Topics Philosophy

Question How come Philosophers never mention the possibility that we may never, ever, know the meaning of justice, life and death as long as we are alive? Religious explanations are so infantile and absurd that it frightens and makes me wonder about the "intelligence" of world leaders acting and playing to what I, respectfuly, consider nonsense, as in the diferent Bibles... Eduardo Schwank Guatemala

Accepted:
October 21, 2005

Comments

Yours is a tough question and I doubt that you will find much to reassure you in my reply.

I think that if there is any lesson to learn from the history of philosophy, it is that fully adequate conceptions of such things as justice--and for that matter everything else that philosophers have worried about for eons--are not likely to be forthcoming any time soon. That most certainly does not mean that there can be no fully adequate analyses of such things. But time has proven these things to be fabulously complex, and even as we make progress in the answers we supply to such questions--and I think we have made enormous progress--that progress has not yet (and does not promise any time soon) to bear the fruit of knowledge, to answer once and for all the questions we have asked for so long now.

I think that if anything is likely to help us to do a better job in such areas (outside our profession as within it) it is to take very seriously and to be acutely aware of our own relative and continued ignorance of the answers we seek. The ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, said it best: the wisest of human beings is the one who (like Socrates), recognizes just how ignorant he or she really is, with regard to these "most important things" (see Plato, Apology 23b). This Socratic moral and epistemic humility would certainly be a great corrective to the arrogance of our world's leaders (and to those who follow them blindly)--just as it was intended to serve as a corrective in Socrates own day.

Of course, it is no ground for optimism that the Athenians killed Socrates. As much progress as I think we have made in philosophy, far too little progress has been made in the reception of philosophy by those not much engaged in it!