Monday, January 27, 2025

Living Wisely

Philosophy of life is again the subject, taken from the column in the Catholic Peace Weekly. Philosophy literally means Love of Wisdom." Philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other.

The ancient Greeks called the highest activity of the human mind wisdom. To them, wisdom meant theoretical knowledge encompassing theory and practice and practical knowledge as practical virtues directly related to life, enabling true belief or knowledge.

Everyone thinks and acts based on their own beliefs. When these beliefs do not correspond to truth or facts, they become presumptions and falsehoods. Therefore, we must consider whether our beliefs are true or desirable before acting. The philosophy of loving wisdom is a journey of thought that finds the basis for true and desirable beliefs in life. Today, philosophical counseling as a philosophical practice is a new discipline that pursues wisdom of life, not stopping at theoretical knowledge, through ‘philosophizing’ (using verbs rather than nouns to emphasize action rather than speculation) in everyday life.

Philosophy begins by looking around us in the world. Humans are the only animals in nature who think.  As soon as they are born, humans look around and constantly try to understand the unfamiliar things they encounter for the first time. This is the unique cognitive act humans perform as thinking beings when born into the world.

Our cognition is based on conceptual thinking. Therefore, having no concepts means that we cannot perceive and understand and cannot grasp things around us. Human thinking goes beyond simple knowledge to understanding our surroundings, and our place in the world. Philosophy can be said to be a kind of ‘dwelling in the world’.

Dwelling is where customs and habits (habitus) are formed. All of this is based on our cognition, and the basic elements of this cognition are none other than concepts, ideas, and vision. These are based on perceptions such as forming relationships with objects in the world, their positions, and assigning values ​​and meanings. The worldview we usually have is a comprehensive framework of these things. Clearly, these elements are very important and make up our lives.

However, when we become accustomed to them without knowing it, ironically, we become distant from our inherent nature of philosophizing. A life without philosophizing will likely become fixed and lose its vitality. Due to the rigidity of thought, we become disconnected from our surroundings, relationships become distorted, and due to its exclusivity, we encounter various problems and suffer from limitations. And eventually fall into a routine. 

German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) warns that this routine is how most live. When we cannot escape from it, we not only fail to obtain our own originality but also fail to exist as ourselves. In today's rigid life, 'philosophizing' is required more than anything else for self-liberation and change.