Philosophy allows the unveiling of what is covered by custom

“Philosophy is the possibility of human transcendence”. M.L.A. Aranha and M.H.P. Martins¹

To know the usefulness of the philosophical aspect of Spiritism, it is first necessary to keep in mind the meaning of the word “reflection”, which comes from the Latin “reflectere”, and etymologically means: “to make one go back, to retreat”. Therefore, to reflect is to resume one's thought, to think about what has already been thought, to return to oneself and to question what is already known...

In the 17th century, Renato Descartes, the French philosopher and mathematician, already presented this method, now known as “Cartesianism”, through which he stated: “to reach the truth, it is necessary, once in a lifetime, to get rid of all opinions that received and reconstruct the foundations, all the systems of our knowledge”.

Such a method led him – by intuition and deduction – to discover the truth of his existence as well as of God’s.

According to Gramsci, “one cannot think of any man who is not also a philosopher, who does not think, precisely because thinking is proper to man as such”.

The Friendly Spirits² clarify that “in thought, man enjoys unlimited freedom, since there is no way to tie him down. You can stop its flight, but not annihilate it... To constrain men to act in disagreement with their way of thinking is to make them hypocritical. Freedom in the realm of conscience is one of the characteristics of true civilization and progress.”

Therefore, there is no doubt that freedom of thought is everyone's right. To curtail it would be to produce hypocrites, as is often the case with forced conversions. Thus, we can arrive to the conclusion that philosophy is the beloved daughter of thought and it is born at the moment when thinking is called into question, becoming an object of reflection.

The common person, in everyday life, is led to “stop” from time to time, in a necessary “staccato”, in order to recover the meaning of his acts and thoughts, and at that time he is asked to reflect. However, simple reflection does not generate Philosophy, but philosophical reflection. In turn, philosophical reflection unfolds at three levels: radical, rigorous and overall.

Let us interpret these three topics with Professor Dermeval Saviani:

Radical – the Latin word “radix, radicis” means “root”, and in the figurative sense, “foundation, base”.

Therefore, philosophy is radical but not inflexible (in this case it would be anti-philosophy). However, as it seeks to make explicit the fundamental concepts used in all fields of thought and action.

Rigorous – While the “philosophy of life” does not take the conclusions to their ultimate consequences, and is not always able to examine their foundations, the philosopher must have a method clearly explained in order to proceed with rigor, guaranteeing coherence and the exercise of criticism. Even because the philosopher does not just make statements, he needs to justify them with arguments. To do so, he uses rigorous language, which avoids amphibology, that is, avoids the ambiguity or duplicity of meaning of everyday expressions and allows him to discuss with other philosophers from clearly defined concepts. That is why the philosopher always “invents concepts”, or creates new expressions and neologisms, or alters and specifies the meaning of the usual words.

Overall – While the sciences are particular, because they approach “cuttings” of reality and are distinguished from other forms of knowledge, and human action is expressed in the most varied ways, philosophy is globalizing, because it examines problems from the perspective of the whole, relating the different aspects to each other. In this sense and in addition to considering that the object of philosophy is everything (because nothing escapes its interest) we conclude that philosophy aims at the whole, at totality. Hence, the interdisciplinary function of philosophy, establishing the link between the various forms of human knowledge and action.

The way in which philosophical reflection is rigorously carried out varies according to the philosopher's orientation and the historical trends arising from the situation experienced by men in their action on the world.

At this point, we can ask, “Where is the need for philosophy?”

Therefore, there is no doubt that freedom of thought is everyone's right. To curtail it would be to produce hypocrites, as is often the case with forced conversions. Therefore, we can conclude that philosophy is the beloved daughter of thought and it is born at the moment when thinking is called into question, becoming an object of reflection.

The common person, in everyday life, is led to “stop” from time to time, in a necessary “staccato”, in order to recover the meaning of his acts and thoughts, and at that time, he is asked to reflect. However, simple reflection does not generate Philosophy, but philosophical reflection. In turn, philosophical reflection unfolds at three levels: radical, rigorous and overall.

Let us interpret these three topics with Professor Dermeval Saviani:

Radical – the Latin word “radix, radicis” means “root”, and in the figurative sense, “foundation, base”.

Therefore, philosophy is radical, however, not rigid (in this case it would be anti-philosophy), but insofar as it seeks to make explicit the fundamental concepts used in all fields of thought and action.

Rigorous – While the “philosophy of life” does not take the conclusions to their ultimate consequences, and is not always able to examine their foundations, the philosopher must have a method clearly explained in order to proceed with rigor, guaranteeing coherence and consistency. Critical exercise. Even because the philosopher does not just make statements, he needs to justify them with arguments. To do so, he uses rigorous language, which avoids amphibology, that is, avoids the ambiguity or duplicity of meaning of everyday expressions and allows him to discuss with other philosophers from clearly defined concepts. That is why the philosopher always “invents concepts”, or creates new expressions and neologisms, or alters and specifies the meaning of the usual words.

Overall – While the sciences are particular, because they approach “cuttings” of reality and are distinguished from other forms of knowledge, and human action is expressed in the most varied ways, philosophy is globalizing, because it examines problems from the perspective of the whole, relating the different aspects to each other. In this sense, in addition to considering that, the object of philosophy is everything (because nothing escapes its interest); we conclude that philosophy aims at the whole, at totality. Hence, the interdisciplinary function of philosophy, establishing the link between the various forms of human knowledge and action.

The way in which philosophical reflection is rigorously carried out varies according to the philosopher's orientation and the historical trends arising from the situation experienced by men in their action on the world.

At this point, we can ask, “Where is the need for philosophy?”

Experts on the subject¹ are unanimous in stating that the usefulness and even the necessity of philosophy are anchored in the fact that, through reflection, it allows man to have more than one dimension, in addition to that given by acting immediately, in which the “practical man” is incarcerated.

Philosophy provides the distance to evaluate the foundations of human acts and the purposes for which they are intended; it brings together the fragmented thought of science and reconstructs it in its unity; it returns to action pulverized in time and seeks to understand it. Therefore, philosophy is the possibility of human transcendence, i. e., the ability that only man has to overcome the given and unchosen situation. Through transcendence, man appears as a being of project, capable of freedom and of building his destiny.

Paradoxical as it may seem, distance is precisely what brings man closer to life. Whitehead, a contemporary British logician and mathematician, said “the function of reason is to promote the art of life”. Philosophy recovers the process lost in the immobility of things done (dead because already outdated). Philosophy prevents stagnation. Therefore, philosophizing always confronts power, and its investigation is not alien to ethics and politics.

The philosophy historian, François Châtelet, states, when he writes “as long as there was a State – from the Greek city to contemporary bureaucracies – the idea of​​truth has always turned, finally, to the side of the powers (or has been recovered by them as witness (for example) the evolution of French thought from the 18th to the 19th century). Therefore, the specific contribution of philosophy – placing itself at the service of freedom, of all freedoms - is to undermine through its analysis and the actions it unleashes, Whether it is a matter of science, of teaching, translation, research, medicine, the family, the police, the prison fact, bureaucratic systems. What matters is to make the mask appear, move it, rip it off...”

Philosophy is, therefore, the critique of ideology, as an illusory form of knowledge that seeks to maintain privileges.

Paying attention to the etymology of the Greek word corresponding to truth (a-létheia, aletheúein, “to lay bare”), we see that truth is to lay bare what was hidden, and therein lies the vocation of the philosopher: the unveiling of what is veiled by custom, by convention, by power...

Finally, philosophy requires courage. Philosophizing is not a purely intellectual exercise. Discovering the truth means having the courage to face the stagnant forms of power that try to maintain the “status quo”, it means accepting the challenge of change. (This is not easy, given ancient human accommodation.)

Socrates and Jesus faced - imperturbably and fearlessly - the ultimate challenge of death in defense of the truth they postulated.

We can now understand why Allan Kardec chose Philosophy to be one of the three main vertices of Spiritism. And we understand this even more when we observe that Philosophy does not encourage either suffocating dogmatism or skepticism, the latter being a philosophical position that concludes by the impossibility of knowledge, either in the moderate form of provisional suspension of judgment, or in the radical refusal to formulate any conclusion.

At the other extreme of skepticism is dogmatism, according to which the philosopher considers himself in possession of absolute and indubitable certainties and truths. While the dogmatist clings to the certainty of a doctrine, the skeptic concludes by the impossibility of all certainty and, in this sense, considers the search that leads nowhere to be useless. Comparing the two antagonistic positions, we can see that they have in common the immobility vision of the world: the dogmatic reaches a certainty and remains in it; the skeptic craves certainty and decides that it is unattainable.

Nevertheless, philosophy is movement, for the world is movement. Certainty and its negation are just two moments (the thesis and the antithesis) that will be overcome by the synthesis, which, in turn, will be a new thesis and so on...

(Continued in the next issue.)