Reading Notes of "A Brief History of Thought" written by Luc Perry

Luc Perry, the writer, thinks philosophy arose from depth. Since if someone is not convinced by the salvation of religion through faith, he will try to understand the world and himself, which the philosophy will act like religion-doctrines of salvation.

Task of Philosophy

Greek philosophers looked upon the past and the future as the primary evils weighing upon life and as the source of all anxieties which blight the present. The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting because it is the only one available to us. The past is no longer and the future has yet to come. Yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memory and aspirations. We imagine we could be much happier with new shoes, a faster computer, a bigger house but by regretting the past or guessing the future we end up missing the only life worth living.

This combination of the fact of mortality with our awareness of mortality contains all the questions of philosophy. The philosopher is principally not someone who believes that we're here as tourists to amuse ourselves. Even if he does come to believe that amazement alone is worth experience, it will not least be the result of the process of thought, a reflection rather than a reflex. This thought has three distinct stages: a theoretical stage, a moral stage and a crowning conclusion as to the salvation of wisdom.

The first task of philosophy is that of theory an attempt to gain a sense of the world in which we live. Philosophy attempts to define the nature of knowledge and to understand its methods, for example, how do we establish the cause of a natural phenomenon and its limit. Our knowledge of the world we know.  Then we go into the practical issue, the Moral. Finally, through practice or acting, we reach wisdom.

Theory is to know the world we are in, to know what is most real, most important and most meaningful. Stoicism sees the innermost essence of the world as harmony, order. They refer to it as kosmos. The kosmos has orders comparable to humans. It exists prior to the creation and is responsible for the act of creation. Everything in the kosmos works his role to make the whole function. Although there may be non-beauty in a specific point, on a whole, the cosmos is beautiful and in harmony. You may think ecologically similar to this concept. Ancient Greek thinks that life is a passage, so after death, there is another state. To be a god after death, one must live in wisdom. Philosophy wins the love of wisdom and according to the Stoics, it is through a practical exercise that one passes from one to the other this exercise is intended to eradicate anxiety-associated mortality. In those times that these anxiety establish themselves, generating remorse and nostalgia for the past, and false hope for the future.

Stoics and Order of the World

Stoics think fear and hope prevent us from achieving fulfillment, specifically attachment to the past and anxiety about the future. These block access to the present moment and prevent us from living life to the full.  Marcus Aurelius is quite insistent on this point:  remember that each of us is only in the present moment, in this instance, all the rest is the past or in uncertain future. The extent of life is therefore brief. Because the only dimension of reality is the present and the nature of the present is in constant flux, it is wise for us to cultivate indifference or non-attachment.

The principal and highest form of training, and one that stands at the very entrance to happiness, is, that when you are attached to something, let it not be as something which cannot be taken away, but rather as to something like an earthenware pot. So that if it breaks, you will remember what kind of thing it was and not be distressed. So in this, too, when you kiss your child, or your brother, or your friend, never give way entirely to your attractions, nor free reign your imagination. But curb it, restrain it, like those who stand behind the general when they win trump and remind them that they are but men. Remind yourself likewise That's What You Love is mortal, that what you love is not your own. It is granted to you for the present, and not irrevocably, not forever. But like a dog or a bunch of grapes in the appointed season. What harm is there while you kissing your child to murmur softly, ‘Tomorrow you will die?’

When density strikes, I shall have prepared for it. If some undesirable event should befall you, it will in the first place be an immediate relief to you that it was not unexpected. You will say to yourself: I knew all along that I am mortal. I knew that in this life I might have to go away, that I might be cast into exile. I knew that I might be thrown into prison. Then if you reflect within yourself and ask from what quarter the accident has come, you will at once remember that it comes from the religion of things outside our will, which are not ours. (Epictetus)

Christianity is totally against Stoics. It is because the cosmo becomes a human. People contemplate with faith in Christianity, but with reasons in Stoics. Since science came out, the cosmo was no longer ordered and divined, humans had to contemplate a new way. Kant thought that humans had to make an order on nature. Science is no longer a passive action, instead, it should be making connections of nature actively.

Humanity

To investigate this problem, one may have to distinguish between Man and Beast. Jean-Paul Satre said that for human, existence precedes essence. This is in line with Rousseau. Human, unlike other animals, have to follow nature-defined rules. We can choose our lives in which we have no definite human essence. Thus, the human individual is free who can choose and act freely. By what we choose, we can be judged, hence it becomes moral.  

Distance from nature is the only criterion that counts decisively on both the ethical and cultural planes. This distance makes it possible for us to engage with the history of culture, rather than remaining the hostages of nature. This distance enables us to interrogate reality, to judge and transform the world, to invent ideals, to distinguish between good and evil. Without it, no morality would be possible.

Kant's disinterestedness and universality of ethics (Critique of Pure Reasons)

It becomes the modern morality of the French Republicans. Men's capacity to act independently of their natural urges, which leads them inexorably in the direction of egotism. This moral perspective, both anti-naturalist and anti-aristocratic is that the Ethical value of this disinterestedness seems self-evident, for example, if somebody appears kindly and generous towards me is doing so in the hope of obtaining some advantage, I attribute no ethical value in it. 

From Humanity to Salvation

If the implementation of the rights of man makes possible peaceful coexistence, these rights do not of themselves give meaning or purpose, or direction to human existence. This is why, in modern life as in the ancient world, it was necessary to devise something beyond morality, to take the place of a doctrine of Salvation. The difficulty is that in the absence of a cosmo or a God, it becomes especially difficult to think this through. How do we confront the fragility and finiteness of human existence, the mortality of all things in this world in the absence of any principal external to and higher than humanity?

One approach is making something as a substitution of religion, for example, Communism and Patriotism which an individual dies for a higher cause. The other is to expand an individual into a society mode. You enter a dimension of human existence which justifies life and gives it a meaning and a direction. 

However, there is another side criticizing the traditional view of the world — Deconstruction. Then we have to talk about Nietzsche.

Postmodernism

• Offer both a critique of humanism and a critique of rationalism.

• Nietzsche reached the peak

• Criticize Enlightenment is still under theological structure: the diffusion of science and technology will bring a better world (implying there is an assumption the hereafter there is a better life than now, offering values supposedly superior and external to life itself, therefore is a syndication of the reality)

Nietzsche

• No perspective is external to life itself. No point of view provides enough privilege to abstract life itself from the tissue of forces that are the ground of the real. 

• Facts are the product of History and of the forces that comprise life at a particular moment.

• If knowledge can never reach absolute truth this is because the real  itself is chaos which no longer resembles the harmonious order of the ancients or the rationalizable universe of the Modern

• Nietzsche distinguishes between two quite distinct types of forces: reactive and active

• Reactive forces: these forces can only deploy themselves in the world and achieve their full effect by repressing or distorting other forces

• For him, the search for the truth reveals itself to be doubly reactive: true knowledge is not to be had solely combat with errors, but generally through combat against the illusions inherent in the sensible world.  philosophy and science are only able to function in effect by opposing the intelligible world to the physical world in such a manner.

• The active forces in the world and do their work without needing to disfigure or repress other energies. It is in art and not in philosophy and science that these forces find their natural home.

• Grandeur: a key term for Nietzsche, the opposite forces finally harmonize and hierarchize, attending the greatest intensity as well as the most perfect Elegance.

• Nietzsche morality: the world is made of collision forces. Neither the reactive forces or the active forces should oppress each other nor eliminate the other one.

• Enemy is essential.

• The will to power: Not a lust for power in the world instead it is the will to intensity of experience that to avoid the internal wrenchings which will diminish life.

Eternal Recurrence

• Regard salvation can only occur on earth

• Live the life that you would like to repeat again

• Love of what the present brings: to want nothing to be other than as it is, neither in the future nor the past