FIVE PHILOSOPHY LECTURES
(Outside back cover)
Philosophy —Xavier Zubiri (1898-1983) wrote— adopts many diverse structures and can be understood as a doctrine for living or as a knowledge. Five Philosophy Lectures presents to us the structural idea and the formal object upon which that kind of knowledge is concerned in the works of five thinkers: being, for Aristotle; the phenomenal object, for Kant; the scientific fact, for Comte; the immediate datum of conscience for Bergson; and the pure essence of conscience, for Husserl. While these philosophers do not say the same things, they do talk about the same thing, about the object and the knowledge about it. In the introduction to this pocket edition Zubiri pointed out that “these pages constitute a fragment of what an introduction to philosophy might be”, since “exposing the stepping march of the very idea of philosophy” is one of the ways to do philosophy. Other works by Zubiri published by Alianza Editorial are: “Sentient Intelligence” (a trilogy of “Intelligence and Reality”, “Intelligence and Logos”, and “Intelligence and Reason”), “Man and God”, “On Essence”, “On Man”, “Nature, History, God”, “Dynamic Structure of Reality”, “On Sentiment and Volition”, and “The Philosopical Problem of the History of Religions”.
XAVIER ZUBIRI
FIVE PHILOSOPHY LECTURES
Translated by Joaquín A. Redondo, M.E., M.A. (Phil.)
(From the Spanish edition of Cinco lecciones de filosofía,
Alianza Editorial, Madrid, Spain, 1994)
(Numbers in braces “{ }” refer
to the pagination of the above Spanish edition,1994)
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
-- Under construction --
{ i }
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
These pages constitute a fragment of what an introduction to philosophy might be. Among the several ways to understand an introduction to philosophy, there certainly is one. Namely, to expose the stepping march of the very idea of philosophy. It would not be the case of just gathering the different definitions of philosophy that have been provided, but to try to clarify the very structure of the philosophy that was launched. To do this I have chosen five authors. As I mention at the beginning of the book, this selection is absolutely arbitrary and in addition very incomplete. Arbitrary, because it does not follow a leading thread hidden in the depth of the mentioned authors. The selection is so arbitrary that I might have chosen other philosophers. And in this sense besides being arbitrary, this selection is, of course, incomplete. An adequate exposition should actually cover many other thinkers. Actually, in one of my other seminars I have attempted to add four more to the five authors mentioned in this book: St. Thomas, Descartes, Leibniz and Hegel. Pehaps some day I may decide to publish these studies. {ii}
It is the case, then, of five philosophy lectures, not in the sense of five philosophical themes, but of five lectures on the very idea of philosophy. On one side we have the concepts and issues that constitute the content of a philosophy, and on the other we have something quite different, such as the structural idea of that very philosophy. They are so different that the same concepts and indeed the same judgments and reasoning can be perfectly common in philosophies that have quite different structures. The same occurs in other scientific fields, for example, in physics. From the time of the Greek up to Descartes, Leibniz and Newton there are concepts that reappear constantly, for example, force, momentum, etc. However, this has not been an obstacle to the development of an essential change in physics. In the whole of physics prior to Galileo, nature is considered to be a system of substantial forms acting as principles of operation. On the other hand, for Galileo, as he literally tells us, the great book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, which has an alphabet composed of triangles, circles, and other geometric figures. With this, Galileo had the clear idea that, regardless of the usual catalog of concepts used in physics, he had initiated a Nuova Scienza, a new science. And that is our physics. Indeed, the same thing happens in philosophy. For example, the idea of substance and accident is common to Aristotle and Kant. However, the structural idea of philosophy is radically different in them. The same idea of “act” has been common to Aristotle and Hegel in spite of the fact that their philosophies are somewhat opposed to each other.
Consequently, in this study I am primarily concerned with the idea of philosophy. Philosophy, above all, has a horizon of intelligibility. Actually, in European philosophy we have had two horizons. One was the horizon of Greek philosophy: motion, change. All of Greek philosophy is built upon the fact, at first sight quite surprising, that things truly are, but somehow they change. And reciprocally, that every change is determined by what something truly is. Differing from this horizon, from Christianity onwards, quite a different horizon is constituted. What is truly surprising now is not that things are and may change, but the fact that there may be things at all: that is {iii} the horizon of nothingness. Things are a challenge to nothingness. It is a horizon determined by the idea of creation. The whole history of European post-Hellenic philosophy from St. Augustine to Hegel is nothing but a metaphysics of nothingness; consequently it moves within the horizon of creation. In this sense, it is a philosophy that is not pure philosophy. Let us put it clearly and precisely. Motion and nothingness, these are the two horizons of European philosophy.
But philosophy, besides a horizon, has a structure. Within the confines of the same horizon philosophy can adopt, and in fact has adopted, quite diverse structures. First, philosophy can be understood as a way of living. That is, for example, the case of the Cynics and the Cyrenaics and in many respects the case of Stoicism itself. To live philosophically is what we still say today, for example, when we speak of someone who takes life quite philosophically. As a way of life, philosophy obviously has its own structure. Second, philosophy can be understood not as a way of life, but as a doctrine for living. Problems like the meaning of life belong to this concept of philosophy. This doctrine is also a philosophical structure. It is what towards the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX was called “philosophy of life” (Lebensphilosophie). Dilthey is not quite alien to this concept. Finally, philosophy understood as a knowledge of things (in the widest sense of the term) with man himself and his life included. Philosophy as knowledge of things is what this book will cover. As knowledge of things, each of the different philosophies studied here has its own structure. The structure of philosophy as knowledge of things is not the same in the five philosophers we are going to study.
As knowledge, philosophy involves the determination of its own proper formal object and “at one and the same time” the determination of the very form of knowing. For Aristotle the object of philosophy is being; for Kant the phenomenal object; for Comte the object of philosophy is the {iv} scientific fact; for Bergson the immediate data of conscience, the durée; for Dilthey the object of philosophy is life; for Husserl the object of philosophy is the pure essence of conscience, the phenomenic essence; for Heidegger the object of philosophy is that which is revealed in my temporal existence, for him that is what being is. And obviously, the form of the knowledge of being does not have the same structure than the form of the knowledge of phenomena or durée, etc.
It is not my purpose, as I mention in my book, to argue with these different structural conceptivations of philosophy. My interest has only been to present them. In this exposition something quite disconcerting might be discovered at first sight. It seems, and factually it is so, that these philosophies are not addressing the same thing. That is what I mean when I say that the concept of philosophy is not univocal. Is it the case then of a concept more or less equivocal? Evidently no, because these philosophers, although they do not say the same things, however, they all talk about the same thing. About what? Not about a concept of philosophy, but about the stepping march of real knowledge. Of a knowledge that is constitutively searching itself both in terms of its object and in terms of the type of its knowledge. It is a knowledge intellectively sensed as indispensable, but impossible to define in advance. That it is basically a “knowledge that is being searched for” (zetouméne epistéme) was actually the primary formulation with which Aristotle qualified philosophy. Six or seven centuries later St. Augustine wrote “let us search like those who have not yet found search, and let us find like those who have yet to search find”.
Xavier Zubiri
Fuenterrabía, August 1980.
PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION
These pages are the text of the lectures given during this last spring season on March 7, 14, 21, 28 and April 4, 1963, organized by the Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones (Society for Research and Publications). They have an elementary characteristic merely expository and educational. I refrained in them from any critical discussions or reflection. Therefore, they do not constitute a book. However, many individuals manifested to me their desire to have the text available, believing it could provide them with a useful informative and guiding service. For that reason I decided to publish them and thus, it is aimed exclusively for that function. My purpose was to to publish these lectures simply in a typewritten form; but technical difficulties forced the editors to use the printing press. However, that does not alter the charactristics and destination of this publication.
The text belongs to the lectures indicated. I have only introduced two small modifications. One, the unavoidable adaptation from the oral stile to the written style in some of the passages. In other cases, in order to keep the length of the lecture to one hour I had to eliminate some details of my original text. I have decided to reincorporate them to the present text. With this the redaction appears to be somewhat irregular, however, given the character of this publication I decided it does not really constitute a problem at all.
In order to provide some orientation to those attending the lectures, I recommended the reading of some brief passages from the philosophers I was going to discuss. The list follows.
Lecture 1. Aristotle, the first two Chapters of the first book of Metaphysics.
Lecture 2. Kant, the prologue to the second edition of Critique of Pure Reason.
Lecture 3. Comte, the first two lectures of the first volume of Cours de Philosophie positive.
Lecture 4. Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, included in a collection of his works in a volume entitled La pensée et le mouvant.
Lecture 5. Husserl, Philosophy as a strict science. Dilthey, The essence of philosophy. Heidegger, What is metaphysics.
There is a Spanish translation of all these texts, except perhaps the one by Comte.
Xavier Zubiri
Madrid, 1963