1. The two approaches
We start by distinguishing two approaches to philosophy. At this point we take it that there is a single discipline of philosophy that can be conducted in different ways. We shall say more about this assumption in section 2.
1.1 The academic approach
A prospective university student who, at an admission interview, says that he or she wants to study philosophy in order to find out how to live, will get an unenthusiastic response. That is not the sort of thing that academic philosophy within the analytic tradition does. (In this essay, "academic philosophy" will be restricted to philosophy within that tradition. A rather different essay would be written if we tried to encompass Chinese, Indian, or other philosophical traditions, or even what has from the analytic perspective been labelled as continental European philosophy).
Conclusions reached within academic philosophy do sometimes have relevance to the conduct of life, but the relevance is often indirect. For example, conclusions about the nature of ethical claims do not tell us what to do, although they may help us when we think about practical ethical questions. And conclusions about the nature of causation, or of knowledge, are likewise only likely to play indirect roles in our thought about actual events or actual results of research.
Sometimes conclusions in academic philosophy can be of direct relevance, as when arguments in medical ethics support specific views on what is or is not acceptable, or arguments in epistemology about the nature and value of justification help us to sift through claims to decide which claims to believe, or arguments in political philosophy show us what trade-offs between different political values are unavoidable. But even when there is direct relevance, the philosophical conclusions only support us in reaching goals that have, at least in outline, already been determined - to do the right thing, or to discover the truth, or to shape an acceptable constitution. The goals may be refined in detail by reflection on philosophical conclusions, but they are unlikely to be changed substantially. The philosophical conclusions do not steer our lives at the highest level, let alone tell us what life's meaning might be.
Matters are not always so clear cut. It is possible for both indirectly and directly relevant conclusions of academic philosophy to affect the selection of the most general goals. For example, a conclusion that ethics was a matter of subjective preference might lead one to forswear the attempt to lead an ethically good life. Or a conclusion that certainty was unattainable might lead one to a pragmatism of seeking beliefs that worked rather than beliefs that were definitely true.
But even allowing for that, helping people to work out their basic values and the broad direction of their lives would still not be the main goal of academic philosophy. One reason is precisely that it is academic. It seeks conclusions of wide, and ideally universal, application. But the inclinations of individuals, the courses of life that lie open to them, and the challenges they will face are too varied to allow much hope of establishing conclusions as to appropriate ways of life that would be of wide application. Therapies can be tailored to individuals. And there is such a thing as philosophical therapy. But that is not the aim of academic work.
1.2 The life philosophy approach
Another form of philosophy, and perhaps the one most associated with the term in popular understanding, is that of an approach to life. Philosophy is sometimes promoted as the steersman of life (Φιλοσοφία βίου κυβερνήτης). In a less intellectual register, people may say "My philosophy is ... ". We shall group such approaches to life under the heading of life philosophies.
Many ways of thinking can come under this heading. There are prescriptions of particular attitudes and ways to live, such as Stoicism, Epicureanism and Buddhism. Some of the prescriptions have long histories and have become objects of academic enquiry as to how texts and traditions within them should be understood. And some of the prescriptions sit within metaphysics of varying degrees of mysticism. But while it is the prescriptions that have the most direct impact on the readers of texts and the participants in traditions, there must be more than prescriptions for there to be a life philosophy. There must be some background or other, some ethical or metaphysical thought, that can be seen as grounding whatever prescriptions there may be.
There are also life philosophies that offer general notions about the nature of the world or of human life. Rather than specific prescriptions, the notions encourage ways to look at life and the world that are claimed to be helpful and to induce appropriate conduct, or that give meaning to life and thereby encourage people to press on with enthusiasm or at least without being held back by a sense that there is no point to anything. At the vague end of the spectrum we find claims like the one that everything is love. Moving up from there, Existentialism offers greater precision and usually does not carry much metaphysical baggage, but its content means that it naturally does not give much guidance as to what conduct might be appropriate. It also sometimes tells us that there is no point to anything but invites us to face the lack of point and carry on anyway, so that at least we are not held back. Another example is Anthroposophy, which carries substantial and implausible metaphysical baggage but is also apt to offer a route to ideas of what conduct would be appropriate in many different areas of life, including education, agriculture, architecture and exercise. Then there are organisations like Freemasonry, which use rituals rooted in a tradition of symbolism to guide the self-development of members.
Some philosophies move further in the direction of supposed factual content, with the emphasis being far more on that content than on how to live. Here we find various forms of esotericism, including some hermetic and kabbalistic forms. We can however also find in these traditions proposals for inner transformation, so they are by no means isolated from the wider project of life philosophy. Indeed, some lines of influence run from these traditions into the Theosophy from which Anthroposophy sprang, while others run to the New Age movement.
The lines of ancestry and influence are too tangled to draw a clear picture or to separate any area of life philosophy entirely from any other. Fortunately, for our purposes it will suffice to see that there are many varieties and that they place varying degrees of emphasis on supposed factual content and on how to live.
Finally, there are life philosophies in which beliefs and prescriptions merge into one, so that we cannot see the latter as derived from the former. Rather, the beliefs and the prescriptions are two aspects of a commitment. Some varieties of Christianity can be seen like that. So can the Lebensreform movement that arose in the late nineteenth century.
We shall shortly look at the ways in which different kinds of philosophy, academic and life, might be thought to lead to discoveries. But here we may note that some of the claimed factual content of some life philosophies is so ludicrously false that it is unsurprising that many in academic philosophy decline to take any notice of those philosophies. This may have the unfortunate side-effect of dismissing all life philosophy as having nothing to tell us.
2. The common ground
It would be tempting to say that the word "philosophy" had senses so different in the phrases "academic philosophy" and "life philosophy" that we should not put the two forms of philosophy side by side. They would simply be different kinds of thought.
We should resist the temptation. There is enough common ground in the history of philosophy. Even within the western tradition where we most clearly find academic philosophy distancing itself from life philosophy, ancient thought is plainly concerned both with understanding the world and with working out how to live, as parts of the same intellectual enterprise and sometimes within the same texts.
The ancient world was however a long time ago. What do the two sorts of philosophy still have in common?
2.1 The significance of origins
One thing they have in common is the significance of origins. Traces of the origins of philosophy of both kinds endure, in the way that is conspicuous in the humanities but less obvious, and much less significant, in the natural sciences. The humanities change slowly. In history, even the significant changes encapsulated in Ranke's "wie es eigentlich gewesen" do not at all detract from our recognition of Herodotus as a historian who practised the discipline that we still find in university history faculties. And in philosophy of all sorts, the traditions within which work is carried on matter. The course of academic philosophy's history has conspicuously shaped the key questions and ways to approach them. Likewise, many varieties of life philosophy use ideas and images that have a long history.
2.2 Experience of life
Another thing in common is the role of our experience of life in sorting good work from bad.
This role does not appear in all areas of academic philosophy. We would be hard put to find it in the metaphysics of spacetime, or in mereology. We would also be hard put to find it in debates between epistemologists over invariantism and contextualism. But in epistemology generally, experience of life will have a role in sorting good work from bad. Knowledge is a concept with functions in our lives, and we should have an epistemology that answers to those functions. Moving on to ethics, no ethical theory that failed to respect how human beings were and how they lived would be much good. This does not mean that goodness of fit with our lives is the sole test of quality even in ethics, let alone in other areas of academic philosophy. But it is an important test.
Turning to life philosophy, the test of experience is of very great significance. A good life philosophy will help people who adopt it to flourish. There is no need for them to feel suffused with joy, or even to be devoid of discontent. But they should be free of anguish, and should feel able to move ahead with their own projects.
2.3 Evidence and argument
Another point of commonality is that the role of evidence differs from that in other areas of thought - although there are also differences between academic philosophy and life philosophy here. Along with evidence, we may consider the role of argument.
We shall identify a category that we shall call independent evidence. This is evidence that is independent of the argument currently being conducted.
We shall also identify a category that we shall call external evidence. This is evidence that is external to the discipline of philosophy, evidence that philosophy borrows for its purposes. It will of course be independent when used within philosophy. It may be contrasted with internal evidence, that arises within philosophy itself and that may or may not have its uses in other disciplines.
2.3.1 Academic philosophy
In academic philosophy the independent internal evidence is limited. The most significant evidence is external and also plays its role in philosophy indirectly, setting limits to what may sensibly be concluded and demanding that philosophy come up with convincing ways to understand phenomena. Thus metaphysicians must pay attention to the natural sciences, philosophers of mind must pay attention to neurological results, and ethicists must pay attention to psychology.
Given that the significance of external evidence is largely indirect, limiting options rather than leading to single answers, and that there is not much independent internal evidence, much of the work is done by the clarification of concepts and by argument.
The fact that some concepts and arguments work while others do not can be seen as giving evidence of the structure of our concepts, but while that may be evidence internal to philosophy, it is not independent of the arguments that yield it. It might be independent of other arguments that relied on it, but in philosophy there is little scope to carry over conceptual relationships from one argument to another with sufficient precision and stability to make them wholly reliable evidence in the latter argument. The discipline is not like mathematics.
The fact that some concepts and arguments work while others do not can also be seen as giving evidence of the nature of the world, if we take it that the success or failure of concepts is related to the nature of the world. But we must acknowledge that the test of whether concepts work is in philosophy a test of whether we find the resulting picture of the world intuitive. This is nowhere near as exacting as tests in the natural sciences of whether equations work, a realm in which intuitiveness counts for little or nothing.
2.3.2 Life philosophy
The conclusions of exercises in life philosophy are not typically reached by robust argument from evidence. They may be presented as implied by evidence that may be independent and internal or that may be external. But on inspection, the implications are found not to be strong ones. And sometimes the external evidence turns out to be fragments of purported science that are simply mistaken.
The effective role, rather than the purported role, of evidence is therefore smaller than it is in academic philosophy. The one place where we might regularly expect to find a role for external evidence would be the use of human psychology to reach conclusions as to which attitudes and ways of life would be most conducive to contentment or achievement. But there, it is hard to draw robust inferences as to what will work for specific individuals, as distinct from what will work on average across a population.
Argument as a tool in itself also plays a less significant role in life philosophy than it does in academic philosophy. Such arguments as we find often do not look at all rigorous.
What really speaks in favour of conclusions in life philosophy is that they are found to work. Adoption of a way of life, or a way to look at the world, is found actually to increase contentment or achievement, or to give a sense that life and the world are truly understood. Given such justification by results, there is no need for an initial argument from evidence to conclusions.
We should however recognize the limits of justification by results. A life philosophy is to be adopted by an individual. Psychological evidence can show what may be expected to work on average, but not for a specific individual. The definition of what works will also depend on what is important to the individual. And a given individual can only try a few of the many options to see which one best suits himself or herself. The result is that we cannot expect any better than a rough and in places uncertain partial ordering of life philosophies by their quality for a given individual, let alone for all members of a given group of people.
This is not just a matter of lack of information. It is easily arguable that in life philosophy, there is no right answer to the question of which is the best way of life or way to look at the world. There are good, acceptable, and unacceptable ways of life and ways to look at the world, and what is good for one person may be only acceptable, or even unacceptable, for another.
If there are no right answers to be found, an objection that academic philosophers might raise against life philosophies can be avoided. The objection is that life philosophies are typically prescriptive, recommending certain conduct or a certain view of the world, on insufficient grounds. It is notoriously difficult to justify against all challenges a derivation of prescriptions from facts about the world. But if the recommendations of life philosophies are seen not as right answers to questions of how to live or how to think, but merely as options that may be favoured and that people have found beneficial, there is no need for robust justification.
3. What is achieved
Both academic philosophy and life philosophy take effort. We might expend the effort because the mental activity was pleasurable. But we may also ask what results are likely to be obtained.
3.1 Academic philosophy
Academic philosophy may be expected to lead to discoveries, and perhaps incidentally to the enhancement of lives.
3.1.1 Discoveries
Academic philosophy can lead to what some in the field regard as real discoveries. It may be found that a previously accepted claim is open to counterexamples, or that apparent difficulties can be resolved by putting new concepts to work. Sometimes ethical challenges generated by new technology will be found to have satisfactory responses. And so on. What is however rare is for there to be universal agreement that a given development is a real discovery. Some may think the development a mistake, while others may withhold judgement.
3.1.2 Enhancement
Academic philosophy can also enhance people's lives. That is not its main objective, but thinking clearly about topics that it investigates, from the concept of flourishing to free decision to the nature of time, can help people. There is even a practice of philosophical therapy. And texts from earlier days, now mostly studied in an academic way to determine their precise meanings and to set them in their historical context, can be very fine self-help books at the same time as being academic studies of their topics. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a leading example.
3.2 Life philosophy
Life philosophy may be expected to lead to the enhancement of lives, and perhaps also to discoveries.
3.2.1 Enhancement
The express goal of life philosophy is to enhance people's lives. But the scope of life philosophy does not include all writing that may do so, or even all writing with that express goal. Novels and poetry may enhance lives without having such an express goal. Sermons do have the express goal of enhancement. But none of these can be counted as philosophy.
The distinguishing mark of life philosophy is that it is not mere encouragement to live in a certain way or to take a certain view of the world, but a compound of encouragement and factual claims. The factual claims support the content of the recommendations, and they may also be made for their own sake.
Some life philosophy makes factual claims that cannot be accepted as correct. It may be claimed that there is a universal resonance to which we should become attuned, or that there are angels. If such claims are of any use at all, it can only be by their serving as poetic inspiration.
More plausible, even if not guaranteed to be correct, are claims such as a claim that we can all communicate with one another even without language, or a claim that love is the most powerful and the most important emotion, or a claim that people who are content with their current lifestyles will be less subject to disquiet than those who aspire to apparently better lifestyles.
There are also factual claims that can plausibly be made conditional on some claim of value. For example, if one makes the claim that an active and productive life is more valuable than some other kind of life, one can make the claim that certain attitudes to other people should as a matter of conditional fact be adopted in order to facilitate activity and production.
The point of linking recommendations to factual claims is that it allows a response to the challenge that no sufficient reason has been given to adopt the recommendations made. Those who do not initially find the recommendations appealing may be persuaded to stop and think.
This does not quite bridge the is-ought gap that is a great concern of some academic philosophers. The recommendations are only made appealing, so it would still not be irrational to refuse to follow them. The facts presented do not mandate acceptance of the recommendations, and some of them can only be regarded as facts conditional on the acceptance of other value claims. But a mere recommendation can have its status as such without having grounding as solid as we ordinarily expect factual claims to have.
3.2.2 Discoveries
Can the practice of a life philosophy lead to real discoveries? Let us consider some possibilities.
The implausible factual claims that are sometimes made cannot qualify. It is very likely indeed that they are simply mistaken, or so vague and disconnected from empirical evidence and logical argument that they cannot even be assessed for truth or falsity. Most such claims are not even worth investigating.
There can be psychological discoveries, for example that a particular life philosophy goes down well with a substantial range of people. It would be difficult to make such a claim statistically robust, given that those who had considered a given philosophy would not be a random sample drawn from the whole population and that the measurement of satisfaction with a given philosophy would have to rely on expressions of opinion by the subjects. But there could still be a tentative discovery.
There could also be personal discoveries. Someone who took on a particular way of life or perspective on the world could come to see himself or herself in a new light, and find that he or she had changed his or her habits without any distress at loss of the old way of life.
Such a discovery would be a discovery about the subject, and about the compatibility of the philosophy in question with the subject. It would not lend credibility to any implausible factual claims, because they would be ruled out by wider considerations and could not be rescued by adding a gloss of appeal to the subject. It would however support the claim that other people who were generally similar to the subject might also benefit from the philosophy (although only the claim that they might, not that they would).
We may therefore say that while the practice of a life philosophy may lead to discoveries, they are not robust discoveries about the world in general.
We should also consider the process of creating a life philosophy. The author may use that process to formulate and express both conclusions about human life, and perspectives on the world. These might be regarded as discoveries, especially if they only emerged through the process of writing and were not formed in the author's mind before the process of reflection that the writing required. But they would still be discoveries of the same nature and limited epistemic status as the discoveries that people who read such texts and tried out life philosophies for themselves might make.
3.2.3 The required depth of study
Whether in reading or in writing, the full appreciation or proper production of academic philosophy requires extensive study of the existing literature. Life philosophy is not like that, and this bears on the question of discovery.
There is often scope for extensive study. Many life philosophies either sit within long traditions, or are the heirs to such traditions. There is for example a large academic discipline of the history of hermetic philosophy, with a centre devoted to it at the University of Amsterdam: https://hermetica.uva.nl/
Such study is however optional. Texts in life philosophy can be put to work to enhance readers' lives without deep study. And they can also be written without deep study, especially if they do not explicitly draw on the available long traditions. Some benefit may be lost without deep study, but the majority of the benefit can still be obtained.
Another feature of some life philosophies is that they accord special status to one or a few honoured texts. Those life philosophies will not make much sense without study of those texts, but contrasting texts may be regarded as irrelevant.
Both the option to read narrowly and the identification of some texts as especially important mean that life philosophies can be more accessible than academic philosophy. But they also mean that the scope for discovery about the world in general, as distinct from self-discovery, is narrow. Discovering new things about the world requires both extensive study and a refusal to regard particular texts as sacrosanct.
4. An alternative distinction
We do not need to regard the distinction between academic philosophy and life philosophy as primary. We shall now make a few remarks on the history of the distinction, and then consider an alternative.
4.1 The separation and crossovers
The separation between academic philosophy and life philosophy within the western tradition has been firmed up by the rise of formal education and research in universities. Even in the nineteenth century, the separation was not clear. John Stuart Mill, admittedly working outside any university context, made contributions of lasting significance to academic ethical and political philosophy that can also be read as life philosophy because they inspire attitudes that favour liberty and respect for other people. (His work on logic, on the other hand, falls clearly within the area of academic philosophy and not life philosophy.) But when we move on to the twentieth century, the separation is firmer. Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote technical works that are still studied in universities and are not life philosophy. He also, in the latter part of his life, wrote a great deal on how to live, but that work does not attract as much academic attention. There are still crossovers, but the traffic tends to be modest. Works of academic philosophy, particularly in ethics, may profitably be read for inspiration on how to live. Example are Thomas Hurka's book Perfectionism and Peter Singer's paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality". It is however unlikely that the majority of devotees of life philosophy will actually read such works. In the other direction, modern books that are primarily life philosophy are unlikely to get much attention from academic philosophers. In recent decades, academic philosophers have taken a growing interest in questions of the meaning of life, but they are most attracted by questions of what it would be for a life to have meaning, what the necessary or sufficient conditions for life to have a meaning might be, and the like, rather than in the search for substantive answers of the sort that one would expect to find in life philosophy.
If we think that the distinction between academic philosophy and life philosophy is to some extent an artefact of developments in recent centuries, against a background of a philosophical tradition that goes back a great deal further and in which it was not so clear, and that there are overlaps and crossovers, we may prefer an alternative distinction that focuses on what different modes of philosophy actually give us. We shall put forward a primary distinction between philosophy that discovers and philosophy that enhances, rather than distinguishing between academic and life philosophy and then as a secondary matter seeing what each may achieve. A piece of philosophy, whether academic or life, could both discover and enhance, although many will do primarily one and many others will do only one.
4.2 Philosophy that discovers
Philosophy sometimes leads to discoveries. We shall not consider whether discovery was the aim of a piece of work, but whether it was an outcome.
We expect academic philosophy, and the academy generally, to discover things about the world, about people, or about our concepts. The emphasis is on the impersonal. A conclusion in the humanities or the social sciences may be about people with some shared characteristic such as living in a particular city, having had a particular type of education, or belonging to a particular organisation, rather than about people in general. But aside from studies of people who were particularly significant in history, conclusions should not be only about individuals identified ostensively rather than identified by characteristics that could also be possessed by the members of an indeterminate class of other people to whom the conclusions would also be expected to apply. And when it comes to concepts, it is concepts that connect to other concepts in substantial webs that are of most interest.
We may debate how well academic philosophy does in discovery of this kind. The persistence of disagreement on a large proportion of significant questions shows that it does not do nearly as well as the natural sciences. But there is still some progress. New approaches to old problems are opened up. We may cite a few examples. Our understanding of necessity and possibility was improved by the introduction of possible worlds semantics for modal logic. The philosophy of science responds to developments in the sciences themselves. The philosophy of mind is modified in response to developments in neuroscience on the one hand, and artificial intelligence on the other. Finally, there is a sense of progress in ethical and political philosophy. For example, there is no longer any realistic prospect of giving a defence of slavery that would be accepted by more than a tiny proportion of ethicists.
Life philosophy may also lead to discoveries that meet our criterion of impersonality. If adoption of a life philosophy is beneficial to many people, that may when combined with some scientific psychology lead on to a discovery about the human psyche. And a life philosophy may introduce new concepts, or new relationships between concepts, that fill out our conceptual map and open our minds to new possibilities. One example, not in itself scientifically robust but a route to new ways of thought, is the concept of the Earth as a unified organism, most famously formulated as Gaia by James Lovelock (although it would be too narrow to see his work as just a life philosophy). That concept can be a life philosophy in itself, for example by encouraging action that minimises disruption of the planet.
4.3 Philosophy that enhances
Philosophy can enhance the lives of the people who read it. We shall not consider whether enhancement was the aim of a piece of work, but whether it was an outcome.
Some work in academic philosophy, particularly work in ethics, may enhance some people's lives. An appealing description of what is presented as a good life can encourage adoption of a life of the recommended sort.
Other work that could not be seen as academic philosophy may also enhance lives. Typically there will be some narrative about the nature of the world or humanity that encourages a particular view of the world or a degree of self-confidence. The narrative might look like a discovery, but it will often lack evidential foundation. The real discovery will be limited to each reader's discovery of the shape and contents of his or her own psyche, in a way that would not meet a standard of impersonality and could not reliably be regarded as discovery about other specific people, even people who were in many ways similar to the subject.
4.4 Blurring the boundary
If we look at a piece of philosophy without any initial categorization as academic or life, and simply see what it achieves, a map of pieces of work that is divided into a region of academic philosophy and a region of life philosophy is replaced by a map in which pieces of work may be placed anywhere between the discovery edge of the map, let us say the left edge, and the enhancement edge, the right edge. A piece of work that primarily discovered would be placed near the discovery edge, while one that primarily enhanced would be placed near the enhancement edge. We could also use the up-down dimension for the significance of the discovery achieved, and a third dimension, coming out of the page, for the significance of the enhancement achieved. To put this in Euclidean coordinate terms, we could put the origin in the middle, use the x coordinate for discovery-enhancement, the y coordinate for low to high significance of discovery, and the z coordinate for low to high significance of enhancement.
On such a map there would be no division into clearly demarcated regions, although we might find that the middle ground on the discovery-enhancement dimension was more thinly populated than regions further out, the regions of substantially discovery and substantially enhancement. And as already mentioned, what would matter would be what a piece of work actually achieved, not what it might have been intended to achieve.
One very welcome result of thinking like this would be the end of pre-judgement of work on the basis of its source or its style. It is possible for academic philosophers to scorn anything that is not in the standard academic style, or even anything that has not been produced in a university. It is likely that seekers of enhancement will ignore work that is conspicuously academic in its source or its style. If everyone focused on what pieces of work achieved, and recognized that there was scope for pieces that primarily offered discovery also to offer enhancement and vice versa, there should be more openness to work that people would previously have disregarded. People would of course still need some rules of thumb to help them find work that was really likely to be useful to them. So much is written that use of a crude initial filter that will sometimes make mistakes is unavoidable. But the place where work was produced, or a classification as academic or life philosophy by reference to style or intention, might be replaced by something a little more responsive to the reality of content and potential benefit.
4.5 Philosophy as illumination
In addition to our blurring the boundary between academic and life philosophy by focusing on what each piece of work achieves, we may credit all worthwhile philosophy with a particular type of achievement, the provision of illumination. This type will turn out to be broad, but it can still be seen as one, not as falling apart into separate types. And within it, there will be sub-types that will at least roughly map onto discovery and enhancement, depending on whether the light shines on the world or on the subject.
We use the word "illumination" to cover making sense of things and showing a way forward. We shall look at the two sub-types in turn, the first of which itself comes in two varieties, and then note that they do belong together as sub-types of a single overall type.
4.5.1 Illumination of the world
Discoveries in philosophy are often not like discoveries in the natural sciences. Rather, they show ways to look at the topics being studied or the objects identified within those topics, ways that help the reader to make sense of the world.
The ideal is to make sense to all readers, and that is a realistic goal, since making sense does not depend on agreement with what is said and there is far less dependence on the psychological quirks of different readers than there is when enhancement is the goal. This goal of making sense to all is a less demanding constraint than the constraint in the natural sciences of finding conclusions on which all will agree. And its achievability is revealed by the fact that philosophers who completely disagree with some line of thought will still understand what the line is.
One way to capture this idea of making sense is to focus on a goal of achieving Verstehen, understanding, rather than Erklären, explanation. The terms are laden with their own history, but roughly, Verstehen is the normal goal of the humanities while Erklären is the normal goal of the natural sciences, with the social sciences sometimes aiming at one and sometimes at the other.
When the goal is Verstehen, there is scope for different philosophers to support different, and even opposing, ways to achieve it.
The achievement of Verstehen does not imply that one has discovered something about the world as it is independently of the understanding subject, even the independent world as it is conceived in a common-sense kind of way without engaging in Kantian thought about noumena. Rather, one has discovered a way to view the world that makes sense of it, given the natures of the world and of human minds together. And the subject does not have merely a diffuse feeling of satisfaction. A claim that sense is made can be supported by discourse on how the account that confers Verstehen fits observations, evidence, and other accepted claims together in a coherent pattern. Indeed, objections to a claim that a particular way to look at things confers Verstehen will often be made by pointing to observations, evidence, and accepted claims that disrupt the supposed pattern.
The idea of a search for Verstehen seems particularly apt to philosophy outside the analytic tradition, whether what has traditionally been called continental European philosophy or philosophy from elsewhere, including philosophies from Indian and Chinese cultures. And the non-analytic forms of philosophy are, even when conducted in an academic way, closer than analytic philosophy to life philosophy. Indeed, the idea of a search for Verstehen is not always apt to analytic philosophy. Something a little different is sometimes needed.
We need the option of something different because analytic philosophy does sometimes see itself as pursuing, and even providing, Erklären. But the systematic use of data, the strict experimental testing, and the arrival at almost universal agreement that we see in the natural sciences are all lacking.
We propose that analytic philosophy can sometimes be seen as pursuing Erklären, but with the result that several possible responses to a given question often remain in play. The responses all have the standing of conjectures. But each one is a highly specific conjecture, with arguments in support, and is thought by a reasonable proportion of philosophers who have worked on the question to be plausible, worth defending, and worth using as a starting point for further work.
In this picture, there is discovery. The range of possible responses to a philosophical question is narrowed considerably. The discovery consists in that narrowing, and in the conclusion that if there is a definitive answer to be found (which there may not be), it probably lies somewhere within the identified range.
Although such a result would be different from Verstehen, it could still lead to Verstehen. To see that the responses within a given range are the ones that would be plausible would confer Verstehen of the topic so long as one saw the responses as sharing certain characteristics or a certain approach, and not as a ragbag of entirely disjoint responses.
4.5.2 Illumination of the self
Life philosophy is not just prescriptions. There will be some background, either supposed facts or a proffered way of thinking about oneself and other people. If the background leads the reader to some conclusion about his or her own nature, that will be a form of illumination.
Such conclusions cannot however be regarded as discoveries about the world, for two reasons. First, they are about the subject, and may not have any validity in relation to others, not even people who are similar to the subject. Second, they will be worded in terms that may make sense to the subject, but that would be decidedly lacking in comparable illuminatory capacity for other people because other people would not know the subject from the inside. We do not need to suppose a private language of the type against which Wittgenstein argued to say this. Words used might carry their ordinary meanings, understood by all speakers of the relevant language. But that a particular text in those words could offer the illumination that it did would depend on an inner understanding the subject had of himself or herself that was not accessible to others.
4.5.3 Sub-types of a single type
We now have Verstehen, Erklären in the form of a range of possible responses to a given question, and illumination of the self. They are different, but it would be good to be able to see them as having more in common than the descriptor "illumination". Here we shall propose that they can be seen as sub-types of a single type, bound together by more than the applicability of that descriptor.
What binds them is that they can all help the subject to position himself or herself in the world, and understand his or her relationship to the world.
Verstehen does this by making sense of the world. And it is a sense made to the subject and to other human beings, rather than a truth that would be objective in the sense of being shareable with all rational beings. Verstehen allows the subject to grasp human actions, to see them as ones that might have been motivated by reasons, and to relate to people appropriately. It can also give the subject a coherent grasp of the history of humanity or of some part of it with which he or she identifies, building up the subject's sense of his or her own identity.
Erklären in the form of a range of possible responses to a given question conveys more information about the world than would be conveyed by a statement of ignorance, if less than a single response. It positions the subject in a network of possibilities, showing what might reasonably be thought and done.
Illumination of the self shows the subject what he or she might be able to do and perhaps should do. The result is not purely for internal use. A grasp of one's own nature will allow one to move forward in the world more happily and productively than would otherwise be possible.
5. The meaning of a life in philosophy
In 1927, Moritz Schlick wrote "Vom Sinn des Lebens", translated as "On the Meaning of Life". He claimed that the the meaning of life was the spirit of youth, as exemplified in play (Spiel). "Play" has a broad meaning here, allowing a youthful spirit to be maintained at any age. It covers any activity that is undertaken for its own sake, rather than to achieve some external goal. When someone is full of the spirit of youth, he or she may have goals that indicate a direction of play, but the goals do not matter in themselves. If they collapse, other goals can be substituted without regret. No adult can live like that all of the time. There is work to do, both to get an income and to look after the home. But everyone can live like that some of the time.
Now think of someone who studies and writes philosophy. He or she can work playfully. There may be a goal to discover something in some particular area or to enhance people's lives in some roughly specified kind of way. But if the work does not go where it had been planned to go, that does not matter. The goal can be modified, or even replaced, without any harm or sense of loss.
A modification or replacement could take various forms. Discovery might come in an unexpected area, or a favourite hypothesis might be refuted rather than supported. Enhancement might turn out not to be available by the envisaged route, but by some other route on which the writer stumbled. More radically, what was expected to lead to discoveries might turn out to be a route to enhancement, or vice versa.
It is in the nature of philosophy that such modifications and replacements should be of no great concern. When philosophers seek to discover, they come up against the unlikelihood that there are single well-defined right answers to questions. The subject matter of philosophy is not like that of the natural sciences, in which single-answer Erklären is often achievable. Rather, the sensible goal is to say something illuminating, to achieve Verstehen or alternatively to settle on a range of possible Erklären-like conclusions. Such things can often be done in several different ways, even in relation to a single topic. And when philosophers seek to offer enhancement to their readers, there are again many different ways to do so even in the same general area. Any of the ways may turn out to be more or less successful.
We may conclude that if we take Schlick's view, philosophy is a particularly good field in which to play. Goals can come and go, and the fact that they are not set in order to achieve a single correct understanding of an independent reality means that there is no single correct set of goals to have. The playful spirit is not an invitation to have no care for the quality of one's work. It is an urge to keep going into an uncertain future.
References
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Available in numerous editions.
Hurka, Thomas. Perfectionism. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993.
Lovelock, James E. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979.
Schlick, Moritz. "Vom Sinn des Lebens". Chapter 6 of Schlick, Die Wiener Zeit: Aufsätze, Beiträage, Rezensionen 1926–1936, edited by Johannes Friedl and Heiner Rutte (Gesamtausgabe, Abteilung I: Veröffentlichte Schriften, Band 6, edited by Friedrich Stadler and Hans Jurgen Wendel).
Schlick, Moritz. "On the Meaning of Life". Chapter 4 of Schlick, Philosophical Papers volume 2 (1925-1936), edited by Henk L. Mulder and Barbara F. B. van de Velde-Schlick. Dordrecht, Reidel, 1979.
Singer, Peter. "Famine, Affluence, and Morality". Philosophy and Public Affairs, volume 1, number 3, 1972, pages 229-243. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052
