Why construct a new philosophy of living?
For Sofia University Cultural Studies Ph.D students
March 24, 2009
Jeffrey Wattles, draft of March 27, 2009
What are the relations of philosophy and culture? On the one hand, philosophy is
a part of culture. On the other hand, philosophy reflects on the facts, meanings, and
values of cultures and discovers ideals in the light of which it tries to help culture to
progress. In every culture there are ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness, and the greatest
expressions of these ideals attracts attention for centuries. At the same time, truth,
beauty, and goodness manifest themselves in new ways from generation to generation.
How are they manifesting now? What are the difficulties that make it hard for their
potentials to be actualized now? If someone is a truth seeker, what nourishment can he or
she find in the popular media today? If someone hungers for harmony on higher levels,
what frustration will that person experience in Western culture or cultures today? If
someone longs for goodness, for humankind to live as a family, how can they participate
effectively in helping their dreams to be realized? And what about the many persons who
are so oppressed by the material struggles of daily living, so distracted by technology and
the intense pace of modern life, that they take no time even to think and contemplate
about cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness? These are people who may
believe that the essentials of human life do not require us to take any time for such
thinking and contemplation.
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When I say “divine goodness,” I shift the discussion. I open a question. What
about spiritual realities? Is it possible to prove the existence of God? And what
difference does that make to culture? What difference can this make in a human life?
Religion often acts in ways that show error, ugliness, and evil; so it can be hard to take
seriously the idea that God is the source of that truth, beauty, and goodness that manifests
in the truths of science and philosophy that people do rely on, in the beauties of nature
and the charm of intellectual art which we all have begun to enjoy, and in the actions and
character of persons who desire to do good to others.
I believe that neither science nor philosophy can demonstrate the existence of
God. Nor can they demonstrate the validity of moral concern. Nor can they prove what
is intuitively evident to everyone—that the material surroundings in fact exist. Any
attempt to prove or disprove something this basic either assumes too much or proves too
little. In the case of the material realm, everyone learns to develop this intuition from the
first year of life. Moral awareness is evident by at least age six or seven. Spiritual
intuition manifests early, too, and the individual, the family, and the social group either
pursue it or not, interpreting it in one way or another. Sometimes these three basic
human capacities for intuition are developed separately, not in a coordinated and
integrated way. A person can be very religious part of the time while making no effort to
bring the ideals of love into his or her study or work. And religion itself often fails to
attain spiritual levels of realization. Morality is often conventional, not progressive. And
there can be complacency about facts, satisfied with ignorance of science when science
has very helpful things to teach, or satisfied with conventional science when that science
itself needs to be expanded.
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These reflections are largely theoretical. A philosophy of living, however, places
theory in an everyday context. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient Greek
philosophers inquired about theoretic matters, in part, in order to clarify the way of
living. That quest is starting to come to life again today, not only because of the
development of applied ethics. Ethics does not go far enough. Let me explain.
The golden rule—Treat others as you want others to treat you—is a principle
filled with life in the diversity of its interpretations. It can be a rule of sympathy: Treat
others with consideration for their feelings, as you want others to treat you with
consideration for your feelings. It can be a rule of moral reason: Treat others in accord
with moral reason, as you want others to treat you. And it can be the principle of the
practice of the family of God: Treat others as brothers and sisters, as the sons and
daughters of God, as you want others to treat you. To apply a principle of goodness,
however, one needs awareness of truth regarding the persons involved and their
circumstances. Love, if it is to be intelligent and wise, must include these dimensions.
When the expression of love is founded on truth, it can be more beautiful.
Truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience are all relevant, and I shall
speak especially of truth in the domain of scientific living, but first let me say something
about truth itself, not particular propositions coming from science, philosophy, and
spiritual experience, but truth as a living reality, which can only be known by those who
are wholehearted and persistent truth-seekers. Here is an account by Sydney Jordan, a
student in art education.
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For me, truth is a feeling of satisfaction. Not in the way of feeling full and
satisfied after a meal, but rather a sense of wholeness. For example, my family
has a rather large garden that we work every summer. This past summer was the
first time I was allowed to have a crop of my own. The feeling I got from the start
when the ground is first turned to the harvest is a sense of completeness. At the
end of each session in the garden I am dirty, sweaty, and tired, but it is my hard
work and dedication that produces something good. People that do what I do
need determination, hard work, patience. Being in the garden every summer is a
truth for me. We plant it, care for it, wait, and it grows then feeds us and others.
Truth is what is there when all of the fancy is taken away. Truth is understanding
the value of things, that all things have value and are in some way connected.
(This quotation and the next two quotations taken from students’ writing are used by
permission.) The meaningfulness of Jordan’s insight, her truthful connection with reality,
will become increasingly evident as we proceed. James Parsons, a philosophy major who
stretched his analytic training to cope with the unusual assignment to live in truth, beauty,
and goodness, gave a quite different answer: “Truth sprouts inclination or motivation,
which ranks somewhere within the scale of goodness, and this scale has a threshold after
which it tends to produce the greatest amount of beauty (with rare exceptions).”1 These
two answers complement each other. For a person to take the time to work to bring forth
such concepts to begin with anchors inquiry in simplicity, insight, and experience. To be
sure, the progress of inquiry brings expansion and often revision to the initial concept.
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A sharp contrast with the previous answers is seen in this poem by Allison
Johnson.
Truth
Full of knick knacks
Left-overs from late night snacks
Stale and salty
Yet we eat them anyway
Choking the jagged edges down
We take it
After all
I am not devouring it
It is devouring me
Consuming
With each and every bite
It gets harder and harder to swallow
To gag down the truth
How do I know?
I feel it
Confined all the tears
As am I
Till they come rushing out of my stale
Now salty eyes
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The poem leaves several possibilities of interpretation intriguingly open. First, the
concept of truth may be ironic: “truth” is official truth, a straight-jacket, needing to be
rejected by an honest recognition of how distorting, rigid, and hurtful it is—in other
words, a lie. A second possible interpretation is that truth here is all-too-real and
recognized as such but resisted because of its unwelcome implications for a soul that
remains torn. A third possibility is that truth is being confused with fact.
A depressed person who was lucid and on the verge of making positive changes
said, “I’m running away from truth because it’s so horrible.” This was the moment to
draw a distinction. Facts can be ugly, but truth is something different. We take a step
into truth just by looking at the chain of causes that led up to the ugly fact. There is an
intelligible process here, and in an evolving, progressing universe, causes do not merely
perpetuate themselves in a linear way. Ugliness does not last forever. Now a big-picture
concept of evolution requires adding philosophic and spiritual components to scientific
ones if it is to have the leverage that truth in its fullness can have. But if those
components are present, the resulting concept of truth is not something to gag down but
something to savor.
It is a fact that some persons are overwhelmed by the question about truth, and
some doubt the very concept of truth itself. There are so many competing versions of
truth. Isn’t it all relative to what a person happens to believe? Will the doubts and
difficulties drive the concept of truth from the field or force it to retreat, or will they
stimulate us to find a way to respond that does not suppress those difficulties but
dissolves them?
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The contrast between truth as embraced by Jordan and “truth” as rejected by
Johnson is that in the first case truth is found to be livable. Indeed, this difference
functions as a criterion that distinguishes the genuine article from what is false.
Scientific living, briefly summarized, involves action based on three preparatory
activities: first, be alive to the surroundings, noticing things, facing facts, and determining
facts with scientific care as needed; second, explore causes—how did this situation come
about? What would happen if we did this? Third, acquire a broad perspective regarding
progressive evolution in the realms of cosmology, biology, psychology, history, and other
sciences.
Charles Darwin understood that science is an activity for us all. He enlisted nonscientists in work that was scientifically helpful and encouraged those who had no
scientific training to make observations and collect samples.
The scientific pursuit of truth means, most commonly, a pursuit of facts explained
in terms of causes. Is anything more basic to science than what Darwin called “hard,
unbending facts”2? He practiced a voracious, innovative pursuit of facts free of orthodox
ideas of where and what to collect. The following passage from the biography, Darwin,
by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, contrasts Darwin’s manner of inquiry with what
was customary. The passage refers to supporters of the idea of evolution who became
interested in how modifications of domesticated plants and animals might give evidence
of species changing.
Few deskbound scientists had ever got their hands dirty, leaving it to tree
cultivators . . . to prove the point. Darwin on the other hand had never ceased
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collecting scraps and facts. He followed up hearsay stories of exceptional hounds,
silkworms, hybrid geese, feral and farm animals in the colonies—anything in fact
on selection, inheritance, and breeding. For fifteen years he had ploughed
through manual after manual on pigs and poultry, and the more he studied the
bizarre types, the odder it seemed ‘that no zoologists should ever have thought it
worth while to look to the real structure of varieties.’
It was hard to realize the novelty of his move. Most naturalists disdained
pigeons and poultry. Science was not done in the farmyard. . . .
But unconventional science required unconventional support, and Darwin
strayed far beyond the normal bounds. He looked anew at the gamekeepers’
familiar fare: agricultural shows, animal husbandry, farmhouse lore, and the
Poultry Chronicle. And he began quizzing those who knew most about breeding
and inheritance: fanciers and nurserymen. (Darwin p. 526)
Thus he collected, sorted, and organized his facts so that they would be serviceable.
Spring turned the study into a pungent jungle, with seeds sprouting in biscuit tins
on the chimneypiece, cabbages and runner beans in floor pots, and nasturtium,
cyclamens, cacti, and telegraph plants scattered on tables. Charles was in his
element, infatuated with every rootlet and blossom. All these were his
companions; he had a feeling for their ‘aliveness.’ He talked to them
unselfconsciously, praising their ingenuity or twitting the ‘little beggars’ for
‘doing just what I don’t want them to.’ Sometimes a flower caught his eye, and
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he would stoke it gently, childlike in his ‘love for its delicate form & colour.’ The
plants moved him, . . . and when the plants moved themselves they stirred him
most of all. (Darwin, p. 631)
Darwin defends the overarching goodness of evolution in a way that may reflect his
training for the Anglican priesthood.
When we reflect on this struggle [for survival], we may console ourselves with
the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death
is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and
multiply.
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout
the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad,
preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working,
whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic
being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.3
Virtues arise in the quest for truth, and fifteen virtues pertinent to scientific
inquiry may be observed in Darwin’s character.
1. Truth hunger
2. Keen perception
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3. Accurate reasoning
4. Concentration
5. Patience
6. Courage
7. The habit of testing one’s ideas
8. Methodical problem solving
9. Teamwork
10. Openness to diverse views
11. Freedom from prejudice
12. Humility
13. Mobilization of the total personality
14. The ability to distinguish fact from theoretical speculation while putting facts in a
broader theoretical perspective
15. Whole-souled identification with the real
Darwin was a scientist with very little interest in philosophy and with declining religious
faith. Nevertheless, scientific living in the fullest sense, engages a person in truth,
beauty, and goodness in thinking, feeling, and doing that are energized by a higher
perspective and motivation. Since there is no question of proving or disproving the
existence of God, it remains logically an open question whether a person chooses to
honor and pursue the light of the divine which emerges in human consciousness
beginning with early childhood. If a person does choose a way of spiritual development,
his or her philosophy will be a religious philosophy, with implications for philosophy of
science.
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Scientific living, at its fullest, is a participation in the divine process of evolution.
In order to engage in that fullness of living in an intellectually responsible manner, during
this age when civilization is struggling with a materialistic interpretation of science, it is
necessary to make something like the following philosophical moves, which keep open
the adventure of faith.
In the realm of cosmology, it is necessary to distinguish the current practice of
scientific cosmology from a full and adequate inquiry into the many dimensioned
material, intellectual, and spiritual cosmos. Scientific cosmology attempts to give a total,
basic description of the entire universe, past, present, and future. The assumptions
involved in that enterprise can be questioned, and the current fabric of scientific results
and hypotheses is far more debatable than introductory accounts reveal. Faith affirms
that the universe is not an accident, nor is destruction its destiny, but faith must wait for
new scientific developments to have a picture of the cosmos more harmonious with its
beliefs.
In the realm of biology, a religious philosophy of science has a few issues to note.
First, there is the confusion brought about by the use of the term “evolution” to
summarize very different theses, some of which are well supported, while others
controversial or speculative or philosophical and inconsistent with religious philosophy.
Second, there is a lack of understanding of the great tradition of teleology stemming from
Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and others, showing ways to integrate mechanical and purposive
accounts in a divinely centered cosmology. Third, there are over 1200 studies of the
relations between religion and health, which overwhelmingly point to a positive
correlation between religion and health, so long as the religion does not fill people with
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fear and guilt. On the topic of health, I will simply suggest that in order for the life in the
spirit to make fuller contact with the life in the neurons and with the body generally, it
helps for the mind—in all its essential functions—to be pervaded by faith.
In the realm of psychology, the last decade has seen a movement called “positive
psychology.” The idea is that psychology has worked too much on how to help persons
move from dysfunctional to functional and not enough on how to help persons move
from functional to soaring. A philosophy of living does well to retain an empirical
awareness which is sobering, expanding to the mind, and encouraging.
In the realm of history, there is a great need for the scholars who discuss the
relations of science and religion to add this topic to their discussions. Science and
religion are judged by how they respond to human need, and many persons in our
generation face the staggering problems of our planet and have no hope for humanity
ever to attain a high destiny. How can philosophy combine scientific realism and
spiritual idealism in this area? First, we can learn selectively from the great philosophies
of history of Augustine, Bossuet, Kant, and Hegel. Second, we can cultivate powerful
attitudes so that the mind is not staggered by problems: we should “learn to feast upon
uncertainty, fatten upon disappointment, enthuse over apparent defeat, to invigorate in the
presence of difficulties, to exhibit indomitable courage in the face of immensity, and to
exercise unconquerable faith when confronted with the challenge of the inexplicable. In
liaison with God, nothing—absolutely nothing—is impossible!”4 Third, we should
expect and prepare for a planetary spiritual renaissance which will reduce the average
level of materialism and selfishness and inspire the leadership and teamwork that will one
day reorganize our world.
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The truth of the universal family, the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
man, will sooner or later be realized and practiced on our world. We can glimpse that
destiny as Paul Mendes-Flohr tells of Bulgarian-Jewish writer Elias Canetti. “Writing in
the midst of the horrific events that so brutally sought to sever the Jews from their fellow
human beings—the events we now call the Holocaust—this Nobel laureate for literature
exclaimed: “Should I harden myself against the Russians because [they persecute the]
Jews, against the Chinese because they are far away, against the Germans because they
are possessed by the devil? Can’t I still belong to all of them, as before, and nevertheless
be a Jew?”
Of course this philosophy requires faith, which alone unlocks the door to cosmic
truth. To live in the light of this philosophy yields the joy of contributing to cosmic
evolution. Cosmic evolution is a project of the eternal God and we, as the sons of
daughters of God in a universal family, have the privilege of helping to bring about a
better world.
There are two ways to participate in the project of constructing this philosophy of
living. The first way is to experience it, live it, practice it in your own life, to see what
adjustments you need to make in it in order for it to fit you and your relationships and
social groups and material circumstances. The second way is to live it and also to
become a fellow architect, someone working to design this philosophy of living. The
emerging philosophy of living will not be the work of one person alone.
1
Sydney Jordan and James Parsons were students in Kent State University’s aesthetics
class, Fall 2008, and the quotations from their papers are used by permission.
2
Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, p. 284.
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3
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Joseph Carroll, ed., pp. 143 and 146.
4
The Urantia Foundation, The Urantia Book (Chicago: The Urantia Foundation, 1955),
p. 291.