Video transcription

In the previous video, as we outlined the fourth movement in the transformation of Philosophy, we discussed the role of the symbol as a bridge by which the structure of the Intelligible World may be reconstructed. In this final video, we shall try to answer a historical question: what becomes of Philosophy, once it has been deprived of the fourth gnoseological dimension?

In the second half of the XIX century, Hermann Lotze writes:

“The necessary development of synthetic truth from a supreme principle was perhaps the task of Platonic Dialectic, though still indeterminate within the Idea. One may justly regard this, as the aim towards which the Hegelian renewal of that ancient endeavor was directed. From such attempts our age has passed, with a certain sobriety, to what lies immediately at hand, to that inexhaustible empirical inquiry whose incompleteness has paralyzed the bold flight of Hegelian Idealism. Despite the universal idolatry of experience that predominates today, I confess that I regard speculative intuition, so often disparaged, as the highest goal of science, by no means unattainable. And I hope that, with greater moderation and reserve, yet with equal enthusiasm, Idealism may rise again, in an effort not merely to ‘calculate’, but to ‘understand’ the course of the world.”

After Hegel, who, in his resurrection of Plato, appears as an almost unique phenomenon, at once ahead of his time and behind it, one can no longer speak of Philosophy without anchoring it to one of the three dimensions admitted by modern Gnoseology: the Sensible World, Thought and Language. Yet because of this self-imposed limit, all the problems of knowledge raised by Philosophy are, an instant later, absorbed by Science, Psychology or Semiotics, the disciplines that specialize in exploring those three respective domains. In such a situation, Philosophy steadily recedes into the background.

Cassirer writes:

“Philosophy receives from each of the particular sciences a determinate orientation. There are almost as many distinct tendencies in the theory of knowledge as there are particular disciplines and particular scientific interests.”

Here, then, is the profound unease that arises from the difficulty of finding, for Philosophy, once deprived of its fourth dimension, a role that is both unique and exclusive. Philosophers are thus compelled to multiply their efforts to carve out for the discipline a domain and a function, even if only in an ancillary position. Francesco Barone writes:

“When that original theoretical stance of the human being before the reality of the world and its meaning becomes specified in clearly delineated directions, giving rise to autonomous sciences with their own methods and objects, philosophical inquiry loses many domains long regarded as its exclusive competence. Yet, at the same time, it finds within itself a sharpened need to determine more precisely what, whithin it, is ‘Philosophy’ in the strict sense, that which cannot be reduced either to the individual sciences or to their totality.”

Philosophical reflection often anticipates, with remarkable foresight, new territories that Science will later conquer, only to fall back into the rear once the discovery has been made, because at that very moment Philosophy is asked to step aside, to withdraw, and to let the specialists take over. One may, then, legitimately ask whether Philosophy is destined to live perpetually as both advanced scout and rearguard, analyzing the past or foreseeing the future, yet never validating the present. Martin Heidegger writes:

“By its very essence, Philosophy is untimely. It belongs to that kind of thing whose destiny is never to find an immediate resonance in the present, and indeed never to need to find it. When something of that sort does occur, when a Philosophy becomes fashionable, then either it is not genuine Philosophy, or else it has been diverted from its meaning and improperly exploited for ends foreign to it, bent to the demands of the moment.”

This untimeliness may be interpreted either as a defect, or as an intrinsic disposition towards a fourth mode of temporality, namely, eternity. The concept of eternity, long since vanished from the modern horizon, implies an appeal to an immutable structural order, external to the mind. In other words, to a reality interpreted as a Cosmos. In the past, as Charles Taylor writes, “the subject defined itself in relation to a cosmic order”.

The modern philosopher, either unaware of any placement within a Cosmos or consciously rejecting a metaphysical order, seeks to define himself from within, and seeks to flow with the present, by adapting to the conditions imposed by history. Yet the concept of Cosmos contains two antithetical aspects, which, in the human soul, provoke anguish and consolation at once. On the one hand, there is a rigid hierarchical structure of reality, a “cage” for thought; on the other, there is an order that discloses the meaning and the sense of the things placed within it. By breaking free of the “cage”, human beings also lose meaning, for that is the dearest price of freedom. Richard Tarnas writes:

“What once permeated the world as the Anima Mundi is now regarded as the exclusive property of human consciousness. The modern human self has, in effect, absorbed meaning and purpose into its own inward being, emptying the primordial Cosmos of what once constituted its essential nature.”

At the collective level, meaning has drifted because of the overflowing victory of individualistic thought. Lacking any transcendent structure of reference, Meaning wanders, disarticulated, across the wastelands of Nihilism, foretold with extraordinary acuity by Nietzsche, one of the most lucid and corrosive critical voices humanity has ever heard. His prophecy of the “death of God” dragged Metaphysics into the abyss as well, for Metaphysics had long been fused with Theology.

Yet if human beings, deprived of God, are forced to renounce Religion at the cost of losing the meaning of their own existence, the philosopher cannot operate in the absence of the Intelligible World. It cannot collapse together with the dogmas of Religion, because it is not an extrinsic element, but a structural one, both of our psyche and of the reality reflected within it. If Theology, which had taken possession of Metaphysics since the time of Philo of Alexandria, sinks under the weight of its irrational contents, then Metaphysics has the duty to abandon it to its fate, without regret.

Kant locked Philosophy within the dimension of mind to which Aristotle had consigned it; Mathematics compelled it to learn a perfect, yet sterile language. By forbidding any transcendence of empirical data, Science blinded it, depriving it of its speculative eye. The question, then, is this: As it has been redefined, does Philosophy still possess a role of its own? Is it still able to respond to humanity’s need for meaning, and to the challenges of the present?

This narrative will argue that it is not necessary to invent a new role for Philosophy: it is recovered at the origin. The role from which it can never be displaced is the one for which it was born. Namely, the investigation of a dimension, the intelligible, which cannot be investigated by the methods of Science, but is disclosed only through the logical and synthetic capacity of our mind. The full reintegration of the fourth dimension might mark both the apex of the nihilistic phase of Western culture, and the restoration of meaning.

Plato would add here, and with a truth that is, in its way, dramatic, that no answer can hold for the whole of humankind, since understanding is conditioned by the noetic level of each individual. For certain consciousnesses, even very acute ones, Philosophy is a splendid marginal occupation; for others, it is a complete waste of time. For Plato, Philosophy is not a horizontal phenomenon, but a vertical one.

It might perhaps shape society if a handful of consciousnesses at the highest noetic level were to dedicate themselves to the equitable governance of human beings, according to the dictates of Reason. At present, however, the Platonic proposal of an Epistemocracy inevitably clashes with the actuality and ideology of mass culture, which brand such a vision as elitism in the pejorative sense of the term.

It is always difficult to observe and describe the time in which one lives. Yet, beyond its social function, we can glimpse in the future of Philosophy, far in the distance, the return of authentic Metaphysics. Goethe writes:

“By the swings of the pendulum, time is regulated. By the alternating movement from Idea to Experience, the moral and scientific world is governed.”

Goethe’s metaphor of the pendulum represents the dialectical movement of reality, and today the pendulum is weighted entirely towards Science and the Phenomena. Yet when it reaches either extreme, kinetic energy is minimal and potential energy maximal. Gravity therefore acts to draw it back towards the centre, and then to carry it towards the opposite extreme. We know that, sooner or later, this force will tend to bring it back towards the Idea, but we do not know exactly when.

The return of the Idea-Form is made possible by the tension each epoch produces through the excess it reaches. The pendulum swings back because the very structure of reality does not tolerate an indefinite permanence in a state of imbalance. This is not a “mystical prophecy”, but a profoundly logical and dialectical hypothesis.

Yet, before it can be fully reintegrated into its role, Metaphysical Philosophy must overcome the obstacles of the present. And the present struggles to reconcile itself with Plato’s Realist Idealism, because it holds a distorted conception of it. Since a valid defence cannot rest on vague or enthusiastic declarations, Kant’s attack on Plato is the crucial issue we shall face in our next stage entitled Nous. “To the Principle!”