V. Socrates (1954)
Two Lectures By Heinrich Blücher
New School For Social Research
Lecture I: (In Two Parts) April 30, 1954
Lecture II: May 7, l954
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Then, there is still another group who want to get us back into life at any price. They call themselves the existentialists. They feel that philosophy is completely lost and if it is to survive it has to go back to certain foundations. Heidegger does that especially, but Heidegger fortunately is no longer an existentialist. Those who still are however, fall prey to another thing: Namely, life itself, which had been abandoned by philosophy, is now made into a God and a new metaphysics arises --- the metaphysics of existence (which is the inner form of life) and so existence becomes the new absolute which replaces all of the old ones, and there does not seem to be anything which cannot be deduced from this term. So from this idea they try to tell us what men are (another attempt to tell us what we are) which is supposedly deduced from this special insight into the absolute nature of existence. We don't know what existence is! We only think we know what it is until there are ten of us together in the same room, and then we discover that we all mean different things let alone that we should be able to deduce things which are applicable to the conduct of our life from it. That is our situation, and it is decisive for our consideration of who Socrates was and what he believed in.
Socrates would never have claimed to know any of those things. He would have realized there is a difference between what philosophy is and what we have decided to call philosophy. And now my friends, I ask you to hold onto your hats. Philosophy (and this is the general opinion) is supposed to be absolutely objective, an activity which is completely disinterested (as is science), and the foremost expression of this great capability of the human mind to be totally objective and disinterested about its objects. Those things should be there and philosophy should he ruled by them, otherwise we will never accept philosophy as philosophy. That, in any case, is the general superstition. Socrates would have said philosophy is no such thing. He knew that philosophers want things from human beings. They try to convince them, not indoctrinate, and if they are pure and good philosophers in the sense we have used this word, they do not try to overwhelm them with objective proofs and magnificent claims as scientists do, because there is no freedom in science in that sense. When somebody says to me that this roof will fall down on my head I move out. There is no freedom of choice. The scientist who proves that to me does not need to convince me of it. He has proved it. He does not need my agreement for me to walk out. I am already out the door.
The philosopher, and this is the great discovery of Socrates, needs for everything he proposes the agreement of the other free human beings, because he knows that in matters of the conduct of life there can be no other way except to reason it out through mutual agreement and take the common risk one might have been wrong, that one might not have had sufficient insight, because we never have sufficient insight, and if we are wrong to accept our defeat and try again. That is how philosophy moves. Philosophers want to convince by reasoning. They want to open up possible new ways of life and explore those ways of life. They approach other human beings and say to them:
"You see my friend, I have explored that and I can assure you of one thing. It might not be the truth, and it certainly will not be the truth because we will never have the truth but at least one thing we do know. It is a truer thing then we have had up until now and I can prove that to you to a certain degree. Because you will see, if you try it, that it will make for a deeper meaning, a more profound meaning, in your own life. It will enrich you and your life will be truer in that sense. You can become truer by it. But this is not the truth that I am giving to you. I am just proposing this living risk and experiment, first in thought, to think it over, and then try it a little bit so that you might not burn your fingers too much. If you see it serves you then go on with it and it will help you to a much deeper meaning to life and a higher significance of your own existence".
That is all philosophizing can do. Philosophers want to try to convince people of this possibility and that means they want to convince people to try to do a terribly dangerous thing; a thing that, after it had been discovered, everyone from Plato to the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky has tried to hide from human beings, and that is the terrible consequences that are involved if one makes a decision for freedom. Freedom is not given. Men are not born free. Men are born as beings that can free themselves and in order to do that they must make a decision for it. The decision for freedom is a very terrible one. It means to believe in something absolutely unbelievable: Namely, that there is a possibility for freedom and truth. It means to have faith, not religious faith, but philosophical faith. Philosophical faith means that man trusts and believes that there might be a meaning to Being, that it is worthwhile to live in Being in order to find this meaning, that truth is possible and we can live by it and it will satisfy our life, and finally, that we will really grow and enrich the humanity of human beings by taking this task upon ourselves.
All of that we owe to Socrates who was the first to state the goal of philosophy which is not knowledge but rather "sophia", the eternal wisdom. This is a transcendent principle, not a natural principle, and like the Tao of Lao Tse, the Nirvana of Buddha, the quality of decision in man of Zarathrustra, the transcendent God of Abraham, and the logos of Heraclitus, it is absolutely set against the mythical framework of mind and the great safety of that framework. To believe in them requires courage. It means to strive towards them which is why Socrates thought that courage was not only a virtue but the source of all other virtues in man. As long as a human being does not dare to stand upon this small possibility of freedom and truth but tries to fall back upon other assurances then he is lost in slavery because he is not able to fully develop his powers of reasoning. To make the decision for freedom means to stand alone as a human being, and face the world and life with the equipment we have been given, the human equipment, and no other equipment. To take the risk of thinking (which is the common faculty of all free men), and to really try to take this risk. To go the way of human reason and human logic which is not absolute and cannot be absolutely reached (as Heraclitus understood when be said):
"You will never find the limits of the human soul, even if you wander down every path, so deep is its logos." [Original Greek also given in manuscript from: fr.45 (Diog.Laert.IX7)]
To go the way of human judgment and human wisdom which is not absolute, because as Socrates realized, the absolute wisdom and judgment can never be reached. We have no divine judgment We have no divine qualities. We have no divine logic. We have no divine will. We have only, as Zarathrustra said, a human will, but we are not Ahuramazda. We do not, in Lao-Tse's terms, have divine unity with the Tao.
"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The Name that can be named is not the eternal Name." (Tao-Te-Ching)
Because the Tao has to be told incessantly and always by human beings. That is how the Tao is approached. To go toward it with our human equipment, and that means with reason and all of the capabilities of the human mind. All of the others, although they may appear to be super-human or divine are only illusions.
That is what all of these philosophers want us to do, because the philosophical quality of man (which is the center of all of his human qualities) can only work in freedom. The search for truth is bound to freedom at the very origin, hence to be a philosophical man means to have made a decision for freedom, because otherwise one cannot be a philosophical man. That is how freedom, the possibility of truth, the search for truth through our human faculties, and human reason hang together. They are there, together at the source, which is the center.
So philosophy wants to convince us of this one thing. Nobody who does not make this decision for freedom, who does not take upon himself this risk, can ever hope to think really philosophically. That step has to be made. From then on philosophers just make propositions, but this one first step must be taken in order to enter the philosophical activity at all.
One might object that the metaphysicians whom I criticize so much, by saying that all of their ideas are based upon general assumptions not accounted for, could easily come back at me with the same criticism:
"But you also base your so-called free philosophy on an assumption that is not accounted for: Namely, the human capability for freedom. You believe in freedom, and so you want to make others believe in freedom."
And we could answer:
"Not quite so. We want them only to make a decision and put their trust into something which, as soon as they have made that decision, will prove itself."
Freedom is this possibility. For if a man makes a decision in freedom and really tries it, then as soon as he has made that it becomes reason: Namely, it proves to him that he can create things in freedom. Freedom proves itself to a man when he acts according to it. The freedom we propose philosophically as the main creative possibility of man is the one upon which all of the others depend. It is the soil, the foundation, for the development of all creative capabilities.
If one accepts this, then with whatever capability one chooses to exercise freedom will increase. We will see that freedom really works, that it is possible, and that we have made it possible. It is the same with all of the other creative capabilities of man. They are all only possibilities. Manhas no nature. He is the undefined being. His possibilities exist, only if he takes them up. Freedom is there if we want freedom to be there. More truth will be there if we want more truth to be there. Beauty will be there and art will be there if we want beauty and art to be there, but not otherwise. All of these capabilities are related to the decision for freedom, because all of them are possible only for a man who has the capacity to be able to make decisions.
If decision is denied, then any scientist could come up and prove to us that any given human being is incapable of creation, that he cannot make decisions, and therefore is incapable of having a will. Yes, quite so. It all depends on this person, and so it is with all of us. If we look at the history of mankind we can see that the risk of the decision for freedom is a terrible one. But it is also, so to speak, the most natural one for man, if he starts to realize who he is and how he is distinguished from all other beings in Being. That he is a being that can be and that can be more than any other being in Being. That he can become transcendent, that he can transcend all other beings and can transcend even Being itself, but that he can never transcend himself.
To say that one has transcended oneself means that one has moved away from the individual naturalness of his own being towards that being he can be, away from what he is, an individual, and towards the person he has decided to become (what all of our philosophers have called the Self with a capital "S", the person, or personality that every human being can become). When an individual has made such a decision and crossed over those limits we usually say of him that he has transcended himself, which is nonsense. He did not transcend himself, because no human being can transcend man. Man cannot transcend man. If he could, then he would approach God, and man is not God. By transcending the world man can come to himself and he comes to himself only by transcending the world. Man, as Heraclitus would say, by transcending the logos of Being, of nature, finally approaches the infinite logos which he himself is, and that means to move from one quality into a higher quality which is why man cannot transcend man. If we could transcend our human qualities then we would be able to enter the realm of the highest being and that means we would be able to unite with God, but we do not have that possibility.
The abyss then, between the Absolute and between us is an absolute one, as Heraclitus, Lao Tse, and especially Socrates would all agree. If this abyss is to be crossed then it can only be crossed by the highest being itself. We can approach this higher being infinitely, just as we can approach truth infinitely, but we cannot reach it, because we cannot transcend ourselves. This is impossible for man. To understand that means to stay within the limits of our human qualities and human creative capabilities.