National Association of Philosophy Students (Nigeria)

My Idea of Philosophy

  

by

Peter Adegoke

To define philosophy is an attempt at trying to dive into a realm of words against words, ideas against ideas; all aim at counterweighing already-held believes and iron-cladded opinions which would have otherwise been left untouched. I think it is the duty of every initiate into the discipline of philosophy to know the method of philosophy, and what it means to study philosophy.

Philosophy is the skeptical approach to the perception of reality; it aims at digging deep into epistemic claims and metaphysical postulations in order to perfect our

concepts of being qua being. The nature of who we are is the concern of the psychologists while the focus of anthropologists is to probe into our cultural

concerns; the sociologists base their study of humans in relations to others in his society.

Philosophy is the only discipline I know of which study itself and others; there is philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of law, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of medicine and even there is philosophy of philosophy. Philosophy analyzes itself and criticizes itself; philosophy is about criticism of concepts, ideas and opinions. 

According to Plato, “Philosophy begins with wonder.” At the initial stage of mankind’s development, it was the preoccupation of our ancestors and forebears to appreciate the spawning nature around them. Nature painted an imagery which left our ancestors wondering about the nature, origin and constituent substance of the artistic displays which envelopes them. This account for the reason why the art of painting was the first to be developed in the quest of mankind trying to express himself to others, followed by the art of singing.; religion came down the ladder later when mankind decided out of frustration in trying to give reasons for everything but with his failure not to contemplate reality holistically, the transcendence was appealed to in order to
answer the question which has defile his rational speculations.

Issues such as the origin of the world, birth, death, appearance and reality, the parts and the whole, universals and particulars, mind and body problems all constitutes what early man faced and in their attempts to answer all these many gods, goddesses, and specious claims were made but all these explanations could not satisfies the issues raised; therefore, man at a point in time decided to look inward and in the words of Socrates man had to examined himself to be able to derive answers to these problems.

The era of trying to give transcendental answers to man’s problems was fast elapsing; hence, some thinkers decided to give natural explanations to these problems. Thales made water the basic constituent of reality another of his contemporary told us it was fire; all these attitude marked a paradigmatic shift from the quest discipline from what it use to be to what it should be.

The cosmological debates is another stage in the discipline of thought also known as ‘philosophia’ (the love for wisdom), the quest to know led mankind particularly in the west to focus on using nature to explain nature.
Whether one subscribes to Plato’s dualistic view of the world in his ‘world of form’ or one hold to the materialist perception of reality, one thing still remains consistent, and that is the fact that natural ontological expressions is still use by all the parties concerned in philosophical debates.

Plato posited that we are mere copies of our true self existing in the world of form; he is still using the natural language to express his idea of the world of form because the word real tables, real beauty, perfection, thought, self and world are mere coinages made by men to depict our thought pattern.

To an animal real beauty, real table and other beings in Plato’s world of form are not part of his ontological experience and that account for the reason why only humans could philosophize. I am a materialist and a monist as such I think philosophy is best understood within the spectacle matter since man being material originates philosophy and only material being could contemplate concepts as concepts and ideas are not the properties of so called immaterial realities. God, spirits, devils, thoughts, mind, soul and other metaphysical concepts are bye product and man’s thought at play.

There are so many disciplines masquerading as philosophy, theology for instance with her theory of virgin birth, immaculate conceptions, trinity, divine inspiration, atonement, heavens, hells, afterlife with some paradise having thirty virgins where the extension of man’s cravings are carried out in a spiritual manual which sounds much like our brothels in this earthly world.

Theology is not philosophy as dogmas is expected to be followed without questioning; the fear of losing one’s salvation is common among theologians where matters of epistemic challenges are punctured with ejaculatory phrase like “Trust and Obey”, Faith is the belief for which there are no evidences is a word of Russell which best captured my opinion on this issue.
Philosophy condoles no sacred cows as heretics are welcomed in its agora and recourse to eternal damnation and transcendental punitive measures are not in the nature of philosophy, hence, Nietzsche could talk about the ‘Death of God’, Robert Ingersoll could write about ‘Some Mistakes of Moses’, Rushdie is free to tell the world about his ‘Satanic Verses’ without been fatwalized save from the intellectually-killing of some Islamic theologians who tried to stifle knowledge advancement with the sword of irrationality.

Theology have stream-lined doctrines which give rooms for little or no criticism, it is closely guided by the dictates of extraterrestrial inspired texts, philosophy is an attempt at making reality conceivable by all men alike regardless of race, creed and political affiliations. Philosophy have no epistemic restrictions as no saints exist in philosophy whose words could not be doubted, doubt is celebrated by philosophy as faith is a requisite demands of fundamentals.

 I have some final clarification to make; I discovered not too long ago that some people new into the discipline of philosophy believes that philosophy is exercise in abstraction, yes philosophical concepts could sometimes be abstract but philosophy is not abstraction as some of our egg-heads often made it looks.

You are not doing philosophy if all you do is to bamboozle your innocent audience with teeth-removing, high-sounding vocabularies.

Philosophy is not mysticism as philosophy is done among men and not angels, the gods do not philosophize, they are one of the bye-product of our inquisitive minds. Without the brain, we cannot philosophize as philosophy and critical thinking requires you to be of sound mind (brainy), no dull-head can survive in the field of philosophy. Mad men do not philosophize as their reasoning have gone berserk. Mysticism, transcendentalism, esotericism and other occult practices are left for religious minds and not philosophers.

I could be contemned for this, as that is the beauty of philosophy, but I still maintain that philosophy gives no room for seeking a world-plane where the language of discourse and the object of adoration is no different form what we have in this world. God speaks, get angry, some gods marry and even the sons of God in the Bible are said to have slept with the daughters of men. These attributes shows man’s creative mind at work. We create them, we destroy them, we adjust them, but some of us kill for them.

Philosophy is mankind search for the why of existence.

©July 27, 2006 Peter Adegoke is the President of National Association of Philosophy Students, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the Co-Chair of the Transhumanist Student Network, USA.