The Discipline

To commit oneself to an academic engagement with philosophy is to be subject to incredulity and/or resignation. Interestingly, these would constitute some of the more tame responses to a pursuit that has historically evoked rather violent persecution. Ergo, now seems to be most conducive to be embarking upon a discipline that has been simultaneously vilified and venerated through the ages.

An Apology for Philosophy

The fact that misfortune dogged some, if not most, philosophers, Socrates with his poison cup and Giordano Bruno burnt at stake (the luckier ones got away with exile and a perfunctory burning of their books), seems to indicate the unrest fomented by the subject, significant enough not to be dismissed as mere star-gazing or dreaming. So, the popular allegations of irrelevance rendering any serious concern with philosophy to dubious disbelief already seem misplaced. The exaggerated pretensions of rank charlatans prescribing philosophy as panacea to all ills has contributed to its undoing in popular imagination too. However, we are warned of the threat of such imposters as early as 4th century B.C.E., in the dialogues of Plato wherein he explained this affliction as a consequence of the prestige associated with an engagement with philosophy. Plato incidentally instituted tough checks to ensure the worthiness of his prospective pupils at the ‘Academy’, the latter providing a model along the lines of which much western higher education continues to be fashioned.

The Curriculum

The undergraduate curriculum for Philosophy involves an interface with the seminal texts in the Indian and European traditions with the object of initiating novices into the formative concepts informing the logical and chronological progression of thought in the subject. The course aims to familiarise students with the core areas of the subject, whereby one would be conversant with the import and implications of engaging in a study of ‘ontology’, ‘epistemology’ and ‘metaphysics’. There is scope for discriminating valid from invalid forms of reasoning and to apply such discernment to the arguments for determining cogent/inconsistent knowledge claims and the feasibility of standards informing value judgements in Ethics and Aesthetics. The course aims also, to interrogate the relation of reciprocity and discord between ‘philosophical’ ideas and the contexts: social, political, religious, cultural, literary, in which they are embedded. For all this and more, a graduate degree in the subject offers but a prelude to further exploration in the subject.

Also, it recognizes dialogic engagement on philosophical issues to be more potent than that with the written word. Socrates, for one, deliberately refrained from writing anything for he revelled in the ability of the ‘elenchus’ to elicit an understanding he believed firmly entrenched in all of us. It is also a plea for the uninhibited articulation of even seemingly implausible alternatives, for ruling out the unviable forms an inalienable part of the Conjectures and Refutations (Popper) constitutive of the discipline of philosophy.

Where philosophers found themselves condemned, some found philosophy in their condemnation, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius being a case in point. The flip side of such endeavours has been the, yet, commonplace association of the subject as the last refuge of the sore loser. Classical Indian thought systems, with their insistence on mokṣa and nirvāṇa seem to transcend the plane of the quotidian and the immediate to the realm of nebulous hypotheses about escapist aspirations. However, such esoteric speculations have been informed and sustained against the backdrop of some of the most sophisticated argumentative traditions. Even revelatory epiphanies are sought to be rationally validated, be it the ‘possession’ of Parmenides or the ‘religious experience’ of Pascal.

Besides, these conclusions can be seen as symptoms of the urge amongst most of us to make sense of our situation, and, the faculty of critical reflection that has rebelled against complacent resignation to status quo. The problem for philosophy has not merely been comprehending life as much as the question of living well. Also, to restrict the scope of philosophical responses to asceticism would be patently unfair to the flamboyance and iconoclasm reflected in the discourse of the Epicureans, Stoics, Cynics, Sceptics, Existentialists, Deconstructionists and what have you.

To visualize philosophy conceived in repose evoked by the idyllic seclusion of forests (incidentally, ‘āraṇayakas’ mark the transition from ritual to philosophical speculation in Vedic texts) is to overlook the bustle of the Athenian agora where Socrates heckled the political conscience of a city state, the vibrancy of Parisian bistros where philosophical speculation thrived in the midst of manifestos for Resistance and revolution, the grandeur of Venetian palazzos where Nietzsche found his inspiration to write.

The Search for a Method: Of Doubt, Initial and Final

Philosophical methods have ranged from those employed in mathematics and natural sciences to hermeneutics and commonsense. This has been the happy consequence of scholars representing a variety of academic disciplines, professional commitments and artistic inclinations staking a claim to philosophy. So where there is the clarity and precision of mathematical structures sought in the ruminations of Pythagoras, Pascal, Descartes, Russell, there is also the probability entailed by the method of empirical sciences, the rhetoric and oratory of statesmen as well as literary genius in writings ranging from the Platonic dialogues and Sartre’s plays and novels.

Some have sought to define a method peculiar to and definitive of philosophy, a “first philosophy”, as a presupposition- less inquiry. What this suggests is in essence an attitude of (Kantian) wonder and awe initiating the whole enterprise of learning, perhaps the unpretentiousness and innocence of a childlike interface with our world.

Pedagogy: ‘Know Thyself’

The approach to studying this subject involves an emulation of the methods espoused by the ‘philosophers’. It is a challenge to the hitherto determined limits of language and understanding. It involves mental calisthenics whereby one questions the obvious, doubts commonplaces and critiques settled convictions. Thought experiments, or, the “free imaginative variation of examples” (of phenomenology) wherein one engages in a play of contending ideas almost like fitting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle though a method of hit and trial are crucial facilitators to the discipline. However the aspiration for a resolution to such intellectual unrest is naive and pre-emptive, the dialectical process is an education in itself. This allows for the freedom to deny, disagree and to remain unconvinced at the culmination of any discussion as Wittgenstein put it.