Philosophy
claims to be neutral and to be conducted on a purely rational basis. Yet, as we
look through the vast diversity of philosophical systems and insights, we are
forced to account for this diversity through appeal to more than rational
factors. Philosophical concepts
themselves require that we dig deeper.
In
modern philosophy there is the basic motivation of personality/freedom and
science/control which needs to be understood if we are to grasp the way
concepts and arguments function. These
two are in constant tension. Through
science, humans come to understand the world. This delivers us from the fear of
the mystery of nature. Further, our scientific knowledge gives us power over
nature. This power means that we can
free ourselves from the capricious power of nature; we can even use the power
of nature for our own benefit. So
science creates huge potential for human freedom. Seen from a humanistic view point this
freedom is created by humans. It is our power of reason that creates it, and
through reason this freedom can become total.
Nature is an object that we can know completely and over which we can
have complete power. We can become gods.
How
do we gain complete control over nature?
We do this through strict adherence to the power of reason to analyse
everything and to see the interconnections of everything. This includes humans and human society if we
are to have complete control over them.
It is not too hard to see that, along this path, what appeared to
guarantee and to be irrefutable evidence for human freedom turns out to destroy
human freedom, either through a deterministic science or social engineering. This kind of problem has gone through many
permutation over the last four centuries, the point to note is that underneath
it we have a basic religious conviction of a humanistic kind.
Despite
the fact that the history of philosophy requires us to take pre-rational
factors seriously, it can still be held that neutrality is an ideal not yet
attained. A second line of argument seeks to show that philosophy is not
possible without a religious starting point; there is an inner point of contact
between religious belief and theory.
This point of contact is to be found in certain basic ideas that make
philosophy possible. They are the ideas
of (1) origin, (2) unity, and (3) diversity in coherence.
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