HOW WE CAME TO BE
While preparing a proposal to the chair of my philosophy department, for a course on African philosophy, I made the interesting discovery that, unlike Western, Mid-Eastern, and Asian philosophy, a substantial part of African philosophy’s literature seeks to answer the question: What is African philosophy?
Should African philosophy be regarded as geographically limited to the sub-continent or extended to include the whole of the continent? Should it begin with ancient Egyptian philosophy or the year 1729 with a now-lost work titled: The Rights of Africans in Europe by Anton-Wilhelm Amo, a Guinean-born European scholar? Should it be ethnophilosophy, a composite of hermeneutics on deeper questions within Africa’s spiritual and cultural traditions? Should it be, like Western philosophy, sage-oriented, primarily influenced by the inputs of African intellectuals? Should its focus be political, centering on Africa’s modern governance, human rights, and the relationship of traditional cultural values to both? Finally, there is the professional approach, the view that African philosophy, like its geographic counterparts, holds certain universal themes that transcend time and culture. Certainly, Kwasi Wiredu (1996) and Paulin Hountondji (1983) write from this perspective.
My proposed course was both approved and expanded to include Asian and Mid-Eastern philosophy. Attracted to the professional approach and anxious to find a way to demonstrate the universality of philosophical thought to diversified students, I began with a search for a definition of philosophy to which non-philosophy majors might relate. The need for a search existed because the definition of philosophy was unsettled. Introductory textbooks, at that time, gave it only a sentence or two, usually with a reference to its etymological meaning which joins philo (fĭló), fond of, with sophia (σoφία), wisdom. Two of the better themes
used are that philosophy is “thinking about thinking” and that it is an investigation into how “things” fit together (Palmer, 2002).
Alternatively, in their introductory textbook: Philosophy, Margaret Wilson, Dan Brock, and Richard Kuhns, Jr. dedicated an entire chapter to the question: What is Philosophy? But even they could only answer the question by providing selections, each from a well-known philosopher, wherein each provides a unique interpretation. Socrates, for example, tells us that philosophy is the path to the perfection of the soul. René Descartes (1596-1650) asserts that philosophy is established to provide a path to valid conclusions. Similarly, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) thought philosophy a device to take us from judgments based on instinct to those based on reason. Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) believed philosophy to be a system of definitions and rules for forming definitions. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) saw philosophy as a tool for making us sensitive to social forces. Lastly, that chapter offers David Hume’s (1711-1776) perspective that philosophy is a study of the laws governing human nature. (1972)
In turning to my dictionary, I found only further evidence that the answer to the question: What is philosophy?” is obscure. The one I had in my office, at the time, provided twelve different answers for the definition of philosophy. (1988)
I then turned to the literature for my course and asked the question: What is it that Western, African, Asian, and Mid-Eastern philosophical literature have in common such that I can provide my students with a meaningful definition for philosophy? Each author wrote from one of three perspectives. The more common is the self-perspective. In this, their authoritative source is their own worldview, as fortified by their own experiences. Next, the doctrines and beliefs of a particular community, institution, social movement, or culture provide what can be called: the human-perspective. Finally, there is the God’s-eye view, or nature’s perspective. With this, one’s philosophical ground is formed by the laws of nature or nature’s creator.
With this, a philosophical system can be defined, heuristically, as one that coherently addresses the following twelve questions: 1 What is the self? 2 What is humanity (as social arrangements)? 3 What is the world (as nature)? 4 How should one’s self, as mind, relate to the self, as body? 5 How should one’s self relate to humanity? 6 How should one’s self relate to the world? 7 How should humanity relate to a self? 8 How should humanity relate to humanity? 9 How should humanity relate to the world? 10 How does the world, as nature, relate to a self? 11 How does the world, as nature, relate to humanity? 12 How does the world, as nature, relate to the world?
Grouping these questions provides four discussion areas. The first three questions are ontological; the second three ethological; the third three sociological; and the fourth three epistemological, in that they are experience-based. Through this “three-players” approach to the understanding of philosophy, I found that my beginning students were able to quickly grasp humanity’s philosophical enterprise. As each topic was covered, whether belonging to Western, African, Asian, or Mid-Eastern philosophy, I easily placed it under the banner of one or more of my twelve questions. This ability provided a context for each discussion in the course. In other courses, it worked as well. For example: many undergraduate students initially find Husserl’s philosophy of ideation to be inexplicable. But, if the appeal of a beautiful sunset is first reviewed as a sub-topic of esthetics, a topic within the box holding all questions belonging to phenomenology; and phenomenology belonging to the question: “How does the world relate to the self?” then a ray of sunshine enters the classroom which helps lift the fog obscuring Husserl’s arguments.
Later reflection on these three learning platforms led me to a deeper understanding of why it can be said that learning is fundamental to nature. Nature is in a continual search for stability, always favoring, through temporal duration, that which is stable over that which is unstable. Every molecule, every plant, every animal, and every person, can be regarded as a local experiment, conducted by nature, in its eternal quest to “learn” what endures and what does not.
From this perspective, it can be said that the creation of minds arises from nature’s learning processes. Through the creation of intelligent beings, the universe comes to know of its existence. For each individual, there is not only learning by instinct, learning by experience, and learning by education, there is also learning by introspection and inference. From this vantage point, it can be said that the creation of a rational worldview arises as the telos of an individual’s learning processes. Opinions come to all, simply through, as Heidegger put it: “Being in the world.”
However, the creation of an intellectually coherent worldview requires deep thought. To be coherent, a worldview must avoid contradiction, both with experience and within its own logic. Secondly, it must provide experience with a context. For example, if one studies the history of the evolution of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, one finds that it arose because many physicists, in the third decade of the twentieth century, felt their empirical findings needed a context, one that explains why experience is unavoidably stochastic. (Cale, 2002, pp. 34-62)
Those, who consciously seek a coherent worldview, tend have in common well-thought-out answers to most, or all, of the above twelve questions. I came to call this segment of humanity: the Matheia Society. My choice for this name came from the two things that I believe these individuals also have in common: a love for learning, and possession of the virtues needed for excellence in the activity of learning. Those who choose the path to a complete and coherent worldview, must first have what the ancient Greeks called: philomatheia (φιλομαθeια). Pronounced fē-lŏ-mŏth-ĕ-ē-ä, it means the love of learning.
The gift of philomatheia is arimatheia (αριμαθeια). Pronounced hä-rē-mŏth-ĕ-ē-ä, this ancient Greek word can be translated as either excellence in learning or virtue in learning.
Unfortunately, during the last few decades, I watched the subject of philosophy proportionally decline in academic importance, with the corresponding rise in technology. The importance of practical understanding eclipsed that of contextual understanding. The idea, that the concept of “Matheia Society” should be formalized in some public way, first came to me as a way to help solve this problem. Broadly interpreted, the Matheia Society is humanity, homo sapiens translated as philosophical man. In 2004, I created the Matheia Society Foundation as a private foundation. With the completion of The Simplest Possible Universe, in 2015, an interpretation of Planck’s constant, I returned to philosophy with a concept I called: harmonic understanding. My book, Harmonic Coexistence as the Telos of Humanity, was completed in 2023. Its concluding chapter calls upon universities to revitalize their philosophy departments by giving them the task of serving today’s ever-increasing need for conflict resolution centers.
David L. Cale Ph. D.
Retired Emeritus
West Virginia University
Cale, D. L. (2002). The Kantian Element in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Ann Arbor: ProQuest.
Hountondji, P. J. (1983). African Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Palmer, D. (2002). Does the Center Hold? An Introduction to Western Philosophy. Boston: McGraw Hill.
The Riverside Publishing Company. (1988). Webster’s II, New Riverside University Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Wilson, M., Brock, D., & Kuhns, R. J. (1972). Philosophy. New York: Meredith Corporation.
Wiredu, K. (1996). Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.