My Idea of Philosophy
To clear a forest, you have to swing an axe
Every once in a while, I get a comment or message that makes it clear a reader strongly disagrees with something I wrote. But on a closer look, it often turns out such objections don’t necessarily concern some statement of mine that is considered false, but rather something I supposedly left out: some aspect, clarification, or qualifier that the reader deems so important that the point I was making is perceived as an affront-by-omission.
So, let me clarify my idea of philosophy and what I’m trying to do here.
Given that the human experience is, for all intents and purposes, infinitely deep, we can only ever express partial truths about it: there is always an infinite number of qualifiers that we could mention, some of which will inevitably be crucial (and their omission therefore fatal), depending partly on the state of mind the reader is in — his knowledge, the problems he is facing, the aspects of the human experience he is grappling with at the moment. It follows that we all need to practice what I have called epistemic humility.
Furthermore, since language can be seen as sort of an access gate to various parts of the thought landscape that transcends the material world, we could never convey the full picture, even if we knew it — which we don’t. In fact, believing that we can is highly delusional and dangerous.
What we can do, however, is explore this thought landscape.
Philosophical truth, then, is the successful attempt to explore one location or another in the higher “thoughtscape.” It integrates a new part of the terrain, or shines a new, clear light on it so that its contours stand out in high contrast to the receptive reader. It unifies, defragments, widens the gaze of the soul-mind.
Philosophical falsehood is when what you express (or read) has a fragmenting effect. It blurs your higher vision, moves you further away from what is real on the thought plane, confuses, produces chaos, disintegrates. If such philosophical talk connects to anything, it is the slums of the Logos, and if you don’t recognize the “falsehood,” it might draw you closer to permanently inhabiting those hellish mind places.
But there are many beautiful places there, too. These are the ones we want to explore. Complaining that a thinker leaves out your favorite spot is akin to complaining that someone describing a lovely hiking trail leaves out another lovely trail you happen to know and like better.
For example, to go meta on you here, you might object that talking about higher thought planes — or thoughtscapes — is Platonic nonsense, and that you are not a dualist, and where’s Whitehead when you need him, or what about feelings, and biology, and didn’t some psychologist show that… and so on. But what I have done here, hopefully, is that I have cleared a path in the forest. If things went well, you understood what I was getting at, your mind is slightly less fragmented, your inner light slightly brighter, your vision slightly enhanced. You recognize the truth in my words, even while you know there are other beautiful places in the thoughtscape where things work a bit differently.
Sound philosophy, in other words, is truthful exploration. To get something out of it, you must allow a thinker to take you on a journey of discovery: discovery of true aspects of the human experience, with the aim of uplifting your soul by truth and beauty of thought, conveyed in language that rings, that sings, and that expresses a deep logic: a language that connects you to the intended place in the thoughtscape.
To explore, one must think. To think, one must move.
But every movement bears risk. You can stumble, or worse: move in the wrong direction, away from beauty and truth, towards the wasteland of chaos and fragmentation of mind and soul. The slums of the thoughtscape. This is the real danger.
However, if the movement is in the right direction, clearing a path in the forest so that a way forward emerges, brightened by clear sunlight, then you don’t need to worry that there are other paths, or that the path is not the whole forest.
Language is coarse and can be brutal. It is an axe we wield in the pursuit of connection. While we do have to clear our own path, we also need help. The forest is too big to find your way around it alone.
From time to time, we need to accept guidance, just as we freely give it. Which is one of the reasons why philosophical truth has a relativistic element to it, for the guidance we need at one location might be different from that we need at another location. Just as it is with advice in daily life: we don’t tell our neurotic friend that there’s always danger out there and people may come after him if he is not careful, even though this might be true. He worries more than enough as it is. Instead, we encourage him to get over his self-doubts and go out there. But we might give very different advice when dealing with a reckless friend who has a habit of waking up in a clinic after yet another day of throwing all precautions to the wind. We will emphasize a different aspect of the human experience to him.
So, for instance, when I argue for a form of historical idealism and give my reasons why thought is primary, it is not that I believe this to be the whole truth and that I have finally solved the conundrum of our existence. It is to clear away a part of the forest that stands in the way. It is because what I talk about there is an aspect that has been suppressed and obscured by modernist thinking habits, an aspect that might, at least for some people, be a key to moving forward towards ever greener meadows of understanding, vision, and defragmentation of thought — just as it had been for me.
To understand, one must think, and to think, one must move. But all movements are limited: we can’t go everywhere at once. Speaking at all about abstract ideas, to put it in stark terms, means lying by omission. Formulating an insight, a take, a connection to the thoughtscape, will inevitably be lopsided. It therefore always bears the risk of reaching the wrong person at the wrong time who draws the wrong conclusions — like our neurotic friend who, to his detriment, reads some advice about how the world is a jungle and how he should be hyper-prudent all the time.
Crucially, this understanding of philosophy — and abstract thought in general — is the antidote to the eternal temptation of the intellectual: the sweet delusion that he has arrived at some conclusive truth, some final destination, some full understanding, and that he is therefore above the unwashed masses. The products of such deluded reasoning will inevitably be taken up by bad actors, who use them to force their warped and pathological perception of the world on normal people, against their better judgement.
All we can hope for is truthful exploration of places worth visiting, worth understanding.
Abstract thought is not a destination; it is a movement. Expressed in the right language, it can pull the reader along. Whether this be detrimental or beneficial partly depends on where the reader currently resides on the thoughtscape. This means movement of the mind, the quest for connection, always has context — even while, due to the very nature of abstract thought which seeks to eliminate context, we tend to forget that.
Nevertheless, move we must, and move I will. It better be graceful.
Referenced and related essays:
Great post... I very much agree with trying to retain epistemic humility. We are limited, finite beings and our grasp of the bigger picture will always be partial. Sometimes I catch myself with thoughts of egoism, and I try consciously to put them to the side -- it's not always easy. There are a couple of Substack authors who I think have great ideas but also big egos, and I think they do a disservice to their message by not consciously reigning in that part of themselves. Maybe it's an age thing, when life beats you over the head enough times humility becomes somewhat easier to incorporate...
Good post. I agree with pretty much all your points. However, I will do the exact same thing you mentioned in your post. And that is mention something you might have left out. Yes, the human experience is infinitely deep, and can't be summarized in a sentence or a paragraph or an entire book. However, I do suppose that if there exist an order to the universe, that that order can be understood. If that order can be understood, then there must be some derived truths we can presuppose as we continue exploring everything else. In our current day and age we have to continue reminding ourselves that mathematical truths are real, that there are historical truths, ect. And only from those starting point can we further investigate, or else everything is relative.