Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy

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.This is a great, practical and user friendly book in the basics of what philosophy is, the history of philosophy which includes the idea of the axial age, the difference between absolute and relative knowledge, the idea of nonknowledge and the connection of philosophy with science.Jaspers, like Plato, tells us that philosophy is the direction we take, the idea of the whole picture. While science is the measurable analysis and empirical observation, philosophy is the direction behind such, the idea of why we are learning the what. This is very much like Plato's Meno, where Socrates and Meno decide that virtue is beyond knowledge and is instead the direction of opinion, or as Jaspers calls it "nonknowledge."On page 127, Jaspers writes:"By technically applying my knowledge I can act outwardly but nonknowledge makes possible an inner action by which I transform myself. This is another and deeper kind of thought; it is not detached from being and oriented toward an object but is a process of my innermost self, in which though and being become identical. Measured by outward, technical power, this thought of inner action is as nothing, it is no applied knowledge that can be possessed, it cannot be fashioned according to plan and purpose; it is an authentic illumination and growth into being."Philosophy must reside in uncertainty, waywardness towards the unknown, never absolute like science. On page 129,"Philosophy must even leave the possibility of full communication in uncertainty, though it lives by faith in communication and stakes everything on communication. We can believe in it but not know it. To believe that we possess it is to have lost it."We must have philosophy to direct our science (virtue) and remove us froe scientific superstition and we must have science to have substance to our philosophy and remove us from philosophical superstition.Pages 159-160:"Any philosopher who is not trained in a scientific discipline and who fails to keep his scientific interests constantly alive will inevitably bungle and stumble and mistake uncritical rough drafts for definitive knowledge. Unless an idea is submitted to the coldly dispassionate test of scientific inquiry, it is rapidly consumed in the fire of emotions and passions, or else it withers into a dry and narrow fanaticism . . . rejecting superstitious belief in science as well as contempt of science, philosophy grants its unconditional recognition to modern science."Jasper ends his book with a short outline on the major thinkers and writers in philosophy and our personal decision of who to study to build up our knowledge. But can virtue be taught? He endorses what an old counsel to study Plato and Kant since they cover all the essentials. An overall good read, a substantial subject in a modern society devoid of substance and profound meaning."Today independence seems to be silently disappearing beneath the inundation of all life by the typical, the habitual, the unquestioned commonplace." - 1954,

This book originated from 12 radio talks given by Karl Jaspers, right after World War II. It is written in an extremely lucid and direct manner, and it is more of an introduction to the art, or process, of philosophising rather than to philosophy itself as a discipline. In this book existential philosophy, the brand of philosophy so successfuly cultivated by Jaspers, is described, so to speak, "from inside". There is hardly any analysis of philosophical terms, but rather a presentation of the inner process of approach to the metaphysical questions confronting the individual person. Jaspers belongs to the great idealist tradition, initiated by Plato, developed further by the medieval schoolmen, and lastly by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Soeren Kirekegaard and others. According to Jaspers the core-meaning of man's identity is his sense of freedom. Freedom is presented as an immediate datum of consciousness, as that part of man's personality which "evades all object knowledge but is always present in him as a potentiality". Irrespective of what is omitted, this book offers a subject-matter of impeccable honesty and undiluted spirituality. This is a great book superbly well written. Also, the translation by Ralph Manheim is quite masterly. It is an out and out example of what every translation should actually be: a representation in another language of the meaning and style of the original text.