A Journey to Philosophy E-Book

Erkki Kemppainen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 130

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

What are cause and effect, and meaning? What connects people? What is law and what is its foundation? The book guides the reader to a journey to philosophy. The questions range from theory of knowledge and philosophy of science to the problems of the being as a human being, social philosophy, and philosophy of law. The tradition of explanation, which is typical for natural sciences, focuses on the concepts of cause and effect. The tradition of understanding focuses on meanings and interpretation. Natural law theory and legal positivism are also analyzed. The philosophies of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Georg Henrik von Wright are discussed at many points in the book. Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory is presented as a synthesis in social theory and philosophy of law. Erkki Kemppainen is a philosopher. He has previously been a civil servant for a long time.

Leseprobe

Contents

Preface

Preface to the English edition

Philosophical Issues

Philosophy and applied sciences

Cause and explanation

Aristotle is with us

The concept of categories in Kant’s philosophy

The traditions of sciences

Logical empiricism

Causality

Knowledge and truth

Science and the growth of knowledge

Meaning and understanding

Early hermeneutics

Phenomenology and hermeneutics

Husserl’s phenomenology

Husserl’s later philosophy

Heidegger’s philosophy

French phenomenology

Hermeneutics and beyond

Causality and meaning as a unity

Human being and other people

Which concept?

Situation

Language

Some concepts in the social world

The human being in systems

Facts, norms, and values

The criteria of law

Natural law

Legal positivism

Decision making and legal reasoning

Some other developments

Habermas’s philosophical synthesis

Philosophical roots

Theory of communicative action

Social philosophy and philosophy of law

The possibility of understanding

References

Preface

I started my studies in philosophy in the autumn 1972 at the University of Turku and continued next year at the University of Helsinki. An effort to combine the accuracy of analytical philosophy and the depth of continental philosophy became my remote ideal.

Parallelly with philosophy, I started to study law in Helsinki to earn my living. A civil servant career followed, and during that time I was not active in philosophy. However, philosophy may have had an effect into my work. Philosopher Heikki Kannisto, a teacher respected by many, once said, when we by chance met at Kaisaniemi street, that when philosophy students are moving to other areas, they often keep an inclination to ask the fundamental questions of their new field.

When I retired I returned to philosophy. This philosophical pamphlet is the synthesis of my experiences and thoughts. It is not a systematical presentation of philosophy and its history, but a description of those thinkers and thoughts that I have since student years until today studied and thought about. It is my story of philosophy, a journey from one thought to another. It also became a short introduction to philosophy, especially in the 20th century. The underlying current in this work is the question about the subject, its actions and decisions, and the world where it is.

Most actively in the end of 1970s we had a philosophical discussion group consisting of Timo Kaitaro, Kalervo Koskimies, Markus Lammenranta, Antti Pietiäinen, and me. I also talked philosophically with Jukka Ihatsu and Taina Schakir. Later I have discussed a lot with professor of social work Mikko Mäntysaari, who knows a lot of philosophy.

Tuija Kotiranta, Mikko Mäntysaari, my colleagues for many years, and Kalervo Koskimies have commented on this text. In a deepest way, I thank them, my teachers in philosophy, and all others with whom I have had philosophical discussions during years.

Tampere, January 2020

Erkki Kemppainen

Preface to the English edition

This book is the English edition of my book Kertomus filosofiasta, which was published by Books on Demand, Helsinki, Finland, in 2020. The text follows the original text, but it is a largely rewritten text. At some sections I have added ideas or text, at some other places I have condensed and shortened the text. Some subchapters are quite largely rewritten. The basic course of my thinking is the same.

Markus Lammenranta and Mikko Mäntysaari have commented on the English edition. I thank them for this support.

Tampere, February 2022

Erkki Kemppainen

Philosophical Issues

I met with philosopher Tauno Nyberg in the autumn evening on the 14th of September in 1998 at his home in Helsinki. We had planned to meet for some time, and the meeting took place in time. He died in October. He lived then in Helsinki at Kasarmi Street, on the top floor in a flat with a view over roofs, for example, to Johannes Church. He had been for a long time an independent philosopher after having worked earlier at the Institute of Philosophy in the University of Helsinki.

As a philosopher he was thorough. He thought for a long time about those questions he thought. He was known as a student of G. H. von Wright and the expert of the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

His thinking concerning the concept of pain was original. Earlier in his presentation at the Goethe Institute in Helsinki he analyzed the pain basically as the construction of a human being. And: “What a human being has constructed that the human being can deconstruct”.

We talked about life and philosophy. For me it was important that he said to me that you are a philosopher. Your comments are philosophical. You understand what I talk.

He concentrated and started to speak systematically about philosophy. At some moments it was difficult for him to sit or stand and then he spoke while lying on the floor with a pillow, all time thinking and speaking peacefully and absolutely in a concentrated way. It became a lecture of 45 minutes.

He started: “After all, there are only three questions in philosophy.” First, there is a question about what there is, what is real (metaphysics, ontology). Secondly, there is a question about how we can obtain knowledge about reality (theory of knowledge). Thirdly, there is question about what is good, beautiful, or right, what is valuable (ethics, moral).

This was the main structure of the lecture. It may look simple, and maybe it wants to be that, but it can clarify many discussions and give a starting point for many analyses. I do not have notes about the full content of this discussion, but it has had an impact on me.

The development of empirical sciences in modern times has decreased the role of philosophical ontology. The experience tells what there is. But empirical reality is still linked to many philosophical questions, and more will emerge.

The knowledge is about the relationship between reality and human being. There can be many conceptions of reality. Which description is true? Knowledge can be improved. Ontology and theory of knowledge are interlinked.

The questions about good, beauty and right are a difficult, but very important for human being. What is a right decision?

These are the classical questions and areas in philosophy. It can be surprising that there would be only three basic questions. The idea of Nyberg means that rich philosophical discussion can be reduced to these questions, but it does not mean the narrowing of its themes.

Not all questions settle down easily in this division, but they do have their place. Logic and dialogue, for example, can be understood as methods in this framework. The holistic approach to philosophy of science as well as to technology includes ontology, theory of knowledge, methodology, ethics, and social philosophy (Niiniluoto, 1980; 2020).

It could also be fruitful to observe that these three questions are different questions. It could clarify many discussions.

Nyberg was also thinking more radically. He said that philosophy is not an analysis of concepts. The concepts are objective, the objects of our thinking. The concepts should in essential parts describe or correspond what they are associated. This is not possible with philosophical problems, because they have a special relationship to experience. The concepts of the horse or the table are genuine concepts, but philosophical concepts are not genuine concepts. The treatise of philosophical problems requires a new method.

He also said that greatest mistake in the philosophy of 20th century was the thinking that philosophical problems would be linguistic. That it is not so is self-evident, he almost exclaimed. We did not have time to discuss this confusing idea more. The language has been so central theme in philosophy. Maybe he thought that the linguistic clarification of things is not enough for philosophy. I wonder what he had thought if the language had been understood in the first place as acts in the sense of John Searle’s famous book Speech Acts (1969) and not as sentences. He seemed to be looking for something universal beyond actual language or experiences.

Nyberg seemed to approach Edmund Husserl’s philosophy, but he did not refer to it. He also knew something about oriental philosophy. However, I felt that he discussed the issues of human constitution while keeping to the tradition of analytical philosophy.

It can be said that the issue is about the level of abstraction of the concepts. The concepts of everyday life or specific sciences are specific, they refer to a specific object. The concepts which are more abstract can refer to many objects. Philosophical concepts, like knowledge, apply generally to experience.

Interesting philosophical conceptions are not separated from this world. Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770−1831) thought in the Preface of his Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts that “Philosophie ist ihre Zeit im Gedanken erfaßt” (1820). Hence, the concepts of each era are studied in philosophy. They are very general, but somehow related to the passage of life.

It can also be said that the concepts are certain kind of meanings. The meanings have been studied a lot in philosophy.

This is roughly the way how I understand the character of philosophy in this book. I shall analyze such concepts like cause and effect, meaning, action, work, law, and decision making. I do not study philosophy more deeply, but I collect some ideas which I have found during years. I refer to some experiences and questions of our time, but I do not discuss them thoroughly. This collection of thoughts is mere philosophy, not an empirical study.1

I started my studies with philosophy. I became Master of Law and Master of Philosophy. The former degree determined my working career. I worked as a legal and policy adviser at the National Board of Social Welfare, briefly at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, at the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, and at the National Institute of Health and Welfare. I was a civil servant and did not participate in political life. Probably only few understood or accepted that I am basically a philosopher. But the cooperation and the discussions with everyone were good. This is important for me. My work was interesting. During years I have worked with issues concerning social administration, customer’s rights and obligations, privacy, social assistance, social services, evaluation, rehabilitation, disability policy, and accessibility, especially access to information society. I participated in international cooperation mainly as a researcher and an expert.

In this book, I shall not discuss these substantial issues. At some points, I may show possible switches between philosophy and empirical sciences or social issues. My life experience may have had influence on my choice of the questions which I shall discuss philosophically in this book.

1 Usually, I refer to a thinker’s book and its year. Concerning citations or specific ideas, I usually refer to the page number or other point in the text. The content of my text shows whether I have used the source in several paragraphs or only there where it is mentioned. When I quote myself, I do not usually present quotation marks or page numbers, but at some points I only generally refer to the publication in question. In references I follow the Harvard style in a slightly modified way.

Philosophy and applied sciences

There is a lot of talk about applications. There are sciences which create applications, theories are applied, principles are applied, law is interpreted, ideas are developed into practical solutions.

To apply something is to apply it to some practical or other problem. Research on nutrition helps to create a diet, the results of behavioral sciences can be applied to marketing, earlier experiences are used in a new situation.

It would be appealing to ask advice from a philosopher, but it is questionable whether philosophy can be applied. Philosophies have so much distance to empirical reality that it is questionable whether specific opinions to practical problems can be derived from philosophy. Philosophy can be blamed for not having practical relevance. However, philosophy can bring new or more systematic conceptual perspectives to reality, which can create new knowledge or action.

Although philosophy does not provide practical solutions, the comments of a philosopher as a person can be insightful or useful. It might be so that they are not based on philosophy, but on the person’s intelligence, analytical capacity, or empirical knowledge.

The basis of discussion should be transparent so that the validity of the opinion can be assessed. Philosophy cannot justify what it cannot justify. But even in that situation the discussion can be interesting or useful.

But philosophy has a relation to reality. There is just a long road to go. It has been said that philosophy starts from wondering. More closely, it can be said that philosophy starts from questions. It can be said that philosophical questions have a fundamental character. Other questions follow, and sometimes answers. At the end some of them can have practical relevance.

Karl Jaspers (1883 – 1969), one of the pioneers of existential philosophy, studied with visionary tone the questions of human existence. He wrote that the origin of philosophy is wondering, doubt, the consciousness of being lost. The utmost basis is willingness to achieve communication, communication with others. Communication leads to the purpose of philosophy: the understanding of the character of being, love, peace. (1970, pp. 30, 33.)

The uncertainty of world may really lead to ask in some respect fundamental questions.

One way of thinking is to say that reality is the context of philosophy. This can be the description of the philosophies of specific sciences, for example the philosophies of political science, natural sciences, law, and so on. The context can also be language, art, or some other empirical entity.

Philosophy can also be an approach. Values of societies or life, principles, obligations or what is important can be considered. Thinking about the selection of paradigm is philosophy.

A good effect of philosophy could be the clarification of thoughts, businesses, or the use of language. However, it is not easy, and the things can become even more messy. It is a fine outcome if “a big picture” or “forest in addition to trees” can be seen.

We speak about reality. What is social reality? What is the reality of impacting it or social policy? It can be cultural or economic structure, social policy system, benefits, policy measures, decisions, practices, customer experiences. The systems have space for many kinds of practices. The practices can be hidden, and that is why the research of practices can help to give an answer to the ontological question of meaningful reality. Institutionalized practices can sometimes describe social reality in a better way than explicit legislation or individual actions.

Antoinette Hetzler has in her book Rättens roll i socialpolitiken (1984) studied ideology, goals, and measures in the context of legislation and its application. Increased framework legislation has on one hand strengthened the citizen’s rights but on the other hand it has also brought problems. The actual situation can within broad legislation be more adequately considered, but it can also lead to random decisions and unacceptable impact of individual preferences. In her model of analysis, Hezler divides society to macro level, e.g., law, middle level, e.g., the network of administration and institutions, and microlevel, e.g., citizens who experience social policy, or their life-world. According to her, we are on the way towards a new kind of legal system which is characterized by responsivity. Law and policy are merged, and the task of law is increasingly to express policy.