“ The wise man does not treasure, and offering to others, he becomes rich. The path of heaven benefits and does not harm. The rule of the sage is to act without fighting. The Book of Tao, Chapter 81”
Adolfo Carpio says that contrary to what happens to science, in the history of philosophy, it would not be reasonable to speak of progressive knowledge. Indeed, nothing seems to allow us to state with broad certainty that Plato was definitively overtaken by Descartes, for example. This means that, while it is necessary to understand each philosopher within the framework of the time to which he belonged, studying the work of ancient thinkers does not represent an anachronism comparable to that manifested in other areas of knowledge. Notable philosophers have left a legacy whose dimension transcends, in some way, the era in which they shone. Similar to the artist, the work of a philosopher has universal value. A philosophical system can be a theoretical framework, suggestion, provocation, irony, poetry and without a doubt also, an inexhaustible source of inspiration to take up those questions that have come over again and again since man awakened to the mystery of consciousness.
Tell me all this, muses who dwell in the Olympic dwellings, beginning from the beginning; and tell me what was first of all.
Hesiod, 700 BC
When man began to liberate himself from the vital demands that overwhelmed his existence in an exclusionary way, that is, food, housing or primitive social organization, and when elementary superstitions ceased to consign his possibility of discernment to a limited space, man first found himself before the possibility to raise your gaze beyond the superficiality of the immediate.
The totality, the depth, the perception of a distant horizon, ignited in human understanding the spark of amazement. Because consciousness awoke astonished at the wonder of the world. And with this dawn, the essential questions, formulated for the first time, would be the starting point for the birth of philosophical thought.
... it might happen that God wanted me to deceive me how many times I add two plus three, or when I list the sides of a square. Discards
In the light of amazement, philosophical knowledge emerges, but once it is reached, doubt appears. The abundant philosophical systems, disagreement, contradiction only seem to speak of fragility or even the impossibility of achieving knowledge. The philosopher, predictably, feels obliged to doubt even the same capacity to know and understand reality.
Don't the senses give us vague information? Can't our finger be bigger than the sun itself if we are only guided by sensitive impressions? And even solving the sensory traps... Can't we perhaps be wrong following the simplest of reasoning? Who guarantees a foolproof reason? And besides... couldn't our reasoning be a limitation in itself at the mercy of our own humanity?
... I must die, I must suffer, I must fight, I am subjected to chance, I inevitably get entangled in guilt. Jaspers
And in doubt, man, he replifts upon himself. It will no longer be directed to the world but to the depths of its existence. Then, the philosopher becomes tragically and inexorably aware of the limit implied by his own humanity.
Philosophical reflection discovers that there are situations beyond which it is useless to move forward. Man lacks the capacity to change the constitutive of his existence. This limit speaks clearly of human finitude, of that frontier from which it cannot escape... as expressed by the bright Socratic confession: I only know that I do not know anything.
Similarities and differences between the concepts of socialism, communism and anarchism.
Observations on the notion of freedom in the philosophy of ancient Greece.
What is pantheism? Some considerations on this philosophical perspective in which God and the world are integrated into a monist vision of reality.
What is desire? A drive that irretrievably tilts us towards an irrational goal, or perhaps an internal necessity deliberately chosen rational negotiation through? For some, desire is the cause of suffering itself and its annihilation, the secret of happiness. For others, desire gives meaning to life and is mobile of inspiration and productivity.
