The Task and System of Philosophy

The Task of Philosophy

Philosophy as a Doctrine of Goods

From our established perspective on the task of philosophy, we can now address the validity of the understanding that philosophy is not a general theoretical science, or at least should not be one in the future, but rather a practical discipline, a science of values, or a doctrine of goods.

Supporters of this view argue that with the delineation of psychology from philosophy and its specific tasks, philosophy no longer has a place within the system of theoretical sciences, as a compendium of general results from the special sciences and the endeavor to re-understand what has already been grasped by those sciences cannot constitute an independent task. However, such a conclusion would only hold true if the task of philosophy were entirely reduced to overseeing insufficiently developed fields of knowledge. In reality, the matter is quite different. Rather, the fulfillment of such a task has always been a secondary aim of philosophy; in each instance, this task could only become consciously recognized after the relevant special branches had been separated from philosophy. Thus, the philosophical elaboration of problems, as it was last applied in psychology and is partially still applied, would be utterly impossible if it were not underpinned by a deeper drive—an aspiration toward the systematization of knowledge and its methods. It is evident that to satisfy this aspiration, a general science is required, one that unites the results of specialized works and transcends the divisions imposed primarily for practical considerations. For it is inconceivable how a special science could undertake such a systematization without addressing other, distinct branches of scientific knowledge. Once this occurs, special scientific inquiry transforms into philosophical inquiry; when there is an attempt to delineate a specialized discipline's relationship to neighboring fields of knowledge, the inquiry inevitably involves exploring how the contents of those fields relate to one another and what consequences arise from this. It cannot be denied that a specialist working in a particular field will repeatedly encounter philosophical problems, and that they may successfully address these, provided they are well-versed not only in the specific facts pertaining to their area of research but also in the broader challenges of knowledge itself. Philosophy cannot be monopolized any more than any other science, and even less so than any specialized discipline associated with specific presuppositions in the interest of technical efficacy. Anyone who wishes or is able to philosophize may do so, regardless of whether they are deemed a so-called professional philosopher. If philosophical problems concerning various fields of knowledge prove difficult to explore—since such exploration must satisfy the demands of both special sciences and philosophy—there lies no justification for denying their existence altogether; rather, it serves as a caution against attempting to resolve them without the necessary means for investigation. However, this does not validate the assertion that philosophy must now embark upon a wholly new path that liberates it from the need to explore general problems of theoretical knowledge, on which it will in the future only examine the question of the value of the known.

Proponents of the aforementioned understanding of philosophy's task, not to mention those who limit its sphere to ethics, have yet to undertake any attempts to carry out the task they propose. In historical systems where questions of value play a predominant role, these questions are invariably tied to discussions of theoretical problems. Philosophy, as a pure doctrine of value, thus remains, at best, an appealing sketch. Who would not wish to ascertain the value of our actions, our knowledge, and, if possible, even the things themselves? Such a philosophical program is therefore very conducive to garnering sympathy among specialists, particularly if they are simultaneously assured that they are correctly and thoroughly engaging in philosophy within their fields as natural scientists, historians, lawyers, and so forth; philosophy does not intend to interfere with their specialized endeavors. Whether these specialists will agree with such a delineation of the realms of philosophy and science not merely in a negative sense, when philosophy leaves them in peace, but also in a positive sense, when final evaluative judgments are exclusively assigned to philosophy, remains uncertain. Even a theoretical science like physics cannot dispense with evaluative judgments, as it attributes varying values to different phenomena and their laws based on their general significance and implications for the connections among natural phenomena. Political economy explicitly refers to a crucial part of its general inquiries as "theory of value." Historical science may less frequently discuss values, yet the entirety of history is imbued with evaluative judgments, as historical life is reduced to human actions, the assessment of the motives behind such actions and their consequences is fundamentally expressed in evaluative judgments. Lastly, while psychology addresses processes of consciousness in general and therefore does not exclusively concern those possessing epistemic value for our cognition or moral value for our practical conduct, it also considers processes that elude evaluation. Nevertheless, the fact of evaluation itself is, in turn, a "phenomenon of consciousness," compelling psychology to account first for the emergence of the feeling of evaluation, and subsequently for the formation of evaluative judgments.

Consequently, if philosophy cannot be delineated as a distinct "science of value" in the sense that value must be a concept specifically belonging to it, only one path remains—to ascribe to it the character of a pure "doctrine of goods." Admittedly, this path has scarcely been chosen to this day; it has merely been suggested for the future. Wherever the special sciences address evaluative concepts and judgments, they generally imply relative value as the determinant of the relative significance of empirical facts. However, relative value presupposes absolute value as its necessary correlate and corrective. Therefore, philosophy should not address what is valuable under temporal conditions but what is unconditionally valuable at all times. In short, philosophy must be a doctrine of universally significant values that arise from the nature of human reason, independent of the constraints imposed by its activities in the empirical world. In this sense, philosophy is termed a legislative or normative discipline. Its task is not to describe or explain facts, but to establish norms that, as laws of reason, should govern the facts.

Such an understanding of philosophy as a pure science of absolute value, despite the fact that no such science exists to date, may seemingly reference certain parts of philosophy where evaluative judgments indeed play a prominent role. These three parts of philosophy—logic, ethics, and aesthetics—are distinguished by this characteristic. Logic contains evaluative judgments regarding the relationship between the thinkable and the known; ethics concerns the motives of the will; aesthetics pertains to feelings of pleasure and displeasure, which are typically associated with our representations. Therefore, these three branches of philosophy are referred to as normative sciences in this context.

However, upon closer examination of their content and objectives, it becomes clear that none of them has ever been purely normative, nor can they ever be so. Aristotle developed logic, fundamentally outlining it as a normative science, deriving its laws from the forms of language; he also sought to expand this elementary task through further exploration of the methods and norms of scientific inquiry. Clearly, we proceed along similar lines in our contemporary development of logic, with the understanding that we must aim to resolve such tasks in a manner corresponding to the current state of science, rather than adhering—unfortunately, as is often the case—to the paradigms of Aristotelian or scholastic science. The same holds true for ethical and aesthetic norms. Although they do not in themselves reside within the facts of moral life or the products of artistic creation, they can never arise unless objectively given facts evoke feelings and evaluative judgments within us. We can account for the origins of these judgments only by analyzing both the judgments themselves and the objects that prompted them.

Consequently, logic, ethics, and aesthetics, as they claim to be sciences, cannot forgo the analysis of the conditions under which their norms arise, and thus cannot neglect the explanation of the norms themselves. If they wish to limit themselves to the establishment of these norms, they would be regarded as sciences to the same extent that legal codes on punishments or governmental constitutions are considered scientific. Of course, these latter subjects can become objects of scientific inquiry if the definitions they contain are substantiated and scientifically interpreted. Therefore, no purely normative sciences exist in isolation; rather, every normative science is, at the same time, explanatory. The genuine scientific task in normative sciences lies in explanation. Their distinction from other sciences does not rest in their task being devoid of explanation of facts; rather, it is that a significant portion of the facts requiring explanation possesses the nature of norms and evaluative judgments. Due to the intrinsic connection between establishing facts and their explanation, in normative sciences, the latter assists in finding the correct formulation of norms and evaluative judgments. While there may indeed be purely explanatory sciences—such as mechanics, physics, or psychology—that show no interest in distinguishing facts according to their value, there can be no scientific discipline that completely relinquishes all explanation of facts. Norms and evaluative judgments, whose basis, purpose, and connections are unknown, would constitute either the utterances of an oracle or empty phrases, but in no case would they qualify as scientific laws.

Philosophy, as a whole, just as its individual branches where evaluative judgments play a role, naturally cannot be a specific science of value. Where evaluative judgments enter into it, they differ from the corresponding evaluative judgments of specialized sciences in their general nature, thus, in the same sense, the content of philosophy differs from that of specialized sciences. However, since evaluative judgments, without any justification or explanation of what they express, cannot in themselves constitute any scientific task, the aforementioned conveys the idea that philosophy, in studying the world, adopts a broader perspective than any specialized scientific branch. This comprehensive study cannot be arbitrarily restricted to any one of the functions that must somehow unify every scientific inquiry: every scientific inquiry encompasses both explanation and evaluation, and whatever it may assert regarding the value of life and its individual goods will remain a mere arbitrary and unmotivated opinion until it endeavors to substantiate its judgments, until it accounts for the relationship of facts to which these judgments pertain. Philosophy can accomplish this by being guided by how specialized sciences provide unity and correct distribution to their content. Thus, if we are to fully develop the concept of philosophy as a universal science of value, it must strictly adhere to the requirement that philosophy be a science, not a collection of unfounded subjective opinions. This inevitably leads to the recognition of our previously established understanding of philosophy: philosophy must be a universal science in the aforementioned sense, wherein its subject matter comprises the principles and methods of knowledge, as these cannot be exhaustively examined within any specialized discipline.

However, as a universal science, philosophy does not precede specialized sciences but rather follows them: universal principles and methods of knowledge can be derived from specific applications. On the other hand, the established universal task of philosophy requires dissection into various problems it encompasses, which, failing to be resolved within specialized scientific research, necessitate the existence of parts of philosophy. These parts, in their logical interrelation, form a system of philosophy, which is initially outlined through the dissection of specialized scientific tasks. Although the differentiation of various branches of knowledge is not undertaken under the influence of logical motives but rather from practical considerations, one may expect that such practical foundations correspond, at least in significant divisions, to identifiable distinguishing logical characteristics rooted in the nature of scientific problems. In the actual division of scientific labor within specialized fields of knowledge, there is typically no effort to account for their interrelations or the manner in which they systematically complement one another. Nevertheless, it is clear that, once the separation of specialized sciences from philosophy has been, by almost universal acknowledgment, largely completed, they must collectively form a system upon which the system of philosophy as a universal science should rise. From this follows the initial preliminary task of introducing philosophy—providing a general classification of the sciences, to which a systematic subdivision of philosophy constitutes an essential component.