Philosophy: Yesterday and Today

Alloy S Ihuah PhD

Dept of Rel and Philosophy
Benue State University,
Makurdi.
alloyihuah@yahoo.com
+2348026242031; +23480334017856

The inspiration of this title goes back to a remarkable article that appeared in Time
Magazine on January 7th, 1966 and entitled “What (if anything) to expect from today’s
philosophers’. A similar title appears in one of the chapters of Kwasi Wiredu’s recent book
“Philosophy and an African Culture”. The chapter in question is “What can philosophy do for
Africa?” These titles are somewhat provocative because they mean to suggest that there I
some doubt as to what the philosophers have to offer to the world today; there may even be
the suspicion that it has nothing to offer. Such questions are not asked of engineers, doctors
or bakers because it appears to be quite obvious that they have something to offer and what
they have to offer.
Such a question would not have been asked of philosophers even three centuries ago
because although at that point in time there was confusion in the air, the importance of
philosophy was never seriously in question. In fact if we look through the centuries we
discover that philosophy was always held in high esteem, even though some of its
practitioners may at times have been severely criticized.
For Plotinus (.270 a.d.) philosophy was a ‘dear delight’. And Plato (.348 B.C.), one of
the greats in the service of philosophy, would place philosophers over the affairs of man. He
risked his life and reputation for his conviction, even though, unlike Socrates, he never had to
drink the hemlock. Protagoras (d.411 B.C.) made the human mind the measure of all things
and philosophizing itself was the greatest activity of that mind. Marcus Aurelius (d.180 A.D.)
loved philosophy more than his throne. Boethius (d.524 A.D.) consoled himself and even
wrote a book while in prison entitled ‘The Consolations of Philosophy’. As the Time
Magazine article put it:
“The world has both favoured and feared the philosophers’ answers. Thomas
Aquinas was a saint, Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great, and
Voltaire was a confidant of kings. But Socrates was put to death, and
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake”.

In order to understand the ways in which the tasks of philosophy have changed over
the centuries and suggest what the tasks of philosophy are today we must look back into the
history of philosophy. In the 6th century B.C. men from the coast of Asia Minor began to ask
questions that had never been asked before. They began to ask what the world was made of
and how it originated.
The discovery that the origins and nature of things were questions that might be
resolved by rational discussion constitutes a landmark in human history. Only a very few
individuals were conscious of it. Nevertheless, the first blow for liberation had been struck.

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Men had begun to ask those questions which not only enriched his consciousness, but
ultimately led to control over the forces of nature. The search started not only for information
but also for understanding. Appeals to tradition and authority were replaced by appeals
before the court of reason. It is true that the early writers made no distinction between
philosophy and science, such as we make today. I deed, science grew out of philosophy, a
development we do not consider here.
When later, Socrates appeared a new feature entered philosophy. It is not that the
earlier activities ceased, it is that philosophers now began to discuss also the nature and
destiny of man, moral conscience and the laws by which it is guided. Concerning philosophy,
therefore, Socrates declared:
“Let no one delay to study philosophy while he is young and when he is old, let
him not become a weary of the study… And he who asserts either that it
is not yet time to philosophize, or that the hour is passed, is like a man
who should say that the time is not yet come to be happy, or that it is too
late”.

Socrates himself, of course, is well known as the father of moral philosophy.

Finally, and particularly under the influence of the growing contacts between
Christianity and Greek philosophy, the Christian philosopher was called upon to justify the
existence of God on rational grounds, to give for the faith that was in them. This task arose
from the fact that although Christianity presented a total way of life, nevertheless there was a
strong challenge from Greek philosophy, which also presented a way of life and without any
reference to supernatural helps. The Christian therefore was compelled to meet the challenge
of Greek philosophy.
If now we are to sum up the tasks of the philosopher in traditional times, a task that
survived up to quite recently we could say that the traditional philosopher did the work of
three men. By his interest in the origin and nature of things, the principle of change and
stability in the world, the philosopher did the work of the scientist. By his interest in the aims
of human activity and the guide that should be given to human conduct; the philosopher did
the work of the morality. By his interest in questions of religion and particularly in defending
the faith against various attacks the philosopher did the work of the apologist.
Now concerning the traditional philosophers and their task we might make the
following observations:
- Although these philosophers from Thales in the 6th century B.C. to
Aquinas in the 13th century A.D. depended on ‘reason’ as the tool of enquiry they made
different claims concerning the nature of the universe. Thales claimed that water was the
source of all things. Pythagoras declared that all things are resolvable into numbers and
their relationships. Heraclitus argued that change itself is the very essence of things while
Parmenides denied the possibility of any change.
The awareness among philosophers themselves of such differences eventually forced
them to ask serious questions about the methods of their inquiry. Although these
philosophers were aware of the fact that different kinds of inquiry demand different
approaches they neglected this fact in practice. Thus, for example, Aristotle treated vital
questions of the nature of the universe as mathematical issues and because he did so he

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 had a most retarding effect on the development of the natural sciences. His theory of the
geocentric character of the universe is a notorious case in point.

When the Scientific Revolution took place in the 17th century a new method of
enquiry was discovered. It was the method of factual observation, careful hypothesis and
empirical verification of results. It stood in direct contrast to the appeals to the authority of
Aristotle or resort to the Bible. In general it has five steps, which mark the scientific method
to this day:
(i) enquiry must be based on factual observation
(ii) it must trace relations between events, primarily in a causal way.
(iii) it must seek to generalize these relations in hypotheses, provisional proposals,
which must be tested by further observations.
(iv) tested hypotheses may then be translated into statements of explanations or laws,
or theory.
(v) theory must be verified, or confirmed by further and continuous observation.

Although the pure scientific method did not grow overnight it did however begin to
quickly have resounding results. The scientific awakening began with Roger Bacon (d.1294).
it grew with the versatile work of Leonardo da Vinci (artist, engineer, astronomer, physicist).
It reached new heights with the astronomy of Copernicus (1475-1543) and Galileo (1564-
1642). The theories of Gilbert in magnetism and electricity were influential. Also the work of
Vesalius on anatomy in the 17th century and of Harvey (1578-1657) on the circulation of the
blood.
Faced with such stupendous achievements by the scientists, philosophers were forced
to question their method. And they did so mainly in order to answer two questions:
(i) why could not some of the fundamental questions of philosophy be
settled once and for all? A search for certainty.
(ii) Why could not philosophy be as successful as science in solving
problems? A search for success.

The one man who made a resolute attempt to conquer certainty and who was also
confident of success was Descartes (1596-1652). His methodic achieved for him a reasonable
level of knowledge out only of his being, but of God and the world. It was an approach
whereby he systematically doubted about everything he could for any reason doubt until he
arrived at a truth he could not in any way doubt. It was in this fashion, as we noted, that he
established the following truths:
(a) His own existence as a thinking subject.
(b) The existence of God
(c) The existence of the external world

And he established these truths purely from thought. Any other truths, he might
establish must, like these, be clear and distinct and necessarily connected with each other.
Without repeating what we have already stated regarding Descartes, the following
observations may be added:

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(a) According to Descartes, there is a general sharing of intellectual ability among human
beings. The achievements of individuals differ because they apply different methods,
some more effective than others. It had a strong mathematical stamp.
(b) Because of the method he chose, Descartes gave the impression that the world is a
sort of clock with very intricate, but discoverable mysteries and secrets. They could be
discovered provided the correct method was used. In such a world, God was the great
clock-maker and man the discoverer. Once the existence and intelligibility of the world
were established, the clock-maker was no longer necessary. God became very much a
caretaker God.
(c) If the world is a system of truths, which are discovered as necessarily connected with
each other, then, it would seem that everything is necessarily related to everything else.
If so, there is little place for human freedom, less scope for responsibility and the whole
world of morality is jettisoned. In a word, the world of Descartes is a mathematician’s
laboratory.
While one admires the daring of Descartes one must admit that his ambition was
unrealistic, that it did not do justice to the range of enquiry he imposed on himself and,
above all, that he sacrificed complexity on the altar of certainty. The fact that God
played such a central role at the base of his system was somewhat a mixed blessing as
the subsequent history of philosophy proved.
Quite quickly a reaction set in against Descartes.
(a) The first reaction came from John Locke (1632-1704) in England. He attacked
some of the basic positions of the Rationalist Descartes and claimed that it is from
experience “that all our knowledge is founded, and from that, it ultimately derives
itself”. Locke was followed by George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-
1776). These are the well-known founders of Classical Empiricism and between then
they bombarded the highly metaphysical and rationalist fortress of Descartes. Hume’s
famous declaration indicates how far the Empiricist world was removed from that of
Descartes. Having criticized a number of metaphysical doctrines of the medieval
philosophers, particularly causality, Hume went on to say concerning his own
principles:
“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc
must we make? If we take in hand any volume of divinity or school
metaphysics, for instance; let us ask: Does it contain any abstract
reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact or existence? No.
Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and
illusion. (Omoregbe, 1991:73).

According to Hume, all human knowledge derives from the impressions made on us by
physical objects during sense perception. From these formed, and these ideas are copies,
images or representations of the impressions.
(b) In different ways the attempts of both Rationalists and Empiricists were self-
defeating because besides the over-claiming (Descartes) and under-claiming (Hume)
philosophers became obsessed with questions about the origins and nature of

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 knowledge, they rarely got on to the more central issues of philosophy itself: the world
about us and ourselves.
They were like certain footballers; too concerned with style and technique they played
the game poorly. Thus for the last three hundred years, it is true to say, philosophers
have been largely epistemologists. They concerned themselves more with the theory,
nature of and origin of human knowledge.
(c) But such occupations have not been a total waste. The search for certainty and
success compelled philosophers to go to the very roots of human enquiry. Thus the
traditional problems received a new stimulus: the problem of knowledge, the nature of
perception, the nature of truth, evidence, different kinds of evidence for different
situations etc. such discussions persist to this day and the likelihood is that they will
continue to do so.
This is one of the permanent features of philosophy: basic problems will always be its
staple diet because the human mind will always be returning to its sources, questioning
its assumptions, re-stating its aims in the light of current conflicts and issues. This is not
a criticism of philosophy as if it were an unproductive occupation. It simply draws
attention to the fact that there will always be a need and scope for such questions even
though the emphasis will vary according to the needs of the occasion.

But while philosophers were discussing their methods and approaches the world was
moving and many new sciences emerged in order to understand it:
(a) The knowledge explosion of the last three centuries has made any attempts of the
philosopher to give a synoptic view of the whole world look like a child’s attempt to
empty the sea with his toy bucket.
(b) The discovery of new-lands, the breakdown of some and the growth of new
ideological systems and the like, have destroyed the credibility of any claims to a single
and comprehensive view of the world.
(c) The emergence of a new world with its increasing scientific base has shattered
many of the traditional claims. Building a new epistemological foundation has become
an urgent priority.
(d) The recognition of different levels of inquiry and the need for distinct methods of
investigation has created the need for clarity and guidance in determining areas of
specialization, their nature, function and scope.
(e) In a world where abundance and destitution rub shoulders, where rising
expectations and developing abilities become a cosmic phenomenon; new social and
political foundations must be developed lest chaos leads to violence without end.
(f) In a world of increasing industrialization and urbanization, education becomes a
condition of participation in life. In a modern society there can be no such thing as
democracy without education. No manipulation of the ignorance of the masses.
(g) In times of change – particularly the type of change brought about by
secularization – everything comes into question and the old wisdoms have to be re-
defined: the value of work, the evidence for God, the meaning of life, the aim of
education, the standards of morality and many others.

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(h) The search for solution of the distinct problems of the new world in-the-making at
first sight appeared to leave the philosopher behind. As one science after another came
into existence and as it became increasingly clear that different kinds of evidence are
the key to knowledge, if not certainty and success themselves, philosophy seemed to be
in a process of liquidation. Intellectually it was being ousted by science. In fact it had
become at best the handmaid of science.

But this is not really the full story. Philosophy today may not be able to aspire to,
much less, achieve the great designs of a Descartes, a Spinoza, or a Leibniz. At the same time
it is not as bereft of contributions as Hume might suggest.
In describing the task of the philosopher today we must however keep in mind two
facts not only for the philosopher himself but for all enquirers today.
First of all, philosophers today, like all other professionals, are far more aware of the
distinctiveness of their contributions than they were centuries ago. In a simple, small-scale,
largely illiterate society the distinctiveness of different professionals is not very clear in fact
the awareness of such distinctiveness may not even have emerged.
But when a society becomes more educated, industrialized and urbanized not only is
there a demand for new skills, but there is also a call for the refinement of more traditional
skills. This applies to the philosopher in a particular way. The business of the philosopher is
with ideas, their nature, establishment and evaluation. In traditional times philosophers were
not sufficiently aware of the distinctiveness of their business. And so they encroached
themselves and took on the business of the scientist, the moralist, the apologist. But in saying
this, we must keep in mind that such an intrusion was practically inevitable in the context of
the intellectual development and sophistication of the time.
Secondly, the philosopher since the 17th century has more and more realize that
different kinds of evidence yield different results, that different types of inquiry postulate
different approaches; that in discovering and understanding facts about the universe
observation is a prime condition of progress. Thus philosophers now realize that discovering
god is not like discovering an unidentified body in outer space, that, in fact, proving the
existence of God is not so much discovering something as interpreting it and in that sense
‘discovering’ God as the source of all things. Philosophers realize that evidence in the natural
sciences, in the social sciences, sciences and in the legal sciences bears some striking
differences in each case. Finally, while philosophers appreciate the role of logic mathematics
in the pursuit of knowledge they realize there can be no real progress without the input of
factual knowledge, careful observation and hypothesis.
The main roles and task of the philosopher may be briefly described as listed as
follows:
(a) We distinguish – but not too severely – two levels of inquiry, that is, second order
activities and first order activities. By first order activities we mean those enquiries of
activities where people are directly engaged in the situation at hand. Thus parents and
teachers engage in giving moral instructions. They teach and educate in various ways.
In so doing they appeal to principles and use concepts: ‘You ought not to be naughty”,
‘You should obey your parents’, ‘You should be respectful to your teachers’ and they
use concepts like ‘teach’, ‘instruct’, ‘play’, ‘educate’ etc.

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(b) By second order activities we mean those enquiries in which the principles and
concepts directly used at the first order level are evaluated and analyzed. Thus
philosophy is a second order activity.
As I say we should not make this distinction too severe because at times in practice
there is quite a blur in the distinction as we already noted in discussing the philosophy
of history.
The task of conceptual clarification is important and urgent. The philosopher who helps
by getting people to clear their ideas, to question their assumptions and attitudes
concerning the crucial issues affecting them individually and collectively is making a
major contribution. Thus there are concepts being freely use today and which are in
urgent need of clarification and refinement as, for example, ‘equality’, ‘development’,
‘tolerance’, ‘ethical revolution’, ‘radical’ and many others.
Furthermore by the throwing light on the distinctiveness of different kinds of enquiry,
the philosopher not only supplements the work of scientists, but also of sociologists,
moralists, theologians and educationists. Thus the work of the philosopher today is
more confined and at the same time perhaps more significant. The philosopher today
may not be able to provide a justification of the existence of God in the manner of
Anselm in the 11th century, Aquinas in the 13th or Descartes in the 17th century. The
contemporary mentality is too tough-minded and critical to the impressed by such
displays of philosophical virtuosity.
But the philosopher today may do much ground work by showing the need to ask
questions about life, what it means to talk about God, to remove much confusion
surrounding the concept of religion, for example and illustrate the sort of language that
is religious as distinct from scientific language, political language, poetic language etc.
The philosopher today may not be able to lay down a great system of morality and place
it within a cosmic view of things as Plato and Aristotle did, but he may cut through
much of the nonsense and confusion written in the name of morality by insisting on
what one precisely means by a moral point of view.
(c) But philosophy today is more than a matter of clarification of concepts. And if
indeed philosophy is more than a clarification of concepts yielded by the natural and
social sciences, if it is more than a conceptual expression of different world views, if, in
fact, philosophy reveals certain fundamental truths concerning the world of human
beings, the relationships among human kind and its relationship to the physical universe
about it, then it is incumbent on the philosopher to discover such truths.
Such truths indeed enhance the human enterprise – to know more and do more in order
to be more – by conceptually expanding the base of human decision and systematically
evaluating the options open to humankind.
Today the forces of change compel the philosopher to examine the care of one’s being
as a developing, social animal, to re-orient the basic principles that constitute morality
with the purpose of expanding their scope, deepening their implications while refining
their meaning in the context of a dramatically changing situation.
(d) This is one urgent task of the philosopher today and that is to restore the human
dimension to the enterprises that characterize the age. The fact is that a general
dehumanization of human relationships has set in on a global scale. It is not only that

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 war has escalated to a horrifying degree; it is also that the world of politics, education,
industry and family life are losing their distinctively human character.

Now if preachers and poets may be described as guardians of our traditions and
prophets in our societies then surely this too must be said of the philosopher. But the
distinctiveness of the contribution of the philosopher must be brought out. The philosopher,
as we know, is concerned with ideas. Strictly speaking he changes nothing but ideas yet, by
clarifying concepts he does affect the world. For the clarification of concepts is neither a
random sample of ideas nor an attempt at clarification for its own sake. The clarification
achieved by the philosopher persuades people to look at the world in a certain way. He
carries out certain propaganda for a particular point of view, but always in the name of truth.
Human behaviour changes over a period as a result of the influence of human thought
upon it. Thus, for example, the philosopher may be concerned with a clarification of the
concept of man. Through his analysis he is giving us an insight into the nature of man,
reminding us of aspects otherwise forgetting or underestimated of totally neglected,
persuading us to look at him in a certain way as a result of which we begin to treat him in a
certain way. Such treatment is more than the translation of theory into practice. It is a new
modification of man because, as a result of that understanding, he is a ‘new man’ a new ‘self-
creation’.
By clarifying concepts the philosopher affects the world. In doing so he may support
the forces of resistance to change by attempting to sustain the status quo as Hobbes did or he
may unleash new forces of change as Marx did in the last century. But the philosopher too
may retain the best that is in society by grounding its traditional values in the rationality of
man and thereby ensuring its core values while stripping them of their accretions.
In fact we can say that the philosopher is something of a prophet not only because he
may predict future developments with remarkable foresight as Nietzsche did but also because
he is the voice of humanity in search of new values, trying to express a new meaning as the
world becomes itself a new reality, something more. The prophetic role can be precarious not
only because the philosopher may err in very serious matters but also because when his
insights run counter to the received values of his own society those benefiting from such a
system may land him in jail as the history of philosophy abundantly explicates in ancient
Athens in the care of Socrates.
The philosophy that has had the greatest notoriety and impact today is undoubtedly
Western philosophy with its more recent Rationalist and Empiricist strands in their various
forms. While not doubting its achievements it has had a commanding role in bringing about a
deep crisis of civilization, a crisis within the spirit of Western man himself and consisting
mainly in an unbridgeable separation between knowledge about the world and how to
understand it, on the one hand, and wisdom, that is, the ability to place all knowledge and
achievement within a human frame of measure. While the study of such philosophy is
necessary, it is equally important not to be dazzled by it, as contemporary man seems to be.
Philosophy, then, is a dangerous medicine. Undoubtedly it has a certain therapeutic role to
play in society. But it itself may be part of that disease. Therefore ‘caveat emptor’, that is, ‘let
the buyer beware’.

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 If one were to draw attention to Africa in particular in determining the tasks of the
philosopher today one would have to draw attention to certain facts:
(i) The process of modernization is going on at a fantastic rate as a result of which Africa
is moving from small-scale, illiterate societies with their tribal gods and social
systems to the larger modernized, industrialized and urbanized democratic states.
(ii) This process has certain contrasts with modernization in the West. It is
chronologically more accelerated and, the cultural distance between the past and
present – between the traditional societies from which Africa moves and the
contemporary societies toward which it moves – is far greater in Africa than it was in
the West.
(iii) It is in Africa alone that we have the greatest concentration of a people who
have been culturally deprived and racially oppressed. The ability of Africans to
integrate themselves to the world community, without resorting to recriminations
because of past experiences has serious consequences for the world at large.
(iv)Furthermore, granted that in Africa as a whole you have vast resources of
industrial development there is a supreme challenge not only to industrialize but to do
so with the human dimension of the whole enterprise kept intact: The real problem
here is whether Africans can learn to select, to choose among the techniques of the
outer world and adapt them without contracting the forms of neo-slavery that marked
much of the history of the Industrial Revolution in the West in particular.
(v) Finally, as traditional allegiances along religious lines via with each other for
acceptance there is the distinct challenge to jointly construct a live together in
societies that all can jointly judge worthwhile.

Given this all too brief list of issues affecting Africa in particular the tasks before the
philosopher in Africa are many:
(a) Given that the culture of a people is its source and way of life the
philosopher in Africa must do his share in preserving the soul of African culture
without canonizing all its features. He must be sufficiently critical of these cultures
without decimating them in the name of progress and reason. As ignorance and fear are
driven out by knowledge and daring, many of the anachronisms associated with
religious thought patterns must be eliminated.
(b) Without the benefit of a common cultural ethos to absorb the impact of
modernization, philosophers in Africa are called upon to develop strategies of
understanding and expectations that will release the great pillars of society-truth,
justice, concern for others and freedom – from their traditional small-scale tribal
moorings and re-set them to form the pillars of a new Africa in a contemporary world.
(c) The myth that all modernization is Western-style must be exploded. But it
must also be realized that this cannot be done by mere goodwill alone. The challenge is
an intellectual one to evolve a new conceptual frame within which understandings and
expectations are emerging in Nigeria, to analyze the main characteristics of that frame
so that in order to bring about a sense of direction one first understands the processes of
social change.

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(d) As the various religious traditions come more in contact with each other
there is a growing realization that fashioning the new Nigeria has to be a work of
collaboration. There has to be an increase of tolerance and generosity without a loss of
commitment.
(e) Finally, up and down the continent African nations are moving into the era
of planned economies, democratic processes and pluralistic societies. The sort of Africa
that will emerge depends in large measure on the decisions being made today. The fact
is that today’s generation is equipped to fashion a future that will be substantially man’s
own making. Thus the morality of options, the categorical imperative to choose among
ideologies and life-styles becomes a new sine qua non in the Africa of the future. If so,
the agenda for philosophers is heavy and their task is not singular but multiple.

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