What is Life?

Aside from being a song by George Harrison, the question “what is life?” gives the philosopher occasion to engage in one of his favorite activities: working toward a precise definition for a word.

We use the noun ‘life’ and the verb ‘live’ (lives, lived, living) in ordinary circumstances quite often. Yet it is perhaps not easy to articulate exactly what life is.

One might observe that life is contingent: different forms of life are contingent upon different things. Various forms of physical life depend on various types of matter and energy: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, heat, light.

We might inquire about non-physical forms of life. One hears the phrase ‘life of the mind’ - is that a metaphor, or a literal reference? Likewise with ‘social life’?

If we restrict ourselves to biological life, we might compare a dead organism to a living one. One of the differences is motion: dead things move when moved; living things move spontaneously. The motion of a non-living thing is ab alio; the motion of a living thing can be ab se.

Life is not measurable in the manner in which we measure matter or energy: a plant or animal does not lose any mass or weight when it dies. Viewing a single-celled organism through a microscope, we cannot see its life disappear when it dies: all the various parts of it remain, and remain in the spatial relation to one another.

What we can see is motion, and death is often inferred when motion stops - correctly inferred or incorrectly inferred. Motion is an indirect, or mediated, sign of life. Motion can fool us; we may think something is alive because it moves, and we might be wrong in so thinking. We may think something is dead because it does not move, and just as easily be right or wrong.

Life, then, might be something metaphysical. If it is not matter or energy or a combination thereof, and if it is not directly detectable by our five senses, it could be a metaphysical category. We note that it is not even detectable in principle by our five senses.

Whether or not one wishes to commit philosophically to a robust ontology, including a metaphysical entity or substance called ‘life’, one can see the reasons which would persuade a philosopher to make that commitment. We might speak of life “going” when a person dies. What is it that went? Whither did it go?

Although some texts include the phrase “self-sustaining” in attempted definitions of ‘life’, this could be true only in a rather limited sense. Given that life is contingent, it is sustained by the ongoing presence of certain types of energy and matter in its environment.

Although living beings may be capable of spontaneous motion, life itself is not spontaneous. Life does not start itself, but rather is started. It does not end itself, but rather is ended. Even in a case of suicide, life is ended by a means, mediately, not by itself directly.

Carl Christian Erhard Schmid wrote an extensive commentary on Kant’s philosophy, and published it in 1798. Summarizing Kant’s views, he gave a four-point Kantian definition of ‘life’ as follows:

1. In general: a substance’s power to determine out of an inner principle to act
2. Particularly: a finite substance’s power to determine itself toward change
3. A material substance’s power to determine itself toward motion and rest as changes of its condition. Because thought and desire are the only inner activities and principles of change which are known to us, but these are not objects of external senses, nor predicates of material substances, life is not ascribed to the latter
4. A being’s power to act according to the laws of the power of desire, i.e., by means of its representation to become the cause of the reality of the objects of these representations.

In German as in English, the verb ‘change’ has both a transitive and a non-transitive semantic; both are in play here. Schmid’s summary in the original reads:

1. Überhaupt: das Verögen einer Substanz, sich aus einem innern Princip zum Handeln zu bestimmen.
2. Insbesondre: das Verögen einer endlichen Substanz, sich zur Veränderung zu bestimmen.
3. Das Vermögen einer materiellen Substanz, sich zur Bewegung und Ruhe, als Veränderungen ihres Zustandes, selbst zu bestimmen. Da Denken und Begehren die einzigen uns bekannten innern Thätigkeiten und Principien einer Veränderung, diese aber keine Gegenstände der äussern Sinne, noch Prädicate materieller Substanzen sind, so kommt letztern eigentlich kein Leben zu.
4. Das Vermögen eines Wesens, nach Gesetzen des Begehrungsvermögens zu handeln d.h. durch seine Vorstellungen Ursache von der Wirklichkeit der Gegenstände dieser Vorstellungen zu werden.

Schmid’s original spelling has been preserved here. If Schmid’s understanding of Kant is correct - and we have reason to think that it is, because Schmid wrote during Kant’s lifetime and received no objection from Kant - then “life” is the power to cause objects to be real, according to Kant. That is quite a statement!

Perception and Conception

Many philosophers will agree to some statement similar to this: the human mind shapes or processes our experiences and sense-data, and from them forms perceptions and ideas. But in the details of how this happens, and in the exact definitions of each of the words in such a statement, quite a few divergent views will be found.

In the history of modern philosophy, the concepts - and we will need to return to the word 'concept' again for clarification - of space and time emerged early as a central part of that process by which the human mind organizes sensations, and as a central topic of conflict between philosophers.

In a famous disagreement between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727), two basic views were set forth. Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) joined the discussion on Newton's side, and letters between Clarke and Leibniz are the primary text for this matter (Leibniz almost certainly never met Clarke or Newton in person). Norman Kemp Smith outlines their positions:

(a) The view propounded by Newton, and defended by Clarke, is that space has an existence in and of itself, independent alike of the mind which apprehends it and of the objects with which it is filled. (b) The view held by Leibniz is that space is an empirical concept abstracted from our confused sense-experience of the relations of real things.

The argumentation produced by both sides is sophisticated and brilliant. Ultimately, however, the question was a stalemate until Kant proposed a third view. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) hoped to split the difference between Leibniz and Newton, glean the best of both, and discard the worst of both. Kant argued that space and time were part of the mind, but not abstracted from experience; rather space and time were part of the mechanism which makes experience possible.

With Leibniz, then, Kant refused to make space and time a physical reality in the way in which rocks and oceans are physical realities; with Newton, Kant gave space and time an unshakeable basis, so much so that they could serve as the a priori foundation for mathematics and geometry.

Since the time of Kant, a number of physicists and philosophers have wrestled with, refined, and produced variants of, these explanations of space and time. The long list would include Einstein and Hawking. Orlin Ottman Fletcher, at Furman University, hopes to make progress by distinguishing types of space and time. If there are different types of space, and different types of time, then we need not trouble ourselves seeking definitions and explanations which would apply to all time and space; this would allow us to steer clear of some of the problems and paradoxes on which others have foundered. He writes:

We distinguish between Perceptual space-experience and that which is purely Ideational. Their essential differences will appear in the course of this discussion. We treat perceptual space first.

Fletcher bases his notion of 'perceptual space' on the phenomenon of distinctness between objects and on the phenomenon of the extension of bodies - which is to say, he bases his notion of perceptual space on phenomena, not on any thing in itself.

The book, inkstand, and ben which are on my desk are seen to be distinct objects; each of them is apart from, or "out of," the others. As I lay my hand on the door-knob in the dark, the knob is felt to be "out from" the surface of the door. Similarly each of the corners of one of the covers of the book is perceived to be apart from the other corners. In like manner we apprehend that parts of other material objects on the desk are experienced as "out from" me. We do not perceive sensible objects otherwise than in a relation of "outness" to one another and to ourselves. So also portions of the over of a book or of a patch of light are seen to be "out from" one another. In a word, all sensible individuals are perceived to be in a relation of "outness" to one another and to the perceiver. In perceiving sensible objects, we always relate them in respect of position; and the objective reality which yields experience of mutual "outness," is the position-relation of the objects perceived. To say that the inkstand and the pen are "out from" each other, is to say that they are in distinct positions, and that we have related them in respect of those positions.

He turns from discussing the perceived distinctness of objects - their occupying of mutually exclusive spaces - to the extension of bodies in space. Note that he is restricting his discussion to perception, and has not yet addressed any metaphysical or a priori considerations.

When we look at a patch of light, the cover of a book, or the top of a desk, we not only have a consciousness of the apartness of portions of the whole, but we also have an experience of "spread-outness," or extensity. Taking all the many positions on the surface together, the whole appear extended. This is true likewise of the perceptions of objects which are not in contact with one another. You see two colored spots at a sensible remove from each other. The whole which you thus perceive is two spots related in position, and it has an aspect of "extendedness." The element of extensity is your experience arises in your perception of the position-relation of the spots. This is evident from the fact that the extensity of the whole is dependent upon the relative positions of the spots. Suppose these spots are colored counters. If you give them positions nearer each other, the extensity is lessened; if you move them farther apart, the extensity is increased. When a sheet of paper is folded, the more widely separated portions are brought nearer to one another, and what we then perceive appears to be less extended than the unfolded sheet. In a word, the aspect of extensity varies with variation of the position-relation of the objects. The position-relation of perceived objects is the objective reality which yields experience of extensity.

Fletcher's text thus far is experiential, and bears some similarity to Leibniz. He goes on to posit that extension is not the primary feature of "perceptual space" but rather that position-relation is.

We have found that perceptual space-experience comes of the perception of sensible objects, and that it has two characteristics: the mutual "outness" of the objects, and the extensity aspect of the whole. We have also learned that it is the perceived position-relation of objects which gives us experience of the mutual "outness" of objects and of extensity. From this it would follow that perceptual space is essentially the perceived position-relation of objects. This, however, differs fundamentally from the common conception of space, which is that space is extensity. This common conception of space is so fixed in thought that we restate considerations already presented. Every whole is many particulars in one. The surface of this sheet is for perception many distinguishable portions of a whole; and it is because we relate distinguishable portions to one another in respect of their positions, that the sheet appears to be extended. When I have experience of the book, the inkstand, and the pen in one perception, it is the position-relation of these objects that gives the aspect of extensity to the whole which I perceive. Spatial experience is, therefore, not primarily experience of extensity; it is experience of the position-relation of objects. The objects whose perception yields this consciousness are necessarily presented together in experience. You cannot relate the positions of three colored spots unless all three are present in your thought at the same time. Including this fact in our description of spatial experience, we would say that it is primarily experience of the position-relation of co-existent objects. Space, as a category, is the position-relation of objects, abstracted from the objects. There is, of course, no perceptual experience of space thus abstracted; for space does not exist by itself, it is a relation. Neither is there experience of extensity by itself; for extensity is an aspect of a perceived whole in which there are sensible particulars, — as the book and the pen, or distinguishable portions of a surface, — and it does not exist apart from sensible particulars. We conclude, then, that perceptual space is the perceived position-relation of co-existent sensible objects, the perception of this relation giving an aspect of eztensity to the whole of what is perceived.

Having posited position-relation as the basis of space, Fletcher then goes on to deal with indexical terms. Indexicals seem to refer necessarily to a conscious perceiver, to the knowing subject.

You reach out and touch a wall, you see a tree toward your right, you hear a bell sounding behind you. The position of each of these objects is related by you to your own position; and you express this relation in the terms, "before," "to the right," "behind." Other terms definitive of like spatial experience are in frequent use — as "here," "there," "above," "below," etc. They define the position of objects and are terms of direction. Such definition of position-relation is present in all developed spatial experience. If we deal efficiently with objects, we must apprehend where they are with respect to ourselves. This definition of space-perception also makes experience available for intersubjective intercourse. If I should say, "The book is on the upper shelf of the case which is at the left of the door as you enter the study," you would understand me and would easily locate the book. The examples given show that, in perceptual space-experience, direction is determined with reference to the position of the subject. The wall is before you, the tree is at your right, the bell is behind you, the book-case is at your left as you enter the room. In general, in perceptual space, the direction is determined by relating the position of the object to the position of the subject.

Having dealt at length with "perceptual space," Fletcher goes on to consider what he calls "conceptual space," which seems to be his version of the a priori concept or intuition of space. Kant argues that space is not, and cannot be, a concept, but is rather an intuition; Kant sees space as prior to concepts, and as making concepts possible. Whether Fletcher will follow Kant in this remains to be seen.

Our discussion has led us to conclude that perceptual space, the space of sense-experience, is the perceived position-relation of sensible objects and the resultant extensity aspect of the perceived whole. As the extension element of the perception is an aspect of what is perceived, it cannot exist by itself. We cannot image extension apart from sensible objects. Conceptual space is extension abstracted from objects; it is mere extensity. According to this conception, space is whether objects are or not. As thus conceived, space has a sort of thinghood ; it is treated as an entity and is virtually regarded as a receptacle for material objects. We easily think of space as an infinite emptiness within which is all that is material. This mode of thought has even found a place in Philosophy; we often say that all sensible objects are in space. But we must not so regard the objective reality corresponding to our perceptual experience; for our perceptions and our images have a spatial character because of the perceived and imaged objects. Conceptual space is not the same with perceptual space. Perceptual space is a relation and a resultant aspect; conceptual space is this aspect, conceived as existing by itself. It is a product of reflection; and, although it is related to perceptual space, it differs significantly from the latter.

Continuing to think nearer to Leibniz than to Newton, Fletcher posits conceptual space as something abstracted from perceptual space, and perceptual space as something existing only relative to objects. Yet, if he give space so weak a foundation, how can geometry, which he seems to see as arising from the intuition of space, have a basis, much less a certain basis?

But, if conceptual space, the space of mathematics, differs so greatly from the space of sense-experience, are the conclusions of mathematics valid for the world which we know through sense-experience? Are they valid for the real external world? Although mathematics conceives space as extensity abstracted from perceived objects, nevertheless it sets ideal objects in this extensity when it reasons respecting space. The ideal objects are the mathematical point, line, surface, and solid. Having set these in space, it discusses position-relations. The point, being without extension, is pure position. It takes the place of the subject in perceptual space; and direction and distance are determined from the point. Its line, surface, and solid are constituted ideally of positions which arc external to one another. The science of geometry is the science of related positions. From this we conclude (1) that, although mathematics conceives space as extensity abstracted from objects, it is wont in its reasoning to give this extensity concreteness by setting ideal objects within space; and (2) that mathematical reasonings respecting space are discussions concerning position-relations. In both these particulars, it puts itself at one with perceptual space. The conclusions logically deduced by such reasoning are true for related positions and are, therefore, true for the position-relations of objects. By so much as they are valid for spatial relations in general, they are valid for the spatial relations of the universe.

Having set forth his views on space and time, Fletcher explains why he rejects the Kantian view, and what he takes the Kantian view to be:

Kant's refusal to regard space and time as categories came of his sharp and overwrought distinction between "sense" and "thought." He himself recognizes that there is no spatial or temporal perception apart from the activity of the understanding; from this it follows that the space and time elements enter cognitive experience through the judging activity of the mind. He was not wholly consistent, then, in refusing to list space and time with the categories. It is also evident that he gave the categories an external, or merely mechanical, relation to the material of knowledge; for he has the material of knowledge ordered in keeping with these forms. The forms are imposed upon the material; they are not an expression of the nature of the material itself. He limited the categories to the province of sense-experience. He could not do otherwise; for the understanding, in his system, only deals with material which is furnished by the senses. As a consequence, Kant's doctrine of the categories leaves them unrelated to the moral order and to judgments of value and purpose. Having limited cognitive experience to the phenomenal world, a world formally constituted by the mind out of sensuous material, he was obliged to assign the moral order and judgments of value and purpose to a realm beyond experience. His refusal to recognize space and time as categories, the extreme subjectivity of his conception of the categories, and their inapplicability (as conceived by him) to the moral order and to judgments of value and purpose, lead us to conclude that his doctrine is inadequate.

The question left, then, is this: are Fletcher's criticisms of Kant strong enough to cause us to abandon Kant? Is Fletcher's description of space and time strong enough to make us embrace it instead? Does Fletcher's version of space and time avoid the pitfalls which he attributes to Kant's version?

Metaphysics - Competing Definitions

The word 'metaphysics' is so problematic in the history of philosophy that one is sometimes hesitant to even use it. The number of books titled merely Metaphysics is large; the number of books with the words 'Metaphysics' or 'Metaphysical' in their titles is even larger. Martin Heidegger even wrote a book titled What is Metaphysics?

Answering the question posed by Heidegger's title is no simple matter, and any proposed definition will meet with a few passionate supporters, but probably more passionate opponents. Philosophers who offer definitions of 'metaphysics' sometimes even equivocate on their own terms. Immanuel Kant initially flirts with a definition of 'metaphysics' as that branch of philosophy which deals with God, with the immortality of the soul, and with the freedom of the will. He then goes on to offer his more widely-known definition of 'metaphysics' as the a priori synthetic.

Let's examine three possible definitions:

First, metaphysics might be that branch of philosophy - that science in the sense of Wissenschaft - which deals with things composed of neither matter nor energy.

Second, metaphysics might be that science which deals with things that cannot be perceived by the five senses.

Third, metaphysics might be that science which deals with things located outside of time and space.

Each of these definitions has some intuitive appeal, but also some problems. The word 'things' might require sharpening: it might include persons, ideas, or objects. To explain what an 'object' is, if it is outside of time and space, not detectable by the five senses, and not composed of matter or energy, could be a challenge. An opponent might say that this is not an object at all, or at most an object by analogy.

Another problem is the use of the preposition 'outside' - it is a spatial preposition, and so to be 'outside of space and time' might be judged to be either nonsense or senseless.

Beyond these two problems - and other problems which might be raised - a question might be posed about these three potential definitions: are they equivalent? Again there seems to be some intuitive appeal to the notion that these three are in fact synonymous expressions.

If we understand our five senses to operate on a basis explainable by garden-variety physics, then it would seem that the objects of our senses are composed of matter or energy or some mixture of the two. The processes described by physics take place in time and space.

Although these three definitions are far from trouble-free, it does seem that there is a strong argument to be made for their equivalence.

Windelband on Causality

Students of philosophy are familiar with Aristotle's four types of causation; students of the history of philosophy know that the topic of causation is early, ubiquitous, and enduring. Aristotle was the first, but not the only, philosopher to develop a fourfold explanation of causality. Wilhelm Windelband, born in 1848 in Germany, also saw a quadruple structure. Windelband's four causes are not the same as Aristotle's. Windelband saw causation as a relation between things, states, and activities. He describes the first type of causation as being a situation in which

one thing is the cause, and another thing is the effect. That is the original form of the use of the causal relation, and it is chiefly found in organic life. The flower comes from the plant, the fruit from the tree, the ovum or the young from the mother. In such expressions as springing from, growing from, coming from, etc., in using the preposition "from" for the causal relation, language bears witness to the impression which contained this first form of causality. But if we interrogate science it assures us that this relation holds only for phenomenal things, for the momentary inherence-complexes of perception. The true things, the substances, neither come into existence nor pass out of it.

Windelband's first type of causation, then, may be called a "thing to thing" cause, or a "thing from thing" cause. By contrast, his second type of causality may be labeled a "thing to state" or "thing to activity" cause:

The thing is regarded as the cause of its states and its activities. We thus speak to some extent of man as the cause of his actions, of the soul as the common cause of its various functions, of the body - especially the organic body - as the cause of its movements. In developing those ideas we interpose, between the one thing and the multiplicity of its effects, the forces by means of which the substance exercises its causality. By this we understand certain general properties, capacities, or powers; and in this sense the attributes are at times called the cause of the modi. In the inner world the will is supposed to be the cause of volitions, the intelligence the cause of opinions, and so on. In the external world we find gravity, inertia, and vital forces filling the gap. Force is expressly defined as the cause of movement, and is thus regarded as a property of thing, the substratum, the matter, the substance. From the logical point of view all these forces are general concepts, assumed as the causes of the various functions. We easily see that the general thing, the force, is never the exclusive cause of the activity in question. In order to pass into such a special function, it always needs some occasion of action.

Windelband is aware here that this quarter of his causal analysis closely mirrors a quarter of Aristotle's:

We therefore distinguish between efficient and occasional causes: causa efficiens and causa occasionalis. It is clear that the two together make up the entire "cause"; just as in the analogous case of a syllogism the full ground for the conclusion is in the combination of the two premises, the "major" and the "minor." This is also a very familiar way of looking at things, and there are many variations of it; but it shows us from the start how uncertain it is which is the real cause, the efficient or the occasional or both together.

In addition to acknowledging his debt to Aristotle - by borrowing from Scholastic vocabulary - Windelband is also defying Hume: Windelband's analysis of causation is precisely the target for Hume's critiques. Moving on to the third of his four causes, Windelband describes it in contrast to the second type: it is

the converse of the preceding: states and activities are the causes of things. It is often said, for instance that the wind (which is a state or mode of motion) causes clouds. Many people say that insects are produced by the rain, which we regard as essentially a process, without inquiring into the thing that is moved. A house is put together by a number of activities; who exercises them is immaterial, as the functions are the immediate causes of the house. If in this way we come to treat the functions, detached from the things which discharge them, as independent causes of other things, we come in the end to the theory of the complete detachment of forces and functions. The dynamic view of nature, which Kant and Schelling held, falls into this class. Attraction and repulsion are forces of the primary reality, and matter is merely produced by them. The system is developed in a much more complicated form in Schelling's philosophy of nature.

In Windelband's explanation of his third cause, we see how he is historically located between Aristotelian physics in the past, and modern views of space-time in the future, with the German idealists as some type of midpoint. Neither a quasi-Aristotelian view of causation, nor a consideration of matter as merely a shorthand for the intersection of various forces without its own independent existence, are unique. The combination of the two, however, make Windelband potentially more philosophically interesting. Somewhat predictably, his fourth type of cause is

the causal relation between states: one is the cause and the other the effect. This situation holds for the immanent as well as the transgredient event. In the first case it is psychic, as when we say that perception causes memory (by association), or the willing of the end is the cause of the willing of the means (resolution), or the knowledge of the reason is the psychic cause of the knowledge of the conclusion (deduction). But even in the case of the physical immanent event we have this form of causality, especially in such complex structures as organisms. The digestion, for instance, is understood to be the cause of the formation of blood, of the peripheral stimulation of the nerves the cause of the central process in the brain. From the purely physical points of view, it is true, processes of this kind are resolved into transgredient events from member to member, and ultimately atom to atmo. It is in these mechanical transgredient events that we find this fourth form of causality in its simplest shape: the movement of the impelling body is the cause and the movement of the impelled body is the effect.

In using the word 'transgredient' Windelband introduces a bit of jargon. He explains the use of this word by contrasting 'transgredient event' with 'immanent event':

One case is where the event occurs in one thing. In one and the same thing A appear the states a₁ and a₂ in a definite succession. The thing, in other words, passes from one of its states to another. We will call this variety the immanent event. In our experience it is found chiefly in the psychic life, in which one presentation or emotion follows another in definite succession in one and the same subject of consciousness. This immanent change of state may, however, occur in a body: in one, for instance, which continues to move in a given direction at a certain speed in virtue of inertia. As a rule the material event is of the other type: it occurs between several different things. With state a of the thing A state b of the thing B is connected in a clear and invariable sequence. If we call this the transgredient event, because it passes from one thing to another, we must admit that we have no experience of such direct happening between different souls. If an event is to pass from one soul to another, it must be done by the mediation of bodies; and we thus get two sorts of transgredient events - the physical, between two bodies, and the psychological between sould and body or body and soul. In such cases, where is the unity of the event, which in the immanent event is based upon the identity of the thing? What in the case of transgredient events holds together the different states of different things in unity? We conceive this unity in the sense that the sequence is not merely a fact (like the world and the whistle in our preceding example), but that the states, which together make up the event, are necessarily connected in this sequence. The event therefore implies the necessity of a clear and invariable succession of states.

Earlier in the text, Windelband given the example:

A word spoken in the house, followed by the whistle of a passing locomotive, does not make an "event," no matter how objectively the succession is determined. They lack any real connection.

Hayden White (born 1928 in Tennessee) explains that Windelband's interest in causation is central to his larger philosophical system. Windelband distinguishes between natural "nomothetic" sciences and historical "idiographic" sciences; the two are different not because of their objects, but rather because of their methods. Windelband, according to Hayden White, posits that any object can be studied by both types of science. One distinguishing feature of nomothetic sciences is causation. Therefore, White writes,

any given object could be studied by both kinds of science. A mental event, if viewed under the aspect of physical causality - as an instance of the working of some general law - was a natural event. That same mental event, described in its individuality and valued for its deviation from the class to which it belonged, because an object of the idiographic sciences.

Thus it is important for Windelband's project that causality be so analyzed that it can apply to everything, making any object a potential object for nomothetic sciences, while also leaving other aspect of any object as the object for idiographic sciences.

Taking Confucius Seriously

Although well-intended, damage has been done to serious academic thought, and its enterprise of close textual reading, by calls, motivated by a desire for multiculturalism, for the increased use of non-Western thinkers and belief systems in humanities courses and philosophy classes.

Wouldn't it be grand, it is thought, if we had courses which included classical Chinese and Indian philosophers? Surely, that would not only lead to more fertile philosophizing by students, given the intellectual cross-pollination, but it would also encourage more students of Asian heritage to enroll in such classes.

Noble imaginations like these result, however, in disappointing results. The expected outcomes fail to materialize because the multiculturalists who call for such academic programming do not know, understand, or realize what such study, if done properly, would entail. To engage in such study is to encounter sophisticated and complex texts which require analytical parsing by the student.

Perhaps motivated by pithy quotes from Confucius, and short aphoristic excerpts from koans, the multiculturalists envision a lively classroom engagement, in which students delve into riddles and - in the case of Asian and Indian students - find connections with their heritage.

In reality, students will encounter brilliant thought, but it will be encountered only after rigorous compilation of definitions of technical terms, and lots of close reading. Intellectually challenging and philosophically fruitful, yes, it certainly will be, but not an Oprah-like exploration of life's meaning and getting to one's genealogical roots.

Justin Smith, professor of philosophy, expresses it this way:

There is much talk in academic philosophy about the need to open up the discipline to so-called non-Western traditions and perspectives, both through changes to the curriculum and also within the demographics of philosophy departments themselves. These two aspects are seen as connected: it is thought that greater representation of non-Western philosophy will help to bring about greater diversity among the women and men who make up the philosophical community.

Smith identifies two typical mistakes of multiculturalism. One mistake is the notion that first-person involvement with subject matter must be maximized; a student will, so it is thought, work better and have a better experience, if he identifies with the content being studied; the multiculturalist doesn't believe that a student might be interested in, and motivated to study, that which is culturally other. If you want more Chinese students to enroll, include an overview of Chinese philosophy in one of your classes; if you want more Indian students to enroll, include a survey of Upanishads and Vedas. The multiculturalist is thus actually a chauvinist: he assumes that students of non-Western heritage of xenophobes and nativists, and won't take a class unless you've stocked it with Indian and Chinese philosophers.

The second mistake, also typical of multiculturalism, is the sacrifice of rigor. It is assumed that one can simply "add in" a few token non-Western thoughts into humanities syllabus or a philosophy course. This ignores the meticulous research which creates a respectable academic discipline. It would be a parallel if one said, "science fiction is really popular; throw some quantum mechanics into your Euclidian Geometry course." As Justin Smith puts it:

When I teach classical Indian philosophy, or advocate teaching it, for example, I often hear in response that doing so provides a service to the university community, and to the student body, insofar as it enhances the diversity of the philosophy curriculum, and makes the curriculum representative of a wider portion of the student body. But what I'm teaching are topics such as 5th-century Indian theories of logical inference, or the concept of qualitative atomism in classical Buddhism: material that is sufficiently obscure that no student, of any background, should be expected at the outset to recognize him or herself in it.

What is true of non-Western thought is equally true of Western thought: one would not expect a student, merely because his last name is Schmidt, to form an emotional connection with the writings of Gottlob Frege; one would not expect a student, simply because his last name is MacGregor, to have an immediate affection for the texts of Thomas Reid.

The goal of reflecting the diversity of our own society by expanding the curriculum to include non-European traditions has so far been a tremendous failure. And it has failed for at least two reasons. One is that non-Western philosophy is typically represented in philosophy curricula in a merely token way. Western philosophy is always the unmarked category, the standard in relation to which non-Western philosophy provides a useful contrast. Non-Western philosophy is not approached on its own terms, and thus philosophy remains, implicitly and by default, Western. Second, non-Western philosophy, when it does appear in curricula, is treated in a methodologically and philosophically unsound way: it is crudely supposed to be wholly indigenous to the cultures that produce it and to be fundamentally different than Western philosophy in areas like its valuation of reason or its dependence on myth and religion. In this way, non-Western philosophy remains fundamentally “other.”

Professor Smith is pointing out that it is absurd to assume that a student whose grandparents came from China will have some innate connection with Confucius, and naturally embrace Confucian views as some explicit expression of what the student already believes by virtue of his heritage. This fallacy is so crude that it constitutes an insult, and this fallacy is delivered by the multiculturalists who wear the badge of sensitivity as their highest honor. In any society, the link between philosophy and culture is often distant and tenuous, if it exists at all. Do we take Kierkegaard as an expression of Danish culture? Is Spinoza an organic outgrowth of Dutch culture?

In philosophy, more than in any other discipline, one encounters nuanced distinctions maintained with precision. Yet the multiculturalist barges in, assuming that all Chinamen give a priori assent to Confucianism, that all Indians are in intellectual harmony with the Upanishads, and that these questions can be treated with broad generalizations about culture, rather than with close textual study earned by carefully crafted documents arising from honed philosophical traditions.

In fact, scholars who have little to do with multicultural trendiness are those most likely to give non-Western philosophers their due. A philosopher whose specialty is Aristotle finds his skills put to good use in studying the Analects. A specialist in Schopenhauer and Hegel finds excellent engagement in Sanskrit texts. It is telling that thorough studies of such philosophies are found outside of, and temporally prior to, the multiculturalist takeover.

Outside of philosophy, an example comes from the related discipline of philology: the study of Ge'ez, an ancient form of Ethiopian Amharic, and the study of Nubian dialects, were more wide-spread among American and European universities a century ago than they are today, despite - or perhaps because of - the rise of multiculturalism. Why? Such academic work requires rigor and analysis: real intellectual work. That's not what the multiculturalists are seeking.

Explanations

One way to understand philosophy is to see philosophy as an enterprise which offers explanations. Philosophers explain things - things like time, space, causation, etc. If that's what philosophy is, then we need to understand the mechanics of explanations - how does one construct an explanation? What makes one explanation better than another?

(To be sure, this is simply one way to characterize philosophy; there are many others.)

If we think about the very first philosopher, we can understand his novel and bold statements as offering an explanation. We are confronted with the world - the phenomena of the five senses, of daily experience. What causes them? From what did they arise? Historian Anthony Esolen writes:

The first Greeks to call themselves philosophers strove to understand the physical world, to see what prime element underlay clouds and lions and marble and blood. We should not take for granted their bold assumption that such an element could be found, and that the world was intelligible! Thales of Miletus reasoned that such an element must be capable of assuming the three phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Hence he posited that water was somehow the arche or foundation or origin of all things, though he knew well that you couldn't squeeze water to make iron or clay. His successor Anaximenes voted for air. Others named earth or fire or some combination of the four so-called elements.

Thales was exploring the discipline we now call cosmology. What is the systematic structure of the universe? Although we may laugh at his notion that water is the foundational element of the universe, he had rational, if not correct, evidence: it covers 75% of the earth's surface, humans are approximately 75% water, it's necessary for all known forms of life; it's found everywhere on planet earth; etc. Not a bad hypothesis. But another Greek philosopher soon found the problem with the explanation offered by Thales, and the with the explanations offered by many of the other pre-Socratic philosophers:

But there's a logical problem with all explanations of the world that resolve it into such stuff as water or air. To say that the arche of the world is water doesn't explain anything, since water itself is one of the things that requires explaining. It is circular reasoning. Nor does it help to stretch the circle as wide as the cosmos. The philosopher Anaximander, therefore, reason that whatever the arche is, it cannot be like the things it explains. It must be beyond predication. So he called it apeiron or the boundless.

The explanation for the physical world cannot be, according to Anaximander's reasoning, simply one of the ingredients of that world. Later philosophers would use words like 'essence' and 'substance' to try to capture similar ideas. That thing, upon which the physical universe is contingent, cannot be merely one part of the physical universe. It must be something other. Anaximander may get credit for invented that branch of philosophy we now call metaphysics.

Different Paths to Philosophy

Not every philosopher has decided, at some young age, to be a philosopher, and followed this decision by studying philosophy at a university. To the contrary, many philosophers have started their careers in some other field, and shifted to philosophy after making a start in those other disciplines. Examples abound: Hegel and Schelling began as theology students; Tad Schmaltz intended to become a lawyer; Nietzsche was a professor of Greek and Latin classical literature.

In this pattern we find also Karl Jaspers. As a young man beginning his university studies, philosophy from far from his mind. Hans Saner, who worked with Jaspers, writes:

Shortly before the end of his high school years, the father one day summoned his son. He showed him his books, oriented him about income and property, and said to him, " ... I think that you can assume that you have ten years to study independently and work, before you will need to earn your own living." The high school graduate decided to study law, and then as a lawyer or a businessman to enter "practical life."

In fact, however, Jaspers abandoned the study of law, not for philosophy, but for medicine. His interest in medicine was more than casual: he suffered from diseases which threaten to kill him. He did well, passed his examinations, and began a successful career as a physician. A fellow who studied first law, and then medicine, would hardly seem to be a likely candidate for a philosopher:

Jaspers had never begun the academic study of philosophy under the direction of a teacher. He did indeed occasionally detect the inclination toward it; but he considered himself in his youth to be insufficiently gifted for this. Even choosing philosophy as a profession in a planned way would have seemed to him like a presumption. Philosophy was for him not a subject among subjects, which one could learn; whoever approached it this way continually ran the danger of end up in mere babble. "The path to philosophy does not go via abstract thought," but rather via the recognition of reality: of nature and of humanity. For this reason, Jaspers, even in regard to philosophy, had studied natural sciences and medicine. "It was the path to philosophy which had determined my choice of studies."

It is, then, love of truth which drives the philosopher. Whichever subjects he may study, the underlying urge is the same.

This gaze toward philosophy had emerged during the loneliness of the high school and university years and in face of the awareness of being constantly threatened by illness. What meaning could lie in an existence which was necessarily separated from that of other humans? What meaning did the exertion toward activity have, if no objective result was to be expected because of the probability of an early death? No science answered these questions. "There remained only one path: philosophy must show the truth, the meaning, and the goal of our lives."

His questions about truth and about the meaning of life were motivated by a very personal sense that he was on the verge of meaninglessness.

For this reason, Jaspers began early to read the philosophers: Spinoza, Lucretius, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche; Plotinus, Schelling, Kant, only later (after around 1913) Kierkegaard and Hegel. Above all, the reading of Spinoza brought him into a state in which he could bear, and even often affirm, sickness. "Philosophy is of amazing value. If it did not exist, life would be terrible." This was true not only for reading, but rather above all for thoughts, which arose at that time in his own philosophizing: "I suddenly marvel, that I exist at all. Out of an unknown darkness, the individual human climbs step by step to the consciousness of his existence ... he feels, that in an isolated existence, he has no significance." His existence must, without surrendering his solitude, be open to other people and to God. One "must have the strength to retain these categories, despite the way the pastors have botched them up." But the biggest problems "on which everything seems to depend" are the questions "what death, and what an individuality, mean." The consciousness of the inevitability of death distinguishes humans, and bestows uniqueness upon their actions. One should therefore continually listen to the memento mori. Only in the presence of death does one learn to understand: "we are always on the border ...", and only in understanding finality do we become aware: "we must struggle."

The questions which drive Jaspers, then, are about the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and about discovering the truth. Living with an awareness of death brings us closer to discovering the meaning of life, and to discovering truth. Openness brings us closer to these discoveries: relationships to our fellow human being, and our relationship to God will help us to learn the truth. Jaspers is clear: despite the fact that some people who call themselves religious have "botched up" concepts of life, death, and God, we must continue to pursue the study of these things. Merely because other people have made a mess of spiritual thought is no reason for us to abandon it - we must rather fix it. Jaspers is encouraging philosophers to engage in thought which will clarify our understanding of God, thought which will correct the errors of sloppy thinking by other people in the past.