These distinctions and modes of action include and involve philosophical knowledge in the everyday mode. For example, the distinction between fact and fiction is actually made even by uneducated persons, though not very clearly and accurately; and these same persons implicitly accept the principle of contradiction in all their thinking and doing. Furthermore, we see that many persons know, with everyday or even refined knowledge, that there is a God, but they are unable to prove it in any organized way. Is it not enough to know that there is a God without being able to prove it? Can we not rest satisfied with our everyday and our refined knowledge of the real (supported and enlarged by faith) and let it go at that? It is true that not everybody needs to have philosophical knowledge in an organized way, just as not everybody needs to know higher mathematics. But suppose no one explicitly knew the philosophy of being. The probable result would be the acceptance of a large amount of error and superstition by many people. For everyday and refined knowledges contain a greater or smaller percentage of error, and they are incomplete. They contain no safeguards against error; they do not enable a person to meet difficulties and objections. Thus, the common good requires that some of those who can learn philosophy do so. Hence, a person who is trying to become an educated man or woman and who consequently will meet with erroneous philosophical positions both in his reading and in his contacts with other people needs for his own sake as well as that of society to know at least the essentials of philosophy. Intellectual ability is a responsibility as well as a gift.
There is a personal advantage in the study of philosophy. A person cannot be mature and confident without an organized and unified outlook on life. A person who is highly educated only in certain specialized areas finds that the world for him is broken up piecemeal. How is he to organize and master this multiplicity? If he attempts an organization by means of limited principles—limited principles are all that can be found from a specialized (that is, partial) point of view—something will have to be left out. He can organize and order all his knowledge and all the aspects and parts of the world that confront him only from the point of view of, and by means of the principles discovered in, his study of philosophy.
But why must I in particular organize my outlook on life? Why must I engage in these very subtle investigations about things apparently remote from everyday life? Because, ultimately, I am a man and I want to be fully a man. A man is an animal, and so he does have needs and interests directed to the sustenance and enhancement of his bodily life. This is his biological sphere of activities, and it is to some extent the basic condition of all other activities. Man is also a gregarious animal, and enjoys activities with others—the social sphere. But he is a special kind of animal, and not merely because of the moral and religious dimensions of his activities. (This dimension not only extends beyond all the others but also permeates them all, and so is more than a part of his activities alongside other parts.) Man is also an intellectual animal. Almost as soon as he can talk, he is asking “What?” and “Why?” All his life, he wants to know what is going on and why. True enough, most people let the preoccupations of biological life limit their questions to what is immediately practical, in the narrow sense of what is “useful.” But man remains a questioning animal; and in itself this tendency to question is not limited to a particular set of questions, to a particular class of things. It is open to literally everything and in its deepest reality. It has been well said that “man is a being who questions being”—and primarily perhaps his own being.
Our contemporary culture both reinforces this tendency and turns aside from it. On the other hand, we are constantly questioning ourselves and our world. Our art and our literature are the most introspective; even common conversation turns on the hidden feelings and motives of ourselves and others; world problems make us question our common values, and our ways of attempting to realize them. On the other hand, this very questioning is sophisticated and fearful—it questions with more than half a mind that our analysis is not a revelation of the truth and with somewhat of a fear of the answers we might find if we push the question far enough. At the same time, we are surrounded with more opportunities for distraction than any other civilization has offered, and so it requires a great effort to continue serious questioning in an organized way.
But to satisfy the profound needs which man has, the intellectual sphere of his activities must be enlarged. What he is, what the world is which not only surrounds him and supports him, but also influences him—these are questions which sooner or later come to a reflective person. Consequently, to reach the perfection of his rationality, a person must come to grips with the ultimate questions which are asked in philosophy.
~George P. Klubertanz, S.J., Introduction to the Philosophy of Being (Second Edition, 1963)
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