Everything, Briefly: A Postmodern Philosophy

By Thomas O. Scarborough and Mel Thompson

"As a man thinks, so is he." Personally, and socially, so is he. Yet if this is true, then "as a man thinks" has led us into the thick of global crisis. What exactly is it, about our thinking, that fails us? What has gone so wrong? There are firm reasons why we may hope for new direction. Firstly, we have a new view of the connectedness of all things. Never before has this encompassed so much. It makes a crucial difference to philosophy. Secondly, when we recast philosophy's high-level concepts in more concrete terms, it becomes possible to discuss them without confusion. This is the method of this book. There is much of interest for the theologian, too. Legendary film director Ingmar Bergman once wrote, "What will happen to us who want to believe, but can not?" His "can not" had to do with what Professor Karen Barad calls the "hegemony of physics". Everything, Briefly details why it is impossible, in fact, to believe in a closed universe of cause and effect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666791471

Thomas O. Scarborough

Thomas O. Scarborough is a minister and ex UK top ten philosophy editor. He holds two postgraduate degrees in three fields: theology, linguistics, and global leadership (covering, also, global dynamics and global thought). Published in peer-reviewed journals in six fields, he is an inventor and prize-winning designer. His innovations include RFL-class logic and CCO-class metal detectors.

Book preview

Everything, Briefly

A Postmodern Philosophy

Thomas O. Scarborough

Foreword by Mel Thompson

Everything, Briefly

A Postmodern Philosophy

Copyright ©

2022

Thomas O. Scarborough. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-3493-5

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-9146-4

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-9147-1

01/12/22

Cover art by Rachel Leibman

Internal illustrations by Thomas O. Scarborough

Scripture quotations are taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, copyright ©

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by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Abbreviations

Part I: Foundations

Chapter 1: Low-Level Concepts

Chapter 2: A New Horizon

Chapter 3: What Is Really Real

Chapter 4: Limited Relations

Chapter 5: Liberating Relations

Chapter 6: Words and Relations

Chapter 7: Things and Relations

Part II: Personal Ethics

Chapter 8: An Endless Expanse

Chapter 9: Human Limitations

Chapter 10: Relations and Expectations

Chapter 11: Opaque Relations

Chapter 12: An Interrelated Ethics

Chapter 13: Esthetic Relations

Chapter 14: More about Words

Part III: Public Ethics

Chapter 15: Political Relations

Chapter 16: Informational Relations

Chapter 17: Employment Relations

Chapter 18: The Imposition of Relations

Chapter 19: Relating Identities

Chapter 20: A Boundless Environment

Chapter 21: Unvirtuous Behavior

Chapter 22: Critical Theory

Chapter 23: Awakening

Part IV: Science and Math

Chapter 24: Defining Ought

Chapter 25: Fact and Value

Chapter 26: Relating Science

Chapter 27: Relating Math

Chapter 28: Relating Languages

Chapter 29: The Isolation of Science

Chapter 30: Scientific Hubris

Chapter 31: Pseudo Ethics

Part V: Classics

Chapter 32: Deeper Relations

Chapter 33: Causal Relations

Chapter 34: Historical Relations

Chapter 35: Mind-Body Dualism

Chapter 36: The Purpose of Relations

Chapter 37: The Teaching of Relations

Part VI: The Ultimate

Chapter 38: Religion as Relations

Chapter 39: God beyond Relations

Chapter 40: Relations beyond Life

Chapter 41: Meaning as Relations

Chapter 42: What Is Metaphysics?

Glossary

Bibliography

"In a world where philosophy is too often narrowly defined, Everything, Briefly is a work of amazing breadth and ambition. Presenting a view that is holistic, interconnected, relational, and boundless, it seeks to reshape our thinking about meaning, language, ethics, and religion, challenging many of our assumptions and setting out an entirely new metaphysics."

—Mel Thompson

Author of The Art of Living

"Thomas Scarborough’s Everything, Briefly is wide-ranging and very engaging. It is refreshing—after so much work in analytic philosophy that is narrow in scope and highly technical—to see someone take on the project of constructing a panoramic metaphysics."

—Christian B. Miller

Author of The Character Gap

What I most appreciate about this book is the recreation of a frame in which to have meaningful discussion around the connection of ideas and values. . . . Perhaps its most valuable contribution is the creation of a ‘table’ where all can come, sit, discuss, and identify what we have in common and brings us together rather than what divides us.

—Mailin Young

National Director of Leadership Development, US and Europe InterVarsity

This book will be a terrific help to all of us. Scarborough explains well our presence in and familiarity with the muddy physical reality, and then opens the door to the fuller reality of metaphysics, which we remembered, perhaps even craved, all along.

—Udo Middelmann

Author of The Innocence of God

Scarborough has provided an important resource material for those interested in metaphysics. It is new, fresh, and engaging. A must-read for the year!

—Samuel Waje Kunhiyop

Author of African Christian Theology

This metaphysic reveals the extraordinary intellectual investment Thomas Scarborough put into thinking deeply about the weighty issues of philosophy. The ambitious scope is striking; and it succeeds. The result is a profound, and often original, work worthy of joining the best from history. I’m impressed. His ideas offer much to ponder, appreciably presented in a delightfully accessible style.

—Keith Tidman

Author of The Operations Evaluation Group

"Everything, Briefly is a unique metaphysic that seeks to unify nothing less than all human experience, and argues for unifying principles. There is breadth here, but not a removal from everyday experience. It’s extraordinarily valuable to see beyond our immediate experiences. . . . As an antidote to tribalism and polarization, Scarborough’s emphasis on connectedness is apt and timely—a starting point for conversations on the relatedness of all aspects of life."

—Stephen Galanis

Philosophy Graduate, Rhodes University

"What are we doing here? Everything, Briefly gives us a new perspective on the journey that life is, starting with an examination of the basics—What is real?—then looking at language and its blind spots, and how that relates to our thinking; and taking us through ethics, science, mathematics, and the classics; and finally to places of deep meaning—religion and metaphysics. If you want to examine your life, Everything, Briefly can give you a place to start."

—Jill Hacker

NOVA Math Lab Tutor

"Everything, Briefly is a courageous attempt to subsume human experience and knowledge under a single metaphysics. Its largely impressionistic, bite-size style will appeal to the interested nonspecialist, while its unique perspective on some of the classic conundrums of traditional philosophy should pique the interest of academic philosophers of all stripes."

—Geoffrey Marnell

Author of Correct English: Reality or Myth?

This book is extremely interesting and well written. Its logical progression of ideas culminates in a competently presented new metaphysic that deserves exposure in today’s world . . . . The effect that this book has had on me, personally, is that it has refocused my inner eye, giving it X-ray vision to see deeper and clearer into the vast connectedness of everything that we so often take at face value.

—Ann Moore

Winner, 2020 AVBOB Poetry Project

Dedicated to the memory of Temeeti the son of Teiaa,without whose influence this book would never have been written

Why do we admire the thinkers of Cretandom? We admire the thinkers of Cretandom because they have managed to reformulate the questions, usually in such a manner as to make certain answers at least seem plausible.

—Sir Isaiah Berlin

Foreword

The aspiration that lies behind this book is quite extraordinary and its publication timely.

Extraordinary, in that it seeks to breathe new life into metaphysics, the often-neglected attempt to grasp the nature of reality itself, rather than opting for the more narrowly defined questions that have become the norm in academic philosophy. Timely, in that it seeks to construct a theory based on relationships, interconnectedness and a holistic view, which reflects the global nature of the challenges, both intellectual and practical, that we face today.

Much academic philosophy, particularly in the analytic tradition, is precise and logical, making incremental steps within arguments that have been developed by generations of thinkers. Yet the real impetus in philosophy has always been provided by those who have not been afraid to challenge existing assumptions and raise fundamental questions.

Even an over-simplified and cursory glance at the landscape of Western thought, reveals the significance of Plato, with his theory of Forms and huge influence on both philosophy and religion, or Aristotle with a metaphysics that enables the integration of philosophy and the empirical quest of science, providing so many of the basic terms upon which later thinkers have come to depend, or Aquinas’ attempt to integrate philosophy and religion. In the quest for certainty, and the shift in the 17th and 18th centuries towards the centrality of the theory of knowledge, you have Descartes, Hume or Kant, radically challenging previous arguments and setting the agenda for those who follow. You have the systematic thought of Hegel, or its political development in Marx, or the development of existentialism from Kierkegaard, or Heidegger’s ontology. Hugely, for the 20th century, there is the influence of Wittgenstein and the shift in philosophy towards the appreciation of the limitations, meaning and function of language, or the pragmatist tradition of James or Dewey or the move towards postmodernism. These and other broad movements in Western thought have one thing in common; they seek to shift the philosophical agenda.

So what of Scarborough? His book is both challenging and disconcerting, in that it too seeks to shift the agenda. His metaphysics is systematically rooted in the ideas of interconnectedness and human values that come closer to the insights of the Buddha than to most western philosophy. He sets about using that new perspective in order to re-examine traditional areas of philosophical discussion – ethics, religion, free will and the relationship between mind and body.

Thus, for example, he sets out to reincorporate ethics into metaphysics, getting beyond Hume’s claim that one cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ and thereby setting a question mark over much modern ethical discussion. His ten ethical principles are founded on the observation of reality in ways that bring it closer to the earlier Natural Law approach to ethics, and he is rightly critical of the false simplicity of much utilitarian thought. By thinking expansively and holistically, he is able to devise his own ethical maxims, taking us into intellectual territory far removed from the familiar arguments of utilitarian, deontological or virtue ethics.

In 1962, working in the field of the philosophy of science, Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In it he described the long periods of time during which scientists tend to work within an accepted paradigm for their field of study, challenging it to a greater or lesser extent, until eventually it is found to be inadequate and is replaced in what he called a ‘paradigm shift.’ I sense that what Scarborough is seeking with this book is to present us with the need for a paradigm shift in metaphysics and in philosophy more generally.

Philosophy in the 20th century left few assumptions unchallenged, and its legacy is a suspicion of any ‘metanarrative’ or attempt to give an overall account of reality in general. This book attempts to rectify that situation and restore the quest to describe ‘everything briefly’ in a way that shifts our thinking from the confines of earlier paradigms to one that reflects the observation that there are boundless relations and interconnections within our world, and that our philosophy should build upon these ‘low level’ facts towards a genuinely new metaphysics.

I have little doubt that those steeped in academic philosophy may find some aspects of this book frustrating, partly because of the originality of what Scarborough sets out to do, and partly because the later sections of the book, in which he unpacks the implications of his thought, make one eager for further development and examination. This is not a criticism of the book itself, for it would be quite impossible in a single volume to unpack all the implications of his thought. What we have here is a work of genuine originality, shifting the parameters of debate and introducing ideas that may at first appear improbable because they are unexpected.

Perhaps there should be a final word of warning for those embarking on this book. Previous metaphysics has tended to argue for a single idea or theme around which everything else can cohere; a single key to unlock all mysteries. That is not the case here. In a world of boundless relations there is no fixed centre—nowhere to ‘plant our flag’, to use Scarborough’s image—no narrow certainty, but only an invitation to an ever-wider sense of openness.

Those picking up this book, expecting it to offer a nuanced and careful development of familiar arguments, comfortably edging academic progress forward at a glacial pace, are in for a shock. It is not that sort of book, but it deserves to be read more than once in order to savour what it has to offer.

Mel Thompson

2022

Preface

One of my professors sought to speak to a student about his worldview. The student responded, Sir, I don’t think we are communicating. My professor tried again. Sir, said the young man, I don’t think we are communicating. My professor noticed that the student had prepared him some tea. He said gruffly, Give me some tea! Taken aback, the young man poured him some tea. Sir, said my professor, I think we are communicating.¹

The curious thing about this exchange is that there was no communication at the higher level of abstract concepts, yet full communication at the lower level of a simple task: pouring tea.

If only it were so with philosophy.

And yet it is so with philosophy.

Traditionally, philosophy has traded in high-level concepts, which are broader and more complex than those that we find at a lower level.

Yet if we recast philosophy in terms of low-level concepts, it begins to look more like a conversation about tea. It becomes possible to discuss philosophical concepts without confusion. This is the method of the present book—without abandoning high-level concepts, which are retained for context.

A metaphysics is a total philosophy, a panoramic philosophy, which seeks to integrate all aspects of our knowledge and experience. The authors of the Collins Dictionary of Philosophy, Godfrey Vesey and Paul Foulkes, wrote, The enquiry is very general, and in a sense has to underpin everything else in the world.²

Of course, to write about everything is, in a sense, impossible. It may take years to master the most basic things: say geometry, boatbuilding, or poetry. Yet in the midst of an ocean of knowledge, there are some time-honored subjects, which, at various times, have been thought to hold the key to the unification of everything: among them, ontology; epistemology; axiology; and, more recently, linguistics.³

Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion?

—Hermann Hesse

In this book, we find that the age-old subjects still deliver—if we drive the discussion down to a low level, to the nuts and bolts of thought, as it were. I part, therefore, with the pessimists. I believe that a new, all-encompassing philosophy is possible in our time. In fact, I seek here to demonstrate it.

A single historical development has made a new attempt possible. There has been a great shift in our conception of the relatedness of all things—influenced in turn by the advance of modern science.

This has introduced a new situation, in which we are more aware of an interconnected world than ever before. It has brought us, too, to the point where the solutions to our greatest problems lie well within reach. In all of our troubles and apparent stumbling in the dark, we have been edging ever closer to the answers. They lie in the observation of the first scientist, Leonardo da Vinci: Realize that everything connects to everything else.⁴

Development of the Book

I formed the vision for a new metaphysics during my first year in theological seminary, in Europe, in 1978. It was a time of great ideological divides—politically, socially, and philosophically—and there was growing relativism and pluralism, as had seldom been the case in the past. This provided a rich and lively academic climate.

I soon began to keep philosophical notebooks, which grew to thousands of entries—and soon I made trial runs on a metaphysics.

I found, however, that integration failed. I could not find the sense of cohesion I was seeking. Curiously, as I look back now, the cohesion is plain to see in my notes.

In 2004 and 2006, I wrote two short metaphysics for professors in the USA. But again, I felt that integration failed, although I obtained good grades. Finally, in 2008, holed up one icy cold winter in South Africa’s Koue Bokkeveld to study and write, I felt that I achieved the breakthrough.

My core ideas were published in the Philosophical Society of England’s centenary special edition of The Philosopher, in 2013,⁵ and the year after this, the philosophy weekly Philosophical Investigations invited me to explore the wider implications of my thought. A constellation of essays now came into being, which tested the waters of a new, integrated scheme.

Editors Dr. Martin Cohen and Pierre-Alain Gouanvic raised the idea of a metaphysics with me and created an online space for me to develop the project. I completed this work in 2015, and it was published the same year under the title Metaphysical Notes.

It was a small metaphysics, somewhat flawed, and taxing on the mind. Therefore, I embarked on a book-length manuscript in simpler style. As I did so, I had the privilege of wide-ranging comment from various thinkers, who continually lifted the level of my work.

Influences

My influences were many. Here I survey the most important few, both in my own immediate experience and in the philosophical past.

My parents grew up in different countries, under different powers. The tension between their two worldviews, their incisive thinking, and their broad learning contributed greatly to a rich thought life. My father, who was a minister, was an unconventional, inventive man, with a brilliant ability to sum up vast situations in a flash. My mother, not long after my birth, found herself seated opposite a translator for the United Nations on a train. He was intrigued to see her traveling with learned books in various languages and invited her that same day to serve as his assistant.

When I was just four years old, we moved to remote islands in the Pacific, where, apart from a few common utensils and cloth, Western influence was virtually unknown. There, a local man, Temeeti Teiaa, was appointed as my guardian. Temeeti, in an old world society, through countless activities over years, showed me a different way of life—and a different way of seeing things. He imbued me with a sense that his civilization was superior to mine.

I attended theological seminaries on three continents and had world-class professors. If I should single out any one of them, it was the philosophical theologian Dr. Francis Schaeffer, whom I quoted at the beginning of this preface. While I have carried few of his ideas into this book, he influenced me greatly through his emphasis on presuppositions and a holistic worldview.

I married a Swiss wife, Mirjam Rahel Meier, in 1982. She became a doctor of philosophy and a co-director and executive editor of the International Institute for Religious Freedom. She understood my ideas and dropped many passing comments. She died too young, of bone marrow cancer. Yet before she died, she followed a little-known tradition of the church, instructing me to marry Ester Sizani, a woman of largely Xhosa descent and royal lineage. Ester quietly yet powerfully promoted the completion of this book.

I received critical help besides, for which a few deserve special mention: a tutor in linguistics at the University of Cape Town, Atikonda A. Mtenje (now Dr. Mtenje-Mkochi); an academic supervisor at the South African Theological Seminary, Dr. Vincent Atterbury; a Rhodes University philosophy graduate, Stephen Galanis; an award-winning poet, B. Ann Moore (my sister); a psychologist and artist, Jeremy L. Dyer; a Swiss banker, Christian Maag; an insightful and combative editor, Dr. Geoffrey Marnell; a perceptive publisher, Wendy K. Lochner; and, again, Dr. Martin Cohen came to my side, bringing a maturity to the whole that I could not have achieved alone

Finally, as my manuscript edged ever closer to acceptance, several agents and publishers wrote to me along the lines that, while this was a fine work, they were not capable of it. It was only when I saw the enormous task it was for Wipf & Stock that I understood that the others had not made excuses. This book required extraordinary diligence and skill to bring it to fruition, over most of a year. I am especially thankful for Rachel Leibman’s beautiful cover art, Mike Surber’s spendid cover design, Dr. Rebecca Abbott’s gracious and assiduous copy editing, Rachel Saunders’ artistic typesetting, and managing editor Matthew Wimer’s always timely guidance.

It is not easy to discern which thinkers were most formative in my quest. A few stand out in particular: Laozi, Nicolaus Copernicus, Søren Kierkegaard, Ferdinand de Saussure, Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen, Stephen Toulmin, Max Black, Jacques Derrida, Simon Blackburn, and Mel Thompson—and in a backward kind of way, the social optimists Karl Marx, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

One writer stands out above all. I had read Aristotle once but found him to be all but inscrutable. I had made a two-page list of books that I thought to be essential reading for my task, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics was last on the list. Now, he came alive. While I did not see in Aristotle what the commentators saw, his thought was catalytic for me. Reading Aristotle, everything fell into place.

A Note about Terms

While I leave any further observations about philosophy for the body of this book, there is something that seems to me to have a special place in the preface. Today there is a proliferation of terms, so that much the same things have many names. Take the example of a thing, a concept that is central to this book. A thing may also be called an object, entity, item, existent, being, concept, and so on—often with special nuances and conflicts of meaning.

Whatever the reason for it, one thing seems clear. If one dwells too much on the terms, one shall never write a metaphysics. My purpose is to create a harmonious whole, which is capable of uniting all knowledge and experience. While I carefully studied the terms, I finally chose those terms and meanings that would be useful to this end.

Thomas O. Scarborough

Cape Town

1

. Schaeffer, God Who Is There,

96

.

2

. Vesey and Foulkes, Metaphysics, in COLDP,

192

.

3

. The aim of metaphysics is, in my own definition, the integration of all fields of knowledge and experience, even if sub-fields should not receive specific treatment. For example, optics may be covered by the exact sciences.

4

. Quoted in Fortuna et al., Five Hundred Years,

9

. Bearing in mind that Da Vinci’s everything was more constrained than our everything today.

5

. Scarborough, Revisiting Aristotle’s Noun.

Abbreviations

CDP The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Edited by Robert Audi. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

CODL The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. 3rd ed. Edited by Peter H. Matthews. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014.

COLDP The Collins Dictionary of Philosophy. Edited by Godfrey Vesey and Paul Foulkes. London: Collins, 1990.

FDMT The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. Edited by Alan Bullock et al. New York: Fontana, 1988.

ODP The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. By Simon Blackburn. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996.

PDP The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. Edited by Thomas Mautner. London: Penguin Reference, 2000.

SEP The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1997–2021. Online resource. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/.

Part I

Foundations

The purpose of this philosophy is not to supplant earlier philosophies but to unify and reconcile—so incorporating earlier philosophies in a new work. The first part of this book addresses the foundations of a new metaphysics.¹

1. Foundations, not in the old sense of beliefs that require no further justification; rather, a context in which to develop a new metaphysics. Note here, at the very beginning, that there are some fundamental disagreements over the meaning of metaphysics. I define it as a grand unified philosophy, which integrates—or provides a means to integrate—all fields of knowledge and experience using familiar philosophical concepts.

Chapter 1

Low-Level Concepts

Philosophers have generally occupied themselves with high-level concepts. Yet solutions to philosophy’s problems lie in low-level concepts.

Ideas matter. They matter a very great deal. They matter to everything we see around us. They shape the world in which we live. This means that ideas are not merely interesting. More than that, they are of critical importance.

However, it is not those ideas which we think to be important that always are. This is especially true of philosophy. Take, for instance, individualism, guanxi, democracy, laissez-faire, or the scientific method. We may call these high-level concepts. They are big ideas, which, in general, enable us to better grasp our situation and explore it. Yet their track record is fairly poor, when it comes to solving the problems of our time.

There are, on the other hand, ideas of another kind, which are more important by far. Call them low-level concepts,² which are far more basic. They infiltrate our thinking everywhere. They are present in all of our speech and writing. Even before we begin to shape our high-level concepts, they are there. They existed where thought began.

As a result, what we see in the world around us may depend heavily on what might seem to be philosophical trifles: the number of things, things and relations, the opposites of things, and so on. These low-level concepts, I argue, are the real determinants of our thought life—therefore, our world, as we know it.

Consider an analogy from the world of computing. When we give a computer a set of instructions, we generally do so with a high-level language—feeding it lines that lie not too far from our everyday speech: INPUT receives input from the keyboard, ARRAY creates an array of data, WHILE executes a set of instructions while a condition is true, and so on.³

Yet it is possible to instruct computers more directly than this, through a language we call machine code. Machine code reads something like this:

01010011

01101111

01101100

01101001

00100000

01000100

01100101

01101111

00100000

01100111

01101100

01101111

01110010

01101001

01100001

00101110

Here, our instructions are reduced to the most basic unit of information—namely, individual bits. A bit can hold only one of two values⁴ that correspond to the electrical values in the computer’s logic gates: 0 or 1. As simple as it is, this code offers us supreme control over the machine.

Sometimes, there are errors or deficiencies at a low level, which a high-level language cannot address. Thus a program may not run, or it may be vulnerable to various kinds of failure. A high-level programmer may need to resort to machine code—alternatively, a low-level language—to overcome the problems that exist at a high level.

In philosophy, similarly, it is the simple things that are of supreme importance. Yet we have often overlooked them or neglected them. Or, we have let basic ideas slip into our minds without examining what they contain. In some cases, we have given them unquestioning acceptance for thousands of years, where they were not deserving of the honor.

The following examples merely illustrate—too briefly—the kinds of low-level concepts we shall examine more closely in due course:

•Number. How many things are there in this world? And if things, then how many relations between them? It is a critical question, which will become central to a new ethics⁵—yet it has been virtually off the map for philosophers. For Socrates, it merely had to do with possessions: How many things are there which I do not want!⁶

•Forms. Plato, in the fourth century BC, held that there are abstract objects which, in the words of philosophy professor Sean McAleer, are mind-independently real.⁷ While we easily dismiss Plato’s idea today, we retain it in all of our scientific theory, since theory is mind-independently real. It is not, we imagine, the product of fancy.

•Things and relations. Aristotle, in the fourth century BC, held the belief—still widely held today—that our whole world may be interpreted in terms of things and relations. Yet what are things? More than that, what are relations? This lies at the root of major philosophical problems.

While philosophers today have scrutinized many of the more basic concepts, a cursory look at a dictionary of philosophy shows that the ideas in which we generally trade—and in which we have traded for thousands of years—are predominantly high-level concepts from A to Z, from alienation to Zeitgeist—compatibilism, existentialism, irrealism, prescriptivism, reliabilism, or vitalism, to give but a few examples.

Conflict and Contradiction

Our failure to resolve philosophical problems at a low level, we shall show, has led to a breakdown at a high level and has obstructed our ability to unite all things—thus to understand the world in which we live.⁸ Philosophy author Richard Osborne wrote, It can be asked ‘Where has philosophy and science got us to at the moment?’ and the answer seems to be in a huge environmental and political mess.⁹

One does not need to understand much about philosophy to see the trouble. Both philosophies and philosophers have, from the beginning, been in continual disagreement—and disagreement has resulted in conflict.

Every major philosophical tradition had its origins in conflict and continued in conflict. In China, it began with the Hundred Schools of Thought. In India there was, from the start, the separation between the orthodox and heterodox schools. The European tradition began with the great division that Diogenes Laërtius later called the Ionian and Italian—not to speak of the many divisions within divisions, which continue to this day.

This conflict includes the most fundamental subjects: the reality of our world, the existence of God, even the possibility of metaphysics itself. From the beginning, there has been an endless succession of philosophical contradictions and reversals.

Today, we may search in vain for a point of view that is not completely contradicted elsewhere. We see it in every dictionary of philosophy. Where we find realism, we find anti-realism; where we find theism, atheism; where we find altruism, egoism—and so on.¹⁰

A philosophical idea may seem to be persuasive for a time. The hard part is explaining why it and every other philosophical idea are so completely disputed and always have been.¹¹ The philosopher and activist Simone Weil concluded, The contradictions the mind comes up against—these are the only realities.¹²

World-views may be grouped in pairs.

—Emil Brunner

An Endless Cycle

Not only has there been conceptual confusion. Philosophers themselves have been in complete and continual conflict with each other.¹³ This has been the case at least since Plato, around 400 BC. Diogenes of Sinope, on a visit to Plato’s home, trampled on Plato’s cushions with his muddy feet and said, I trample on Plato’s vainglory! Plato replied, How much pride you expose to view, Diogenes.¹⁴

In the Middle Ages, Abu al-Ghazali wrote the book Self-Destruction of the Philosophers—to which Averroës wrote the disparaging reply: The Self-Destruction of the Self-Destruction. Yet even in his own lifetime, Averroës was shunned. Sheikh Ash-Shuyookh Ibn Hamawiyyah summed it up: He had many strange views.¹⁵

Centuries later, Voltaire, during the age of Enlightenment, wrote to Jean-Jacques Rousseau that, when he read his works, a desire seizes us to walk on four paws.¹⁶ Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that Hegel was an intellectual Caliban (the subhuman son of a malevolent witch);¹⁷ Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that Schopenhauer was a case of the first order for a psychologist;¹⁸ while Kant—a dignified man, who preferred to avoid personal insults—merely referred to his predecessors’ work. He called it obnoxious.¹⁹

At the same time, metaphysicians have been quick to extol the importance of their own ideas. René Descartes considered that he was rebuilding the house in which we all live;²⁰ Kant wrote that his was the only remaining path to truth;²¹ and Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his first work, considered his thoughts unassailable and definitive.²²

The problem with the philosophers of the past, wrote Bertrand Russell, was their glib assertions [and] glib denials. But things had been misconceived by all schools. He himself would now set it all to rights with precision and certainty.²³ That attempt, titled Our Knowledge of the External World, is by now fairly much forgotten and certainly disputed.

The very fact that metaphysicians continually put each other down and set their own selves up—and in rare cases, put their own selves down again—ought to alert us to something that would seem to be larger than their very selves. Over and above these men and women, there is a continual cycle. One metaphysician displaces the other—or so they claim—only for another to displace them in turn—and this cycle does not end. The result is not only the confusion of the philosophers but the confusion of the world.

How, then, should we exit this scene, in order to see more clearly? The behavioral psychologist John B. Watson wrote, Unless new issues arise which will give a foundation for a new philosophy, the world has seen its last great philosopher.²⁴

2

. At the best of times, this is not a well-defined term. Here, it refers to concepts that lie at a level of abstraction below that which is normal or average.

3

. These particular instructions belong to the Pascal programming language.

4

. This holds for a bit, though not for a qubit.

5

. While ethics (singular) is a branch of philosophy, and ethics (singular or plural) are moral principles, for reasons of style, we refer to both in the singular.

6

. Socrates, as cited in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, §

32

.

7

. McAleer, Plato’s Republic,

150–73

. What Plato meant by forms is a subject of debate. His own understanding of forms may have changed during his lifetime. According to McAleer, Plato included mathematical objects under forms.

8

. The more banal the truth (‘truism,’ ‘platitude’), wrote theologian Hans Küng, the greater its certainty (Küng, On Being a Christian,

74–75)

.

9

. Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners,

181

.

10

. Classical skepticism held that the best methods deliver conflicting judgments about truth. The philosopher Francis H. Bradley held that contradictions are inherent in the basic categories (Bradley, Appearance and Reality,

518)

.

11

. It is hard to know, wrote Georg W. F. Hegel, given so many competing yet internally coherent philosophies, which one is true (Hegel, History of Philosophy,

1:16–17)

.

12

. Weil, Gravity and Grace,

151

. The Madhyamika school of Buddhism taught that truth lies beyond all dichotomies and oppositions (Blackburn, Madhyamika, in ODP,

287–88)

.

13

. The psychologist and philosopher William James reportedly said, There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers (quoted in Mulvaney, Classic Philosophical Questions,

12

).

14

. Laertius, Complete Works, §

26

. Bertrand Russell gave an earlier example: Anaximander vs. Thales (Russell, Our Knowledge,

13)

.

15

. Dhahabi, Siyar Alaam an-Nubala,

21:307–10

.

16

. Warner, Voltaire to Rousseau,

38

:

15

,

484

.

17

. Jacquette, Philosophy of Schopenhauer,

79

.

18

. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols,

79–80

.

19

. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, x.

20

. Descartes, Discourse on Method,

32

.

21

. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, xii.

22

. Wittgenstein, Tractatus,

4

. Ludwig Wittgenstein did not, however, think of