Philosophical questions are synoptic
By synoptic vision we mean “seeing things whole.” seeing everything in its bearing upon everything else,seeing things in their integral togetherness.This characteristic of philosophy really sums up all the others.Whereas science and many of the special branches of philosophy deal with only particular aspects of things or narrow “universes of discourse”，philosophy itself is an attempt to remain keenly aware that we live in one world,Our knowledge breaks awareness of this world into bits and studies each aspect or part piecemeal,or,at most,the relations holding among a few of its parts.In this way,our knowledge gains certainty and clarity.Any attitude that goes beyond this is speculation,and is sometimes criticized as “mere mysticism.” The mystic immerses himself in The Whole or The One and what he gains in scope and depth,he loses in detail and logical rigor,But,says Whitehead,“The purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism,” [6]that is,to render intelligible the view of the whole that comes from imagination,speculative flights,and what Whitehead calls “direct insight into depths as yet unspoken.” Synoptic philosophical questions are questions about “everything.”
The synopsis that is the aim of philosophy is one of the features that make it of great importance in education.Modern education requires specialization,and universities have departments that make specialization in teaching and research possible.Most schools leave “generalization” of the student to be a matter of precept and acculturation in an intellectual atmosphere provided by libraries,laboratories,lecture rooms,and association with scholars.Philosophy,although it is usually a special department in a university,fails to do its whole job if it remains simply a curriculum for training expert technicians in logical analysis and erudite students of the history of philosophical ideas.The philosophy department and philosophy classes,at their best,provide a center of gravity for the educational program which is somewhere near the center of experience instead of off to one side.Philosophers seek to generalize,to synthesize,to criticize,and to integrate.As teachers,their task is not only to make Ph.D.’s in philosophy,or to give students of accounting a nodding acquaintance with Plato;their task is also to develop the student’s ability to gain a synoptic view of himself and his place in the world,to show him that he is really one person in one world—not a Christian on Sunday,a chemist one hour,a classicist the next,an athlete in the afternoon,and a wolf in the evening.
This cannot be taught in the same way that skills and even some knowledge are imparted.It is something that the student must teach himself by trying to make and to examine his own philosophy.This was the method of Socrates,who said that he acted as midwife for others who were trying to bring their own ideas to birth;it was the method of Kant,who said,“I cannot teach philosophy,I can only teach philosophizing.” By such a method,the study of philosophy can help the student to work out his own problems through showing him that he is not alone in his perplexities;the greatest minds in history have faced the same problems and have used their genius in trying to solve them.The world is full of problems for all of us.The task of a course in philosophy is not to tell the student the answers—as if the teacher or the author of the textbook knew them!—but to make him fully aware of the ramifications of his questions,of some possible answers to them,and of his stake in each.
These,then,are the distinguishing traits of philosophy at its best.Philosophy grows out of the need of each thinking person to find an intelligible order in his life so that he can think and fell that things “make sense.” Philosophy is not an accumulation of facts,although it uses all the facts that it can get and that the individual can master.It deals rationally with values and ideals;it tries to see the most general contours of the world,which is not merely a world of brute fact but also a stage on which ideals are pursued and values are,in fortunate moments,appreciated;and it tries to integrate all the partial views we have into a reasonable picture of the whole.Its inquiry is detailed analysis and disciplined speculation.It goes critically beneath and speculatively beyond established facts.There is a place in it for individual beliefs and ideals;there are many rooms in the mansion of philosophy.At the same time,however,its problems recur from age to age,and from the master each of us can learn which solutions are promising and which ways of dealing with our own puzzles are futile.We feel,perhaps,that our problems of coming to terms with ourselves and discovering our place in things are personal problems;but the ones that most perplex us are the most human and perennial of all.
（Selected from Philosophy Inquiry：An Introduction to Philosophy,by Lewis White Beck,Professor of Philosophy,the University of Rochester ）
【注释】
[1]Diogenes Laertius,Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (C.D.Yonge,trans.),pages 9-10.London:H.G.Bohn,1853.
[2]Arthur E.Murphy,The Uses of Reason,page 288.New York：The Macmillan Company,1943.
[3]Moritz Schlick,The Future of Philosophy,The College of the Pacific Publications in Philosophy,1932,page 58.
[4]Herbert Feigl,in Readings in philosophical Analysis (H.Feigl and Wilfred S.Sellars,eds.),page 26.New York：Appleton-Century-Crofts,Inc.,1949.
[5]From Problems of Philosophy,by Bertrand Russell,pages 241-242.New York：Home University Library,Oxford University Press,1912.
[6]Alfred North Whitehead,Modes of Thought,page 237.New York：The Macmillan Company,1938.