Do you sometimes ask, what can we know? Is there any truth that we can believe? Is a statement true only if it is based on what our senses tell you, on what you can see or touch? But is there any guarantee that what we observe by our senses can establish truth about the world? Is truth eternal and absolute, as some philosophies and all the great religions say, or can truth be subject to change? The sciences, which are largely based on observations by the senses, are constantly changing, revising themselves, contradicting themselves, producing more and more humbers, charts, and computer printouts, and more and more experimentation with electrons and rats. Is science true? Or shall we turn for truth to the great religions of the Judeo-Christian tradition? Or to the great philosophies of the Western world? The defenders of science sneer at both religion and philosophy in their claims to truth, and insist that there is no other truth than what science provides. As for the religions and the philosophies, they not only are attacked and condemned by the defenders of science but they also attack each other. Do you then ask what can we know, what is truth? These are the questions that philosophy also asks. Theory of knowledge or epistemology asks: What is mere opinion and what is truth? Does true knowledge have its source in observation by the senses or in human reason or in supernatural being? Is truth fixed, eternal, absolute, or is truth changing and relative? Are there limits to what we can know? These are the questions of the branch of philosophy called theory of knowledge or epistemology.
Do you sometimes ask, why should I be moral? Do you often notice that among the people you know the righteous and good people seem to suffer all kinds of grief, that their lives are lived in frustration and despair, and that often it is the selfish and the cheats who are prosperous and happy? Why not, then, live the playboy life, in which pleasure is the highest good - the life of pleasurable indulgence in food and drink and sex and drugs and sleep and all the titillations of the body that can be produced? But if the life of pleasure cannot be defended as ultimately good, then do you ask what after all is ultimately good, worth living for, worth fighting for? What, if anything, can be said at the present time to be right or wrong? What standards are there to judge that an act is wrong? Many people ask "Who is to say?" They are expressing a widespread public opinion that we have no justifiable grounds for our moral judgments, and therefore that no one can "say" that an action is wrong. Are all standards of what is right or wrong, what constitutes a good personal life or a good society, merely relative to the individual person or to a particular social group, expressing nothing more than habit or prejudice, and serving individual or group interests and needs? These are the questions of the branch of philosophy called ethics. Ethics asks: Is there a highest good for human beings, an absolute good? What is the meaning of right and wrong in buman action? What are our obligations? And why should we be moral?
Do you sometimes ask, what is the best kind of government? Is democracy the best form of government in the world today? Is communist totalitarianism the worst? What principles of justice, truth, freedom, equality do democracy and totalitarianism appeal to in order to justify their forms of government? Do principles of justice, truth, freedom, equality, have any firm, qualtifiable meaning or are they only high-sounding, inflammatory words which propagandists for democracy, dictatorships, and totalitarian governments use in order to manipulate and control us? Today governments of the Western world face serious problems which have been generated by nuclear weapons, overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources like oil and coal, the pollution of air and water, and economic inflation. Our governments are confronted by these problems as well as by the problems of maintaining health care, welfare, social security, public education, military defense, and a tax structure, and as a result they have assumed an increasingly large role in our lives. A crucial question that we cannot help asking now is, how much control should government have over the lives of its citizens? What is the function of government - is it to protect our equal opportunity or is it to provide equal welfare to all? Political philosophy is the branch of philosophy which asks all these questions: What is the best form of government? What are the principles which justify government? Who should have power or control and how is this justified? What are the proper functions of government?
Do you sometimes ask, does human history have any meaning? Does the history of human beings in the world have any purpose, does it show any pattern? Or are the generations upon generations of human beings - with all their activities, beliefs, and hopes - only a meaningless scurrying about, an empty chatter, soon dust into meaningless dust? The hopes and struggles of individual men and women soon come to nothing. The rise of great nations seems inevitably to lead to their decline and fall (one thinks of the fall of the Mayan civilization of Central America, or of the decline and fall of ancient Rome). Can you bear the torture of thinking about the miseries and frustrations that are the repeated events of personal history and of world history? Does history have any significance that can justify its endless horrors and frustrations? Do you ask these questions about history? These are also phylosophy's questions. These are the questions of the branch of philosophy called philosophy of history.
Do you sometimes ask, how sound are the arguments with which economists, politicians, theologians, philosophers, journalists, attempt to convince you of their views? Are you also concerned about the soundness of your own arguments? What are the principles of valid reasoning? How can one recognize reasoning which is not valid? What are the criteria of correct or valid inference? Are there various types of errors in reasoning which can be identified? These are the kinds of questions which is the branch of philosophy called logic asks. You ask all of these questions sometimes, but are they not always somewhere in the back of your mind, are they not always simmering away slowly on a back burner? Someday you will find that they are no longer simmering but have suddenly burst into flame. These questions may be thought of in yet another way - as figures who are standing offstage in the darkness of the wings. But there are times when they come to the front of the stage and shout and scream at you. They will scream their importance on the center of the stage when you have a personal crisis or when your whole society is in crisis and a revolution seems about to break out. Sometimes they will come to the fore even if there is no crisis in your life, but when you suddenly feel that you have lost your bearings, that you don't know what to believe any more, and that you have a sense of vast inner emptiness, a sense of nothingness. These questions will then thunder loudly in that emptiness within you. But in no case will these questions go away. As long as you live, they never go away. Time will not banish them or get rid of them for you. They can't be ruled out of your thoughts, by you or anyone else. Philosophy is there to help us shed some light on these questions but it can in no way solve them all if at all. But once it is beyond the shadow of any doubt the most fascinating field of inquiry we're invited to delve in and probe and who knows what we will encounter at the end of the tunnel: a divine light that will reveal it all to us or more darkness to baffle our minds?
Toronto, November 2000
