Know Your History!

Everything happens in a time and place.
Everything happens in a context.
Everything happens for a reason (whether we argue there is an "ultimate meaning" for the world, it seems to be the case that the law of cause and effect applies. I would argue there are relatively few things that happen "for no reason." There are things that happen for no apparent reason, but everything happens for a reason. The question of whether or not we can rightly ascertain the reasons that things happen is an open question which I am making no attempt to address here.)

The world didn't begin yesterday. All of us have been staked to a heritage (however you want to describe it.) This heritage effects the way we think, the things we enjoy and the conventions of social life. In other words, history matters. What happened yesterday has a bearing on what happens today, and what happens tomorrow. All of us, whether we like it or not, is grounded in something bigger than ourselves.

There is something unfolding. Some would argue that this unfolding is the process of humanity learning to perfect itself. Some would argue that this unfolding is the progressive revelation of the plan of a deity (or deities). Still others would argue that though the law of cause and effect applies, there is no explicit or implicit goal of any kind in the unfolding. Through all of these explanations, there is still an unfolding. One thing happens. Something happens after that which reflects, reacts, responds or otherwise handles the thing previous.

I would go further. I would argue that history is a complex system of action and reaction--that no occurance is totally disconnected from what precedes it or what follows it. If this view is true (and because it's my blog I'm going to assume for the moment that it is, whatever the underlying reason for why it is so), then history is very important because it gives insight into the way things have gone and what a period of time is staked to in terms of heritage. Especially in the realm of ideas, systems interact and respond to one another. The reaction against a system of ideas creates a countermovement. The reaction for a system often leads to an even more strenuous version of the system, where the presuppositions and activities of that system are carried all the way to their logical end. Often times, this hyperapplication of an idea system leads to a messy end, at which time those present for the meltdown of the system salvage what they can from the disaster and start again. Humanity has been in this system of action and reaction, the system of reformulating the same ideas over and over again in the laboratory we call the world, for a very long time. If we want to claim to know anything about the world we live in, therefore, we MUST know something about how we've arrived where we are now.

There will be entries on the nature of history in specific areas added to the end of this entry as they become necessary.

Concepts and Definitions.

If you look around the ideosphere right now, there isn't much clarity or disclosure in the way that people describe and explain the way they think. As such, there's lots of confusion. Different worldviews (idea systems) use the same term different ways. As just one example, I'd like to offer up the word 'tolerance.' Without going into a long diatribe about the newer ways in which the word is being employed, it will suffice to say that in many cases now people don't mean what the dictionary says when they use the word 'tolerance.' No matter what you think of that development, asking someone to define their terms (or asking good questions that will give you a hint about how they're using it) is a fundamental part of any serious discussion.

This might sound like a waste of time. To others it might sound like a sort of arcane pursuit, totally removed from useful conversation. If everyone used the same words the same way, both of these criticisms would be exactly true. But the way things are now, those who don't ask careful questions are setting themselves up for trouble.

In addition, many current philosophical/theological positions make assumptions from previous schools and then carefully relabel an old idea with a newer, hipper name. If we can get down to the ideas that comprise a view and compare them to older ideas with a longer history, that can also be a helpful pursuit. This blog is going to explore the kinds of definitions and concepts which are prevalent in these types of discussion in an effort to provide some kind of basic grounds on which to build.

Here's a partial list of some of the ideas and concepts (building blocks) which will need to be tackled:

Three Pursuits of Philosophy:

1. Metaphysics
2. Ethics
3. Epistemology

Philosophical Systems: (aka the "-isms")

• Rationalism
• Empiricism
• Utilitarianism
• Pragmatism
• Skepticism
• Stoicism
• Deism
• Theism
• Existentialism
• Nihilism
• Logical Positivism
• Monism
• Dualism
• Hedonism

Philosophical Concepts & Laws

• a priori
• reductio ad absurdum
• ad hoc
• ad hominem
• Law of Identity
• Law of the Excluded Middle (Bivalence)
• Law of Contradiction (a.k.a Law of Non-Contradiction)