Reflection On The History Of Western Philosophy

In the term philosophy (love of wisdom), I find that the word “wisdom” is a little incomprehensible. Perhaps, we could define the word by breaking up its term to “wise” and “wiser”. The phrase “make a wise decision” is comparative. What is meant here is that one should make a “wiser” decision than the other. If we say “one year older, one year wiser” we mean to say “I am wiser than I was yesterday” or “wiser than who I was previously”. These two phrases aim to show how comparative the word “wiser” can be. We are all philosophers in the grand scheme of things. We can think of philosophy as an evaluation or interpretation of what is important and meaningful in life.

Every time we think analytically about anything, we are trying to come to the more logical and practical decision, because we have this desire to be wise and are inclined to detest foolishness. We want to be the person who can bring light to what our implicit beliefs are, make assumptions about the world around us, ourselves and our values. However, we have to note that those people generally labelled Philosophers are commonly known to be the “wise men”, as their lives revolve around thinking analytically. Through this philosophy, it seems that everyone can be a philosopher, but the reality is that it is only achieved systemically. Opinions of a true philosopher have to be inspected, scrutinised and organised into a meaningful and coherent system of views. Social philosophers, anthropologists, existentialists, pragmatists, and even analysers of philosophy, are specialists in their field. We call them specialists only because they are limited to what they have knowledge of. The most intelligent person is limited by time, capacity, and application of acquiring and applying his knowledge.

There is not one human being on Earth who can ever know everything in its entirety, as no one is ever gifted with that amount of understanding. I believe that these philosophers appear as though they are wiser than most of us, perhaps having spent their entire lives disputing or interpreting matters. After all, the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates did claim that he was the wisest of them all. So, can we speculate that he has discovered any universal truth, that applies to all places and all things, that none of us today would dare to claim so? Is it not true that philosophers can only deal with the known reality. Eventually as things progress, and new discoveries are made, together with circumstances changing, different factors would inevitably need to be considered and the outcome of what was known will definitely change. Let us consider Plato’s philosophy, despite his brilliance, his ideologies were quickly replaced by his student Aristotle – and his philosophies were made obsolete by his very own student. Hence, we can say that philosophies come and go, they can never last a life time. Socrates dedicated his life to the love of wisdom. He said “An unexamined life is not worth living”. The Socratic method is pretty straight forward. By removing that which is evidently untrue, one could only be left with what was true. However, we find that not everything was True. With a vast amount of limitations posed on every discussion, it seems that everything has a possibility to be contradicted. It is merely about realising your own ignorance, and knowing that whatever you already know is meaningless. One of his most famous statements is “the only thing I know is that I know nothing”. This statement probably makes him one of the wisest philosophers in the Western history. His wisdom of which that he acknowledges how he knows nothing. To keep searching for True Wisdom would only lead us to a lifetime of constant reminders of our own ignorance.

However, this search would lead us to a path that sheds light on how humans have this amazing ability to attain such a high level of wisdom. This would eventually allow us to analyse how our Creator is the only One that can truly be the All-Knowing and the Most-Wise. We have Allah (swt) and His revelation which is the epitome of wisdom. Hence, I find the strong need to continuously seek knowledge of what God has revealed to us human beings – for us to understand and apply it to this ever changing world we live in. Ignoring God’s guidance can only jeopardise our purpose on this Earth, causing us to bring innovation to our religion. As a Muslim, I have been blessed with clarity of the truth, with clear revelation from God, the only wise one. The way for Muslims to journey back to their Creator is to seek knowledge of the revelation. This is how we are made to function, to think analytically; understanding the revelation in the context of life. We have to constantly seek the perfection of God’s generosity and wisdom for this is the true path of a Muslim.