In our search for realness, in Deep Philosophy we explore fundamental issues of life and reality. We work, in other words, with philosophical ideas. But philosophy, so it seems, is abstract and remote, so how can it bring us closer to reality?
The answer is that we should distinguish between philosophical IDEAS and philosophical THEORIES. Theories are indeed remote, because they are “about” reality – they look at reality from a distance. But as Deep Philosophers, philosophical ideas interest us not as theories but as networks of meanings, or what we call “voices.” To see this, let us look at the big picture of philosophy.
Philosophy (in the West) is a long and rich tradition which cannot be captured in a simple definition. Nevertheless, if we look at what Western philosophers have been doing throughout history, we find four important common characteristics: First, all Western philosophers investigated fundamental issues of life and reality. Second, they did so by trying (not always successfully) to compose ideas that would shed light on these issues. Third, their investigations were based on the powers of the mind (logical analysis, common sense, intuition, introspection, etc.), as opposed to faith on the one hand, and empirical observations or experiments on the other hand. Fourth, they developed these ideas in dialogue with previous philosophers.
These four characteristics apply to virtually every philosopher in the history of Western philosophy. Those thinkers who diverged from them, are not regarded as philosophers, and are not part of the philosophical tradition.
Like all philosophers, in Deep Philosophy we use ideas and the powers of our mind to explore the foundation of life and reality. We are, therefore, part of the philosophical tradition. But we occupy a special place in it: Whereas most philosophers attempted to explore reality by constructing THEORIES ABOUT it, for us Deep Philosophers “theorizing-about” is not satisfactory. Our thirst for realness is not satisfied by abstract theories which are “about” reality and which “describe” or “represent” it. We want to get in touch with reality, to be moved and inspired by it. Therefore, when we work with philosophical ideas or texts, we are not interested in them as theories, even if the writers originally intended them to be theories.
Ideas are not necessarily theories. A network of ideas MAY be a theory (as opposed to a poem, for example), but only if it serves us as a representation of something, if it gives to us a “picture” of a certain reality. A theory of atoms, for example, functions to represent the structure of material objects, and a psychological theory of emotions tells us about how people feel.
But philosophical ideas do not have to function in this way. They can connect us to reality more directly, not by representing some external reality, but by making reality itself (or an aspect of it) appear in our minds. After all, reality is already in us – we are part of it, like a wave in the ocean. Ideas can present in our mind what is already in us, just as the movements of the ocean are present in a wave. Metaphorically, ideas can give us not just a copy of the original thing but the original thing itself, not the musical booklet of a concert but the real sounds of music. Ideas can make reality “speak” in us; they carry its original voices.
The “voices” (or meanings) which ideas carry are not abstractions; they are very real – they are reality itself as it “speaks” in us, like the movements of the ocean as it resonates in a wave. Ideas become abstractions only if we think-ABOUT them, if we turn them into objects of thought, into a theory for example. But voices in themselves – not voices-objectified but voices as they live in us before we start thinking about them and objectifying them – are the building-blocks of our world. They are the meanings that compose our world, the “sounds” that compose the “music” of our life.
Saying that a “voice” (or meaning) is real does not mean that you can touch it like you touch a rock or a tree – a voice is not a physical object, not an objectified reality, not an object INSIDE our world. Voices are the pre-condition of any object of thought, the root of anything we experience, the “language” of our life-story, the basic texture of our world.
This is why we work with philosophical ideas, and why we use texts that are philosophical. Non-philosophical texts – scientific texts, political analyses, news, novels, gossip – are always about specific objects (people, events, facts, countries, atoms and molecules, etc.), and objects cannot appear inside us in the same way that a meaning can. Objects are accessible to us only as objects of thought. Philosophy, in contrast, contains the most general and fundamental ideas beyond any specific object-of-thought, and such ideas allow us to relate to their pre-objectified meanings. They allow us, in other words, to listen to the voices of our reality – if we only learn how to listen without objectification, without thinking-about.
Thus, when we contemplate on a philosophical idea, the pre-objectified voices that it carries appear within us in their full realness and overpowering presence. Because “voices” can be present within us like no object can, and their realness can resonate in us beyond the limits of our intellectual thinking, beyond our thinking-about, in the whole of our being. When we contemplate on philosophical ideas, the voices of reality are incarnated in our Inner Depth.