Its About Philosophy, ......

Its About Philosophy, ……

Descartes' legacy to all of us via philosophy can be labeled, I think, as rationalism (discovery of truth through pure reason), dichotomy (mind/body split), and certainty. Even though very few of us know anything about philosophy, almost everything we think results from the philosophy we inherit through social osmosis (unconscious assimilation). Philosophy theory permeates almost all of our mental gymnastics without our conscious recognition.

I speculate that such is true because it fits well for the ego of all humans, especially philosophers, and because it also fits well with the interests of the Christian faith. Descartes' legacy makes it easy to place our self in a hierarchy of being with humans one step below God and a giant step above animals. If one thinks about it too much we might have difficulty eating the progeny our own ancestors.

If we want to understand our self and our world we will necessarily have to learn some bit of philosophy. That is when we can begin to appreciate certain theories of philosophy. We become interested in philosophy when we begin to ask questions that go to the ?'root' of the matter.

Someone said that only one person in a thousand ever "strikes at the root". I do not think a liberal democracy in a hi-tech world can survive if such remains to be true. Hi-tech gives us the ability to easily destroy our self and our world; liberal democracy makes all citizens to be sovereign and thus responsible in some small way for the integrity of our existence.

We are all in the same boat and if only one person in a thousand accepts the responsibility of democracy I think we may be in trouble.