Philosophy as an art form that many define as the love of knowledge or wisdom. These may be necessary for philosophy. However, these are insufficient conditions for true philosophy. For true philosophy is an action, a process, an endeavor. And the love of truth, knowledge, or wisdom provide only motivation for the task.
In the world of art, there are art critics and there are artists. Art critics refer to all those who study art but who do not themselves create artistic works. They analyze art and teach about artists and art works. Yet they are not artists in the true sense. The same can be said about music. There are musicologists who appreciate, listen to, talk about, write about and criticize music but who themselves do not play any instrument or produce any music. Like composers who play no instrument, they may create musical scores but not music itself. The distinction between true philosophers and those who study and teach philosophy is the same.
Universities are filled with scholars who study, analyze, memorize and compare philosophical writings. They are experts at what others have said and thought. Many are intellectually brilliant people capable of marvelous language, fine distinctions and insightful comparisons. Yet most of these are not true philosophers. With all their language ability, they remain locked in the intellectual world of conceptual thought and never break through The Veil of Maya. I do not wish to diminish the value of the scholar who loves philosophy. However, as Robert Pirsig suggests in Zen and the Art of Mototcycle Maintenance, they should be referred to as "philosophologists" rather than philosophers.
What is true philosophy? Philosophy is the attempt to make experience intelligible. It is the effort to understand, in intellectual terms, the meaning of experience. Experience is presented in the language of the senses, sensation. Philosophers create language systems by means of which we understand and talk about the worlds of experience. The language systems created, with their attendant metaphors, analogies, concepts and particular symbolic language formulations, are the intellectual artistic creations of the philosopher. (the person).
Philosophologists, like art and music critics, all agree to conform to certain general rules of method, categorization, recognition, appreciation, and evaluation. They think in certain ways, with certain acceptable attitudes, using certain terms, phrases, and language elements which they bring forth when speaking or writing to one another, especially in their own private academic journals. Certain topics become popular; trainees join the fray and the club by getting involved in thinking and writing about the themes of current interest. The language system created by the philosophologists by means of which they communicate with one another about philosophy is the closest many of them will ever come to philosophizing.
What follows is bold art, perhaps even bad art. I will probably be considered an outsider and even disrespectful renegade for creating a private language with which to talk about and understand the world. Unfortunately, none of us uses language in precisely the same way; none of us would define any word or term using precisely the same language. Therefore, no other man's language can suffice for describing another's experience. And so, in the typical fashion of an artist who simply must paint in his own way, good or bad, and just as a musician spontaneously creates his own music while playing alone, so I have created my own philosophy. I entitle this Languages of the Mind.
Although I attempt to share this philosophy with the reader, it is unlikely that anyone reading this will be able to clearly understand what I've written or exactly what I mean. But, as Gerald Loeb stated in his book the "Battle For Investment Survival", the rest of this book is for those who insist on trying it anyway. If so, then scrap the previous meanings of many common words like know, understand, being, existence, reality, actuality, realization, actualization, metaphysics and mind and lets wipe away the cobwebs of confusion which have been constructed over the last two thousand years and now exist as a hopeless tangle of words with unclear meanings. They can no longer serve as building blocks for clear understanding.
A. Iosue
table of contents