Philosophy's Job: Critique Assumptions

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Philosophy’s Job: Critique Assumptions

 

While studying philosophy thirty five years ago I asked my professor “what is philosophy about?” He said to me “philosophy is radically critical self-consciousness”. Today I think I now know what he meant.

 

First I will change his wording but not his meaning. Philosophy “is a self-conscious and radically self-critical form of enquiry”.

 

All forms of enquiry are based upon some assumptions. Such assumptions as the world is orderly and can be comprehended by reason, the world operates by laws and is causally connected and can be measured; theology assumes the existence of God and the veracity of the Word.

 

Philosophers contend that the assumptions of an enquiry make that enquiry limited and distorted by those assumptions. These assumptions lead the enquiry to abstract certain aspects of the world and ignore others; an example in the natural sciences is that natural scientists ignore quality and focus on the quantifiable.

 

Philosophers argue that unlike other sciences (domains of knowledge) philosophy is radically critical and is self-conscious; it constantly criticizes its own assumptions. The examination of fundamental assumptions has been traditionally a distinctive preoccupation of the philosophical form of criticism. As an example, natural scientists are unable qua]/b] (in the capacity as) natural scientists to examine their own assumptions. This leads to the mistaken hubris that the natural sciences can serve as a model for other domains of knowledge.

 

Philosophy does not rest on unexamined assumptions; this means that while other sciences (domains of knowledge) are narrowly focused; philosophy is broadly focused and views the world as a gestalt, as a whole. Philosophy contends that its knowledge is not abstract but is concrete. Its knowledge is categorical.

 

While philosophers disagree on many things they seem to agree that 1) assumptions distort a domain of knowledge 2) non philosophical enquiries tend to advance claims that are universal and illegitimate. As a result the best way to counter this tendency is for philosophy to draw lines of demarcation of the general field of knowledge. Philosophy draws the boundaries between prevailing forms of inquiry.

 

To critique assumptions is a dirty job but someone must do it! Do you agree?