Jess asked:

My question stems from an observation: Often — on the web especially — we find defenses of
philosophy or of the philosophical life that claim that philosophy is, or at least ought to be, relevant to
'real life'. My observation is that often this relationship between philosophy and real life goes only in
one direction: everyday situations give rise to all sorts of philosophical problems, but once we enter
the realm of philosophical enquiry, bringing the problems and their possible solutions down to earth in
a meaningful way is quite a challenge. My question is about bringing philosophy down to earth in a
meaningful way: What would a philosophy field trip be like?

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Um... tell me, just what is"real life"? You mean, getting a job and earning money? That sort of thing?
Well, take a look at what's happening, right now, in the States in the business community... the
scandals, arrests, etc... you think knowing and following ethics isn't relevant to business? What about
law? How do judges decide questions? And so forth.

So what would a philosophy field trip be like? Well, we go into a business and start asking
questions... or look at the books. How was the business plan decided on, what are they doing now,
how close to the legal edge are they willing to go... why are laws relevant, rather than ethical
principles?

To school: what is being taught, and why? What about the evolution/ creation controversy... what is
the science behind them, what isscience; what is the ethics of teaching "creationism" alongside
evolution?

To college: what about student evaluations? Is it ethical to give students control, in effect, of their
teachers in this manner? What courses are being taught and why? How are they taught?

Home: how are children being raised? What are the assumptions about punishment, and their bases?

Does this begin to give you an idea?

Steven Ravett Brown

I can follow you all the way until the last sentence. A philosophy field trip? I'm not sure how that
connects to your concerns. On a philosophy field trip, I imagine that one would be looking for the
philosophy that arises in real life — just like on the geological field trips I have run, we look for where
items of geological interest arise in road cuttings, cliffs etc. For philosophy, this is something that you
rightly say is not hard to do.

Maybe you mean something different. Maybe you want to look for philosophy in action, being applied
to real life, rather than arising from it. Again, I don't think it would be hard to do, although you would
need to develop the knack of good timing. Every time a group are trying to decide what to do about
something, and someone says "Hang on, what exactly do we mean by x, or what makes x the right
thing to do?", then you are seeing philosophy. In Habermasian terms, this group has moved from
practical or communicative action into a critical discourse. These discussions may not be informed by
quotes from philosophers, but they are often drawing on philosophical writings at many hands
removed.

Tim Sprod

Generally it's much easier to have a problem than to have an answer — in philosophy as everywhere
else. To bring philosophical answers back to the world you first should have some. That's the main
part of the problem. But theres another part of the problem you state: Like in politics, if you think you
have an answer — maybe others don't think so — you have to implement your solution. Put simply: If
you think you have found the (philosophical) formula for "a just society" you have to fight all those
people who doubt or resist your solution. Going around with a machine-gun like Hitler, Stalin or the
Taliban or whoever as a true believer will/ should not do.

So the natural way to bring philosophical answers back to the world is by time and by speech and
writing and by "hoping for rain". Some insights have to await their time — even if they are valid and
no mere misunderstandings (as they often are). Think of the Gospel: Even today it cannot be
"proven" that the Gospel was any help to mankind. Many think so, but others think it has been mainly
a curse in the hands of hypocrites, liars and seducers. And how did the Gospel "win" over competing
"gospels" offering "truth"? Since the Christian Gospel found more followers among the inhabitants of
the Roman Empire than any other "gospel" in the 4th century, Constantine the Great and Theodosius
the Great found it proper to use it as a new "common creed" to hold the vast empire together and
made it a state religion — just as Lenin made his version of Marxism a state religion for the new
USSR or Hitler made his version of a national socialism the state religion of his "Third Reich" or
Chomeini made his version of Islam the state religion for Iran. So this is a way to bring philosophical
answers back to the world. Do you like it? No?

There is another field of application: Kepler and Newton found their formulas "by luck and
Neo-Platonism" so to say. There has been one and only one planetary orbit in the time of Kepler that
could be proven to be elliptical by the data gathered by Tycho Brahe — that of the planet Mars.
Jupiter was too far away, the Venus orbit is practically a circle, and the orbit of little Mercury is too
near to the sun to be easily observable. So from only one orbit Kepler derived his famous laws. And
Newton's interest was in the ways of God, not in founding "modern physics". It was mainly a
theological and not a practical argument that drove him to his theory of gravitation. So this time the
"gains from a philosophical answer" have been very impressive — the whole of modern industrial
society — but they have been a case of "serendipity", not intended by the primal inventors Kepler and
Newton. But this time nobody needed force to spread the "gospel" of science — to the contrary some
tried to stop it. Not even the idea of the modern liberal state and the human right of free speech have
been welcomed by everybody. The popes Pius IX and Pius X both condemned "by anathema" most
modern convictions of the French Revolution and the US Constitution as "dangerous errors" in their
"syllabi errorum".

So what is the drift of the argument: There seldom is a simple "answer" or "insight" or "truth" to be
brought back from the philosophers study to the eagerly waiting world, but there are lots of people
around who find the offered answer wanting or otherwise objectionable or downright scaring and
dangerous. And there are historical and social preconditions and forces that bring forth or suppress
an answer like rain or drought bring forth or suppress the development of a sprout. Some times are
not "ripe" for some answers — and some times are not "ripe" for some questions either. And there
sometimes is dumb luck or serendipity in finding a very great answer to a very great question that
nobody has called for or even thought of.

Of course there are those "simple" cases too — sometimes: There are lots of philosophical "advisers"
nowadays to apply new and old philosophical insights to some problem at hand. Why do you "ask a
philosopher" if not to gain some insight into the nature of some questions to make a better decision or
a better argument next time? This concerns students doing their homework in philosophy, but this
concerns other people and fields of applied philosophy — mostly ethics — too. There are lots of
philosophers in ethics panels today. Many of the more than 1000 questions stated in the Pathways
"questions and answers lists" so far are quite "application oriented" — concerning war and abortion
and suicide and sexual behaviour and religious tolerance etc.. But seldom are philosophical answers
definitive and convincing. And they should not be! Life in this complex world is a permanent challenge
to creative and pensive minds and should be so. If indeed philosophy arrives at "final" solutions
instead of "wise" and "helpful" ones then the end of mankind is near. Man is a philosophical animal
roaming free in a sometimes charming and sometimes disturbing world.

The lack of definite answers in philosophy has been called "the scandal of philosophy". Oh no! The
scandal is to call that a scandal, because that shows a complete misunderstandig of what philosophy
is about. Or let's say: a partial but important misunderstanding. Philosophy is somewhere between a
science and an art, having aspects of both.

There can be no "single true" picture of the world — neither in art nor in philosophy — since part of
the "truth" is in the eye of the beholder and in the question and point of view from which he
approaches reality. There is no point in asking for "the" truth — normally. Schopenhauer and Husserl
started from this: "There can be no objective problem. Why does a fact become a problem to this
thinking animal?" Nature "poses" no problems — we do. The problem of "social justice" or the
problem of "sin" are no "natural" problems, they are "our" problems. And if the questions and
problems are in this sense "artificial", how could the answers be "natural"? So that places philosophy
near the arts.

But then philosophy is no mere play with words and ideas either. There is a deep sincerity in the
quest for truth of the great philosophers. In that sense philosophy is the science of our way of
grappling with the world we live in. That was the position of Wittgenstein. He thought that philosophy
tries "to show the fly a way out of the fly-bottle". But he didn't say if he thought this project promising.
And he didn't say where the fly should go if she really got out of the bottle either.

And then: What is a "solution" anyway? To get out of the bottle is some sort of solution — a Buddhist
one. To get out of the entanglings of sin and tragic events by faith in Gods grace is another form of
"solution". To find the right answer to a mathematical problem — or to the problem of putting the
"right" note into a musical composition or the right colour into a painting or the right spice into a meal
are just some more examples. Boethius — sitting in jail and awaiting his death — wrote a famous little
book on the "Consolatio Philosophiae" (The Consolations of Philosophy) — the consolation to be
gained from philosophy in the middle of bleak despair. Many people got comfort from philosophy like
from art and religion and psychotherapy and counseling. That too is "bringing the answers of
philosophy back into the everyday world." Is that nothing? Should every outcome be countable and
accountable too?

Hubertus Fremerey