2.2 Philosophy Is Not a Matter of Opinion
🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: 2.2 Philosophie ist nicht Meinungssache
There is a widespread view that goes roughly like this: in philosophy, everyone can think whatever they want. There are no right and wrong answers. Everything is a matter of opinion.
That sounds modest and tolerant. But it is false.
Suppose someone claims: “Two plus two is five.” Would you say: “Well, that is just his opinion”? Of course not. You would say: that is not right. And you could explain why it is not right. The truth that two plus two is four does not depend on whether anyone considers it correct. It holds whether people acknowledge it or not.
Likewise, in philosophy there are states of affairs that are true — independently of what individual people think about them. The question “What is the human being?” is not a question to which every answer would be equally good. There are answers that correspond to reality, and others that do not. The philosopher’s task is to find the true answers — and to show why they are true.
This does not mean that philosophy is easy. Nor does it mean that philosophers never err. It means only this: there is something to be known. There is a reality that exists independently of our thinking and that we can grasp — albeit with effort.
Aristotle put it succinctly: “Philosophy is the science of truth. Theoretical science has truth as its goal.”1 Robert Spaemann adds: “The philosopher […] is not to hold true that which he suspects will in the end be the prevailing opinion; rather, without any guarantee of success, he must bring into the contest of philosophies, by way of argument, that which he believes himself to see as true.”2
Next section → · Back to chapter overview
Fußnoten
-
Spaemann, Schritte über uns hinaus (Steps Beyond Ourselves, 2010), vol. I, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2010, p. 263. German original: „Der Philosoph […] hat nicht für wahr zu halten, wovon er vermutet, daß es am Ende herrschende Meinung sein werde, sondern er muss ohne Erfolgsgarantie dasjenige argumentativ in den Streit der Philosophien einbringen, was er als wahr zu sehen glaubt.” ↩