February 7, 2006
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"What is the ultimate one-sentence philosophy? Why?
This is the next topic for Socrates' Cafe and here's my take on it:
Philosophically speaking this question has lots of interesting answers. the one that came to my mind first is that aphorism which is found in so many religions and early philosophies:
THIS TOO WILL PASS
This has been said in many ways, perhaps the most memorable being the Jewish legend; though it is to be found among the saying of most religions.
Philosophically the saying sometimes runs:
YOU CAN'T STEP IN THE SAME RIVER TWICE
Which has been attributed to Heraclitius (?)
The idea is the permanence of impermanence.
Another one-sentence philosophy might be that of Albert Schwitzer:
RESIST NOT EVIL, a philosophy that he followed only imperfectly.
A one sentence zinger I’ve always been attracted to was Descartes:
I THINK, THEREFORE I AM
Which is a pretty good base for any metaphysical adventuring.
Any one of these would be a good basis for developing a philosophy and all have been used many times. I would tend to favor “YOU CAN'T STEP IN THE SAME RIVER TWICE” as I think it includes the idea of an ever-changing but nevertheless all-inclusive reality. We discussed this a couple of weeks ago when we talked about Time but this concept also is part of human psychology and experience. The aphorism “History repeats itself” isn’t really true as the circumstances are never exactly the same and our adaptation to ever-changing circumstances is the most (to me anyway) fascinating part of the Human Condition.
Comments (14)
Linking you now.
Interesting thought. Rather like the old adage, "You can never go home again." I never got that one either. So, why CAN'T you step in the river twice? What does the river actually represent? Is there ever atime when you can?
Another way of expressing the philosophy is that nothing ever, or ever has, existed without change because change is one of the basic dimentions of existance. Physically this is called entropy and supposedly at the end of time entropy will have succeeded in changing everything to its ultimate state and time, space, and the Cosmos will end.
It think current physical thinking is that this is impossible.
Psychologically, the most obvious proof of the adage is what we're doing right now. Our consideration of the question has altered our consciousness so that we can never return to the state we were in before we considered the question. That "river" is both reality and our perception of it.
How will a philosophy of "you can't step into the same river twice" impact on the human collective consciousness?
As a philosophic starter, this simple aphorism is a statement of the human condition. A rational philosophy would have this as an assumption. In other words, it is part of the basis of human collective consciousness and a rational philosopher would understand this, even if most humans don't seem to.
That's a good one, alright.
Would you then say that if there is a broader assumption of the truth of the statement: "you can not step in the same river twice" then people will also be more tolerant with each other? Can we then also return to a Krisnamurti type philosophy that says we must learn from every moment as if it is totally new?
I'm not convinced that a realization of the impermanence of life and permanance of change will lead to more tolerance.
I tend to think this is more likely to lead to attempts to direct the change in desirable ways, which can lead to a lot of strife - The current War in Iraq is an example.
Another aspect of this is that cultures change at uneven rates and with that change the interpretation of the basic cultural values also changes. This could mean that our cultural "tolerance value" (We believe we should be tolerant of people with differing beliefs/lifestyles/skin color/whatever) will vary in its application as we re-define how far we should extend tolerance.
"Resist not evil" is a quote of Jesus ... from Matthew's rendition of the Sermon on the Mount.
(see Matt 5:39)
( ... not to say that it isn't also Schwitzer's philosophy ... just completing the reference)
Heraclitus:
I think (IMOAO) it is intersting that in Plato (the origin of the famous version of the quote) the conception has both a permanent and impermanent side. The impermanence is in the physical world and the permanence is in the Platonic Forms or Ideas. Plato uses the river argument, that there can be no permanence in the physical world, to promote his Ideas (because something must control identity, yes?) ... as a proof that his Ideas must be real things.
Those after Plato are probably quoting Plato (eg Aristotle and Plutarch), but there are other translations of the Heraclitus quote that predate Plato. Some agree (depending on the translation) but some quote Heraclitus as saying "When you enter the same river twice, the waters flow and flow" (or something like that, the emphasis being that he starts off saying you enter the same river twice only to find it is different. Heraclitus was fond of the theory of "the unity of opposites" so this would not be a surprising statement by him ... someone quotes him as saying "you can and cannot step into the same river twice, you both are and are not" ... the relation of this to Eastern thought being obvious.
I think it is generally accepted that Heraclitus, like Plato after him, believed the physical world is always changing, but that the controlling agent is Logos (breath or fire) rather than Platonic Heaven/Ideas. Heraclitus uses the word "exhale" ... as if we ourselves are exhaled into the universe like the river flows out into the world. That is, we become the river in the example, as well as the agent considering the river. (I think i get this reading from those Germans like Heidegger ... with their "being" and "Being-in-the-World" type concepts which he is obviously mapping to the Heraclitus fragments. So, grain of salt. But Heidegger was a Heraclitus [and pre-Socratics in general] specialist, so there should be some value there.)
Not to push the point too far, but we might think about the idea of the permanence of Ideas. As I understand the Greek Philosophers and most religions, the basis of reality as they saw (and see) it is some kind of unchanging controlling order - which remains immutable and supreme no matter what we think about it.
Is this true? Or do we humans consciously decide what we want to believe?
If we do so consciously decide, does the decision and discussion change the idea?
We can conceive of an unchanging immutable truth, but does our conception make it so?
BTW, in her Philosophy Classes, my wife always suggested to her students that Heraclitus was wrong, she proposed that "You Can't Step In Any River Once - it changes even as you step". Actually, I think that's what Heraclitus meant - but we don't fight about it
Aristotle. quoting, oh, what is the name, Clytius?, makes that same claim ... but he was hoping to hit Plato with a Slippery Slope or Reductio ab Adsurtim argument, i think. Clytius (what was his name, really, ugh) might have been making a point similar to your wife. I don't think we have the original source ... only Aristotle claiming he said "you can't even step in a river once" [paraphrase from memory].
I always liked the existential "Existence preceedes essence." Sounds nice, too.