Philosophy as calling

Abstract

Philosophy comes to us humans as an appeal to search for wisdom, understanding, insight and knowledge. All humans experience this. It is not so much a human creation like the sciences, but much rather a gift to humans to which they must respond. This calling does not come from above or beyond, but from inside ourselves. It is in a very fundamental way a call to exercise the most distinguished quality we possess, namely thinking. It is a call to think properly, adequately, responsibly, inventively, and not only critically. Pascal stated: “Let us try our best to think well; that is the principle of morality.” The philosopher is required and called upon to encourage thinking, to identify flaws in thinking, to protest or revolt against deliberate distortions in thinking, to identify gaps in mental activity and to identify traces of philosophy and the philosophical wherever they appear or may appear. The philosophers Hegel, Deleuze and Prigogine serve as examples. This calling is irresistible and inexhaustible. It haunts us wherever we are and in whatever we do. The philosophic mind can never stop philosophising. Gadamer stated: Not from transcendental revelation, but out of the power of deepening, and the spiritualization of the own earthly-humanly being, the road to salvation opens up.