THE PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER'S DILEMMA!

The Philosopher’s Dilemma

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 2005

A philosopher and an oyster have each their respective stations. The oyster fulfills the law of his existence (whatever it be) as long as he lives, and at length for the nourishment of the philosopher. The philosopher leads a life of learned ease, which he employs in ingeniously arguing (or attempting to argue) away the first instinctive principles of nature, reason, faith, and religion.

Charles Moore (1790)

Philosophers, unlike scientists in general, tend to show rather than to hide their feelings, that is, in the era of Hume, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Robeck, Montaigne and Donne. When mathematicians and scientists moved from their respective disciplines into philosophy, in the era of Russell, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Heidegger, in other words in more recent times, feelings were there but disguised in arguments that drifted far from these sensory moorings. Feelings connect us to community, not intellect, and when feelings are well disguised, and intellect is celebrated as if some magic wand we may wave at a problem, situation or condition, we have the world that we experience today in all its contradictions.

A philosopher, if he is to be of any moment to his age, it would seem to me should not only know but acknowledge a distinction between the general laws of nature and the human powers of matter and motion, and the particular movements of an individual body in that climate, culture and time.

The philosophers who were more openly expressive of their feelings lived in a more believing although increasingly skeptical climate, where man was not so highly and hastily exalted. These philosophers communicated by a sense of the Deity, while the latter, the philosophers in more recent times, saw matters were more within the compass of man’s agency, and the discharge and satisfaction of these matters, more depended on the individual’s free will for their direction.

No matter what the argument, if you go deeply enough, and ferret through all the claimers and disclaimers to the core expression of value, and philosophy no matter how much the philosopher may insist it is “value free” philosophy is forever value laden, you will see that the doctrine of local good, otherwise better known as the “common good,” has all but disappeared from the consciousness of postmodern Western man, replaced, as it were, by a doctrine of the private good, better understood as “personhood.”

In the quote above of Charles Moore, it is taken from his book titled A FULL ENQUIRY INTO THE SUBJECT OF SUICIDE. So, while Western man believes that in his God-centered universe life is precious, and has always been so, think again.

Man has been moving away from the consensus belief in self-preservation and towards the justification of self-murder for centuries, and nearly on the same schedule as man has moved away from a centrifugal Deity.

Long ago, argument was given that “a man’s life is his own property, and therefore may be disposed of at a man’s own pleasure.”

Such arguments were more common in academia in the last few centuries than in general society, but eventually shop talk finds its way into the fabric of social existence.

Fore example, in most recent times, it has not been the physical deed but spiritual death that has been the instrument of self-murder. This has been epitomized in a lifestyle that has created a scourge of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, lung cancer, stomach cancer, genital cancer, AIDS, workaholism, ambition, exhibitionism, celebrity worship, mental illness, jealousy, envy, sloth and rage.

Things have become more important than persons, and persons equate and justify their station and existence on the basis of things accumulated at the expense of a dying soul. The will is a nobler power of the soul than is the intellect. And the will, in Freudian terminology, no longer has the superego as a “lid on the id.” Intellect has surrendered to the child of the universe.

Put otherwise, we have lost our capacity to distinguish voluntary, violent, and mixed actions, having no standard by which to measure them other than a drive in which no one is at the controls.

The success of voluntary actions depends on having a good or a bad will on check. Violent action is action that has an external principle which, when opposing cannot be resisted by the active or suffering man. A tsunami may sweep a man up without recourse, while a man may voluntarily walk away from a fight that has no purpose other to fuel his pride.

Mixed actions arise externally by force, and internally from the will, which find us wavering and vacillating. Recently, a young lady while driving home from work at dusk in Tampa hit and killed two young boys in an African American neighborhood. The right thing to do was to stop, and render aid, and comfort, but she went home. Her parents in collusion with her attempted to hide the act, justifying it in the belief that she, being a white woman, was in danger for her life having killed the children in a black area. This is the private good taking precedence over the local good.

What prompted this discourse is that I have had an interesting reaction to a recent missive of mine (“When did God make color a sign of quality?”). I attempted in the piece to understand why an African American businessman was treated as a criminal by Wal-Mart when he attempted to purchase $13,600 worth the Holiday gift certificates for employees, when his company had been doing business with Wal-Mart for years. My question: was it only because he was black?

Most of my respondents were from white people, as I am white, and all of them were reasonable, intelligent and perceptive of the situation. Missing was an expression of feelings for the man and what he experienced. I can’t imagine, myself, ever being treated this way and not being seriously injured, but I am a feeling philosopher.

The responses were overwhelmingly intellectual but not one of them implied an understanding or what it must have felt like to be black and so treated. One African American respondent admitted that he had never been so treated, and considered being lucky. But was it luck, or something deeper? That is what I hoped to learn.

As always, I am appreciative of people willing to share their views, and I always learn from them.

But my point, and the reason for the philosopher’s dilemma is that the question goes beyond simple argument to a mindset of the private good versus the mindset of the local good that I feel is endemic to our times.

The young lady mentioned above was tried and put on house arrest for two years, meaning she will serve no prison time but will remain at home. Only a year ago, a black man and immigrant to this country, driving a truck in my area of Tampa Bay, hit and killed a youngster. He did not leave the scene of the accident, but attempted to render aid. He was tried for vehicular homicide and sentenced to ten years in prison, which he is now serving. I might add that he had no police record, was not emotionally or physically impaired, in other words, had no drugs or alcohol in his system, and yet he begs the question of my earlier piece, which I sense is not soon to come. My hope is that virtue wins out for this young woman and young man and that they find solace in their souls for embracing the future even though the hand of justice was not blind.

© December 2005 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D., the Peripatetic Philosopher.