INTRODUCTION TO GREEK PHILOSOPHY

THE NATURE OF ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY

1. What is Greek philosophy?

1.1. The Etymological Approach

One approach to this answering the question "What is Greek philosophy" is to explore the etymology of the Greek word "philosophy" (filosofi,a). The term "philosophy" is a compound word, composed of two parts: philos (love) and sophia (wisdom), so that literally it means love of wisdom. To be a philosopher is to love wisdom.

Does an analysis of the etymology of the term "philosophy" help in understanding its meaning of the term for ancient Greeks? When one knows that it means "love of wisdom" does this explain what the ancient Greeks intended by the term "philosophy"? Unfortunately, this is not the case. The fist part of the term philosophy (love) is easy to understand, denoting a "fondness for" or "attraction to." It denotes a value placed on something, so that the one who loves wisdom considers it worthy of pursuit. The problem that arises, however, is defining the term "wisdom," as ancient Greeks would have understood it. The term is not so easily explained. Nevertheless, this much seems clear: since it was something to be loved and valued, it seems that the ancient Greeks believed that wisdom did not come naturally to the human beings. Normally, the things that are commonplace and ubiquitous are taken for granted. Indeed, as will become evident, ancient Greeks assumed that wisdom was inaccessible to all but the determined and intellectually-capable.

1.2. The Phenomenological Approach

Defining the term "philosophy" phenomenologically is to decide its meaning by means of ascertaining the experience that people are describing when they use the term. Now, one cannot assume that a term such as philosophy has the same meaning when used by all ancient Greeks. Also one should not assume that one is not doing "philosophy" if one does not use the term to describe one’s activities. Nevertheless, there was a core meaning of the term "philosophy," as used by ancient Greeks: philosophy was a knowledge of the way things really were as opposed to the way things appeared to be. Philosophy as a discipline invariably assumed that the "world" constructed uncritically and naturally from data derived from the five senses was illusory; following B. Lonergan, one could call this the world of common sense. For the ancient Greek philosopher, Reality was uncommon, quite different from the world of common sense. Although it is dangerous to generalize, because there was great diversity among Greek philosophers, for the ancient Greeks the philosopher sought to know that Reality concealed and distorted by the world of common sense. This knowledge was the wisdom that philosophers loved.

For the ancient Greeks, to be a philosopher was to seek and obtain an all-inclusive knowledge, which one could describe as the knowledge of Being (what is). (Being is the most abstract of all terms, for it means everything that is; as such Being is a synonym for Reality.) Thus the philosopher, as the Greeks understood it, sought to understand the Whole or Being. The goal was to know Being in its basic structure, not in all its multifarious detail, for it was assumed that the details of one’s existence become intelligible when one understood them in relation to the Whole. To use a metaphor from the building trade, the Greek philosopher was one who sought to understand the framework in relation to which all the details of existence were set. A house is the totality of its parts, but only when organized in a certain way, since a pile of building materials is not a house. It is the framer who gives the house its basic shape or structure; all the details of a house are set in relation to the framework. By analogy, for the ancient Greeks, philosophy was the attempt at understanding the framework of Being (what is), the basic "shape or structure" of Being, in relation to which all the details of existence were set.

It is important to note that for the ancient Greeks, philosophy as knowledge of Reality or Being affected how a person lived; in other words, philosophy had ethical implications. What a philosopher knew was not merely theoretical knowledge, unrelated to the other aspects of human existence. The ancient Greeks assumed that one ought to live one’s life in conformity with the way things really were; otherwise, one could not be happy. But again, how one ought to live was thought to be concealed from human beings, not being self-evident; what appeared to be a means of happiness usually was not. Only the philosopher knew how to live, because ethics is founded on a knowledge of Reality or Being: to know the Whole is to know one’s place in the Whole.

2. The Possibility of Philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy generally distinguished human beings from other sentient beings, in that the former had the capacity to philosophize; often they explained this by postulating that human beings possessed reason, or some such expression. What they seem to have meant by this is explained by B. Lonergan, who is a modern philosopher standing within the Aristotelean and Thomist tradition (Aristotle was, of course, an ancient Greek philosopher). According to Lonergan, what the Greek philosophers meant, phenomenologically speaking, when they said that human beings possessed reason (or some similar expression) was that what distinguished a human being from another sentient being was the capacity for self-transcendence.

Transcendence denotes the state of having gone beyond. Thus self-transcendence is the state of having gone beyond oneself. How then does one go beyond oneself? One does so whenever one goes beyond the world of pure, practical self-interest and seeks to know something for its own sake. Human beings have, according to Lonergan, the pure, unrestricted desire to know; this is a human distinctive. This pure, unrestricted desire to know drives us beyond ourselves in an effort to understand Being (what is). When all of our physical needs have been met, we do not curl up and go to sleep, as a dog does; instead we begin to ask questions: this is our uniqueness: the capacity and drive to ask questions about everything, Being (what is). This is why Lonergan writes, "Man is an animal for whom mere animality is indecent" (Insight, 187) According to Lonergan, the unrestricted desire to know will eventually lead one to ask the question about Being, so that all human beings are (potentially at least) philosophers.

The possibility of self-transcendence also means that human beings are capable of examining courses of action and choosing the one which is logically demanded by Being (the Good). Thus, the human being is intrinsically an ethical being

Is it true that all human beings are philosophers whether they want to be or not?

3. The Possibility that Philosophy Is an Impossibility

There was a subversive undercurrent in Greek intellectual culture, standing in opposition to the basic assumption shared by philosophers in all their diversity. These anti-philosophers viewed the goal of philosophy as illegitimate or unattainable. Either there is no Reality to know behind the world of common sense or, if there is such a Reality, it is inaccessible to human beings. The Sophists fall into the fist class of anti-philosopher while the Skeptics fall into the second class.

Given all the different versions of Reality or Being that were produced by Greek philosophy (and those produced by philosophers from different cultures and eras), it seems prima facie that the Sophists and the Skeptics may be correct in their criticisms of philosophy. If philosophy were possible, one would expect after so many centuries of philosophical activity that there would be consensus; there is none, however, so far.

when one understood what one . In fact, what appeared to be the best to live tybecause Reality or Being was not self-evident. It typically happened that the non-philosopher chose the wrong way to happiness; it may have appeared to him or her that that this was the best way to live, but further experience proved otherwise. d . How one ought to liove flowed from a knowledge of Reality or Being. philosophers ; how one ought to live follows from the ways things really are. Again thebest way to live is not self-evident but is part Usually the non-philosopher chooses the wrong way, thinking that his choices are best is a function of Being (what is), i.e., ethics flow from and must be consistent with Being (what is)

mere appearance. Assume, indeed theterin spite of the it is at least a prima facie the assumption that the term has a some common experiential reference its ostensive reference. Plato’s use of term in Phaedrus or Republic

-it is difficult and dangerous to generalilze, because there was great diversity among Greek philosophers; nevertheless, generally it seems to be true that when Greek philosophers philosophized the special type of knowledge that they pursued was the knowledge of Being (what is), not in all its detail, but in its basic structure

- let's leave this question for a minute and look at an passage from Plato's Republic

-Plato characterized his own race--the Greeks--as lovers of knowledge, in contrast to the Phoenicians and the Egyptians who were known rather for their love of money (Rep 435e-436a); in Plato's view, this was a distinctive of the Greeks

-this raises the suspicion that perhaps wisdom and knowledge are synonymous so that the philosopher, so that the one who loves wisdom is one who loves knowledge

-moving from an etymological attempt at understanding the nature of Greek philosophy to what people call a phenomenological (a descriptive method), we discover that this is the case

-when we simply describe what they were doing, it is clear that Greek philosophers were seeking a certain type of knowledge

Phaedrus study philsophy

-the question now is, What is the nature of this knowledge that a Greek philosopher is pursuing?

-the term Being may sound too abstract to be very meaningful; in fact, the more abstract a term is the more difficult it is to understand it, because the less tied it is to ordinary experience

-Being is probably the most abstract of all terms, for it means everything that is; thus the philosopher, as the Greeks understood it, sought to understand the whole of Reality, Everything that exists, in its basic structure

-to be wise is to possess this type of knowledge; but of course, the first step to possessing it is to love it and pursue it, as a philosopher does

-to use a metaphor from the building trade, the Greek philosopher was one who seeks to understand the framework in relation to which all the details of existence are set

-a house is the totality of its parts, but only when organized in a certain way; a pile of building materials is not a house

-it is the framer who gives the house its basic shape or structure; all the details of a house are set in relation to the framework

-philosophy is the attempt at understanding the framework of Being (what is), the basic shape of Being, in relation to which all the details of existence are set

3. It is important to note that for the Greek philosophers determining the basic structure of Being had implications for how a person lived (ethics); one should not think that it is simply theoretical knowledge; how one ought to live is a function of Being (what is), i.e., ethics flow from and must be consistent with Being (what is)

C. The Uniqueness of Greek Philosophy

1. The Escape From Mytho-Poetic Explanation

-one could argue that philosophy as defined above is not unique to the Greeks; virtually every culture has an explanation of Being (what is) in its basic structure, a symbolic universe

-what distinguishes Greek philosophy from these other attempts is that the former escapes the confines of mytho-poetic explanation

-mytho-poetic explanation is explanation in terms of ordinary, everyday experience; it operates on the principle of analogy

-it is unreflectively assumed that analogous phenonena have identical causes

-the movement is from known cause/effect relations in ordinary, everyday experience to a determination of causes of phenomena that are not known as part of ordinary, everyday experience; this is the method whereby Being in its basic structure is explained

-this may sound obscure, but it is really quite simple; two examples will make the point clear

a. Since the natural phenomena of a thunderstorm is analogous to an outburst of anger, the former is explained as the manifestation of the anger of the gods

b. Or since in human experience life comes from sexual union, the origin of all life is explained as the result of the sexual union of a sky god and a mother earth; rain is understood as analogous to semen

-one could argue that gods and goddesses were believed to exist by the Greeks and other partly in order to account for natural phenomena; it was assumed that what happens in nature must be analogous to human intentional behavior

-the Greeks (and also the Indians and Chinese) were the first as far as we know to attempt to explain in non-mytho-poetic terms; this is why the Greeks are viewed as the first scientists

2. The Freedom of the Greek Philosophers to Philosophize

-Greek philosophy was also unique in the freedom in which it was carried out

-the Greek philosophers operated uncontrained by the public religious authorities; generally, Greek philosophers were critical and sometimes contemptous of the portrayal of the gods in Homer and Hesiod, which naturally did not commend them to the traditionalists

-nevertheless only rarely did the Greek philosophers run afoul of the public authorities; the best-known exception to the rule, of course, is Socrates

-being uncontrained by public religious auhtorities allowed the Greek philosophers to philosophize with little concern for the social/political consequences of their results; they had a sort of academic freedom.

II. The Possibility of Philosophy

-the Greek philosopher generally distinguished human beings from other sentient beings, in that the former had the capacity to philosophize; often they explained this by postulating that human beings possessed reason, or some such expression

-what they seem to have meant by this is explained by B. Lonergan, who is a modern philosopher standing within the Aristotelean tradition (Aristotle was, of course, an ancient Greek philosopher)

-according to Lonergan, what the Greek philosophers meant, phenomenologically speaking, when they said that human beings possessed reason (or some similar expression) was that what distinguished a human being from another sentient being was the capacity for self-transcendence

-now what does this mean? Lets start with the word transcendence: it is the state of having gone beyond.

-this brings us to the word self: if transcendence is the state of having gone beyond, self-transcendence is the state of having gone beyond oneself

-how then does one go beyond oneself? One does so whenever one goes beyond the world of pure, practical self-interest and seeks to know something for its own sake

-we have, according to Lonergan, the pure, unrestricted desire to know; this is a human distinctive; the pure, unresticted desire to know drives us beyond ourselves in an effort to understand Being (what is)

-when all of our physical needs have been met, we do not curl up and go to sleep, as a dog does; instead we begin to ask questions: this is our uniqueness: the capacity and drive to ask questions about everything, Being (what is)

-this is why Lonergan writes (Insight, 187) "Man is an animal for whom mere animality is indecent"

-according to Lonergan, the unrestricted desire to know will eventually lead one to ask the question about the basic structure of Being, so that all human beings are (potentially at least) philosophers

-the possibility of self-transcendence also means that human beings are capable of examining courses of action and choosing the one which is logically demanded by Being (what is) (the Good); the human being is intrinsically an ethical being

QUESTION: Is it true that all human beings are philosophers whether they want to be or not?

III. The Possibility That Philosophy Is An Impossibility -as we shall discover, there was a skeptical undercurrent in Greek philosophy

-the skeptical position was that the goal of philosophy was unattainable; it was one thing to desire to know, but it was something else again to gain the knowledge sought after and to know with certainty that one knows it

-given all the different versions of the basic structure of Being that were produced by Greek philosophy (and those produced by philosophers from different cultures and eras), it seems prima facie that the skeptics were correct in their claim that, although the question may be there to be asked, the ability to answer the question has eluded and always will elude humankind -in other words, the basic structure of Being (what is) is unknowable, because such knowledge is beyond human ability

INTRODUCTION TO GREEK PHILOSOPHY

I. The Nature of Greek Philosophy QUESTION: What is Greek philosophy? A. Philosophy Defined Etymologically: philos and sophia (the love of wisdom) B. Philosophy Defined Phenomenologically (descriptive method) 1. Plato refers to Greeks as lovers of knowledge; it seems that wisdom is synonymous with knowledge (Rep 435e-436a). 2. The type of knowledge that Greek philosophers sought is a knowledge of Being (what is), not in all its detail, but in its basic structure. 3. For the Greeks, a determination of the basic structure of Being had implications for how a person lived (ethics). C. The Uniqueness of Greek Philosophy 1. Escape From Mytho-Poetic Explanation 2. Freedom of the Greek Philosophers to Philosophize

II. The Possibility of Philosophy 1. Greek philosophy distinguished human beings from other sentient beings in that the former had the capacity to philosophize; this was often expressed as possessing reason or some such expression. 2. Phenomenologically speaking, the Greek philosophers seem to have meant what B. Lonergan meant when he said the capacity of the human being for self-transcendence leads to the pure, unrestricted desire to know Being (what is). Thus, as Lonergan put it, "Man is an animal for whom mere animality is indecent" (Insight, 187) QUESTION: Is it true that all human beings are philosophers whether they want to be or not?

III. The Possibility That Philosophy Is An Impossibility Some Greek philosophers held that human beings may be capable of asking questions about the basic structure of Being (what is), but were incapable of answering them.

What is Greek philosophy? -one approach to this question is to analyse the etymology of the term philosophy; as you may know already, the term philosophy is a Greek word made up of two parts: philos and sophia -literally it means the love of wisdom -so philosophy is the love of wisdom; but does this help much in our understanding of the nature of Greek philosophy? Not really -the problem is that we now have a new concept to define, i.e., the ancient Greek understanding of wisdom -What did the Greeks mean by the term "wisdom"? -let's leave this question for a minute and look at a passage from Plato's Republic -Plato characterized his own race as lovers of knowledge, in contrast to the Phoenicians and the Egyptians who were known rather for their love of money (Rep 435e-436a); in Plato's view, the was a distinctive of the Greeks -I think that it is a valid assumption that at least in this context knowledge means the same as wisdom, so that the philosopher, the one who loves wisdom, is one loves knowledge in general or loves a certain type of knowledge -the question now is, What is the nature of this knowledge that a Greek philosopher is supposed to love? -lets move from an etymological attempt at understanding the nature of Greek philosophy to what people call a phenomenological: i.e., we simply look at what a Greek philosopher was doing when he was philosophizing; this is a descriptive method -it is hard to generalize, because there was great diversity among Greek philosophers; nevertheless, generally it seems to be true that when Greek philosophers philosophized what they were doing was -it seems that a Greek philosopher is one who is engaged in the pursuit of a special type of knowledge, the knowledge of Being (what is), not in all its detail, but in its basic structure -to be wise is to possess this type of knowledge; of course, the first step to possessing it is to love it and pursue it -the term Being may sound too abstract to be meaningful; in fact, the more abstract a term is the more difficult it is to understand it, because the less tied it is to ordinary experience -Being is probably the most abstract of all terms, for it means everything that is insofar as it is -to use a metaphor from the building trade, the Greek philosopher was one who seeks to understand the framework in relation to which all the details of existence are set -a house is the totality of its parts, but only when organized in a certain way; a pile of building materials is not a house -it is the framer who gives the house its basic shape or structure; all the details of a house are set in relation to the framework -philosophy is the attempt at understanding the framework of Being (what is), the basic shape or structure of Being, in relation to which all the details of existence are set -lets try another way of explaining what the Greek philosophers sought -to express it differently, the Greek philosophy attempted to understand the largest context into which every detail of experience became fully meaningful -as you are aware, context determines meaning; for example, imagine the event of hearing a loud crashing noise from the living room while sitting in the kitchen -By itself this event is puzzling because it lacks a context from which it would derive meaning or significance; it demands that you determine its significance by locating it into a context, and you will not be satisfied until you do -having heard the noise, you then set out to determine what that context is within which you should understand this event -so lets say you go into the living room and see shards of glass all over the carpet, a hole in the front window, a rock sitting on the carpet and see out the window (or what's left of it) a group of children running madly down the street away from your house -from these disparate data by means of insight, you then construct a context in which to understand the event of hearing a loud crash coming from the living room; what you do, in fact, is to create a hypothetical scenario in which all of these events and the hearing of the loud crash are causally related, thereby belonging to a single context; this context you determine to be that of some neighbourhood child's having just thrown a rock through your window; this hypothesis explains the significance of hearing a loud crash coming from the living room and gives you cognitive satisfaction -we should note that the loud crash you heard not only receives fuller significance by being placed within a context but itself contributes to the construction of that context; this is the nature of the construction of hypotheses, including philosophical ones -the point of this illustration is to show what it is that Greek philosophers were attempting to do: they were attempting to find the largest context into which all other experiential data become most fully meaningful -when they could do this, they would have a knowledge of Being in its basic structure

-it is important to note that for the Greek philosophers determining the basic structure of Being had implications for how a person lived (ethics); one should not think that it is simply theoretical knowledge; how one ought to live is a function of Being (what is), i.e., ethics flow from and must be consistent with Being (what is)

-it also is important to note that in this enterprise of determining Being (what is) in its basic structure, the Greek philosophers operated independently of the contraints of civil and religious authorities; although they were not necessarily antagonisitic to the establishment, they nonetheless were not subject to it in its religious or civil forms -only rarely did the Greek philosophers run afoul of the public authorities; the best-known exception to the rule, of course, is Socrates

2. The Possibility of Philosophy -the Greek philosophy generally distinguished human beings from other sentient beings in that the former had the capacity to philosophize; often they expressed this as possessing reason or some such phrase -what they seemed to mean by this is explained by B. Lonergan, who is a modern philosopher who stands within the Aristotelean tradition (Aristotle was, of course, an ancient Greek philosopher) -as Lonergan put it (Insight, p. 187) "man is an animal for whom mere animality is indecent" -according to Lonergan, phenomenologically speaking, what the Greek philosophers meant when they said that human beings possessed reason or some similar expression was that what distinguished a human being from another sentient being was the capacity for self-transcendence -now what does this mean? Lets start with the word transcendence: it is the state of having gone beyond. -this brings us to the word self: if transcendence is the state of having gone beyond, self-transcendence is the state of having gone beyond oneself -how then does one go beyond oneself? One does so whenever one goes beyond the world of pure, practical self-interest and seeks to know something for its own sake -we have, it would seem, the pure, unrestricted desire to know; this is a human distinctive; the pure, unresticted desire to know drives us beyond ourselves in an effort to understand Being (what is) -when all of our physical needs have been met, we do not curl up and go to sleep, as a dog does; instead we begin to ask questions: this is our uniqueness: the capacity and drive to ask questions about everything, Being (what is) -the possibility of self-transcendence also means that human beings are capable of examining courses of action and choosing the one which is logically demanded by Being (what is) (the Good); the human being is intrinsically an ethical being -the Greek philosopher was one who asked a specific type of question, as we stated above: he wanted to know the basic structure of Being -as Lonergan put it, to be human means to have the pure, unrestricted desire to know; this means that one cannot help but be interested in the question that philosophy is concerned with, the basic structure of Being QUESTION: Is it true that all human beings are philosophers whether they want to be or not? 3. The Possibility That Philosophy Is An Impossibility -as we shall discover, there was a skeptical undercurrent in Greek philosophy -the skeptical position was that the goal of philosophy was unattainable; it was one thing to desire to know, but it was something else again to gain the knowledge sought after and to know with certainty that one knows it -given all the different versions of the basic structure of Being that were produced by Greek philosophy (and those produced by philosophers from different cultures and eras outside of Greek civilization), it seems prima facie that the skeptics were correct in their claim that, although the question may be there to be asked, the ability to answer the question has eluded and always will elude humankind -in other words, the basic structure of Being (what is) is unknowable, because such knowledge is beyond human ability QUESTION: How do you account for philosophical diversity?

finds for example that Greek philosophers tookoutside of the framework of religion as will see knowledge is not simply perception; perception may be the point of departure but wisdom or knowledge goes beyond perception to make true statements about What is, so that there is a hidden element to it

for Plato a E. Hamilton in her book identifies the Greeks as ; her account is somewhat tendentious

1. The Nature of the Discipline of Philosophy -if you go into an academic bookstore, you will discover that it will have a philosophy section; all the works that are classified as philosophical are placed there -given this fact, one would presume that there is something common among these works or else they would not be classified under the same general heading of philosophy -What is this commonality? -this is the question that we want to answer this morning. QUESTION: What is philosophy?

-one approach to this question is to analyse the etymology of the term philosophy; as you may know already, the term philosophy is a Greek word made up of two parts: philos and sophia -literally it means the love of wisdom -so philosophy is the love of wisdom; but does this help much in our understanding of the nature of philosophy? Not really -the problem is that we now have a new concept to define, i.e., the ancient Greek understanding of wisdom

-this is the Greek meaning of sophia (wisdom) (with a few exceptions): the wise person both knows and conforms his life in accordance with that knowledge

-in summary philosophy is the discipline resulting from our unrestricted desire to know that aims at an understanding of the structure of Being (what is), the largest context in which experience becomes fully intelligible, including an understanding of how to live (ethics).

4. Greek Philosophy -Western civilization traces its philosophical heritage to

INTRODUCTION TO GREEK PHILOSOPHY

A. The Nature of Greek Philosophy QUESTION: What is philosophy? 1. Philosophy Defined Etymologically: philos and sophia (the love of wisdom) 2. Philosophy Defined Phenomenologically (descriptive method: what a Greek philosopher actually did when he philosophized: a. Philosophy is a discipline that seeks to know Being (what is), not in all its detail, but in its basic structure. b. Philosophy is knowledge of the largest context of meaning. c. Nota Bene: Any version of the basic structure of Being (what is) will always include considerations on how to live (ethics).

B. The Possibility of Philosophy "Man is an animal for whom mere animality is indecent" (Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 187). The capacity of the human being for self-transcendence leads to the pure, unrestricted desire to know Being (what is). QUESTION: Is it true that all human beings are philosophers whether they want to be or not?

C. The Possibility That Philosophy Is An Impossibility 1. Human beings may be capable of asking questions about the basic structure of Being (what is), but incapable of answering them. 2. Human beings may be unwilling to recognize what they already know about the basic structure of Being. D. Summary Philosophy is the discipline resulting from our unrestricted desire to know that aims at an understanding of the basic structure of Being (what is), the largest context in which experience becomes fully intelligible, including an understanding of how to live (ethics). QUESTION: How do you account for philosophical diversity?

; this is a human distinctive; the pure, unresticted desire to know drives us beyond ourselves in an effort to understand what is, or Being (what is)

what appears to distinguish human beings (in the phenomenological sense, i.e., what is observably different) is the Human The capacity of the human being for self-transcendence A philosopher is one who is engaged in the pursuit of a special type of knowledge, the knowledge of the totality of being, not in all its detail, but in its basic structure -a philosopher is one who seeks to understand what is (being) in its essential structure; he/she is after a unified vision of reality that will serve as a framework into which to place all the details of existence -the metaphor of the framework is worth pursuing; a house is the totality of its parts, but only when organized in a certain way -a pile of building materials is not a house -it is the framer who gives the house its essential shape or structure; all the details of a house are set in relation to the framework -philosophy is the attempt at understanding the framework of what is, the essential shape of reality, in relation to which all the details of existence are to be set

-lets try another way of explaining what philosophy is -to express it differently, the philosopher attempts to understand the largest context into which every detail of his/her experience becomes fully meaningful -as you are aware, context determines meaning; for example, imagine the event of hearing a loud crashing noise from the living room while sitting in the kitchen -By itself this event is puzzling because it lacks a context from which it would derive its meaning; it demands that you determine its significance by locating it into a context -having heard the noise, you then set out to determine what that context is within which you should understand this event -so lets say you go into the living room and see shards of glass all over the carpet, a hole in the front window, a rock sitting on the carpet and see out the window a group of children running madly down the street away from your house -from these disparate data by means of insight, you then construct a context in which to understand the event of hearing a loud crash coming from the living room; what you do, in fact, is to hypothesize that all of these events are causally related and thereby belong to a single context, which you determine to be that some neighbourhood child has just thrown a rock through your window; this hypothesis explains the significance of hearing a loud crash coming from the living room -we should note that the loud crash you heard not only receives fuller significance by beingn place within a context but itself contributes to the construction of that context -the point of this illustration is to show what it is a philosopher is attempting to do: he/she is attempting to find the largest context into which all other experiential data become most fully meaningful

-we should note the understanding of the essential structure of reality will have results for how one lives (ethics); one should not think that it is simply theoretical knowledge; how one ought to live is a function of what is, i.e., ethics flow from and must be consistent with what is (being) in its essential structure -this is the Greek meaning of wisdom (with a few exceptions): the wise person both knows and conforms his life in accordance with that knowledge; other nations had wisdom traditions but these have been largely ethical in orientation with a minimal theoretical component

2. The Possibility of Philosophy -having said this we now must ask a further question: what is it about the human being that give him/her the potentiality to philosophize -by way of contrast, lets look at the life of a dog: the activities of a dog in a day can be categorized as either instinctive or learned -instinctive behaviours are genetically given patterns of behaviour; for instance, a dog will growl when another dog intrudes on its territorial; this is not learned, but instinctive -a dog also exhibits learned behaviour; for instance a dog will jump up and down when it sees its supper dish because it has learned to associate the dish with food -human beings have both instinctive behaviour and learned behaviour as well; in this way we are similar to dogs and other animals -but, as Lonergan put it (Insight, p. 187) "man is an animal for whom mere animality is indecent"; what appears to distinguish human beings (in the phenomenological sense, i.e., what is observably different) is the capacity for self-transcendence -now what does this mean? Lets start with the word transcendence: it is state of having gone beyond. -this brings us to the word self: if transcendence is the state of having gone beyond, self-transcendence is the state of having gone beyond oneself -how then does one go beyond oneself? One does so whenever one goes beyond the world of pure, practical self-interest and seeks to know something for its own sake -we have, it would seem, the pure, unrestricted desire to know; this is a human distinctive; the pure, unresticted desire to know drives us beyond ourselves in an effort to understand what is, or Being -when all of our physical needs have been met, we do not curl up and go to sleep, as a dog does; instead we begin to ask questions: this is our uniqueness: the capacity and drive to ask questions about everything, the totality -the philosopher then is one who asks a specific type of question, as we stated above: he wants to know the essential structure of being (Aristotle: first causes and principles) -to be human means to have the pure, unrestricted desire to know; this means that one cannot help but be interested in the question that philosophy is concerned with QUESTION: Are all human beings philosophers whether they want to be or not? -the possibility of self-transcendence also means that human beings are capable of examining courses of action and choosing the one which is logically demanded by Being (the Good); the human being is intrinsically an ethical being

3. The Possibility That Philosophy Is An Impossibility -now is the time to raise the question of whether the goal of the philosopher is even possible to reach; it is one thing to desire to know, but it is something else again to gain the knowledge sought after and to know with certainty that one knows it -given all the different versions of what reality is that have been produced by different philosophers from different cultures and eras one may be tempted to conclude that, although the question may be there to be asked, the ability to answer the question has eluded and always will elude humankind -this is the position of skepticism: What is (being) in its totality is basically unknowable, because such knowledge is beyond the ability of humanity -or one may say that although the question forces itself upon human beings and an answer must be sought to this question, nonetheless, human beings are fundamentally incapable of answering the question owing to a lack of desire to know the truth -a person can ask the right question, but cannot answer it, because he/she does not want to hear the answer -this is Paul's view of the human being: sin fundamentally perverts human cognitional faculties; he says in Rom 1:18 that human beings suppress the truth in unrighteousness -we shall have to deal with both of these objections to the possibility of philosophy -in summary this is philosophy: it is the discipline resulting from our unrestricted desire to know that aims at an understanding of the structure of Reality, the context in which everything becomes fully intelligible, including an understanding of how to live (ethics).

imagine discovering a small puddle of water on your basement floor -by itself this is a datum, a fact derived from your senses -what this datum lacks, however, is a context in which it may become most meaningful -let's say that at the time of the discovery of the puddle on the basement floor, you find a crack in the basesment wall from which water is trickling out and outside you discovery that it sis raining -then the light goes on -you take these three apprarently disparate data and connected them causally, thereby creating a context in which to understand then connected -lets try another way of explaining what the Greek philosophers sought - the Greek philosophers attempted to understand the largest context into which every detail of experience became fully meaningful -as you are aware, context determines meaning; for example, imagine the event of hearing a loud crashing noise from the living room while sitting in the kitchen -By itself this event is puzzling because it lacks a context from which it would derive meaning or significance; it demands that you determine its significance by locating it into a context, and you will not be satisfied until you do -having heard the noise, you then set out to determine what that context is within which you should understand this event -so lets say you go into the living room and see shards of glass all over the carpet, a hole in the front window, a rock sitting on the carpet and see out the window (or what's left of it) a group of children running madly down the street away from your house -from these disparate data by means of insight, you then construct a context in which to understand the event of hearing a loud crash coming from the living room; what you do, in fact, is to create a hypothetical scenario in which all of these events and the hearing of the loud crash are causally related, thereby belonging to a single context; this context you determine to be that of some neighbourhood child's having just thrown a rock through your window; this hypothesis explains the significance of hearing a loud crash coming from the living room and gives you cognitive satisfaction -we should note that the loud crash you heard not only receives fuller significance by being placed within a context but itself contributes to the construction of that context; this is the nature of the construction of hypotheses, including philosophical ones -the point of this illustration is to show what it is that Greek philosophers were attempting to do: they were attempting to find the largest context into which everything became most fully meaningful -when they could do this, they would have a knowledge of Being in its basic structure