A Brief History of Thought - Luc Ferry

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First and foremost, because the promise of religions – that we are immortal and will encounter our loved ones after our own biological demise – is too good to be true. Similarly hard to believe is the image of a God who acts as a father to his children. How can one reconcile this with the appalling massacres and misfortunes which overwhelm humanity: what father would abandon his children to the horror of Auschwitz, or Rwanda, or Cambodia? A believer will doubtless respond that that is the price of freedom, that God created men as equals and evil must be laid at their door. But what about the innocent? What about the countless children martyred in the course of these crimes against humanity? A philosopher begins to doubt that the religious answers are adequate. (Undoubtedly this argument engages only with the popular image of religion, but this is nonetheless the most widespread and influential version available.) Almost invariably the philosopher comes to think that belief in God, which usually arises as an indirect consequence, in the guise of consolation, perhaps makes us lose in clarity what we gain in serenity. He respects all believers, it goes without saying. He does not claim that they are necessarily wrong, that their faith is absurd, or that the non-existence of God is a certainty. (How would one set about proving that God does not exist?) Simply, that in his case there is a failure of faith; therefore he must look elsewhere.

      Wellbeing is not the only ideal in life. Freedom is another. And if religion calms anguish by making death into an illusion, it risks doing so at the price of freedom of thought. For it demands, more or less, that we abandon reason and the enquiring spirit in return for faith and serenity. It asks that we conduct ourselves, before God, like little children, not as curious adults.

      Ultimately, to philosophise, rather than take on trust, is to prefer lucidity to comfort, freedom rather than faith. It also means, of course, ‘saving one’s skin’, but not at any price. You might ask, if philosophy is essentially a quest for a good life beyond the confines of religion – a search for salvation without God – why is it so frequently presented in books as the art of right-thinking, as the exercise of the critical faculty and freedom of conscience? Why, in civic life, on television and in the press, is philosophy so often reduced to moral engagement, casting the vote for justice and against injustice? The philosopher is portrayed as someone who understands things as they are, who questions the evils of the day. What are we to make of the intellectual and moral life, and how do we reconcile these imperatives with the definition of philosophy I have just outlined?

       The Three Dimensions of Philosophy

      If the quest for a salvation without God is at the heart of every great philosophical system, and that is its essential and ultimate objective, it cannot be accomplished without deep reflection upon reality, or things as they are – what is ordinarily called ‘theory’ – and consideration of what must be or what ought to be – which is referred to as ‘morals’ or ‘ethics’.

      (Note: ‘Morals’ and ‘ethics’: what difference is there between these terms? The simplest answer is: none whatsoever. The term ‘morals’ derives from the Latin word for ‘manners, customs’, and ‘ethics’ derives from the Greek term for ‘manners, customs’. They are therefore perfectly synonymous. Having said this, some philo sophers have assigned different meanings to the two terms. In Kant, for example, ‘morals’ designates the ensemble of first principles, and ‘ethics’ refers to their application. Other philosophers refer to ‘morals’ as the theory of duties towards others, and to ‘ethics’ as the doctrine of salvation and wisdom. Indeed, there is no reason why different meanings should not be assigned to these terms, but, unless I indicate otherwise, I shall use them synonymously in the following pages.)

      If philosophy, like religion, has its deepest roots in human ‘finiteness’ – the fact that for us mortals time is limited, and that we are the only beings in this world to be fully aware of this fact – it goes without saying that the question of what to do with our time cannot be avoided. As distinct from trees, oysters and rabbits, we think constantly about our relationship to time: about how we are going to spend the next hour or this evening, or the coming year. And sooner or later we are confronted – sometimes due to a sudden event that breaks our daily routine – with the question of what we are doing, what we should be doing, and what we must be doing with our lives – our time – as a whole.

      This combination of the fact of mortality with our awareness of mortality contains all the questions of philosophy. The philosopher is principally not someone who believes that we are here as ‘tourists’, to amuse ourselves. Even if he does come to believe that amusement alone is worth experiencing, it will at least be the result of a process of thought, a reflection rather than a reflex. This thought process has three distinct stages: a theoretical stage, a moral or ethical stage, and a crowning conclusion as to salvation or wisdom.

      The first task of philosophy is that of theory, an attempt to gain a sense of the world in which we live. Is it hostile or friendly, dangerous or docile, ordered or chaotic, mysterious or intelligible, beautiful or ugly? Any philosophy therefore takes as its starting point the natural sciences which reveal the structure of the universe – physics, mathematics, biology, and so on – and the disciplines which enlighten us about the history of the planet as well as our own origins. ‘Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here,’ said Plato to his students, referring to his school, the Academy; and thereafter no philosophy has ever seriously proposed to ignore scientific knowledge. But philosophy goes further and examines the means by which we acquire such knowledge. Philosophy attempts to define the nature of knowledge and to understand its methods (for example, how do we establish the causes of a natural phenomenon?) and its limits (for example, can one prove, yes or no, the existence of God?).

      These two questions – the nature of the world, and the instruments for understanding it at our disposal as humans – constitute the essentials of the theoretical aspect of philosophy.

      Besides our knowledge of the world and of its history, we must also interest ourselves in other people – those with whom we are going to share this existence. For not only are we not alone, but we could not be born and survive without the help of others, starting with our parents. How do we co-exist with others, what rules of the game must we learn, and how should we conduct ourselves – to be helpful, dignified and ‘fair’ in our dealings with others? This question is addressed by the second part of philosophy; the part which is not theoretical but practical, and which broadly concerns ethics.

      But why should we learn about the world and its history, why bother trying to live in harmony with others? What is the point of all this effort? And does it have to make sense? These questions, and some others of a similar nature, bring us to the third dimension of philosophy, which touches upon the ultimate question of salvation or wisdom. If philosophy is the ‘love’ (philo) of ‘wisdom’ (sophia), it is at this point that it must make way for wisdom, which surpasses all philosophical understanding. To be a sage, by definition, is neither to aspire to wisdom or seek the condition of being a sage, but simply to live wisely, contentedly and as freely as possible, having finally overcome the fears sparked in us by our own finiteness.

      I am aware this is becoming rather abstract, so I would like to offer some examples of the three aspects I have touched upon – theory, ethics and the quest for salvation or wisdom – in action.

      The best course is therefore to plunge into the heart of the matter, to begin at the beginning; namely the philosophical schools which flourished in Greek antiquity. Let’s consider the case of the first of the great philosophical movements, which passes through Plato and Aristotle to find its most perfected – or at least its most ‘popular’ – form in Stoicism. This is our way into our subject, after which we can explore the other major epochs in philosophy. We must also try to understand why and how men pass from one model of reality to another. Is it because the accepted version no longer satisfies, no longer convinces? After all, several versions of reality are inherently plausible.

      You must understand that philosophy is an art not of questions but rather of answers. And as you are going to judge these things for yourself – this being another crucial promise of philosophy, because it is not religion, because it

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