Search for the ​Arche The Western discussion of philosophy began

1 Search for the ​Arche The Western discussion of philosophy began with the talk of first principles. The concept of the ​arche​ has dominated; in fact, it very much continues to influence and guide philosophical discourse with regards to the pursuit of knowledge as the pursuit of Truth. The sweeping breadth of this discourse is evidenced by the many Ancient works which have outlined complex systems for attaining both. While curiosity and motivation are two valuable traits, I believe that, in this case, they have resulted in the framing of Truth as something which human beings can strive to understand, but something which exists independently of us, and that we must then endeavor to discover or covet. Additionally, there is the Skeptical school of thought, which frames natural variation among individual perceptions as flaws which hopelessly bar human beings from “really” seeing what is in front of them. Again, while a healthy dose of Skepticism is necessary in any philosophical endeavor, I think framing variation as imperfection again places us at a disadvantage. Further, these ideas have persisted throughout the ongoing trans­historical exchanges that characterize philosophy, and thus have not been examined with the same critical lens its successors have. I characterize this as a misstep, an oversight on the part of philosophy, and one which has limited the scope of what individuals think of as possible, including truth, its pursuit, and the capabilities of humanity to understand the world in which we exist. However, this misstep not without value. I think examining how this oversight was allowed to occur, and why it was ignored, could reveal insight into why humanity continues the search for something which will give us comfort, something which contains “the answers,” and why we have framed Truth as 2 having these qualities in the first place. We have turned Truth into something we want to find, and we have been (in my opinion) searching for that something in all the wrong places. Early philosophical ideas are evidence of human curiosity: they show early philosophers grasping at the world around them, trying to find a way to understand it. This is no doubt integral to philosophy’s development, but I believe through the cyclical nature of philosophical and meta­philosophical discourse, these early theories, rich with unexplored implications and grounded on untested assumptions, have been allowed to continue uncontested, so much so that traditional empirical methodologies developed around this idea ­ that the universe is external from oneself, objective and knowable (at least to some extent) to us. Plato does this in his discussion of Forms, pure concepts of things­in­themselves, an understanding of which is only capable through the means we have: by distilling many observations of varying instances of the same thing. Aristotle describes this process in terms of human memory: the process allows us to recognize consistent traits of various novel things and sort out unimportant contextual details from the “essence” of the thing. In other words, to find the Forms. As such, subsequent schools of thought, like Skepticism, criticized the process of such a distillation. It does not acknowledge various factors of human cognition and perception which will affect the formation of such concepts. Additionally, it seems a bit circular to establish the Forms through induction while also using them as standards by which to evaluate and classify novel things. While I believe this to be a valuable move, I think the Skeptic’s tendency to blame individual differences between structured human experiences as “distorting” something that exists outside of their perception wrongly frames these faculties as possessing shortcomings. These shortcomings are viewed as the source of anxiety about the inability to adequately 3 perceive external existence (the “thing in itself”). Once the first cause has been uncovered, it will not be the thing that can replace the nebulous uncertainty that comes with existence. As such, we will never be able to alleviate the source of our existential anxiety permanently; we must instead perpetually be stuck employing modes of ​epoche​ ad nauseam. This is as self­defeating as the circular induction problem. Further, this fear has been allowed to guide the search for knowledge, causing an eager acceptance of anything anyone labels as “Truth,” and thus has led people who are searching to believe in questionable sources for knowledge. Whenever discussion centers upon epistemology, it is inevitable that one discusses authority as well. Who officiates the standard empirical methodologies used to discover things? From where or whom do the Forms acquire authority? To answer these questions, it is necessary to further break down “authority” itself. Although the thinkers whose works are referenced here precede this idea, Max Weber’s tripartite model of authority, which has become one of the fundamental tenets of social theory (and eventually sociology), provides a useful framework for breaking down the concept of authority. Weber classifies three types of authority: charismatic, traditional, and legal­rational. Charismatic authority refers to the individual’s power to persuade others, whereas traditional authority is gleaned from history, and legal­rational authority, which describes the type of power exerted by an individual as a result of one’s position or legal office. Although Weber’s model separates authority into three types, any authoritative institution or individual will typically have a combination of them. Charismatic authority is one of the most important focuses of philosophy and the social sciences: how the individual handles this authority, how they handle the weight of responsibility that comes with it, ways in which individuals subvert or undermine their own personal authority 4 and why, what causes individuals to relinquish their authority to others, and the list continues. It is obvious now that human freedom and authority are intertwined. Always loyal in some sense to my analytic roots (which grew into my interest in philosophy), I see value in pursuing truth and knowledge about existence, but at the same time I am unable to ignore the alarming implication this particular method has about authority. When philosophers place Truth as something existing entirely independently of themselves, that implies that an understanding of such is beyond the reach of humanity. Furthermore, viewing the pursuers of knowledge and knowledge itself as being discrete, separate portions of existence, rather than intimately interconnected and contingent, frames the whole epistemological process in a very specific, narrow, way: the only type of knowledge we can hope to glean from our pursuits is completely decontextualized, discrete “Forms.” Since human experience is not structured in such a way, and our first­person perspectives render any type of knowledge from an omniscient perspective unintelligible, these Forms are no more useful to us than a paddle in the ocean without the boat. Since humans cannot understand or really access this pure, conceptual world (which requires one to step outside of their perspective), we cannot come to know or own the very things which we have given power over us, and thus allows a ruthless undermining of the authority of the individual. In Skepticism, this implication is clearly illustrated. In order to attain freedom from anxiety, one must perpetually engage modes of ​epoche​, or disbelief. All modes rely upon the various “flaws” which arise in the act of perceiving reality, in reality itself, and in the relationship between the observer and reality. In doing so, Skeptics claim to be journeying towards the attainment of truth by eliminating false assumptions about appearances. However, 5 the methods do not seem to align with the goal: classifying perceptual variations as flaws and thus using them to delegitimize generalizing statements (which were formed using an aggregate of individual experiences) does not facilitate in the least the formation of different “ways of knowing.” The individual Skeptic bows under the weight of his anxiety, and thus relinquishes his authority by undermining the only tools he has to make sense of existence. In trying to understand something unintelligible, the Skeptics wrongfully turned their doubt inward, and found fault in themselves, which gives rise to some of the more obvious and common objections to it (because the Skeptic must always be doubting himself, and that doubt, ad nauseam). They question everything, including themselves, and their own questioning, but they have never seemed to question the conception of Truth at all. The almost blind devotion to uncovering first principles, which is present in the pre­Socratics and Aristotle alike is misdirected in a similar way. Once the first cause has been uncovered, it will not be the thing that will replace the nebulous uncertainty that comes with existence (and as such we will never be able to alleviate the source of our existential anxiety). Echoing the sentiment of Hegel and other Modern thinkers, self­conscious human freedom is uncircumventable: any relief is temporary and unsustainable. This recurrent theme which in some ways characterizes Modernist thought can be said to have origins in the shift in authority which served as the catalyst for the movement itself. When analyzing philosophy as a historical progression, the chronology is divided into three main periods: premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism. In addition to having differing approaches to the world and philosophy, these periods can also be characterized by differences in authority. Premodernism generally focused upon the attainment of objective knowledge which was held by some external (often divine) source of authority, and was revealed 6 to individuals through “revelation.” The popular conception of human existence was existence as facilitated and controlled to a certain degree by some higher power. People placed authority in this higher power, but more specifically in the earthly manifestations of such: the Church (which had the revealed knowledge), or individuals who had been “given” this knowledge, such as the “divine right” afforded to kings. Postmodernism reevaluates and revisits old ways of knowing, including the methods one uses to know. In this case, authority is directly being deconstructed and undermined through the inclusion of various methodologies available for “knowing.” It is not clear who holds authority anymore, but authority at this point is met with distrust, so there is a tendency to diversify ways of knowing in order to avoid concentrating authority in any one area. If there are many avenues of pursuit and many things to pursue, none of them will prevail over the others. Modernism is the link, the stepping stone from divinity to diversity: between the blind faith acceptance of some external authority and the complete deconstruction of traditional authority. Thus, in Modernism, one can find the catalyst for this change, and follow its progression. The movement is characterized by a lack of reassurance found in tradition, and thus the idea that everything (including Modernism itself) requires some kind of internal justification for its existence is paramount. Vestiges of the Church’s power still remain, but power is now thought to be held in the governing institutions which rule the people, and in academia, which holds knowledge. There is a recurrent theme in works during the period of experiencing negative emotions as a result of navigating existence and having to bear the consequences of one’s own actions, whether these feelings are specified as guilt, anxiety, or otherwise. This existential 7 anxiety has a profound influence in determining not only one’s actions, but also how one deals with authority. In one of my previous essays I drew a comparison between Kant’s view of reality and the Skeptical motivation for employing doubt. Specifically, I was writing about Kant’s assertion that humans are self­conscious beings, and each individual’s self­consciousness is what mediates their experience of the world. In other words, humans cannot escape their perspectives: to extract the self from any of the self’s experiences is impossible. This conclusion is generally drawn by Skeptics as well, which is what inspired the modes of ​epoche ​in the first place, but they stop where Kant continues on. Instead of characterizing these natural differences of perception as hopelessly unavoidable flaws, Kant sees something more positive. According to Kant, objects exist in the world, and individuals see them. In seeing them, the individual does not just passively accept the object: seeing is a complex activity. Once she sees an object, she then takes that information beyond just acknowledging the existence of the object. Like Aristotle outlined in his ​Metaphysics​, one takes one’s mental representation of the object, which was shaped by the cognitive faculties of the perceiving individual, and compares the object to other things the individual has experienced. These associations between experiences gives rise to concepts, and these concepts are used as a basic framework for how the individual characterizes, perceives, and interprets experiences. This ability to establish general rules and observations about reality arises from cognitive commonalities shared by most humans; humans shape their reality via perception just as human evolution was shaped by the external environment. 8 However, to classify the human and her environment as separate entities ­ or worse, as opposites in a binary ­ is already forcing the situation to be read in a certain context. This context was projected, given; it was not organic, just as the classifications humans create (and arguably, by extension, the Forms themselves) are not naturally found in nature. Even Aristotle’s process of memory requires us to “strip away” the “extraneous” details of something’s existence. I argue that nothing about the existence of an object is extraneous ­ if the concept of the object does not fully embody the essence of that object, then it is the concept which is the problem. However to clarify, I do not think the existence of an object in entirely contingent, although I think that part of the essential nature of an object is its relationship to the world, the observer, and other objects in reality. Taking apart a motor to look for the motor seems counterintuitive, and perhaps this self­defeating exercise is more to blame for anxiety, as it leaves the individual powerless to mitigate the “distortion” effects of their own perspective. The Skeptics are too eager to attain relief from their anxiety, and they ignore the awesome power which comes with the ability to engage and utilize these cognitive faculties; a power onto which many Modernist thinkers place a great deal of significance. Instead of creating larger problems by applying inadequate, short term solutions to an unavoidable, long term issue, Modernists identify human freedom and autonomy as the source of individual authority; Kant suggests that the ability to engage in doubt, to step back and critically analyze the situation (a quality which the Skeptics heartily advocated for), is evidence of the authority of the individual to assess her surroundings and from that, her cognitive faculties to aggregate similar experiences together to form basic concepts around which like­minded people can rally. 9 This process is exactly how Aristotle speaks of establishing an ethical system in his Nicomachean Ethics​. Because human beings are capable of being virtuous (engaging in the rational process of comparing two different things and finding a common ground between them), they are able to make decisions about how to act in given situations based on their experience, and thus they are capable of taking this general formula of decisions and actions and turning it into a system by which they can achieve a goal. The common theme in both Aristotle and Kant is that commonality in the possession of reason facilitates the creation of communities on the basis of similar experiences and thus similar ways of construing the world. Additionally, having reason seems to be inextricably tied to fully realizing one’s freedom. On matters of existence, I think it is necessary to constantly be aware of one’s perspective, and how different this is from other individuals. Ignoring biases of perspective does not erase them; it merely makes any subsequent assertions as weak and as narrowly applicable as one’s own perspective to another’s. What do we gain from chasing theories about external “first principles” when we have a world in which we are our own first principles? Without the self, there is nothing which is experiencing; there is no perception and thus no engagement of any processing faculties of any kind. Without you, your construal of reality cannot exist. Thus, it seems like it would make more sense to focus on our perception, which guides us, orients us, and constructs the reality which we perceive, and using this unique perspective along with our innate rational abilities to come to a functional understanding of existence. We must revisit not only our epistemological methods for the pursuit of knowledge; we must revisit the end goal ­ and the act of pursuit itself. We must revisit our characterizations of the things we now call “truth,” 10 “knowledge,” and “authority,” because these things have led us on a search for something that we embellished and imagined in the first place. Being antagonistic towards any suggestion of uncertainty or insecurity when we are entirely surrounded by chaos is merely a defense against the anxiety and dread that occur when confronting the responsibility that is the cost of freedom. The solution to this situation is not to see anxiety as something one can get rid of, and at the risk of sounding like a masochistic Existentialist, that anxiety is a constant reminder of our existence as free, rational agents in the world. From Rollo May’s book, ​The Meaning of Anxiety ​(1977), he says: Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities...— one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever. Now creating, actualizing one’s possibilities, always involves negative as well as positive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living. I could not imagine a situation in which giving up that freedom, relinquishing one’s individual authority in order to feel comfort has ever ended well. Instead, individuals should take full ownership of their freedom: fully explore the world and in doing so, shape it. Ancient philosophy has remained as startlingly relevant as it has for so long because the problems that keep coming up are the same ones in different forms. As such, the act of philosophizing becomes a discursive process of constantly looking back for reassurance and finding comfort in the familiar, and then moving hesitantly forward. This is why the relevance of ancient philosophy today can be considered a warning sign: are philosophers placing too much faith in the authority held by the historical philosophical tradition? It is not to say that philosophy should ignore its past and its roots, but rather not be tethered to them, and to allow oneself to 11 escape to the nostalgic comfort of old methods, ideas, and goals. Rather, learn them, acknowledge them, and then move forward into uncharted territory. The search for the ​arche​ should not be blind grasping upward or outward into the unintelligible unknown, rather it should be grounding oneself in one’s own freedom and using it to navigate, shape, and learn about existence. Pursuing knowledge and truth as though they are only externally found and validated, to set something apart as a pure conceptual Form from existence overall, to ignore or attempt to erase all the “extraneous” details that embody human existence is to undermine the value and richness of human experience. That is not to say that metaphysics is irrelevant or unimportant, rather that we must revisit our methods, our goals, and our actions taken in trying to understand existence. Tap into the intense curiosity and determination that characterized the Skeptics’ doubt, and do not look to mitigate anxiety, because without anxiety, there is no possibility.