A localization of philosophy within the overall context:
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Changelog: Jan 21, 2025 – Jan 28, 20225
AUTHOR: I have changed the title “WHAT IS LIFE? … PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD” to “WHAT IS LIFE? … PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.” Reason: It will become evident in the course of the investigation that the ‘life’ we find on planet Earth, and which at first glance appears to be a ‘part of the world and the universe,’ may not actually be only a ‘part’ … Therefore a ‘philosophy’ aiming to describe the ‘world’ would do better to focus directly on ‘life,’ which is the true ‘riddle of the universe.’
Email: info@uffmm.org
TRANSLATION: The following text is a translation from a German version into English. For the translation I am using the software @chatGPT4o with manual modifications.
CONTENT TREE
This text is part of the TOPIC Philosophy of Science.
CONTEXT
This is a direct continuation of the preceding texts “WHAT IS LIFE? WHAT ROLE DO WE PLAY? IST THERE A FUTURE?” and “WHAT IS LIFE? … DEMOCRACY – CITIZENS”
INTRODUCTION
In the two preceding texts, the ‘framework’ was outlined within which the subsequent texts on the topic “What is life? What roles do we have? Is there a future?” will unfold.
The exploration of the various aspects of this broad theme begins with reflections on the role of ‘philosophy’ in this context.
ANCHORING ‘PHILOSOPHY’ IN LIFE
The assumption here is that the phenomenon of ‘philosophy’ is connected to ‘actors’ who live on this ‘planet,’ who are part of the great phenomenon of ‘life’ on this planet. According to a widely held understanding, philosophy is found primarily in the life form broadly referred to as ‘Homo’ (approximately 6 million years before our present time) and, within the Homo lineage, later manifested as ‘Homo sapiens’ (approximately 300,000 years before our present time). While other manifestations of the Homo life form existed alongside Homo sapiens, it is only Homo sapiens who have survived to this day—so essentially, ‘us.’
As is well known, in the year 2025, there are many ‘continents’ on the planet Earth where ‘humans’ live almost everywhere. The ways people live on different continents often differ significantly in outward appearances, influenced by external conditions (climate, vegetation, geology, worldviews, etc.). The ‘genetic basis’ is either almost ‘identical’ or differs only in ‘details.’ The connection between these details and observable ‘behavior’ remains largely unclear. While differences in hair color, skin color, body shape, etc., may exist, these differences are found on every continent, in every population group, and are irrelevant to behavior.
Due to numerous ‘necessities of life’ (food, drink, shelter, etc.), humans never act entirely ‘planlessly.’ From the earliest ‘evidence of human life,’ we can observe that humans ‘shape,’ ‘organize,’ and develop their behavior and environment into increasingly complex ‘systems of rules’ that guide their actions. The entirety of these forms, organizations, and systems of rules is referred to here as ‘culture.’
Within this ‘human culture,’ one feature stands out in particular: communication through ‘spoken language.’ While humans can ‘communicate’ in many ways without explicit speech, for all detailed, complex matters—especially for the purpose of ‘coordinating shared actions’—spoken language proves to be indispensable and immensely powerful! It is noteworthy that there was not just ‘one language,’ but almost as many languages as there were ‘human communities.’ The ‘harmonization of languages’ or the ‘fusion’ of different languages has—if at all—only occurred over many generations. Even today (2025), we see national communities with hundreds of languages coexisting, and it seems self-evident that at multinational events, each nation participates with at least one ‘own’ language.
As a culture becomes enriched with more and more ‘elements,’ the demands on the ‘members of this culture’ to ‘familiarize themselves’ with all these elements and their ‘interplay’ increase. Today, we would say that individual members must ‘learn’ their own culture.
In the last approximately 2,000 to 3,000 years of human culture, a ‘pattern of education’ has emerged that is broadly referred to as ‘philosophy,’ or specific behaviors are labeled as ‘philosophical.’ The diversity of this phenomenon ‘philosophy’ is so vast and pronounced that it seems nearly impossible to trace this diversity back to just a few fundamental elements. Those who wish to explore this historical diversity further can do so by consulting relevant handbooks and encyclopedias, where they may—possibly—’lose themselves’ in this diversity.
Here, a different approach is taken.
This ‘diversity of the philosophical’ ultimately always leads back to specific individuals—usually referred to as ‘philosophers’ in an educational sense—who were actors in a particular, culturally shaped ‘everyday life.’ As ‘parts’ of such a ‘life process,’ they formed certain ‘opinions,’ ‘views of life.’ They used ‘specific linguistic expressions,’ interpreted, classified, and organized the experienced life through their linguistic expressions, and abstracted from individual phenomena. They ‘perceived relationships’ between phenomena, summarized many relationships into ‘networks of relationships’ (often also called ‘models’ or ‘theories’), and studied the ‘functioning of language’ (rather late), the ‘functioning of thought,’ and much more.
‘In the end,’ all these linguistic and intellectual activities led to various philosophers developing different ‘views of everyday life and the world.’ Some ‘later’ philosophers considered such ‘philosophical views’ of ‘earlier’ philosophers for their own ‘production of views,’ but to this day, one cannot claim that there is ‘one grand philosophical view of the world.’ Instead, we find a vast number of fragments and drafts, specific perspectives, some contradictory, with little overlap.
It is striking that there is still no (!) philosophical view of the world that explains philosophy ‘itself,’ its own ’emergence,’ its own ‘functioning.’ There are many reasons why this is so. Even for a philosopher willing to scrutinize all the ‘assumptions of their thinking,’ obstacles exist. One such obstacle is the language within which they philosophize. Philosophizing in a particular language while simultaneously reflecting on the ‘assumptions of that language’ is maximally difficult, and no one has truly succeeded in doing so. To a certain extent, the same applies to their own body, within which the philosopher finds themselves. The complex inner workings of one’s own body are—roughly estimated—accessible to no more than about 1% of any person. Another significant obstacle is the entirety of the culture in a society. Over a lifetime, this culture leaves deep marks on a philosopher’s ‘feelings, thinking, and behavior,’ which can only be questioned and changed to a very limited extent. Finally, not to be overlooked, is the phenomenon of ‘time,’ manifesting as ‘changes’ in the experienced everyday life and in the evolving ‘inner life’ of a philosopher: What was just ‘present’ suddenly becomes ‘past’; what was just ‘blue’ suddenly turns ‘black.’ Everything can change. And what does a philosopher then do with their ‘memories,’ shaped by ‘yesterday’?
This reflection on some of the ‘conditions of a philosopher’s cognition’ may seem ‘depressing,’ extinguishing any ‘hope for useful insight’ at the outset. However, everyday life teaches us that we humans are still here, that even in the ‘scientific field of philosophy,’ there seems to be a kind of ‘development of views (models, theories)’ which give the impression of ‘functioning,’ enabling us to make ‘predictions’ to a limited extent that can be ‘verified as accurate.’
For the further determination of what characterizes the phenomenon of ‘philosophy,’ the focus here will be less on the ‘congealed form’ of philosophy as an educational construct but more on the ‘everyday processes’ where specific people engage in concrete activities that form the ‘framework’ or ‘medium’ within which ‘philosophy for all’ takes place.
Ultimately, ‘philosophy’ is a ‘holistic phenomenon’ that becomes visible in the interplay of many people in an everyday context, is experienced, and can only take shape in this process form. ‘Truth,’ as the ‘core’ of any reality-related thinking, is always only found as a ‘part’ of a process in which the interconnected dynamics are essential to the ‘truth of a matter.’ Therefore, truth is never ‘self-evident,’ never ‘simple,’ never ‘free.’ Truth is a ‘precious substance’ that requires every effort to ‘attain’ and whose state is ‘fleeting,’ as the ‘world’ within which truth can be ‘worked out’ continuously changes as a world. A key factor in this constant change is life itself: the ‘existence of life’ is only possible within an ‘ongoing process’ through which ‘energy’ can illuminate ’emergent images’—not created for ‘resting’ but for ‘becoming,’ whose ultimate goal still appears in many ways ‘open.’ Life can indeed—partially—destroy itself or—partially—empower itself. Somewhere in the midst of all this, we find ourselves. The current year ‘2025’ is actually of little significance for this.
… To be continued …
