To Climb is Philosophical (Essays on Philosophy and Its Enemies)

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To Climb Is Philosophical brings together Charles William Dailey's essays on the fallacies and dangers of scientism, mass psychological manipulation, and reductionist views of civilization and humanity, which he argues threaten the survival of philosophy as it has been practiced for millennia in both East and West. Addressing topics such as the politicization of science in "Science and Tradition," the acceptance of human existence as a low-awareness phenomenon in "Human Nature and Human Being in the Thought of Xunzi," the reduction of human populations to instinctual processes in "Gandhi on the Freedom of Indian Civilization and the Slavery of the West," and the trivialization of traditional metaphysics in favor of expanded Darwinian theories in "The Meaning of Novelty and Its Possibility in a Platonic Universe," To Climb Is Philosophical confronts many of philosophy's enduring adversaries and presents the sole path for those who seek to defend and preserve it: to Climb.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAILEY, Ph.D., is a researcher specializing in Comparative Religion & Philosophy and the Philosophy of History, with a focus on the meanings of ancient symbols and the concept of Tradition. He earned his doctorate in Philosophy from the University of North Texas, holds an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Houston, and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in History from Lamar University. Dr. Dailey is the author of The Serpent Symbol in Tradition and has published multiple essays on philosophy, religion, politics, and contemporary culture. To Climb Is Philosophical is his second book.

Philosophy, rightly understood, is the love of wisdom. But what is wisdom? Philosophers have provided different answers to this question. For Plato, wisdom is the 'recollection' of divine, eternal, and immutable sources of existence; for Aristotle, it is the 'science' (the systematic and organized contemplation) of 'first principles and causes' axiomatic propositions. Empirical science talks about principles and causes, as do non-philosophers and non-scientists. As the Armenian thinker G. I. Gurdjieff stated, however, to find a word for something doesn't necessitate understanding the thing. Practical know-how proves this to be the case, although the explanations of what the British logician Bertrand Russell called the 'practical man' are decidedly not the same as those of philosophers. In non-careful speech and writing, words serve as organizing, yet unanalyzed, centres of thought the words themselves are usually blinked at. A philosophical explanation is, therefore, a unique animal-its creation and understanding requires an unusual, dare I say 'unnatural,' level of introversion. Once understood, however, it can't be mistaken for a sociological, psychological, biological, or chemical explanation. Unlike these, philosophical explanations aren't contingent upon: trends, zeitgeists, political commitments, preciseness of instruments, or whatever seems, at the moment, to constitute the 'preponderance of evidence.'

This book is an anthology of four longish essays which I composed on a variety of topics in philosophy over a period of several years. During the last year or so, I decided to compile these into a single work. The title of this work, To Climb Is Philosophical, is not taken from the title of any of the essays included herein, but rather from an as yet unpublished essay which I wrote on the subject of debates concerning the meaning and 'appropriate' use(s) of the natural stone outcropping in Australia called Uluru and Ayers Rock. An important part of that essay is my analysis of the contradictory beliefs held by different individuals and groups that Uluru (Ayers Rock) either: 1) should be climbed or 2) shouldn't be climbed. Controversially-it is not currently the mainstream opinion, in other words-I argue for the former. Also perhaps controversially, I argue that to climb Uluru (Ayers Rock) is philosophical. That is, that act expresses a more universal and deeply reflective state of consciousness than the state of mind which finds its justification in group instincts, handed down beliefs, or popular opinion. Uncontroversially, I accept as axiomatic the fact that the traits of universality and reflection are more characteristic of philosophical thinking than are instinct, ethnic solidarity, or opinion.

At some point in reading over the four essays contained in this book, I realized that 'philosophical climbing' expresses a, or the, major idea presumed in each of them-when one assumes proper philosophical distance. All the essays included, that is, not unlike the noble souls who climbed, or have tried to climb, Uluru/ Ayers Rock, attempt to climb over petrified or 'dug in' ideological positions considered, today, to be conducive to promoting a more modern or 'progressive' system of existence. The included essays strive, more specifically, to 'climb over' the obfuscations and deceptions of, what I consider to be, philosophy's essential enemies: non-meta- physical theories and non-meta-physically-oriented ways of life. Of course it will be noted-objected, perhaps that this statement implies a certain definition of 'philosophy,' as many readers will want philosophy to mean any old thing that today's universities, or the corporations pay- rolling them, decide to teach under its label-in order to 'save' something. Philosophy, however, I contend, and as philosophers have contended for over two thousand years, is, in its essence, the rational comportment towards, and intellectual (not academic) study of, meta-physical reality. Anything else, although it may appropriate elements of philosophical thinking, or tools of logic, or rhetorical tactics, isn't philosophy. The venerable notion that the axioms of a system cannot derive from either empirical experience or the constructions of reason is one that I believe philosophy must embrace; it is, in fact, the eminent expression of that idea. Each essay included in this anthology, therefore, presents 'philosophical climbing' as emphasizing one or more of the following: 1) Being over becoming; 2) valorization of the individual over the collective; 3) recognition of the importance of perennial truth over transient, 'politic,' opinions; or 4) the attempt to understand why humans are different from other life forms over the compulsion to reduce them to a kind of animal. None of these subjects did I investigate for the purposes of either compiling this collection or composing its individual essays, nor with the intent to deconstruct what I call philosophy's 'enemies.' At some point, however, I realized that each essay, in its own way, shines a light on one or more of philosophy's perennial foes.

Which, one may ask, today and any day, are philosophy's enemies? What is the first step in identifying them? To answer this question, one must also answer the question of what it is that philosophy seeks. Provided long ago by Aristotle, the answer still is 'first principles and causes.' The greatest of philosophy's enemies, therefore, is that one that prevents philosophers from attaining consciousness of 'first principles and causes,' either by persuading them that there aren't any, or substituting false ones. What, though, are these 'first principles and causes'-since all pursuits worthy of pursuing rely on their reality-if not truth, eternality, and Self? For, without these philosophical axioms: 1) truth blends into opinion ('my truth'), 2) the transcendent blends into the present moment and its worries (and the past, thereby, is diminished or forgotten), and 3) identity blends into the 'feelings' of the day. What I call 'pop philosophy' and its application to the problems of any age that is, the political or 'social science' capture of philosophy-isn't philosophy; the perennial desire for truth isn't a desire for egalitarianism; and manufacturing contentment and 'feeling safe' isn't equivalent to finding one's true Self. God forbid that Plato's escaped cave-dweller should have decided the question of his ascent based on the operant conditioning or 'majority decision' of his deluded companions.