Northern Illinois University and was followed by a brief outline (omitted here) from which the author spoke extemporaneously. Some minor rewordings and insertions were then made and, except for those of punctuation, are here enclosed in brackets. Finally, a rearrangement of paragraphs was made, beginning with the ultimate paragraph of the main part; this is within the portion dated to June 1951 and was made in order to emphasize the contrast between theoretical philosophy and the Cairnsian striving for sophia and in order to have the text end on a note appropriate for the worldview of the author, who said “My life has been the attempt to understand and criticize the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, and as I went further and further in this enterprise my criticisms of certain aspects of Husserl’s philosophy ... became more and more radical....”[2]

 

[Author’s Preface]

 

            My concept of philosophy as a striving toward universal sophia in the integral sense of the substantive, “sophia,” originated partly from a critical examining of Hellenic thinking about sophia and philosophia and partly from a critical examining of possible mental lives that, I believe, is rightly called “phenomenological,” in the Husserlian sense of the word. But the concept in question is opposed to the concept of philosophy that has, I believe, dominated Western philosophizing, starting as early as Plato’s philosophizing. It is opposed to the concept of philosophy that dominated in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophizing.

            Since my concept of philosophy as a striving toward sophia, in the integral sense, originated partly from a critical examination of possible mental lives that is rightly called “phenomenological,” in a Husserlian sense of this word, I wish to start [by mentioning] the concept of philosophy that dominated in Husserl’s phenomenological philosophizing. The thirteenth paragraph of the “Introduction” of Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy may be translated as follows.

 

A third (and concluding) Book is devoted to idea of philosophy. There will be awakened the insight that genuine philosophy, the idea of which is the actualizing of absolute cognition, is rooted in pure phenomenology; and rooted in it in a sense so important that the systematically strict grounding and working out of this first of all philosophies is the incessant precondition for every metaphysics and other philosophy—“that will be able to make its appearance as a science.”

 

            Incidentally, we note Husserl’s obvious reference to the title of Kant’s book: Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics that will be able to Make its Appearance as a Science. The concept of philosophy that dominated in Husserl’s phenomenological philosophizing is, indeed, similar in that important respect, to the concept of philosophy that dominated in Kant’s so-called critical philosophizing.

 

[Author’s Introduction]

 

An important group of senses expressible by the word “philosophy” relate to attempts to shape world-views or their correlates more closely to a particular ideal of perfection: philosophy as a striving to shape the actual world-views in that fashion; philosophy as the ideal; and philosophy as the result of such striving. To make this apparent we shall make a fresh start, turning our attention to the word “philosophy” and its various significations.

            Even a cursory examination of dictionaries and the relevant literature shows that the word “philosophy” is used as a name for many different things and an expression for many different concepts. Accordingly, many non-equivalent definitions of philosophy are correct, in that each of them denotes something that has been commonly called “philosophy” or explicates some concept that the word has commonly been used to express. Our task is to exhibit the interrelations of certain important concepts that we shall express by the word. I shall distinguish four related concepts expressed by the word “philosophy,” which have their basis in usage, and may be formulated as follows.

           

            1. Love of sophia.

 

            2. Strivings to actualize approximations to sophia.

 

            3. Sophia.

 

            4. Results of striving to actualize approximations to sophia.

 

This ideal sophia has an epistemic and conceptual component, which has often been emphasized. Accordingly, we have four restricted senses of “philosophy” corresponding to those listed above: senses of primarily, purely epistemic, conceptual, or theoretical philosophy.

 

 

Philosophy as Love of sophia

 

          The English substantive, “philosophy,” is an adaptation of the Ancient Greek substantive, “philosophia,” which is formed on the expression “philosophos.” The latter, as substantive, is equivalent to “philosopher” and, as an adjective, is equivalent to “philosophic” and “philosophical” in the sense in which a person can be philosophic or philosophical. This word “philosophos” is a compound of two words, “philos” and “sophos,” both of which are older than the word “philosophos” and therefore older than the word “philosophia.” There is also a noun, “sophia,” which is older than both these words but not as old as the word “sophos.” Accordingly, those concepts expressed by the substantive “philosophy,” which are directly related to the concepts expressed by the Ancient Greek words “philosophos,” “sophos,” and “sophia” are its etymological senses. They are also its oldest senses and the oldest senses of the Greek word “philosophia.” Other senses become attached to either or both of these words (“philosophy” and “philosophia”) because the other senses are either parts of, or associated with, some etymological sense. So far as they had already become attached to the Greek word, they were taken over into Latin, and then into English and other modern languages, along with the Greek word and its etymological senses. In the various documented senses of “philosophia” we shall find a clue to a single sense that seems to have been historical and that, in any case, is to be fundamental here. We shall develop this fundamental sense by first explaining the senses of “philos,” “sophos,” and “sophia,” and then explaining the etymological senses of “philosophia.”

            The conventional English renderings of the Ancient Greek words under consideration are as follows. As a substantive, “philos” is usually rendered as “friend” or “lover”; as an adjective, it is rendered according to the context either as “friendly” or “loving” or else as “dear” or “beloved..” The long-established English usage is to render the adjective, “sophos,” as “wise” and the substantive, “sophos,” as “wise man” or “sage.” According to its grammatical form, “sophia” is the name for that which someone has if he is sophos. Because “sophos” is conventionally rendered as “wise,” “sophia” is conventionally rendered as “wisdom,” wisdom being, according to its grammatical form, the name for that which someone has if he is wise. In further consequence, the etymological senses of “philosophos” have already been rendered adjectivally as “loving wisdom” and substantively as “lover of wisdom” or “friend of wisdom.” “Philosophia,” according to its grammatical form, signifies that which someone has if he is philosophos. Since the etymological senses of “philosophos” are rendered substantively as “lover of wisdom,” the etymolological senses of  “philosophia” are rendered as “love of wisdom,” love of wisdom being that which makes one a lover of wisdom.

            When the conventional renderings of “sophos” and its derivatives were first instituted they were adequate. At that time the English words “wise” and “wisdom” were commonly used to express all the different senses expressed in Greek by “sophos” and “sophia.” Today that is no longer true, because some of the original meanings of “wise” and “wisdom” are archaic and even obsolete. Consequently, the long established conventional renderings, not only of “sophos” and “sophia,” but also of the etymological senses of “philosopher” and “philosophy,” are inadequate and misleading.

            The early documented senses of “sophia,” [namely:] skill, wisdom, [and] knowledge, are as follows.[3] About the ninth century B.C., Homer (Iliad, 15, 412) spoke of the sophia of the carpenter, obviously designating by the word “sophia” the carpenter’s exceptional skill in making things out of wood—tangible things. Later writers refer to the sophia of musicians and poets, i.e., an exceptional skill in making music and poems—intangible things. Skill, even when it has become habitual and largely automatic, does involve some mental intending. The somatic activity of a swallow building its first nest may well involve some mental purposing of at least the separate steps leading to the end. But that somatic activity is the manifestation of a purely natural ability. Skill, on the other hand, is what might be called an “artful ability”; [it] presupposes mental learning and involves what must be called “knowing,” in a broad sense (not necessarily conceptual knowing). The sophos, as the man of skill, knows the right methods, tools, materials, to use—under known circumstances—in order to actualize a foreseen state of affairs.

            In Greek literature there are many references to the Seven sophoi[4]—the Seven Sages or the Seven Wise Men, as they are called in English. The lists of the Seven differ; but all the men lived in the seventh century or the sixth century before Christ and were either law-makers and civic administrators, or else advisors to law-makers and civic administrators of that age. These men are called “sophoi” because they were thought of as having “sophia” in a pre-eminent sense, a sense indicated for us by the characteristics ascribed to them all. First: their sophia included either an exceptional skill in making laws and administering civic affairs or else an ability, by advice or instruction, to make others skillful in those things. In either case they were men who had the knowledge that was regarded as necessary to such skills. Secondly: according to Greek standards they conducted their personal lives exceptionally well; thus their sophia included wisdom and skill in the universal human business of living. Thirdly: they stated principles or maxims for the conduct of public or private affairs. Their sophia was not only implicit in their actions but explicit in their words. The sophia ascribed to the Seven sophoi accordingly involves wisdom in the chief present-day sense of the word. It is still a practical skill, but it pertains to conducting one’s whole life and the main affairs of one’s community. Moreover, it includes as its basis insight and, more particularly, conceptual knowledge, knowledge that can be expressed in words.

            A man is a sophos, in the pre-eminent sense, if he knows how to make a good life for himself and for his fellow men by virtue of having universal principles and being able to “apply” them in practice. An essential difference between sophia and ordinary skill of any kind and sophia as wisdom seems to be that the latter involves knowing what the right ultimate ends are for voluntary activities, whether private or social. Ordinary skill is compatible with folly, i.e., with striving to actualize wrong ends.

            In the history of Hellenic thinking, Socrates was apparently the first who explicitly restricted the extension of the term “sophia” to practical[5] abilities that involve conceptual knowledge of principles. He reportedly claimed to have found that such alleged sophoi as able poets and statesmen can give no account of how to make good poems or conduct civic affairs well. And, for that reason, he reportedly denied that they are genuine sophoi. But apparently Socrates did not only restrict the extension of “sophia” to abilities that involve expressible knowledge. Apparently he also transferred the major emphasis from the practical to the cognitional component. Indeed, if Plato’s Theatetus (145e) and Euthydemus (288d-f) are historical in this respect, Socrates identified sophia with knowing how to live a good life. In his Republic (376b; cf. 581b), Plato represents Socrates as identifying philosophia with philomathe, i.e., love of “learning” or knowledge, love of discovered being, truth. I am not certain of the sense expressed by the word “philomathe” in this passage. At all events, the shift of emphasis from practical sagacity to theoretical insight seems fairly certain.

            During Plato’s lifetime there spread among members of his school[6] the belief that the best life is the “theoretical life,” the life of the man whose ultimate aim is insight and conceptual knowing, the man for whom doing is a means for attaining insight and cognition, for whom the “application” of knowledge is of value chiefly as a method for increasing knowledge. True practical wisdom, according to this one-sided view, consists in striving for theoretical insight. Thus, as early as the fifth century B.C., “sophia” had acquired a third sense: exceptional theoretical knowledge of any kind, regardless of whether that knowledge is accompanied by outstanding creative or practical skill and regardless of whether it is accompanied by what we today call “wisdom,” indeed regardless even of whether it could be made subservient to practice. Already in the Republic (475b) Socrates is represented as saying that the genuine lover of sophia loves all “truth.” The precise significance of this saying depends, of course, on the precise significance of the word “alethia” here. But the saying seems to indicate at least that, in Socrates’s or Plato’s opinion, philosophy is not exclusively interested in useful “truth.”

            The word “knowledge” is commonly used to express a number of senses and to name things of different kinds. One particular ambiguity consists in its being used sometimes to designate knowing, as something mental, and sometimes to designate what is known. This ambiguity spreads to the word “sophia” when sophia is conceived in a “Socratic” fashion: either as wisdom involving verbally expressible knowledge or else as exceptional conceptual knowledge itself.

            Sophia in all these senses involves knowing. Skill, as we have said, involves knowing, in a broad sense, at least. Wisdom too involves knowing, since it involves both skill and knowing what ultimate ends are the right ones. Universally, to know something is to believe it (or believe in it) and at the same time to have evidence that justifies one’s believing. A knowing is a believing that the believer knows to be correct.

            Ordinary skills, being practical abilities, involve conative positings and valuings of ends and means. But [it may be that] the valuing of an end [is not] justified by evidence; and the value of the means, as such, is contingent on the value of the end. Wisdom, on the other hand, involves not only believing in but also knowing the rightness of ends. Thus is presupposes valuings justified by evidence. The wise man, moreover, wills to actualize what he knows is best. His willing is a willing justified by evidence.

            The fact that sophia, in any one of the historical senses, involves critically justified doxic positings, together with the fact that sophia, in the present-day sense of the word “wisdom,” involves critically justified affective[-emotional] and [conative-]volitional positings, indicates that each of the three historical senses of the word “sophia” is a more or less incomplete concept of one thing: something that is, or at least includes, an entire complex of mental positings—doxic, affective-emotional and conative-volitional—all of which are critically justified, or, in our terminology, is a world-view by evidence.[7] Obviously the objective sense of any normal human world-view includes a world-concept, founded, to be sure, on a non-conceptual substratum but not necessarily on a substratum of attitudes justified by evidence. The conceptual stratum of sophia, on the other hand, would be founded on a preconceptual stratum justified by evidence and would itself be justified by evidence. It would thus include an evidently true theory of the world.[8]

            The following facts are to be noted about sophia, in the integral sense: sophia in the integral sense includes not only doxic but also emotional and conational intentive positings. [Moreover,] sophia comprises positings each of which is both correct and known to be correct. “A knowing,” I said, is “a believing that the believer knows to be correct.” This implies that knowing is, in the first place, correct believing. A knowing is, more particularly, a believing that is warranted by “seeing,” in other words, a rational believing. A seeing of something may itself be called “a knowing,” in a broad sense. Or, if we wish to limit the extension of “knowing” to knowing facts, we may say that the most fundamental knowing is based on a judging warranted by “seeing,” i.e., a judging in which someone predicates of an evident thing some property that evidently belongs to it. For example, I am aware of a green surface as itself presented; I see it. In a broad sense this seeing awareness is “knowing” the green surface. I then go on to judge: “This is a surface; this surface is green.” And then, on the basis of this judging, I objectivate and know the fact: that this surface is green. I am believing that this surface is green; and my believing is a knowing; it is a believing warranted by seeing it or, in other words, a rational believing. Obviously my awareness of a green surface as itself presented does not fully warrant my believing that the surface is green. Under suitable conditions one sees as a green surface what is truly a white surface with green light shining on it. The point however is this: so far as my believing that the surface is green is truly a knowing, it is based on a seeing. In this case the evidence is only presumptive; and consequently my believing is not an “absolute” knowing of the alleged fact.

            As already suggested, there are other kinds of evidence. In the first place, other kinds of direct evidence. Remembering something as itself presented in the past is a kind of “seeing,” a “re-viewing.” The objectivating of a fact, after one has judged step by step on the basis of clear evidence, is itself a “seeing.” In this case that we have been considering, the fact that this surface is green is evident in my objectivating of the fact. Furthermore, there is indirect evidence of various kinds. In the awareness of a symptom as itself presented the symptom is directly evident; and the disease is indirectly evident. In another manner, testimony is indirect evidence. Obviously we have only begun to clarify the nature of knowing and evidence. These beginnings, however, may suffice as an initial clarification of what is meant by the phrases, “a believing warranted by evidence” and “a rational believing.” Seeing or insight, we may also say, is not only a motive for believing but also a reason justifying believing. And, universally, believing because of evidence is reasonable or rational believing. To show in detail that doxic positings of other sorts—doubtings, disbelievings—may be correct, in the sense of being rational or warranted by evidence, is perhaps superfluous.

            My earlier statement that skills and wisdom involve valuings and strivings known to be correct implies that, if skills and wisdom are possible, then such non-doxic positings can be correct. The possibility of skills we may safely assume, though perhaps not the possibility of wisdom. However that may be, the “correctness” of any valuings, wishings, willings, and other non-doxic positings would consist in their being warranted by evidence and, in that sense, rational. To be sure, the rational has often been contrasted with the emotional and the conative—sometimes to disparage the pursuit of knowledge and sometimes to disparage the emotional and striving sides of mental life. On the other hand, even in everyday life, we refer to some hopings and fearings, some lovings and hatings, and some strivings as “irrational.” Does this not point to an everyday awareness that some emotional or valuing positings and some conative positings are not irrational? Let us first consider emotional or valuing positings. Roughly speaking, a liking (for example) has a prima facie claim to being correct, warranted, rational, if it is founded on an awareness of the liked thing as itself presented with respect to those properties for which it is liked. If liking of an apple for its taste is based on tasting it, the liking is warranted, prima facie. So far as esteeming a man for bravery is based on evidence of his bravery, then that esteeming is warranted, prima facie. Similarly, a striving, specifically a volitive striving, is warranted and rational (roughly speaking) so far as the comparative goodness and the actualizableness of the willed state of affairs are evident.

            The correctness of positings comprised in sophia is rationality, warrantedness by evidence. A positing is “correct” in a weaker sense—“merely correct”—if it is such as evidence would warrant, even though it is not actually warranted by evidence. For example, a person may believe something true without having any evidence that it is true. Such a believing is, in a weak sense, correct. But it is no more rational than it would be if the thing believed in were false. Or, again, a person may strive blindly, in what is in fact the best manner, to actualize what is in fact the best actualizable state of affairs—that is, quite without evidence that his aim or his method is correct.

            A person’s positings may be correct, even in the sense of being warranted by evidence, without his knowing them to be correct. To know that one’s positings are correct, one must have examined the evidence critically and seen that it does indeed justify one’s positings. Sophia, moreover, presupposes a criticism that is universal. As Kant wrote:

 

... to criticism everything must submit. Religion through its sanctity, and law-giving through its majesty, seek to exempt themselves from it. But they then awaken just suspicion, and cannot claim the sincere respect that reason accords only to what has been able to sustain the test of free and open examination. (K.d.r.V., A xi, n.)

 

            If prejudice be understood to be a doxic positing in advance of evidence, then sophia can be characterized as being, negatively, complete freedom from prejudice, from presuppositions unwarranted by evidence. The person who had sophia would base his positings on his own evidence and know that they were correct because he himself had examined that evidence critically and seen for himself that it justified his attitude. This does not mean that he would disregard the testimony of others. It means rather that he would weigh such indirect evidence critically, for himself. In some matters the testimony of others is of far less value than direct evidence; in others it is of about equal value; in yet others—e.g., in many matters of factual history—it is the best evidence one can have. Sophia presupposes that the individual has evaluated testimony and accepted it on his own responsibility, for what he sees that it is worth to him,.

            Sophia, in the integral sense, we have said, involves valuings and strivings warranted by evidence. In two respects, however, warranted believing, i.e., epistemic or doxic reason, plays a pre-eminent role in sophia. In the first place, rational valuing and willing always presuppose rational believing; whereas it is not the case that rational believing presupposes rational valuing or rational willing always. In the second place, the critical component essential to sophia is a cognitive, and therefore a doxic, activity—resulting in a justified believing that all one’s positings are warranted by evidence, one’s emotional and volitional, no less than one’s doxic attitudes.[9] [Furthermore,] sophia is universal, cognitively universal—all entities known, valuationally universal—all things rightly valued, and volitionally universal—all ends and means willed rightly, in view of all relevant goods and evils, and all practical possibilities. [Finally,] sophia would include a set of rationally and critically justified positings of sophia itself: a critical knowing of sophia, a critically justified valuing of sophia, and a critically justified volitional positing [of sophia]. When considering the problem of the relationship between any world-view and the world, I stated[10] that any world-view is open and subject to correction. No one could actually have an entire complex of attitudes, all of which he knew to be correct. In any actualizable world-view there must be not only an element of still unproved rationality but perhaps even an element of irrationality. And an open horizon. Sophia in the integral sense is an ideal, in that it is not actualizable, not a possible reality.[11] Sophia may be approximated by real world-views. They may be made more nearly justified by evidence, more nearly rational. (In Phaedrus (278d) Plato ascribes to Socrates what seems to be at least an approach to the conception of sophia as ideal. Cf. also Symposium 204.) It follows, of course, that the sophos, as someone with sophia, is likewise an ideal: the ideal “perfectly rational” person.[12]

           

12. Philosophy as love of sophia in the ideal integral sense.[13]

 

a. Review: the etymological senses of “philosophy.”—Etymologically the words “philosophy” and “philosophia”are names for what a person has if he is philosophos, i.e., if he is loving sophia or if he is a lover of sophia. Thus they are names for love of sophia, whatever sophia may be.

 

b. An etymological sense of philosophy.—Accordingly, if we understand the word “sophia” to express what I have called its ideal integral sense, we can define, as an etymological sense of “philosophy”: love of a particular ideal thing, namely an entire complex of intentive positings known to be correct and adequate by the person in whose mental life they are present. More concretely, philosophy in this sense would be love for a fully rational life.

 

c. The relevant sense of love.—Any love is an affective attitude; and, as such, it is or includes a positive valuing of realities that is proportionate to the closeness of their approximations to the ideal.

 

d. Sophia as an ideal standard.—The preferring of one complex of positings to another need not involve measuring the two complexes by a standard. On the one hand, once a person sees an ideal as approached, that ideal functions as a standard for measuring and evaluating the corresponding realities.[14]

 

e. The rationality of the love of sophia.—In itself philosophy, as love of sophia, is a valuing, not a cognition[15] and not a mere believing. The correctness, the rationality, of this love is not established by the mere fact that its object is, in itself, something correct or rational. As in the case of any other valuing, rationality would be established only if the loving were based on an adequate seeing of the idea, sophia. Furthermore, a preferential valuing of sophia and approximations to it is not ipso facto justified. It may be that as a system of positings, or a life, approaches rationality, it loses other good characteristics.

 

            Etymologically the word “philosophy” signifies love of sophia, no matter what the word “sophia” signifies. In our own usage we shall assign to the word “philosophy” the etymological sense: love of sophia in the ideal integral sense. In some passages the words “sophia” and “philosophia” were apparently used by Aristotle synonymously.[16] There are passages in which “sophia” expresses an exclusively epistemic sense and, more particularly, the accent falls on knowledge as known truth rather than as knowing. Thus they involve a double semantic shift: first, from sophia as the distinctive characteristic of the sophos to sophia as what the sophos knows; secondly, from sophia to philosophia. At the same time, as already indicated, the concept of sophia, and therefore of philosophia, involved is one-sided in that it is exclusively epistemic. Omitting the Aristotelian restruction to knowledge, we have a semantic change by which the word “philosophia” becomes synonymous with “sophia” and acquires the latter’s ambiguities. We then may fix one of these senses, namely the ideal integral sense of the word “sophia” as also one sense of the word “philosophy.” If we broaden this sense to include the ideal objective correlate of sophia, we can define “philosophy,” in an ideal sense, as a universal and critically justified world-view. In the corresponding sense, a philosopher too is an ideal, not a possible reality.[17]

 

Philosophy as a Striving to Actualize Approximations to sophia.

 

Since philosophy, in the just-defined etymological sense, motivates a striving to actualize ever closer approximations to sophia, the word “philosophy,” with a natural transference of application, is used as a name for such a striving itself.[18] As an actively framed idea, and as a standard of value, sophia functions as the guiding idea for philosophic or rationalizing striving. Philosophy, as a striving to approximate sophia, is itself conative. The corresponding philosophic positing is [a] volitive positing, a positing by “the will,” not by “the intellect.” Like all other non-doxic positings, however, it has a doxic foundation. And if, and so far as, philosophy, in this sense, is itself a rational striving or positing, it is based on insight not only into the nature and comparative value of sophia but also into the genuine possibility of approximations to sophia and into the availability of means for actualizing them. The mere fact that the life of reason is the life of reason does not establish the reasonableness of striving to live as rationally as possible.

            As a striving to actualize the closest possible approximations to the objectivated idea, sophia, philosophy becomes initiated in a person’s life after he already has a set of positings. So far as it is a reflective striving, its ultimate objective is a progressive refashioning of the philosopher’s pre-philosophic positings. The philosophic striving is aimed at a refashioning of all his positings, doxic, emotional, conational, wherever they fall short of sophia. That is to say, the aim of is a reshaping not just of one’s already-instituted doxic positings but likewise of one’s already instituted emotional-valuational and conative-volitional positings. To this practical end of self-refashioning, reflective cognitional and valuational activities are subservient: the philosopher aims at knowing and rightly valuing all positings in the mental life wherein he participates, in order to see where and in what respect his positings fall short of sophia. But his reflectings are, or at least ought to be, directed chiefly to his more fundamental positings, the ones that are the presuppositions for, or that motivate, other positings. They are the attitudes he ought to seek out, analyze, evaluate, and aim at improving, since the rationality of the founded depends on that of the founding positing. For this reason the philosopher seeks to penetrate beneath the conceptual stratum of the objective sense belonging to his world-view. For this reason the principle objects of his reflectings within the subconceptual stratum are doxic attitudes and their objects, since all non-doxic attitudes are founded on doxic positings. The pre-conceptual doxic positings he makes, or ought to make, his principle themes of reflection: to discover their nature, to examine their rationality, and—where such an examination indicates the desirability of so doing (assuming that the rational life is desirable)—to amend them. The fundamental mental amendments would thus be adjustments of assent to conform to actual evidence. Then, where evidence was discovered to be conflicting, or insufficient to warrant full assent, that discovery would motivate a striving for further evidence. The philosopher’s striving aims at the closest approximations to sophia in the world-views of others and thus at the closest approximations to a rational society.[19]

            Usually, however, the theoretical (i.e., the doxic conceptual) component of the result of such striving is regarded as central: the theories produced, but also the theoretical problems raised, the methods of theoretical inquiry opened up and followed. A good initial definition of “theoretical philosophy” is: the search for universal principles. In this definition the word “principle” signifies: anything that is primary or ultimate, fundamental or supreme. A principle, in this sense, could be, more particularly, a beginning or an end, a cause or an effect, a source, a process, or an issue; a motive or a purpose; it could be subjective or objective, personal or impersonal, it could be an individual or an essence, an element or a whole, a fact or a value, a concept, a truth, a law, a criterion, or a reason. Whatever else it is, a thing is a principle in the relevant sense if it is also somehow primary or ultimate, fundamental or supreme. To call a principle “universal” is equivalent here to saying that it is a principle either (1) with respect to “the” universe, i.e., with respect to everything or the whole of things, or else (2) with respect to “a” universe, i.e., some very comprehensive (though not all-embracing) whole or class of things. The latter aim may be, on the one hand, an aim to actualize the closest possible approximations to knowing universal principles themselves or, on the other hand, an aim to know whatever knowable things come closest to being universal principles. The following is accordingly equivalent to our initial definition. “Theoretical Philosophy” is the endeavor either to know or to come as close as possible to knowing whatever is primary or ultimate, fundamental or supreme, with respect to the universe or else to some extremely comprehensive whole or class of things.

            Though the characteristic and ultimate aim of theoretical philosophy (as thus defined) is to know, or to come as close as possible to knowing, universal principles, the more ultimate objective of philosophical inquiry is often a knowledge of something secondary, or highly specific, or minutely partial. Whatever its actual theme, an inquiry is philosophical if pursued as a means to a philosophical end. Accordingly philosophy and departmental scientific research are not necessarily disparate activities. On the contrary, they coincide whenever the scientific investigator’s final aim is the closest attainable approach to knowing universal principles. An inquiry is non-philosophical only if its ultimate cognitional aim is to know only the peculiarities of some narrow province or to acquire only such imperfect quasi-knowledge as is sufficient to some limited non-cognitional purpose. But the knowledge or science of universal principles (which is characteristic of [theoretical-] philosophical investigation) need not be sought purely as an end in itself. It may be, and often has been, sought also as means to a practice guided by knowledge of universal principles.

            Whatever changes in world-views [that] have resulted from consciously attempting to approximate the ideal of a universal and critically justified world-view [have included] changes in the pre-conceptual level as well as at the conceptual level [and have included] changes in affective and conative attitudes as well as in doxic attitudes. Attempts to actualize an approximation to the philosophical ideal (sophia in the ideal integral sense) are necessarily attempts by individual philosophers. But the conceptual results of such attempts are expressible by words which can be understood by others. That is to say, others can re-produce the philosophic concepts, theories, and questions first produced by one individual philosopher. Having re-produced another’s philosophical concepts and theories, one can criticize them with respect to their clarity, consistency, and truth. One can then accept, reject, or modify them, as the results of such criticism. Thus philosophy, as philosophizing, can be intersubjective history, in that one philosopher’s theoretical results are (more or less correctly) understood, criticized, adopted, or changed by another. Indeed, it may even be said that philosophy, as theory, can have a history—that philosophic “ideas” can have a social history which consists in their becoming known to others, and criticized, accepted, rejected, and changed by them. Strictly, the mere understanding and accepting or rejecting of another’s philosophic concepts and theories is not part of the history of philosophy. So far as philosophizing is concerned with another’s thoughts, it is criticizing. No true philosopher, as such, merely accepts or merely reproduces, another’s thoughts. The true philosopher starts anew—independently, solitarily. But his understanding of the work done by others can make his own philosophizing surer and quicker. He must see for himself. But sometimes he can more easily avoid the pitfalls that others have discovered and marked. Thus, in the social history of philosophizing there can be not only mere repetition and mere novelty, but also progress. Even the less able philosopher may improve on the results of a more able predecessor.


[1]This essay was originally published in Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch, ed. Lester Embree (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. and University Press of America, 1984), pp. 27-43 and is reprinted [and translated] by permission of Richard M. Zaner.

[2]Dorion Cairns, “My Own Life,” ed. Lester Embree, in Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism, Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, edd. Fred Kersten and Richard M. Zaner (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), p. 13.

[3]Author’s Note: Based on Überweg-Prächter, 1926, pp. 3 f.

[4]Author’s Note: Check this phrase! Überweg says that Herodotus calls these sophistai.

[5]Editor’s Note: This word was later placed in parentheses by hand; it is not clear whether the intent was to substitute another word or not.

[6]Author’s Note: Cf. Heraclides Ponticus’s account of the origination of the word “philosophos” by “Pythagoreas.”

[7]Author’s “Historical Note”: One of the purposes of Plato’s Republic may have been to clarify and integrate more or less sharply differentiated current concepts of sophia. Obviously the dialogue teaches that knowing, even theoretical knowing, is indispensible to wisdom and that no knowing is irrelevant to wisdom, to right willing. In a more obscure manner the dialogue is apparently intended to indicate an even more intimate unity of belivings, valuings, and willings, all based on evidence or insight: “the form of the good” is the principle of all being and knowing, of all goodness and love, of all ends and volition. Furthermore, in the simile of the cave, the whole soul is turned toward the light.

[8]Editor’s Note: The heading, “As involving reflective criticism,” follows at this point in the MS., but nothing, not even space for something to be added later, was left. Reflective criticism is discussed below on pp.----.

[9]Editor’s Note: The following sentence, which occurs at this point, was circled, possible for deletion. “As a complex of critically justified mental attitudes, sophia necessarily has, as its objective correlate, a critically justified objective sense.”

[10]Editor’s Note: The reference is to earlier parts of the larger MS. from which this part has been taken.

[11]Editor’s Note: The following sentence was deleted but seems not irrelevant. “The relationship of sophia to actually or possibly real world-views is analogous to the rationality of ideally exact geometrical figures to actual and possible real shapes.”

[12]Editor’s Note: There follow two more headings with nothing under them: “The rational life as an ideal” and “The self-consistency of these ideal things has not been shown.”

[13]Editor’s Note: The following “paragraph” is left in the outlined form in which the entire manuscript edited here was found.

[14]Editor’s Note: The following was circled, possibly for deletion. “At the same time it functions as a principle unifying the various criteria of excellence already implicit in valuings of world-views.”

[15]Editor’s Note: The word “cognition” was crossed out, but no replacement given.

[16]Author’s Note: “See Überweg-Prächter 1922, p.4.”

[17]Editor’s Note: The previous two sentences were circled by not crossed out.

[18]Editor’s Note: The following sentence was circled but not crossed out. “Many of the changes in world-view that occur automatically, or that are produced by active striving and willing, tend toward sophia or rationality.”

[19]Editor’s Note: On the margin alongside this sentence the author wrote: “This is most inadequate.” The paragraph placed last below may begin to respond to this self-directed objection.