Karl Jaspers: Way to Wisdom (1951)

  What is philosophy?

What philosophy is and how much it is worth are matters of controversy. One may expect it to yield extraordinary revelations or one may view it with indifference as a thinking in the void. One may look upon it with awe as the meaningful endeavour of exceptional men or despise it as the superfluous broodings of dreamers. One may take the attitude that it is the concern of all men, and hence must be basically simple and intelligible, or one may think of it as hopelessly difficult. And indeed, what goes by the name of philosophy provides examples to warrant all these conflicting judgments. For the scientific-minded, the worst aspect of philosophy is that it produces no universally valid results; it provides nothing that we can know and thus possess. Whereas the sciences in their fields have gained compellingly certain and universally recognized insights, philosophy, despite thousands of years of endeavour, has done nothing of the sort. This is undeniable: in philosophy there is no generally accepted,definitive knowledge. Any insight which for cogent reasons is recognized by all has ipso facto become scientific knowledge and ceased to be philosophy; its relevance is limited to a special sphere of the knowable. Nor is philosophical thought, like the sciences,characterized by progressive development. Beyond any doubt, we are far more advanced than Hippocrates the Greek physician. But we are scarcely entitled to say that we have progressed beyond Plato. We have only advanced beyond his materials, beyond the scientific findings of which he made use. In philosophy itself we have scarcely regained his level.

It lies in the very nature of philosophy, as distinguished from the sciences, that in any of its forms it must dispense with the unanimous recognition of all. The certainty to which it aspires is not of the objective; scientific sort, which is the same for every mind; it is an inner certainty in which a man's whole being participates. Whereas science always pertains to particular objects, the knowledge of which is by no means indispensable to all men, philosophy deals with the whole of being, which concerns man as man, with a truth which, wherever it is manifested, moves us more deeply than any scientific knowledge.

Systematic philosophy is indeed bound up with the sciences. It always reckons with the most advanced scientific findings of its time. But essentially philosophy springs from a different source. It emerges before any science, wherever men achieve awareness. The existence of such a philosophy without science is revealed in several striking ways : 

First: In philosophical matters almost everyone believes himself capable of judgment. Whereas it is recognized that in the sciences study, training, method are indispensable to understanding, in philosophy men generally assume that they are competent to form an opinion without preliminary study. Our own humanity, our own destiny, our own experience strike (is as a sufficient basis for philosophical opinions. This notion that philosophy must be accessible to all is justified. The circuitous paths travelled by specialists in philosophy have meaning only if they lead man to  awareness of being and of his place in it.

Second: Philosophical thought must always spring from free creation. Every man must accomplish it for himself. A marvellous indication of man's innate disposition

of philosophy is to be found in the questions asked by children. It is not uncommon to hear from the mouths of children words which penetrate to the very depths

of philosophy. A few examples:

A child cries out in wonderment, "I keep trying to think that I am somebody else, but I'm always myself."This boy has touched on one of the universal sources of

certainty, awareness of being through awareness of self. He is perplexed at the mystery of his I, this mystery that can be apprehended through nothing

else. Questioningly, he stands before this ultimate reality.

Another boy hears the story of the Creation : In the beginning God made heaven and earth . . . and immediately asks, "What was before the beginning?"This child has sensed that there is no end to questioning, that there is no stopping place for the mind, that no conclusive answer is possible.

A little girl out walking in the woods with her father listens to his stories about the elves that dance in the clearings at night . . . "But there are no elves ..." Her father shifts over to realities, describes the motion of the sun, discusses the question of whether it is the sun or the earth that revolves, and explains the reasoning for supposing that the earth is round and rotates on its axis . . . "Oh, that isn't so," says the little girl and stamps her foot. "The earth stands still. I only believe what I see." "Then," says her father, "you don't believe in God, you can't see Him either." The little girl is puzzled for a moment, but then says with great assurance, "If there weren't any God, we wouldn't be here at all." This child was seized with the wonder of existence: things do not exist through themselves. And she understood that there is a difference between questions bearing on particular objects in the world and those bearing on our existence as a whole. 

Another little girl is climbing the stairs on her way to visit her aunt. She begins to reflect on how everything changes, flows, passes, as though it had never been!

"But there must be something that always stays the same . . . I'm climbing these stairs on my way to see my aunt” that's something I'll never forget." Wonderment and terror at the universal transience of things here seek a forlorn evasion.

Anyone who chose to collect these stories might compile a rich store of children's philosophy. It is sometimes said that the children must have heard all this from their parents or someone else, but such an objection obviously does not apply to the child's really serious questions. To argue that these children do not continue to philosophize and that consequently such utterances must be accidental is to overlook the fact that children often possess gifts which they lose as they grow up. With the years we seem to enter into a prison'of conventions and opinions, concealments and unquestioned acceptance, and there we lose the candour of

childhood. The child still reacts spontaneously to the spontaneity oflife; the child feels and sees and inquires into things which soon disappear from his vision. He

forgets what for a moment was revealed to him and is surprised when grownups later tell him what he said and what questions he asked.

Third : Spontaneous philosophy is found not only in children but also in the insane. Sometimes -raraely- the veils of universal occlusion seem to part and penetrating truths are manifested. The beginning of certain mental disorders is often distinguished by chattering metaphysical revelations, though they are usually formulated in terms that cannot achieve significance : exceptions are such cases as Holderlin and Van Gogh. But anyone witnessing these revelations cannot help feeling that the mists in which we ordinarily live our lives have been torn asunder. And many sane people have, in awaking from sleep, experienced strangely revealing insights which vanish with full wakefulness, leaving behind them only the impression that they can never be recaptured. There is profound meaning in the saying that children and fools tell the truth. But the creative originality to which we owe great philosophical ideas is not to be sought here but among those great minds, and in all history there have been only a few of them ,who preserve their candour and independence.

Fourth: Since man cannot avoid philosophy, it is always present: in the proverbs handed down by tradition, in popular philosophical phrases, in dominant convictions such as are embodied in the idiom of the emancipated, in political opinions, but most of all since the very beginnings of history, in myths. There is no escape from philosophy. The question is only whether a philosophy is conscious or not, whether it is good or bad, muddled or clear. Anyone who reject philosophy is himself unconsciously practising philosophy.  What then is this philosophy, which manifests itsell so universally and in such strange forms?

The Greek word for philosopher {philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures : the essence of philosophy is not the possession of truth but the search for truth, regardless of how many philosophers may belie it with their dogmatism, that is, with a body of didactic principles purporting to be definitive and complete. Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question. But this on-the-wayness- man's destiny in time- contains within it the possibility of deep satisfaction, and indeed, in exalted moments, of perfection. This perfection never resides in formulable knowledge, in dogmas and articles of faith, but in a historical consummation of man's essence in which being itself is revealed. To apprehend this reality in man's actual situation is the aim of philosophical endeavour.

To be searchingly on the way, or to find peace- and the fulfilment of the moment these are no definitions of philosophy. There is nothing above or beside philoophy. It cannot be derived from something else. Every philosophy defines itself by its realization. We can determine the nature of philosophy only by actually experiencing it. Philosophy then becomes the realizition of the living idea and the reflection upon this idea, action and discourse on action in one. Only (???) thus experiencing philosophy for ourselves can we understand previously formulated philosophical thought.

But we can define the nature of philosophy in other ways. No formula can exhaust its meaning and none can be exclusive. In antiquity philosophy was defined by its object) as the knowledge of things divine and human, the knowledge of being as being, or it was defined (by its aim) as learning how to die, as the striving for happiness by the exercise of thought; as an endeavour to resemble the divine; and finally (in the broadest sense) as the knowledge of all knowledge, the art of all arts, as the science  confined- to no particular field.

Today perhaps we may speak of philosophy in the following terms ; its aim is to find reality in the primal source; to apprehend reality in my thinking attitude toward

myself, in my inner acts; to open man to the comprehensive in all its scope; to attempt the communication of every aspect of truth from man to man, in loving contest; patiently and unremittingly to sustain the vigilance of reason in the presence of failure and in the presence of that which seems alien to it. Philosophy is the principle of concentration throught which man becomes himself, by partaking of reality. 

Although philosophy, in the form of simple, stirring: ideas, can move every man and even children, its conscious elaboration is never complete, must forever be

undertaken anew and must at all times be approached! as a living whole, it is manifested in the works of the great philosophers and echoed in the lesser philo-

sophers. It is a task which man will face in one form or another as long as he remains man.Today, and not for the first time, philosophy is radically attacked and totally rejected as superfluousi, or harmful. What is the good of it? It does not help us in affliction.

Authoritarian church thought has condemned independent philosophy on the ground that it is a worldly temptation which leads man away from God, destroys his soul with vain preoccupations. Political totalitarianism has attacked it on the ground that philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways, when the important thing was to change it. Both these schools of thought regarded philosophy as dangerous, for it undermined order, promoted a spirit of independence, hence of revolt, deluded man and distracted him from his practical tasks. Those who uphold another world illumined by a revealed God and those who stand for the exclusive power of a godless here and now would equally wish to extinguish philosophy.

And everyday common sense clamours for the simple yardstick of utility, measured by which philosophy gain fails. Thales, who is regarded as the first of Greek

philosophers, was ridiculed by a slave girl who saw him fall into a well while observing the sky. Why does he search the remote heavens when he is so awkward in his dealings with the things of this world? Must philosophy then justify itself? That is imossible. It cannot justify itself on the basis of a something else for which it is useful. It can only appeal to the forces in every man which drive him toward philophical thought. It is a disinterested pursuit, to which questions of utility, or injuriousness have no relevance, an endeavour proper to man as man, and it will 
continue to fulfil this striving as long as there are men alive. Even those groups which are hostile to it cannot help harbouring their own peculiar ideas and bringing forth pragmatic systems which are a substitute for philosophy, though subservient to a desired end - such as Marxism or fascism. The existence of even these systems shows how indispensable philosophy is to man.

Philosophy is always with us. Philosophy cannot fight, it cannot prove its truth, but it can communicate itself. It offers no resistance where it is rejected, it does not triumph where it gains a hearing. It is a living expression of the basic universality of man, of the bond between all men. Great systematic philosophies have existed for two and one-half millennia in the West, in China, and in India. A great tradition beckons to us. Despite the wide variety of philosophical thought, despite all the

contradictions and mutually exclusive claims to truth, there is in all philosophy a One, which no man possesses but about which all serious efforts have at all times gravitated: the one eternal philosophy, the philosophia perennis. We must seek this historical foundation of our thinking if we would think clearly and

meaningfully.

                                                                       

                                                                                 Translated by Ralph Manheim