Lecture 1

Science is a systematic way to study the world we live in. The main sources for scientist to understand the world we live in, they use observation and experimentation. They collect information and data in order to make predictions about how the world works. They also use instruments. There are many ways to define science, but all definitions of science include several systematic steps for the process of scientific inquiry. These include – 1. Making scientific observations, 2. Proposing scientific questions, 3. Designing scientific experiments, 4. Collecting scientific information, 5. Making scientific interpretations, 6. Evaluating scientific assumptions, 7. Discussing scientific implications, and evaluating different points of view. The word originates from the Latin scire, meaning “to know”. The word “scientist” was coined by a British scholar named William Whewell (1794-1866). Before this all who were engaged in studying the world were named as “natural philosophers”. The modern science is in fact a mixture of various ways of investigating the world, and all of these three ways were well known in the old times. They are ideas, observation and application. Ideas, discovery and invention – these are the main parts of it. The ideas are in fact the philosophy itself. Particular scientific disciplines are in fact discoveries made on the base of these ideas. And what corresponds to science as an invention can be called as technology.

Philosophy is the thoughts and ideas which occurred in Asia Minor around 600 B.C. The word comes from the Greek language, meaning philein – “to love” and soph – “wisdom”. So the general meaning of philosophy is “love of wisdom”. The first philosophers were gathered around the Mediterranean Sea near to the ancient Greece. Nonetheless, people tried their best to discover the most important characteristics of the world and mechanisms of its working all around the world. Their activity in this field can be properly named as “scientific”. For example ancient peoples like the Egyptians and South Americans were studying the celestial bodies and making mathematical calculations concerning the movement of these bodies. The Chinese were preoccupied with some forms of chemistry by making use of some features of mercury and sulfur, and the American Indians were interested in studying some sort of plant in the hope of discovering new medicines. All these can be rightfully dubbed as “science”. There was a disagreement between the philosophy and craftsmanship up to the 15^th century, as philosophers who were working out new ideas and understandings were not so interested with what inventors were doing, so there was a chasm between technology and science. Also, the discovery side of science presented largely by breakthroughs in chemistry, was not intersecting with the invention and philosophical sides of science. After 15^th century, the discoveries made by different peoples of the world caused the philosophy to merge with the particular disciplines which made great progress in understanding the ways things work in our world. For instance the discovery of telescope was very instrumental in assuring or undermining the accuracy of the observations that the ancient people had been conducting for long centuries. This led to further merging of philosophy and mathematics brought from the Middle East and the Greeks with inventions and discoveries, enabling us to derive the current understanding of the celestial bodies. This gave us our current understanding of the planets and solar system. From this time forward modern science exploded as new discoveries and inventions were put together with philosophical ideas. Science as ideas, science as discovery, and science as invention began to merge together giving us what we know today as modern science.

The philosophy asks “big questions”. Example: why is there something? What causes being or non-being of something? But what does it mean to be or not to be? If we are there, why are we there? Is there some secrets in our existence? What is the meaning of life and death? How can we know that we know? How can we test the validity of our assertion that we know? As science is a systematic way of studying the world, gathering information about it and implementing this information in order to make out how the world functions. If some important piece of information obtained and analyzed the way we understand the related phenomena can be altered in spite of some well-established philosophical conclusions about it made in the past. Atoms, for example, are not conceived today as some contestable philosophical issue but as a fact which does not allow for any controversies. But the question of as how the matter had appeared is still debated. The term philosophy cannot be delineated precisely because the subject is so multifaceted and so controversial. Different philosophers have different views of the nature, methods, and variety of philosophy. The philosophical wisdom is the active use of intelligence, not something passive that a person simply possesses. Philosophy is best known for a class of questions which includes some of the most difficult and important questions there are, such as whether or not there is a god, how one can know anything at all, and how a person ought to live. Or is there an external world? What is the relationship between the physical and the mental? Does God exist? Others concern our nature as rational, purposive, and social beings: Do we act freely? Where do our moral obligations come from? How do we construct just political states? Others concern the nature and extent of our knowledge: What is it to know something rather than merely believe it? Does all of our knowledge come from sensory experience? Are there limits to our knowledge? And still others concern the foundations and implications of other disciplines: What is a scientific explanation? What is the status of evolutionary theory versus creationism? Does the possibility of genetic cloning alter our conception of self? Do the results of quantum mechanics force us to view our relations to objects differently? 

But the way of thinking, the philosophical questions about the things also may profoundly influence the way science works. Hadn’t Aristotle paid so great attention to the fact that there are some laws governing the matter and graspable by our understanding, Newton may well-neigh haven’t looked for the most appropriate explanation of these laws’ existence. Or had it not been by the virtue of Democritus that mankind took some interest in the atomic theory of existence, it could have never become appealing to a scientist called Dalton to conduct a series of investigations so as to prove their actual existence.

What we think also affects how we do science. If Democritus (a philosopher) hadn’t thought that atoms existed, Dalton (a scientist) may not have looked for them. If Aristotle (a philosopher) hadn’t thought that the world might be ordered or that natural laws might exist in an ordered world, Newton (a scientist) may not have looked for them.

So philosophy, or how we think about the world around us, can affect the science we do. As our thinking changes so do the experiments we may perform or the direction we may take in finding new discoveries. The experiments we perform are affected by the way of thinking or general philosophy we bear in our minds as well as the course we take when trying to come up with some new discoveries.

Philosophy is the systematic and critical study of fundamental questions that arise both in everyday life and through the practice of other disciplines. Philosophy is a study that seeks to comprehend the mysteries of existence and actuality. It tries to find out the nature of truth and knowledge and to find what is of basic value and importance in life. It also examines the relationships between humanity and nature and between the individual and society. Philosophy arises out of wonder, inquisitiveness, and the desire to be on familiar terms with and understand. Philosophy is thus a form of inquiry – a process of analysis, criticism, construal, and guesswork.

Some people think that philosophy has also had a long history in some non-Western cultures, especially China and India. But until about 200 years ago, there was little interchange between those philosophies and Western philosophy, chiefly because of the difficulties of travel and communication. As a result, Western philosophy generally developed independently of Eastern philosophy.

The importance of philosophy

Philosophic thought is an inescapable part of human existence. Almost everyone has been puzzled from time to time by such essentially philosophic questions as “What does life mean?” “Did I have any existence before I was born?” and “Is there life after death?” Most people also have some kind of philosophy in the sense of a personal outlook on life. Even a person who claims that considering philosophic questions is a waste of time is expressing what is important, worthwhile, or valuable. A rejection of all philosophy is in itself philosophy.

By studying philosophy, people can elucidate what they believe, and they can be motivated to think about ultimate questions. A person can revise philosophers of the past to find out why they thought as they did and what worth their thoughts may have in one’s own life. There are people who simply enjoy reading the great philosophers, especially those who also great writers. The aim in Philosophy is not to have full possession of actual facts, so much as think profoundly and clearly having any set of facts. To reach that end, philosophy students are trained to evaluate things critically, analyze arguments and find hidden assumptions, construct cogent arguments, and express ideas clearly and distinctively in speech and writing. These important talents can be utilized to philosophical issues as well as others, and philosophy students are likely to reach perfection in fields as varied as law, business, medicine, journalism, and politics. 

Philosophy has had huge influence on our daily lives. The very language we speak uses classifications derivative from philosophy. For example, the classifications of noun and verb entail the philosophic idea that there is dissimilarity between things and actions. If we ask what that dissimilarity is, we are starting off a philosophic investigation

If philosophy is love of wisdom, than does this tells us something about the nature of philosophy too much? Many disciplines seek wisdom, so how does philosophy differ from these other disciplines? A brief look at the historical development of the field will help us to answer this question. On the standard way of telling the story, humanity's first systematic inquiries took place within a religious framework: wisdom ultimately was to be derived from sacred traditions and from individuals thought to possess privileged access to a paranormal (and, apparently, truthful and error-proof) sphere; the authority of these traditions usually was not questioned. However, starting in the sixth century BCE, there appeared in ancient Greece a chain of thinkers whose inquiries were fairly secular. So for answers to questions about such subjects, people had largely relied on magic, superstition, tradition, or authority. But normally philosophers consider those sources of knowledge unreliable. Instead, they seek answers by thinking and studying nature.

To say that philosophy is worldly does not mean that it is anti-religious, but only that it is autonomous from religion. To state that philosophy is secular is also not to reject that there are numerous thinkers, including philosophers themselves, for whom it is not always obvious if they are doing philosophy or theology: philosophy, akin to any other discipline, has gray precincts.

However, there are now many forms of secular inquiry, so what distinguishes philosophy from them? In the beginning, there was perhaps no dissimilarity. But, as civilization developed, two parts of philosophy became so influential in their own right that they separated off, claiming for themselves the rank of self-governing disciplines. Mathematics was the first, and split off extremely early; science (or natural philosophy, as it was dubbed well into the nineteenth century) was the second, splitting off later. To modern philosophy is left whatever questions these two disciplines cannot solve (at least at a given time), including not only questions that are traditionally thought to be beyond the two (e.g. "What is the meaning of life?"), but also theoretical questions at their outer reaches (e.g. "What was before the Big Bang?") and theoretical questions at their basics (e.g. "What is science?").

Philosophy is characterized as much by its methods as by its subject matter. Though philosophers deal with speculative issues that generally are not subject to examination through experimental test, and philosophy as a result is more entirely theoretical than science, philosophy correctly done is not simple speculation. Philosophers formulate hypotheses which in due course must respond to reason and evidence. This is one of the things that set philosophy apart from poetry and mysticism.

The Branches of Philosophy

The four major branches of philosophy are logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics:

• Logic is the endeavor to codify the rules of cogent thought. Logicians discover the structure of arguments that maintain truth or allow the optimal drawing of knowledge from proof. Logic is one of the most important tools philosophers make use of in their investigation; the accuracy of logic helps them to cope with the delicacy of philosophical problems and the habitually deceptive character of conversational language.

• Epistemology is the learning of knowledge itself. Epistemologists inquire as to what criteria must be fulfilled for something we believe to be reckoned as something we know, and even what it means for a proposition to be correct.

• Metaphysics is the study of the nature of things. Metaphysicians inquire what types of things are real, and what they are like. They think logically about such things as whether or not we possess free volition, how conceptual objects can be said to be real, and how brains are able to produce ideas.

• Axiology is an umbrella term for diverse studies that concentrate upon the characteristics of diverse types of worth. These diverse studies comprise aesthetics, which investigates the crux of such things as attractiveness and art; social philosophy and political philosophy; and ethics which examines the core of right and wrong, and of good and evil, both in speculative considerations about the basics of ethics, and in practical deliberations on the refined details of ethical behavior.

So the diverse branches of philosophy overlie one another. A philosopher considering whether people ought to give excess wealth to the poor is asking an ethical question. However, his investigations might lead him to wonder whether or not standards of right and wrong are built into the fabric of the universe, which is a metaphysical question. If he claims that people are justified in taking a particular stance on that question, he is making at least an implicit epistemological claim. At every step in his reasoning, he will want to employ logic to reduce the chance of being misled by the great complexity and dimness of the questions. He may look to the ethical, metaphysical, and epistemological works of philosophers of the past to understand how his precursors thought about the substance.

Details of each branch of philosophy can be studied one by one, but philosophical questions have a nature of leading to a series of other philosophical questions, to the point that a full-fledged examination of any particular issue is apt in due course to absorb almost the totality of the philosophical venture.

The Demands of Philosophy

Philosophical way of studying is very arduous, appropriate only for those who has a fair degree of bravery, modesty, endurance and self-control.

Doing philosophy requires bravery, because one never knows what one will discover at the end of a philosophical examination. Since philosophy speaks of the most fundamental and significant issues of human being, and since these are what most people at the outset take for granted, real philosophical investigation has great prospective to disturb or even to demolish one's earnest and most appreciated beliefs. Real philosophical investigation also has the risk of isolation among one's colleagues and compatriots, both for the unconventional views to which it may guide one, and for the mere disapproval of critical way of thinking. A philosopher must be ready to encounter both results.

Doing philosophy needs modesty, because to do philosophy one has always to maintain steadfastly in mind how little one knows and how simple it is to fall into fault. The very start of philosophical inquiry requires one to make a clean breast from any pretentiousness and admit that he may not have all answers.

Doing philosophy requires both endurance and self-control, because philosophical inquiry needs a lot of time and hard work. One must be prepared to assign great amounts of time to elaborating over issues both complicated and delicate. Those who avoid philosophy often criticize it on the basis that philosophical elaborations make their heads hurt. This is inescapable. To do philosophy, we must give ourselves to pain. The only differentiation between one who chooses to take on the pain and one who does not is that the former admits that there is no shortcut to reality.

These assets always are poorly represented in one and the same person. That is why philosophy is most effectively done in a group of people: the critical inspection of other intellectuals provides a needed check on imperfections imperceptible to the person's own eyes.

The Rewards of Philosophy

But if philosophy is so demanding, why should people even bother with it?

Many philosophical questions are fundamental to human being; the only cause it often does not appear thus is that so many of us merely presume they know what the answers to these questions are, without ever taking bold to make a solemn investigation.

This brings us to the second motive to do philosophy: to comprehend something genuinely is ennobling. To live life merely guessing that one comprehends, is not. Surely, one can possibly be happy, at least in the same way as a well-fed dog is happy, if one manages to make it all the way through being without being perplexed by anything. Philosophical investigation can be unsettling, suggesting no assurance that your harsh efforts will produce what you hope for. To make it worse, philosophy gives you no assurance that your survey will bring forth any conclusion whatsoever: finally, you can find yourself not only deprived of the firmness in worldview with which you commenced, but also with no new ones to replace them. If you do philosophy, you will possibly have to be trained to live with continuous hesitations, while others, in their unawareness, happily profess ideal knowledge of what they do not comprehend at all. But it is obvious who has the better life: far better to comprehend, even if the main thing you comprehend is the edge of your own comprehension. And for all of the pains and difficulties coupled with it, the search and gaining of knowledge is pleasurable. It is a refined delight, and it is frequently problematical to see from the outside what its charm is. But once you become engrossed in it, it carries its own instantaneous rewards, and it is hard to oppose becoming captivated by it. We can experience most of the pleasures, but eventually none of them hold a candle to the pleasures of the intellect: the pure joy of studying and exploring, and from time to time even understanding.

the thoughts he expressed seem to have been worked out by appeals to reason and evidence. I would contrast that with, say, Whitman's poem which expresses disgust with the way astronomers dissect everything, and contrasts their efforts with the beauty of the night sky. I suspect Whitman was just articulating feelings, and not a rationally worked out position: however deep his feelings might be, and however much grist they might provide for a philosophical mill, Whitman still was not doing philosophy.

6 The term axiology sometimes (and perhaps more properly) is used in a more constrained way, to refer strictly to the study of questions of value; in such usage, axiology cuts across the studies I list, functioning as a component of each rather than an umbrella term for all.

7 Two I haven't experienced are drunkenness and drug euphoria. Since our advanced ability to reason is one of the very few things that (when we use it) elevates humans above other animals, it is difficult for me to understand the appeal of immoderate use of mind-altering substances. The mass appeal of drugs and overindulgence in alcohol seems to me an example of collective madness. Both are antithetical to the spirit of analytic philosophy.

Why Study Philosophy?

Do you want to learn to think well and communicate effectively?  Do you enjoy challenges and debate?  Do you want to take interesting courses that expand your mind? Do you want to develop skills that will make you stand out in the job market or improve your chances of getting in to graduate school and prepare you for the rest of your life?  Then philosophy is for you!

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”  - Rene Descartes

Here’s what some of our students have said about why they study philosophy:

• “It’s important to learn about genetics, but it is more important to learn to think. Philosophy makes me think!”

• “Philosophy courses give you more than just knowledge of the world; they give you a deep understanding of how the world works, even how it should work.” 

• “Majoring in philosophy makes me a better thinker and a more well-rounded person.”

• “My philosophy senior thesis was not only the best part of my Lehigh experience, but it has helped me tremendously throughout law school and my life.”

• “Studying philosophy, I learned to analyze closely and critically, to question thoroughly, and to write and think rigorously.  My philosophy skills has made me more valuable to prospective employers and graduate schools.”

Top Five Reasons to Study Philosophy

1. Fascinating subject matter 2. Wide variety of interesting classes taught by outstanding professors 3. Skill development 4. Great preparation for any career or graduate study 5. Personal development

 

1. Fascinating subject matter Philosophy seeks not simply knowledge, but deep understanding and wisdom.

Philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand themselves, the world they lie in, and the relations to the world and each other.  Those who study philosophy are engaged in asking, answering, evaluating, and reasoning about some of life’s most basic, meaningful, and difficult questions.

In studying philosophy, you’ll have a chance to grapple with these questions yourself and to think about what others—some of the greatest philosophers of the past and present, as well as your fellow students—think about them.

2. A wide variety of interesting courses taught by outstanding professors. There are philosophy courses that address moral issues, others that focus on the nature of science and technology, many that explore some of the most important philosophical works written across the history of Western civilization and others that introduce great thinkers of Eastern philosophy, courses for those who are interested in mathematics and logic or politics and societies or religion or knowledge or the human mind or the nature of reality.

Some of the courses are broad survey courses, others are in-depth studies of particular issues, texts, or philosophers.  Most philosophy classes above the 0-level are small and involve lots of discussion and writing.

Philosophy professors are dedicated teachers who are experts in their fields and who are genuinely interested in helping students to develop their understanding and skills.  Our professors have won teaching awards and consistently earn high ratings on student evaluations.

3. Skill development Far from being an abstract and useless field, philosophy is among the most practical courses of study. Taking philosophy courses imparts skills that will be useful not only in any career but also in your personal life.  The study of philosophy will enable you to think carefully, critically, and with clarity, take a logical approach to addressing challenging questions and examining hard issues, reason well and evaluate the reasoning of others, discuss sensibly, and write effectively.

In philosophy courses you can expect to • enhance your problem-solving capacities, your ability to organize ideas and issues, and your ability to distinguish what is essential from what is not; • become better able to look at things from a variety of perspectives, to understand different viewpoints, and to discover common ground among them; • learn how to critically examine your own views as well as those of others; • develop your ability to understand and explain difficult material; • learn how to distinguish good reasoning from attempts to manipulate opinions, to construct sound complex arguments, and to evaluate others’ reasoning; • develop good interpretive, comparative, argumentative, analytical, and descriptive writing skills that will allow you to communicate your ideas in a clear and powerful way.

Philosophy develops intellectual abilities important for life as a whole, beyond the knowledge and skills required for any particular profession…It enhances analytical, critical, and interpretive capacities that are applicable to any subject matter and in any human context”

5. Personal development Careers and jobs are only one part of the rest of your life. The study of philosophy not only affects how you think but also your development as a person.  The study of philosophy can be truly enriching an highly gratifying, and it is excellent preparation for lifelong learning and en enhanced intellectual, political, and social existence.  It can help you to live better by helping you to understand yourself as a thinking, acting being.  Socrates famously said that “the unexamined life is not worth living;” and philosophy is the tool he recommended for examining both one’s own life and the various possibilities open to you throughout your life.  What beliefs are important to you now and how reasonable are they?  What principles guide you in deciding what to do and do they stand up to scrutiny? Which paths will provide a more fulfulling life for you and which popular paths will eventually leave you feeling hollow? Both the content and the skills you gain from the study of philosophy will enable you to think better about such things and so to make good choices.

Philosophy’s critical skills also provide the best defense against popular foolishness and falsehoods, allows you to see through cultural and intellectual fads, protects you from the empty posturing of politicians and the inane prattling of media pundits and commentators, defends you from the slippery claims of advertisers and salespeople, and enables you to see right through silly opinions and everyday nonsense.

In the current cultural climate in the West as well as other parts of the

globe affected by modernism and postmodernism, philosophy and

prophecy are seen as two very different and, in the eyes of many,

antithetical approaches to the understanding of the nature of reality.

Such was not, however, the case in the various traditional civilizations

preceding the advent of the modern world. Nor is it the case even

today to the extent that the traditional worldview has survived. Needless

to say, by “prophecy” we do not mean foretelling of the future,

but bringing a message from higher or deeper orders of reality to a

particular human collectivity. Now the modes of this function have

differed from religion to religion, but the reality of “prophecy” is

evident in worlds as diverse as the ancient Egyptian, the classical

Greek, and the Hindu, not to speak of the Abrahamic monotheisms in

which the role of prophecy is so central. If we do not limit our understanding

of prophecy to the Abrahamic view of it, we can see the

presence of prophecy in very diverse religious climes in nearly all of

which it is not only of a legal, ethical, and spiritual significance but

also of a sapiental one concerned with knowledge. We see this reality

in the world of the rishis in India and the shamans of diverse Shamanic

religions as well as in the iatromantis of the Greek religion and the

immortals of Taoism, in the illumination of the Buddha and later in

the Zen Buddhist masters who have experienced illumination or satori,

as well as the prophets of the Iranian religions such as Zoroaster and

of course in the Abrahamic prophets. Consequently in all of these

worlds, whenever and wherever philosophy in its universal sense has

flourished, it has been related to prophecy in numerous ways.

Even if we limit the definition of philosophy to the intellectual

activity in ancient Greece known by that name, an activity that the

modern Western understanding of history considers to be the origin

of philosophical speculation as such, the rapport between philosophy

and prophecy can be seen to be a very close one at the very moment

of the genesis of Greek philosophy. We also come to realize that the

two drifted apart only later and were not separated from each other

at the beginning of the Greek philosophical tradition. Let us just consider

the three most important figures at the origin of Greek philosophical

speculation. Pythagoras, who is said to have coined the term

philosophy, was certainly not an ordinary philosopher like Descartes or

Kant. He was said to have had extraordinary prophetic powers and

was himself like a prophet who founded a new religious community.1

The Muslims in fact called him a monotheist (muwaччid) and some

referred to him as a prophet.

The person often called the “father” of Western logic and philosophy

was Parmenides, who is usually presented as a rationalist

who happened to have written a poem of mediocre quality. But as the

recent brilliant studies of Peter Kingsley have clearly demonstrated,

far from being a rationalist in the modern sense, he was deeply immersed

In the world of prophecy in its Greek religious sense and was

a seer and visionary.2 In his poem, which contains his philosophical

message, Parmenides is led to the other world by the Daughters of the

Sun who came from the Mansion of Light situated at the farthest

degree of existence.3 The answer to the question as to how this journey

took place is “incubation,” a spiritual practice well known in Greek

religion, one in which a person would rest completely still until his or

her soul would be taken to higher levels of reality, and the mysteries

of existence would be revealed.

Thus Parmenides undertakes the inner journey until he meets

the goddess who teaches him everything of importance, that is, teaches

him what is considered to be the origin of Greek philosophical speculation.

It is remarkable that when the goddess confronts Parmenides,

she addresses him as kouros, that is, young man. This fact is remarkable

and fascinating because in the Islamic tradition the very term for

spiritual chivalry (futuwwah in Arabic and jawеnmardҐ in Persian) is

associated with the word for youth (fatе/jawеn), and this spiritual chivalry

is said to have existed before Islam and to have been given new

life in Islam where its source is associated with ‘AlҐ,4 who received it

from the Prophet of Islam and where it was integrated into Sufism.

Furthermore, ‘AlҐ has been associated by traditional Islamic sources

with the founding of Islamic metaphysics.5

Another Greek figure who was given the title kouros was

Epimenides of Crete who also journeyed to the other world where he

met Justice and who brought back laws into this world. Like

Parmenides, he also wrote poetry. Now Epimenides was known as a

healer-prophet or iatromantis to whom everything had been revealed

through incubation while he lay motionless in a cave for years.6

Parmenides was associated with this tradition. The iatromantis journeyed

Into other worlds like shamans and not only described their journeys but

also used language in such a way as to make this journey possible for

others. They used incantations and repetitions in their poems that we also

see in Parmenides. They also introduced stories and legends of the East

even as far as Tibet and India, which is of great interest because the

community of Parmenides in southern Italy itself hailed originally from

the East in Anatolia where the god Apollo was held in special esteem as

the divine model of the iatromantis whom he inspired as his prophets to

compose hypnotic poetry containing knowledge of reality.

Excavations in recent decades in Velia in southern Italy, which

was the home of Parmenides, have revealed inscriptions that connect

him directly to Apollo and the iatromantis. As Kingsley writes, “We are

being shown Parmenides as a son of the god Apollo, allied to mysterious

Iatromantis figures who were experts in the use of incantory

poetry and at making journeys into other worlds.”7 If we remember

that, esoterically speaking, “Apollo is not the god of light but the Light

of God,”8 it becomes clear how deeply philosophy as expounded by its

Greek father Parmenides was related at the moment of its genesis to

prophecy even conceived in Abrahamic terms provided one does not

overlook the inner meaning of prophecy to which we shall turn soon.

A whole tradition of healer priests was created in the service of Apollo

Oulios (Apollo the Healer), and it is said that Parmenides was its founder.

It is interesting to note that although these aspects of Parmenides were

later forgotten in the West, they were remembered in Islamic philosophy

where Muslim historians of philosophy associate not only Islamic

but also Greek philosophy closely with prophecy.9 One must recall here

the famous Arabic dictum yanba‘ al-чikmah min mishkеt al-nubuwwah,

that is, “philosophy issues from the niche of prophecy.”

It is also of interest to note that the teacher of Parmenides is said

to have been obscure and poor and that what he taught above all else

to his student was stillness or hesychia. This was so important that

later figures such as Plato, who sought to understand Parmenides,

used the term hesychia more than any other word to describe the latter’s

understanding of reality. “For Parmenides it’s through stillness that

we come to stillness. Through stillness we come to understand stillness.

Through the practice of stillness we come to experience a reality

that exists beyond this world of the senses.”10 Again it is of remarkable

interest to remember the usage of ‘hesychia’ associated with the founder

of Greek logic and philosophy in Hesychasm, which embodies the

esoteric teachings of the Orthodox Church, teachings whose goal is

the attainment of sanctity and gnosis.

4 Introduction

In the poem of Parmenides he is told explicitly by the goddess to

take what she has taught him back to the world and to be her messenger.

Kingsley makes clear what the term messenger means in this context.

“There is one particular name that well describes the kind of

messenger Parmenides finds himself becoming: prophet. The real meaning

of the word ‘prophet’ has nothing to do with being able to look into

the future. In origin it just meant someone whose job is to speak on

behalf of a great power, of someone or something else.”11 This “prophetic

function” of Parmenides included not only being a philosopher,

poet, and healer but also, like Epimenides, a bringer of law.

The relation between Parmenides and prophecy was not, however,

primarily social, legal, and exoteric but inward, initiatic, and

esoteric. His poem, if correctly understood, is itself initiation into

another world, and “all the signs that only a fool would choose to

miss, are that this is a text for initiates.”12 In this he joins both Pythagoras

and Empedocles whose philosophy was also addressed only to those

capable of receiving its message and was properly speaking wed to

the esoteric rather than exoteric dimension of the Greek religion, requiring

initiation for its full understanding. It is remarkable how again

in this question Islamic philosophy resembles so much the vision

of philosophy of these pre-Socratic figures such as Pythagoras,

Parmenides, and Empedocles, all of whom were deeply revered by

Islamic philosophers, especially of the ishrеqҐ (Illuminationist) school.

Coming to the mysterious figure of Empedocles, again we see a

philosopher who was also a poet as well as a healer and who was

considered by many to be also a prophet. “As well as being a sorcerer,

and a poet, he was also a prophet and healer: one of those healerprophets

I have already talked about.”13 Empedocles also wrote on

cosmology and the sciences of nature such as physics, but even in

these domains these works were not written only to provide facts but

“to save souls,”14 very much like the cosmology of a number of Islamic

philosophers, including SuhrawardҐ and even Ibn SҐnе in his Visionary

Recitals.15 What is essential is to realize most of all that Empedocles

saw himself as a prophet and his poem as an esoteric work.

It is of interest to mention that all three of these figures who

came at the origin of the Greek philosophical tradition were also poets.

This is a characteristic of much of philosophy that flourished over

the ages under the sun of prophecy. One need only recall the ancient

Hindu sages who were poets and also fathers of Hindu philosophical

thought in its traditional sense or the many Chinese sages who expressed

themselves in poetry. In the world of Abrahamic monotheism

this is to be seen among a number of Jewish and Christian philosoIntroduction

5

phers but is again to be found especially among Islamic philosophers

from Ibn SҐnе , NaΣir-i Khusraw, Khayyеm, and SuhrawardҐ to Af∂al

al-DҐn KеshеnҐ, MҐr Dеmеd, and Mullе S•

adrе to ЎеjjҐ Mullе HеdҐ

SabziwеrҐ, who lived in the thirteenth/nineteenth century.16

In a world such as the one in which we live today where philosophy

is reduced to rationalism or more and more irrationalism and in

which not only esoterism but religion itself is either denied or

marginalized, the interpretation given above of the founders of Western

philosophy will be rejected in many circles, and the nexus between

philosophy and prophecy in general and philosophy, poetry

and esoterism in particular will be dismissed or considered as being

of little consequence. But strangely enough for the Western reader

the relation among philosophy, prophecy, and esoterism, affirmed

by a number of contemporary Western scholars, are found to be

central to the Islamic philosophical tradition with which most of this

book will be concerned. We have included the discussion of these

Greek figures here in order to demonstrate that the relation between

philosophy and prophecy, although severed to an ever greater degree

in the West from the end of the Middle Ages onward, is of great

significance not only for the understanding of Islamic philosophy

but also for a deeper comprehension of the origins of Western philosophy

itself, origins that Western philosophy shares with Islamic

philosophy but that have come to be understood in radically different

ways by these two currents of thought as Western philosophy

has come to distance itself to an ever greater degree from both the

perennial philosophy and Christian theology.

__

There are of course different modes and degrees of prophecy, a fact

that one realizes if one studies various religious traditions and even if

one limits oneself to a single tradition as we see in Judaism and Islam

where the prophetic role of Jonah or Daniel is not the same as that of

Moses or the Prophet of Islam. And yet there are common elements in

various understandings of prophecy as far as the challenges posed to

philosophy are concerned. First of all prophecy implies levels of reality

whether these are envisaged as an objective or a subjective hierarchy.

If there were to be only a single level of reality associated objectively

with the corporeal world and subjectively with our ordinary consciousness

considered as the only legitimate and accepted form of consciousness,

then prophecy as the function of bringing a message from

another world or another level of consciousness would be meaningless

because there would not be another world or level of consciousness,

and any claims to their existence would be rejected and considered as

subjective hallucinations. Such is in fact the case with modern scientism

and the prevalent desacralized worldview, both of which exclude in

their perspectives the transcendent Reality and even higher levels of

existence vis-а-vis this world as well as the Immanent Self and levels

of consciousness deeper than the ordinary. But in all the worlds in

which the reality of prophecy has been operative in one mode or

another, acceptance of higher levels of reality and/or deeper levels of

consciousness has been taken for granted as the correct manner of

understanding the nature of the total reality in which human beings

live.17 Formulated in this way, this assertion includes Abrahamic

monotheisms along with the Indian religions, Taoism and Confucianism

as well as the ancient Mediterranean and Iranian religions, and

Shamanism along with Buddhism, which emphasizes levels of consciousness

rather than degrees of objective existence.