Get a Grip on Philosophy: New Edition

By Neil Turnbull

Don't know Socrates from Sartre? Can't handle Kant? This lively introduction traces the history of Western philosophy, from the works of Plato and Aristotle to those of Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault. Easy-to-understand explanations cover all branches of philosophy, illustrating changing interpretations of the meaning of life and outlining key ideas of famous thinkers.
Author Neil Turnbull offers memorable examples and analogies, injecting a playful modern tone into potentially obscure subjects. Loaded with sidebars, comic illustrations, and bulleted points, the book's reader-friendly format offers digestible portions from a banquet of philosophical traditions, including thought-provoking tastes of works by Aquinas, Descartes, Wittgenstein, Hume, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Dec 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9780486783246

Book preview

PHILOSOPHY

Get a Grip on

PHILOSOPHY

NEIL

TURNBULL

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

MINEOLA, NEW YORK

Copyright

Copyright © 1999, 2013 by Neil Turnbull

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2013, is a revised and corrected republication of the work originally published in 1999 by The Ivy Press Limited, East Sussex, England.

International Standard Book Number

eISBN-13: 978-0-486-78324-6

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

49737201 2013

www.doverpublications.com

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE DOVER EDITION

INTRODUCTION

The Question of Philosophy

CHAPTER 1

Magic and Metaphysics

CHAPTER 2

Truth and Opinion

CHAPTER 3

God and the Universe

CHAPTER 4

The Rise of the Technocrats

CHAPTER 5

Romantics and Revolutionaries

CHAPTER 6

Endgames

CHAPTER 7

The Return of the Good

INDEX

get a grip on

PHILOSOPHY

PREFACE TO THE DOVER EDITION

  I wrote this book in three weeks in early 1998. It was written for mercenary reasons, but I was badly broke and desperately needed the cash and was thankful for the work. I was instructed by the (initial) publishers not to go in to too much depth and to make the discussion as light, amusing, and accessible as possible. The idea was to produce something quickly and in a way that was likely to engage with the ‘population at large.’ However, such haste typically generates a surfeit of errors and many of these, as well as the other infelicities contained in the first edition, weighed on my mind for many years afterwards.

  As such, I am very relieved to be able to correct my earlier mistakes in this edition. Many people seemed to enjoy the first edition; I just hope that they didn’t enjoy the bits of the book that were amusing but mistaken! Also, I am grateful for the opportunity to revise this book because since 1998 I have changed my mind on how we need to understand the overall significance of the western philosophical tradition. At the time, like many others, I was under the spell of Heidegger and I moved along with his hostility to Platonism in full throttle. However, the passage of time has led me to conclude that Heidegger’s philosophy is an ethically dubious dead-end. Also, I have become much more appreciative of the philosophical importance and sophistication of the mediaeval era and I am now aware that philosophy without an engagement with Judeo-Christian thought only takes thought -and life more generally - so far.

  I have tried to keep to the populist spirit of the original book. I still believe that philosophy should be accessible and that it cannot be understood as privileged outlook of a philosophical elite. So I hope that people find this book as accessible as the first. I have retained most of the jokes, many of which are ‘groansome,’ as this seemed to retain something of the books original irreverent vibe. I also, despite some criticisms, believe that the characterization of the history of the subject as a conflict between authentic philosophers, technocrats and philistines, although a simplification, is a very useful term of art in pedagogic contexts, especially those that express a popular-cultural dimension.

  Thanks to everyone who read the first edition. Hopefully this edition will spark a younger crowd’s interest in philosophy and a new yearning to philosophize.

INTRODUCTION

THE QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHY

  Philosophy, in its simplest sense, is all about asking questions. Not ‘any old questions’ however, but questions that seem to possess what we might term ‘an absolute significance’ that cannot be surpassed by any other kind of thought. Philosophical questions are grounded in a basic kind of experience that philosophers term wonderment, and to be a philosopher you must be prepared to be wonderstruck by things that most people just take for granted. People have been doing philosophy at least as Westerners have understood it for nearly 3,000 years. This is really quite an amazing length of time, especially given that the lifecycle of many academic subjects today is only around 50-100 years. However, we need to consider here the precise nature of the questions that philosophers ask, as well as the specific intellectual complexion of the answers that they have provided for us over the centuries. We also need to ponder where philosophical modes of questioning take us and why we should take them seriously. Thus when asking after the nature of philosophy we must start with the ‘question of the question,’ the question of what questions are and why we value them so highly.

philosophy in question

thoughts are more than small change—they’re the whole bank!

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Wisdom lovers

The meaning of the word philosophy is derived from two ancient Greek words; ‘philo’, meaning ‘to love’ and ‘sophia’, meaning ‘wisdom’. To pursue answers to philosophical questions means to court the love of wisdom, whatever that might be.

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HOMO CURIOSUS

  Questioning is a fundamental part of human life. It is in many ways an activity that is essential to our humanity, for the human being is essentially a questioning creature and, as far as we know, the only questioning creature. The need to find out more and look beyond the confinements of our current situation and explore ‘what lies beyond’ spurs us on to question received opinion and to discover new facts and ideas. This need is what makes human life more than the life of an animal. It also ensures that human life is always something between a test and an adventure in a way that guarantees that it is not only interesting and exciting but purposeful too. IMPORTANTLY, IT IS THIS BASIC SENSE OF CURIOSITY THAT UNDERLIES MUCH OF WHAT WE DO IN OUR DAY-TO-DAY LIVES

. It explains why we are interested in ‘news’ and ‘fashion’ and accounts for our desires to travel and explore new places and have new experiences. It also explains why our everyday lives are so concerned with posing questions of various kinds and with various degrees of difficulty. How much of an ordinary day is spent asking questions? Clearly, it is impossible to be mathematically precise about this matter. Questions, unlike monetary currencies, don’t come in small pocket-sized denominations and so they are very difficult to quantify. However, a moment’s reflection should tell us that we could not even function as an effective human being for as much as half of a day without asking a question and that a good deal of our waking lives is spent either asking questions or providing answers to them. Moreover, SOME OF OUR CLEAREST AND MOST USEFUL THOUGHTS EMERGE FROM QUESTIONING OURSELVES AND OUR IMMEDIATE PREOCCUPATION

—thus showing the extent to which questions are not only necessary but of real significance to the way in which we view ourselves and our world.

is it a crutch?

CURIOSITY:

a basic human need to know more about themselves and their surroundings

QUESTIONS:

ideas that guide our basic curiosity towards answers

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Innate curiosity

Although, according to mythology, it was Pandora’s curiosity that unleashed all the malignant ills of the world, it is now widely agreed that there can be no human progress without a questioning attitude towards the world.

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget argued that all our mature adult knowledge about the world is founded upon a basic curiosity about our surroundings; therefore without curiosity humans would remain in a state of ignorance.

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TYPES OF QUESTIONS

  Most of the day-to-day questions that typically occupy us are SO UNEXCEPTIONAL

that they usually pass unnoticed. These questions are typically quite trivial – ‘where’s my toothbrush?,’ ‘what time does the shop open?,’ ‘why is there so much traffic on the road today?’ are routine questions that all of us ask but are quickly forgotten in the maelstrom of modern existence. Moreover, as our minds today are often filled with desires and worries, hopes and doubts, most of the questions we ask are quickly forgotten in the emotional hurly-burly of our inner and outer worlds. However, if we stop for a moment we may be startled to realize that we often ask ourselves questions of some importance. For example, we may ask whether such and such a person is likely to win a political election, or whether a policy that such and such is promoting is right or wrong.

‘What time is it?’

DIFFERENT TYPES OF QUESTIONS

  So, before we go any further, it must be pointed out that there are questions and there are, well, questions. The reason for the difference in emphasis is a simple one; that the questions that tend to preoccupy us are not all of the same relative value. In fact, we should immediately recognize that some questions are simply much ‘larger’ than others and that we need to classify questions in terms of their overall ‘relevance’ and ‘scope.’ Put simply, some questions are vital whereas other questions are of no general consequence whatsoever.

left my watch at home guy

that was not a worthy question

ECONOMICS AND CARING FOR PETS

  So - some questions are big questions, but others are less so. How then to define a ‘big question?’ We can define big questions as those questions that, because they are more costly in terms of time, skill or effort to answer, offer us with potentially greater rewards when answers to them are found. For example, for this reason, the question, ‘How should the government ensure economic growth?’ is a much bigger question than ‘What should I feed my pet guinea pig?’

BIG QUESTIONS:

questions that because of their scale or scope require unusual ways of thinking to answer them

LITTLE QUESTIONS:

conventional questions that can be answered easily by using common-sense criteria

look after your pet guinea pig and let inflation worry about itself

  It is important to note that I am not suggesting that we should ALL CONCERN OURSELVES WITH THE QUESTION OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND NEGLECT TO FEED OUR GUINEA PIGS

. No, the precise point that I am trying to make is this: any way that allows us to answer the question of how a modern economy ought to be managed will necessarily involve and ‘implicate’ many more people and things than the one that allows us to answer how to best feed our pets. This complexity reflects the greater scope and depth of the first question – and in a way its overall importance to us as modern human beings.

WHO CAN ANSWER THE BIG QUESTIONS?

  In a sense, in the current market for questions, questions about pet cuisine are to be found in the intellectual cheap shops, alongside questions about the IDEAL MARTINI AND DO-IT-YOURSELF PAVING

. They are important in certain specific contexts but they possess no generality and as such they are dime-a-dozen questions whose answers are not in great demand.

  Moreover, big questions, because of their complexity, depth and scope, are often so costly to answer that when we need to answer them we usually defer to those who possess the requisite intellectual resources. These are usually the specialists (of various kinds) who possess the skills and information needed to answer them.

  Ordinarily, we lack such skills and information and it is this that prevents us from answering them for ourselves in any adequate way. In fact, some have defined the size of a question in terms of its ‘information content;’ to the extent that the bigger the question, the more intensive is the search for the relevant information required to answer it. This insight gives us another useful way of classifying questions.

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The big questions

For many of the big questions facing the world today, there seems to be no agreement as to how they should be answered. This means that big questions are often the source of bitter disputes between different powerful groups.

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what are the really big questions?

TECHNICAL QUESTIONS

  Let’s term questions that require special information-gathering procedures in order to answer them technical questions (scientific questions are just a sub-species of technical question in this regard). These questions are typically of such detail and complexity that they have traditionally required whole armies of fact-gathering and/or questionnaire-administering experts in order to answer them. This is simply a sociological fact about this kind of question; that they are often (and increasingly) the property of powerful experts to whose knowledge we immediately and unthinkingly bow. In fact, the dominance of technical expertise in modern life is another reason why we tend to dismiss our everyday modes of questioning as comparatively insignificant.

TECHNICAL QUESTIONS:

questions that require the systematic search for information in order to be answered

INFORMATION:

data that is easily coded into facts

EXPERTS:

those adept in finding answers to technical questions

big and little questions

EVERYDAY QUESTIONS

  Let’s term questions that can be answered without the deployment of such specialized information-gathering procedures everyday questions. Everyday questions come in various sizes, some are clearly very trivial, but others, as we will see, are very important to us and our sense of who we are and what we should do. Moreover, most of the questions that we ask are everyday questions; we only ask ourselves technical questions in very specific contexts. We have now made an important distinction, one that is crucial if we are to get a grip on the nature and purpose of philosophy. This is the distinction between the technical and the everyday.

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Different worlds

The questions and insights that emerge from our everyday lives are radically different from those that emerge from technical sciences. In fact, the world of science and the everyday world of common sense stand in antagonistic relation to each other, and science has historically attempted to correct the deficiencies of ordinary common sense. For example, because of science, we no longer believe the sun orbits the earth, despite appearances.

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QUESTIONS IN CONFLICT

  What I want to suggest here is that, to all intents and purposes, there are only two basic types of question: technical questions and everyday questions. Any question that is not a technical question is an everyday question (and vice versa). This way of analytically dividing questions mirrors the fact that the modern world is, sociologically speaking, divided into two mutually antagonistic cultures, the expert and the lay. For anybody to begin to understand philosophy they must first see that these two kinds of questions are, in some sense, in conflict with each other. Moreover, everyday questions are questions that we like to answer for ourselves: we usually get quite upset when others, especially experts, try to answer them for us.

will I ever be rich and famous?

THE POWER OF EXPERTS

  It is probably fair to say that the most significant faith of the modern world is the belief that its major problems can be solved by technical experts armed with their technical skills. This faith has its own priestly caste and as you might expect there is a central creed. In fact, we might say that for these high priests of modernity, its cognoscenti, the only important and significant questions of human life are technical questions. Technicality is in many ways a new species of the sacred for this sociological type - a type that is often referred to as the technocrat. Technocrats dismiss everyday knowledge as ignorant and significant only to the extent that it requires correcting, managing and controlling. Moreover, the technocrat is only interested in everyday questions that can be easily translated into everyday questions. However, thankfully most of us still feel that our everyday questions are significant (they remain significant to us, and just consider what it would be like to live in a world where the only questions were technical ones). And sometimes, now and again, everyday questions take on a scale and significance that seem to dwarf all other questions, even technical ones, completely.

‘Will the polar ice caps melt due to global warming?’

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Power games

Many

Reviews for Get a Grip on Philosophy

[joririchardson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book, approaching the subject of philosophy in an entertaining, unfazing manner, covers the basics of the field. I would say that it is written for high schoolers.Personally, I did not enjoy this book very much, but for beginners, or people who do not know much about philosophy, this is a good book to peak your interest.I just felt that it was approached too lightly for me to learn anything new from it, and the attempted comedy, which got old very quickly, I found annoying.