Philosophy as methodology

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Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1455
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

Philosophy as methodology

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

Philosophy as a methodology, is the pursuit of a "truth"
or a process that allows us to reach the "truth".....
The search of philosophy over the last 500 years has been
a search for a method to make philosophy "scientific"
Since Descartes, philosophers have struggled to make
philosophy scientific.. to make philosophy as scientific as
science itself...

but think about it.. so many diverse truths cannot come
in a scientific format.... One of the great "truths" that we
human beings discover is the "truth" of love...for ''love" is
a truth and happiness is a truth and joy is a truth....
beauty is a truth...and we cannot find these ''truths'' using the
scientific method.. we cannot come to these truths
via logic or rational beliefs or any sort of methods...

Love is just as much a "truth" as the fact that the Earth is
93 million miles from the Sun... in fact, one could argue that because
love is a more immediate truth than the fact that the Earth is 93 million
miles from the Sun... to learn that the Earth is 93 million miles from the
Sun is a less impactful truth, it doesn't rock one's world the way
discovering that one is in love will rock your world...

there is no way that we can scientifically explore the truth of love,
the way we might explore the truth/fact of the distance between the
Sun and the Earth.. for this truth of love impacts everyone differently...
my response to love was/is vastly different than it might impact you....

much of what we believe to be truth, comes from the impact that
emotions/feelings have on our lives.. we human beings are not naturally
logical or engage in reason as a way of life... we are driven by
emotions and feelings first...rationality, reason, logic are not our first
response to a question or problem... as we human beings are not
born with logic or reason, but we are born with emotions/feelings...
and that is how we approach the questions of existence.. first with
emotions and then with logic/reason... emotions and feelings have
been with human beings since before we were even human, and has
with us since that day we learned to walk on the ground..
whereas logic and reason had to wait until the Greeks over
2 million years later....

so in our human ways, we are engaged in emotions and feelings
long before we engage with reason or logic... and to know this,
is to understand what makes us human.... if we fail to include
emotions and feelings in our understanding of what it means to be human,
is to fail to understand what it means to be human.....

so, to make an understanding here, we cannot use philosophy
as the only methodology of understanding of what it means to be human....

Kropotkin
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