Belief and faith

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Anandaji wrote:

Such work of intellectual construction is often identified as the

main task of philosophy. Hence Aristotle has often been considered

as a model philosopher, because of his great system-building work

which has been of such use to western thought. But, from an Advaita

perspective, system-building goes in quite the opposite direction to

philosophy. The proper task of philosophy is to turn back from

building pictures, by a skeptical investigation down into their

assumed foundations.

 

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Namaste Anandaji

This is a reading of the word 'philosophia' which

my Greek dictionary translates as love of knowledge

and wisdom, fondness for studious pursuits

2: the systematic treatment of a subject, scientific

investigation Lat. meditatio

3: philosophy Lat. sapientia or philosophia

 

Next entry:

Philosophos:

loving wisdom or knowledge, first used by

Pythagoras who called himself philosophos

or a lover of wisdom rather than a sophos i.e.

a sage hence learned, scientific, literary as

opposed to the vulgar

2: as Substantive, Philosophos ho, one who

professes an art or science; later a philosopher

one who discusses subjects scientifically.

 

There seems to me to be in that not the evidence

of an early departure from the inquiry aspect

of wisdom for the trumpery of system building

but the actual equation in the Greek mind of

the two. Really it is quite obvious that the

opposition which you suggest did not exist

for them at all. To know something truly is

to discern in the manifold instances the unifying

principle and law. Wisdom and the empirical

were not separate from each other and perhaps

the rediscovery of that by the Scholastics marked

the beginning of the rise of science. You will

recall that in mediaeval times Science was

known as Natural Philosophy.

 

However the Greeks also had their Eleusinian

mysteries in which the iniatiates (mystai)

participated in some rite about which little

is known. In this experience the aporia

of the students of the academy and their

masters were perhaps dissolved in an

experience that surpassed dialectic.

 

Best Wishes,

Michael