Chapter One

THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY

P hilosophy is identified as one particular human enterprise among

others by its characterizing mission of providing satisfactory an-
swers to the “big questions” that we have regarding the world’s
scheme of things and our place within it. And these big issues relate to
fundamental of human concern, being universal in dealing with hu-
mans at large rather than particular groups thereof (farmers or doctors
or Europeans or contemporaries of Shakespeare). Philosophical delib-
erations must have a bearing—direct or oblique—for the key essen-
tials of the human condition—knowledge and truth, justice and moral-
ity, beauty and goodness, and the like.
In its dealing with such issues, philosophy principally asks ques-
tions having two forms:

• Clarifactory questions issuing from the format “Elucidate the

nature of X (e.g., of truth, knowledge, justice).”

• Explanatory questions issuing from the format “Explain why P

is so (e.g., why knowledge is not simply a matter of true belief).”

Either way, grappling with those “big questions” seeks to facilitate our
understanding of the nature of things.
The instruments of philosophizing are ideational resources of con-
cepts and theories, and it deploys them in a quest for understanding, in
the endeavor to create an edifice of thought able to provide us with an
intellectual home that affords a habitable thought shelter in a complex
and challenging world. The history of philosophy accordingly in-
volves an ongoing intellectual struggle to develop ideas that render
comprehensible the seemingly endless diversity and complexity that
surrounds us on all sides.
As a venture in providing rationally cogent answers to our ques-
tions about large-scale issues of belief, evaluation, and action, philos-

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 Nicholas Rescher • The Nature of Philosophy 2

ophy is a key sector of the cognitive enterprise at large. And since a

rational creature acts on the basis of its beliefs—philosophy also has a
bearing on action, so as to implement the idea of PHILOSOPHIA BIOU
KUBERNÊTÊS—the motto of the American Phi Beta Kappa honorary
society which proclaims philosophy to be a guide to life.
What is it that makes someone who thinks, talks, and writes about
matters of human interest a philosopher? And what is it that defines a
body of discourse as philosophical?
It is one thing to deliberate about human affairs, and something dif-
ferent and rather distinctive to philosophize about them. The political
theorists, the economist, and the theologian all discuss matters of im-
portance for what we humans think and do. But their deliberations do
not thereby belong to philosophy as such.
Of course, the first requisite for a specifically philosophical delib-
eration is that it deals with philosophical issues. This means that it
must be reliable to resolving those big questions of man’s place in the
world’s scheme of things—matters which—like the nature and requi-
sites of truth, knowledge, beauty, goodness, justice, etc.—are of fun-
damental concern for intelligent beings who live in social interaction.
To be sure, philosophical discussions need not always deal with
these great matters directly and explicitly. But there must be means-
ends connectivity; a philosophical discussion that is, it must deal with
issues whose resolution facilitates answers to questions which deal
with problems whose answer facilitates etc. until at least we reach is-
sues that do deal explicitly and immediately with those big issues
themselves. To be sure, many a philosophical discussion does not look
to be such but has this status only in a way that is oblique and non-
explicit. It is not directed at three big questions directly but only via
chain of means and filiation. For what it does is to address a question
whose answer is needed to resolve a question etc. whose answer is
needed in its turn to resolve a still further question, until at last a link-
age to those big issues is achieved.
A second prime requisite relates to the method of procedure. For ra-
tional deliberation is crucial to philosophizing: merely giving opinions
or proclaiming individual or alternative preferences or condemnations
will not qualify as philosophical. The provision of supporting consid-
erations for one’s judgments is crucial to the enterprise.

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3 ON THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY

A third definitive feature of philosophical deliberation is its con-

cern for normative issues. For philosophy, properly coordinated, deals
not with what people have said in the past or maintain in the present.
Its concern, rather, is with what people should think and maintain with
regard to these issues. The key concern of the enterprise is with cogent
answers to the questions and good reasons for proposing them. In the
quest for truth the philosopher’s concern is not with what people do
think and say but with what they should think and say if their views
are to be substantiated as acceptable to others. To qualify as plausible,
a philosophical discussion must develop a case for its conclusion
whose cogency in the circumstances could and should be apparent to
anyone. The philosopher must provide a rationale for his claims—a
manifold of good reasons why anyone, anywhere should accept them.
The methodology of philosophy is impersonal reason.
And the universality of reasons is crucial here. Philosophy cannot
be grounded on individualized predilections or personal preferences.
Only what can and should be seen to make sense for anyone in the cir-
cumstances will carry philosophical weight.
Why is it that philosophy pivots on reasoned inquiry? The answer
is that we are homo sapiens, a rational animal. We do not want just
answers to our questions, but answers that can satisfy the demands of
our intelligence—answers that we can in good conscience regard as
appropriate, as tenable and defensible. We are not content with an-
swers people would like to have (psychologism) nor with answers that
are theoretically available (possibility mongering). What we want is
cogent guidance regarding which answers to adopt—which conten-
tions are correct or at any rate plausible. And reason affords our prime
standard in this regard.
A further key procedural requisite of philosophizing lies in an en-
gagement with the tradition. The philosopher must take some account
of the deliberations of his predecessors of days past and his colleagues
of the contemporary scene. To qualify as lying within this field, his
discussions must have some enmeshment within the wider discussion-
setting of the field.
Granted, agreement on this point has not been universal. Basically
three positions that have been taken with regard to the relationship be-
tween philosophy and its history:

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 Nicholas Rescher • The Nature of Philosophy 4

1. There is no real difference here. The two are coordinated be-

cause philosophy is constituted by its own history. To philoso-
phize is simply to consider the history of philosophy in a certain
perspective.

2. The linking of philosophy has no more to do with philosophy as

such then the history of chemistry (say) has to do with chemistry
as such. Any branch of inquiry is best constituted by its present
condition—as far as we can ever tell. For sure, any given state of
the art in inquiry emerges from its predecessors—no doubt the
past plays a developmentally productive role here—but the actu-
al field is best characterized by its present condition and the past
is substantively irrelevant. In inquiring where you geographical-
ly are how you got there is doctrinally irrelevant.

3. The history of philosophy is hermeneutically crucial for philoso-

phizing. It is an indispensably useful resource for philosophical
work. For determining what position one should take on a philo-
sophical issue requires knowing what positions one can take and
the history of philosophy is an immensely useful resources
here—a treasure house of ideas and possibilities.

In comparing these it deserves note that the third, middle-of-the-road

position—which sees the history of the subject as neither coordinative
for nor yet irrelevant to it—appears to be the most plausible. And
there is good reason why this should be so.
As already noted above, what marks a question as philosophical—
as belonging to this particular discipline (rather than, say chemistry or
horticulture)? This is obvious with respect to those “big questions”
themselves. And as to other philosophical questions, this emerges
from convolutions of means-ends connectivity: we need answers to
these questions whose concerns we need to address those questions …
and so on until we return to those big questions themselves. And just
this means-ends connectivity is the dialectic that the history of philos-
ophy traces out over the ages.1
But why don’t philosophers agree on the issues? The story here is
long and complicated. But the short version lies in a difference in pri-

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orities. The issues of philosophy are convoluted thought-traps and

there are different—and circumstantially cogent—ways of resolving
them.2 Priorities reflect experiential circumstances. And even as in in-
ductive reasoning our conclusions must (rationally) reflect the state of
the evidence, so in philosophy our positions must (rationally) reflect
the range and substance of our experience.
In giving structure to their thought philosophers are allegiant to the
“data” of their subject: the findings of science, the common sense
facts of life, the cognitions of their culture-context, the fabric of their
personal experience, the ideas of their predecessors. In addressing
their questions, they endeavor to construct a systematic structure that
accommodates the bearing of this mass of material. The resulting
problem is like the constructive of a jigsaw puzzle with extra pieces—
the materials being so profuse and decisive that all the pieces simply
cannot be fitted in. Some must be sacrificed to others. The resulting
situation is aporetic, an apory being a group of individually plausibly
but collectively inconsistent beliefs. Thus consider an historical ex-
ample drawn from the Greek theory of virtue:

1. If virtuous action does not produce happiness (pleasure) then it

is motivationally impotent and generally pointless.

2. Virtue in action is eminently pointful and should provide a pow-

erfully motivating incentive.

3. Virtuous action does not always—and perhaps not even gener-

ally—produce happiness (pleasure).

It is clearly impossible—on grounds of mere logic alone—to maintain

this family of contentions. At least one member of the group must be
abandoned.
But of course if we are going to be sensible about it we will be un-
der the rational obligation to provide some sort of account—some ra-
tionale—to justify this step whatever particular exit from inconsisten-
cy we adopt will have to be accompanied by a story of science and
that justifies this step.

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 Nicholas Rescher • The Nature of Philosophy 6

And so with the preceding virtue illustration we face the choice

among the following alternatives:

1-Abandonment: Maintain that virtue has substantial worth quite on

its own account even if it does not produce happiness or pleasure
(Stoicism, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius).

2-Abandonment: Dismiss virtue as ultimately unfounded and unra-

tionalizable, viewing morality as merely a matter of the customs
of the country (Sextus Empiricus) or the will of the rulers (Pla-
to’s Thrasymachus).

3-Abandonment: Insist that virtuous action does indeed always

yield happiness or pleasure—at any rate to the right-minded.
Virtuous action is inherently pleasure-producing for fully ra-
tional agents, so that the virtue and happiness are inseparably in-
terconnected (Plato, the Epicureans).

When an apory confronts us, a forced choice among the propositions

involved becomes unavoidable. We cannot maintain the status quo but
must, one way or another, “take a position”—some particular thesis
must be abandoned as it stands.
In such cases there is always a physicality of avenues to consisten-
cy restoration. And with different evaluations and priorities reflecting
different courses of personal experience, there cannot but be different
ways of proceeding—each of them leading to different morals of doc-
trinal commitment.
It emerges from this perspective that the history of philosophy is a
crucial resource for the work of philosophizing (1) because it serves to
define the questions at issue since the question agenda of the present is
formed and concretized by the discussions of the past, and (2) because
it provides the working philosopher with the concepts, ideas, and lines
of reasoning that are indispensable resources for his own work. After
all, for over two and one-half millennia philosophers have reasoned,
speculated, and argued about the “big issues” of the field. The best
minds of the race have canvassed the issues from top to bottom. They
have created a deposit of thought that our present-day discussions

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cannot defensibly put aside. After all, almost every inch of the ground
has been gone over time and again. To ignore the history of the sub-
ject is to commit oneself to re-making the wheel—and in doing this
we will generally manage to produce a less perfect wheel than was al-
ready there. The past efforts of its practitioners being grist to the mill
of our present-day philosophizing that we can neglect only at our own
detriment and loss.
And so, returning to our main line of thought, we note that philoso-
phizing involves four definitive factors:

• A thematic engagement with “the big issues”.

• A Methodology of rational substantiation.

• A normative erotetic concern not just for possible answers but

for good answers to the questions of the field.

• An Historical contextualization of the issues through interaction

with the field of philosophical discourse as it has unfolded over
the ages.

But what now of the thinker who says “It is all very well to say that
this is the sort of thing that philosophers have traditionally been
about? But I just don’t want to play the traditional game.” This calls
for the following response: “You are a free being. No-one is going to
force you to do philosophy (as standardly understood). There are lots
of other things to do: journalism, sociology, mathematics, etc. But if
you want to be a philosopher, then this is the sort of venture you have
to take in hand because it is just this that defines the nature of the en-
terprise at issue. To say that people should call philosophy something
else is much like saying that they should call cold cuts something
else.”
And it deserves note that the big stars of the philosophical firma-
ment have generally scored well with regards to those four factors.
Granted, some thinkers widely accounted among philosophers have
fallen drastically short on one or another of these respects. And some
have fallen significantly short in all several respects as for example,

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Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Ayn Rand. There are three possible reactions

here

• To reject the traditionalistic account of philosophy as mistaken.

• To see these people as simply misclassified—as doing interest-

ing things alright but things that don’t qualify their thought as
strictly speaking philosophical.

• To regard qualifying as a philosopher as a matter of degree (of

more or less) and to categorize these people as only remotely or
marginally qualified accounted as philosophers.

The question comes down to a choice among alternatives. As these

people are to be seen as genuine but nontraditionary philosophers, as
genuine but nontypical philosophers, or as thinkers who are nonphi-
losophers engaged in some different albeit remotely related enterprise.
This question poses a choice so heavily involved with matters of taste
and preference rather than reason that in the end it cannot itself qualify
as a philosophical question in the sense presently at issue. And it is
just this consideration that suggests those marginal figures to be en-
gaging in philosophical rhetoric rather than philosophizing proper.
After all, the question of the nature of philosophy—of what sort of
activity can count as philosophizing—is not in the end a philosophical
question as much as a lexicographical one, and the ground rules of de-
termining meaning through usage principles here as much as else-
where. The philosopher is free to write and think as he pleases. But he
is not in control of whether the products of his brain are to be charac-
terized as philosophical any more than then the shoemaker or the ago-
nist would be in analogous circumstances.
However, the question of whether a discussion qualifies as good
philosophizing is something else again. It indeed is a philosophical
question. One man’s weird eccentric and extreme position is another’s
innovative and illuminating insight. And for some, the value of an in-
telligent position lies exactly in its departure from well-grounded fa-
miliar orthodoxy.

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9 ON THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY

Display 1

Era-Comparable
Eccentrics Traditionalists

F. Nietzsche (11.3) J. S. Mill (4.7)

K. Popper (2.1) R. Carnap (0.4)

Ayn Rand (8.5) W. V. Quine (0.4)

J. Derrida (4.3) H. Gadamer (0.6)

L Wittgenstein (5.0) E. Casserer (0.7)

B. Russell (7.7) E. Husserl (3.1)

NOTE: the numbers indicate Google scores (in millions) as of August, 2011.

Just this, so Karl Popper taught that eccentricity marks the signifi-
cance of scientific discovery. As he saw it, scientific progress is a mat-
ter of conjecture and refutation—and the wilder the conjecture by pre-
vailing standards—the greater (so long as it remains refuted) is its
cognitive value.
And it seems that for many the same principle is operative in phi-
losophy (where, of course, refutation is more difficult to manage). For
such people anything that approaches what is frequently acceptable
and common-sensical is anathema. Not just in decoration but in doc-
trine. They yearn for what is odd, unfamiliar, out-of-the-way.
The ironic fact is that the overall response to the work of the eccen-
trics and the impact they make through the scope of their reception
widely outruns and outranks that of their more orthodox and tradition-
alist compeers. This all too seldom acknowledged fact is vividly
brought to light by citation statistics. To all appearances, Conditional-
ists have to reckon on a statistical bias here.
It is in this context to draw the contrast between the professionals
and the amateurs, the practitioners and the interested bystanders, with
the professoriate of the academic profession as a first-approximation

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to the former. Clearly, the former, the professional practitioners, are

more conservative in favoring the plausible-seeming and well-
entrenched positions, although the eccentrics also have a following
among the professionals. Nevertheless the fact is that on the whole the
eccentrics dominate in popularity and that they do so in large measure
owing to their popularity among the nonprofessionals and despite their
unpopularity among many professionals who would often—without
hesitation—decline to see them as colleagues and fellow practitioners
at all. For those traditionalistic professionals the greater impact of the
eccentrics is virtually unintelligible and thoroughly frustrating.
Nevertheless the fact remains that if one makes the presumption
that professional dedication is an index of competence, one cannot
avoid the conclusion that it would be problematic and questionable
that in philosophical matters wide interest and extensive preoccupa-
tion can serve as an index of merit.

NOTES
1
For further details on this dialectical process see the present author’s The Strife of
Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).
2
The author’s The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1985) is dedicated to these issues.

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