Beyond These Usual Things

12 July 2012


Discussed Text: "The Promotion of Responsibility and Hope"

It would be important to once again discuss the task of philosophical reflection in three important levels, according to Paul Ricoeur, in order for us to see why philosophical reflection is necessary in being human.

On the level of everyday life, philosophical reflection gives a perspective to a prospective society. To prospect is to manage, to control something, and the way of life of a prospective society is precisely characterized by control for the sake of quantitative growth and efficiency. It is to make an enterprise out of one's life, making sure that the most clever moves are done in order to maximize time and resources from the start of the day to its end.

A prospective way of life may seem attractive; however, it is characterized by a rationality of means but has no real end, no real goal in sight. In being prospective, most of the time we forget the ultimate end of our endeavors, and we lose our recognition and appreciation of other important things in life that we ought to take care of, like confronting the fundamental questions in our lives, maintaining our relationships with others, and even exercising responsibility towards the world that we live in. Our being too caught up with our prospective concerns leads us toward forgetting these things that essentially make us human, preventing us from actually living as human beings.

This is where philosophical reflection enters, as that which provides us a perspective, giving us the opportunity to see our life as a whole. Through reflection, we see that our lives are not all about growth, habit, efficiency, and productivity. It is good even to take control and manage the affairs of our lives, but we should not miss the question: in view of what? It is at this point, that philosophical reflection becomes essential.

On the level of scientific life, the task of philosophical reflection is precisely to remind us that there is a superabundance of meaning which cannot be reduced to what is empirical and mathematical. The sciences indeed have great advancements, and it has changed our lives as new technological innovations and scientific discoveries are brought up before the world. However,we should remember the very nature and consequently the limits of the sciences, as a discipline based on abstraction which describes the world "objectively" as if the subject is not present.

The objectivity that science presents stands differently from the "objectivity" of philosophy, which includes the subject in touch with the object, as well as an acceptance that every discourse and explanation comes from a particular limited viewpoint that can be enriched by other claims which come from other viewpoints. And because of this, layers of meaning are being created from critical experience and investigation. As an abstracted investigation, science temporarily ignores these various layers of meanings and focuses on one only, and fortunately it has yielded results that have helped us in the course of time.

However, the problem with that is that it may lead to a "flattening" of meaning when left unquestioned. The pure objectivity of science leaves out the way the world becomes significant and meaningful to human beings in different ways. Such flattening, which we can consider as scientism, disregards the importance of human experience as that through which the meaning of things are produced. In this regard, accepting scientific meaning as the totality of meaning seems to be very limited, and the task of philosophy is precisely to point out what lies beyond the limited layer, that things mean differently when seen and understood from a different perspective. Ultimately, philosophy "redeems" objectivity and subjectivity, in such a way that objective knowledge is formed through subjects observing, criticizing, and investigating reality. In other words, the objective world is intersubjectively conceived and thought of.

On the level of meditative life, which tackles the fundamental question of philosophy: that of Being as a dynamic act, that which is accessible only through a sense of wonder that "it is." Ricoeur simply says that we should confront two aspects of being human that should not be viewed as two opposing and struggling stands  from which we must choose from. On one hand, there is atheistic humanism, in which we affirm our humanity and our capabilities that can be explained and realized without the need of God or any supernatural being that stands above us. On the other hand, there is theistic humanism, in which we recognize that there might be something that goes beyond us, which escapes our understanding and remains unknown despite revealing itself to us in various moments of our lives.

Ricoeur tells us that these are two aspects within us that should engage each other through self-reflection, in the same way that philosophy is concerned not only of our existence as human beings but also of reality as a whole, the way we experience it. Thus, it means confronting our very own selves and subjecting our convictions to questions, to confront the believer with the unbeliever within.

Such is the task of philosophical reflection, that which is necessary in order for us to know what it means to be human and ultimately make sense of our lives as individuals and as members of a larger society and community.