The new style of technical philosophy is remarkable, since it expresses something about the philosophy itself. The style tends towards the telegraphic code. One reason for this is that the paper must be capable of being read during office hours and make no demands upon the weekends. Technical philosophy, the reader must understand, is simply one sort of work for which one is paid. It should have no resonance beyond those hours.

When carried to ideal perfection, it is expressed in some form of artificial symbolism which takes years of training to read with any ease. The technical philosopher has always envied the mathematician with his proofs and symbols, and he has always had a fear of natural or ordinary language. Ordinary language is so obscure. Words come dripping out of a sea of feelings and related meanings and are logically unmanageable. Therefore, we have devised a new language, symbolic logic, which begins with marks having no meaning at all. Whatever meaning they acquire is given to them by other marks which serve as their definitions. Now everything should be clear, and to some extent it is. But unfortunately, the language is so impoverished that nothing of any importance can be said in it, and so artificial in form that error is perhaps more frequent in it than in our mother tongue.

In summary, then, the technical philosopher analogizes himself to the scientist. He wishes to be brief, technical in style and subject matter, impersonal, unemotional, and unedifying. He does not expect the layman to understand what he says, and would be slightly embarrassed if the layman did. He has nothing positive to offer, no vision of life or the world, no summary attitude or total view. His positive activity is to analyze statements made by others, but never in his professional role to make such original statements himself. He assumes that, somehow or other, the accumulation of these technical analyses in the library adds up to something of value. The New Philosopher does not wish to speak of matters of human concern. He only wishes to be clear about little things. He does not believe in his heart that one can be clear about big things or that philosophy should address itself to human concerns. One of the classical works most in disrespute today is Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy. The technical philosopher knows analysis will bring no consolation. He is not the pompous philosopher of the old style, rather he regards himself as a technician who “does philosophy” more or less in the office during school hours. Weekends are another matter, a vacation from philosophy.

So much for Mr. Earle, an excerpt from his very amusing essay Notes on the Death of Culture. And, in a way, this is a trenchant and important criticism of the kind of philosophy which is practiced today in the academies. I would add this comment that, as Earle observes in another part of the paper, the great deal of this new style in philosophy emerges from the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna School. And so often happens people who are disciples and followers manage to effect the most amazing parodies of their masters.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is a formidable genius. And if I may be so bold as to attempt to summarize in a few words what he was after, he was trying to show that, in his view, philosophy is a kind of therapy. There are many, many very close parallels between Wittgenstein and Buddhist philosophy, since both are concerned with philosophy as a kind of recovery from the mind’s bewitchment by false problems. What we call the “Problem of Life”—with a capital P, capital L—the sense that to be human is to be in some sort of predicament, that to be alive and confronted with death, that to be in a world where pleasure is correlative to pain, constitutes some sort of great philosophical question. Now, in Oriental philosophy—Indian, Chinese, Japanese—there’s a very wide recognition that feeling that one has this problem is the problem, and that the one who is liberated is a person liberated from the torment of asking, not questions that are simply unanswerable, but that really have no meaning at all.

The difficulty is this: that Wittgenstein—who saw this and propounded it with great genius—ended his famous book the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by saying: “Of that which one cannot speak, one should remain silent.” In other words, Wittgenstein was a mystic, and he saw that there are important and valuable realities beyond anything that philosophy can discuss, that just can’t be put into words, that are matters of immediate contemplation rather than discourse. Unfortunately, he had to make his living as a professional philosopher, as all of us who are professional philosophers do. And we’re required to go on talking, because that’s what the university expects of you. Logically speaking, all those people who came to this conclusion should have conducted meditation sessions in which there would be perfect silence, like a Quaker meeting or a Zen Buddhist monastery, instead of classes in which there was talk. And somehow or other, though, the philosophy department hadn’t got the nerve or the gall to do this. And so, instead of shutting up (as they properly should have by their own argument), they continued to talk, but they had to talk about matters that are entirely trivial. And this is responsible for a new kind of professor of philosophy—such as Mr. Earle has been discussing—who is a sort of would-be mathematician who can only discuss small points of grammar.

But I was going on to say that to this situation there are some extremely happy exceptions, and I want to draw attention to one of them. And that is the work of Abraham Kaplan, who is head of the Department of Philosophy at UCLA. He’s just published what is, to my mind, a very important book called The New World of Philosophy. Now, this doesn’t claim to be an original. It doesn’t even claim to be a particularly profound book. But it’s a very important book nonetheless, and one I think which anybody interested in the general scope of the talks that I give here would be very interested to read, especially if you don’t regard yourself as highly sophisticated in philosophical matters. This is just the sort of book which I think a responsible philosopher ought to produce. It’s (in the very best sense of the word) a popularization: an attempt on the part of a highly trained intellectual to communicate with an intelligent public of laymen, and it’s superbly well done. It fulfills that intention beautifully.

First of all, I want to quote something that he says about the function of the philosopher. He says that:

In the arts and sciences, in law, medicine, politics, or religion, questions continually arise which, because they are so speculative, so broad in scope, or so inextricably involved with values, are habitually dismissed as being too philosophical in character to be considered there. I have no quarrel with those who hold that such questions belong in philosophy. But what is to be done if philosophers also refuse to consider them? I am saying only that the division of labor in society must not be allowed to go so far as to leave no place at all for those great questions which cannot be divided, and for which every man presupposes some answer or other in going about his business or just in living his life. That those of us who have some professional responsibility for dealing with such questions can do no better with them than anyone else is a sorry enough confession to make, though I think that honesty demands no less. But I do not know why philosophy should keep the name if it abdicates the responsibility. I wish some sociologist would write an essay today on philosophy as a calling, and on the social or psychological forces which transform a vocation into merely an occupation. I am afraid that nowadays, in the English speaking world at any rate, we would have to say that anyone for whom philosophy may be a calling would be well advised to stay away from schools of philosophy.

This is a head of a department talking!

Such advice is no different, after all, from what we might give to a young man who aspires to write poetry or to emancipate his people. These things are not academic pursuits, and I say (in the case of philosophy at least) so much the worse for the academy.

In other words, Kaplan is taking the view that a philosopher is a kind of generalist: a very essential sort of person who thinks about the broad problems that are raised in all other kinds of arts and sciences. He’s a man whose duty is to have to see things whole. And in his book he does this admirably well. Let me try and give you just some sort of summary of the scope of his undertaking.

The New World of Philosophy means, in other words, a positive and constructive view of philosophy as it exists today. And this is really comprehensive, because just to read down the list of his chapters gives one an immediate idea of the scope. He starts out the discussion of pragmatism (as a sort of essentially American philosophy), then he goes on to analytic philosophy (which is the sort of technical philosophy that Earle has been discussing), and in an extremely clear, lucid essay brings out the values of analytic philosophy and points out its limitations. It’s followed by an essay on existentialism. I’ve often remarked that existentialists are apt to be extremely turgid in their literary style unless enormously difficult to understand, and Kaplan has done a perfectly superb job of summarizing central existential points of view with great wit and clarity, and introducing a friendly criticism of existentialism which is very well worth reading.

He goes on to discuss Freud and modern philosophy very properly. Because, after all, Freud—although a psychologist in the technical sense—has actually contributed more to the total climate of modern thought than probably anybody else. There’s a brilliant essay on communism, and then he realizes that you can’t discuss the new world of philosophy without discussing eastern philosophy. And there follow four very good essays: Indian philosophy, Buddhism, Chinese philosophy, and finally Zen. Although I think that the essays on Chinese philosophy and Zen are a little weak, there’s no doubt in my mind that the essay on Indian philosophy is very good indeed. It contains one of the best, most concise, clear summaries of the central ideas of Vedanta that I’ve read in a long time.

And the interesting thing about Kaplan’s approach is that it’s completely constructive. He has that delightful capacity to put himself in sympathy with other people’s points of view, and to realize very effectively something that I was trying to express in one of these talks a little while ago: that philosophy is an ongoing thing. That you never reach finality in it. He brings this out very well in the essay on pragmatism. Incidentally, he describes himself as a person who is a positivist by training and a pragmatist by inclination. And the point that he makes there is that philosophy is never something that is complete, because thinking is part of living. And the moment anybody would reach something that looks like a complete philosophy, that is a final systematization and expression of truth, there would be something dead about it—in the same way, as it were, one does not reach at any time in life a final moment.

Now, what I was going on to say was this: that he’s got a very effective sense of how differing philosophical points of view are contributive to a total climate of thought in the same way as different kinds of flowers and animals in a garden, or even in a wilderness, are contributive to the ongoing life of the whole scene—even though they may be at war with each other. And Kaplan brings this out with great effect.

In other words, this is a book which is a truly synthetic, comprehensive survey of the picture of philosophy as it exists at the present time. It includes the achievements of the technical philosophers, but it includes also things that would be considered by them nonsensical or merely poetic or simply expressions of emotion, which are nonetheless in Kaplan’s view highly important contributions to knowledge after all—psychoanalysis, existentialism, communism, Zen, and so on and so forth. And, as I said, although this book doesn’t claim to be highly original or particularly profound, it is just what a responsible teacher of philosophy should do to communicate with lay people without talking down to them, and to give a picture, shall I say, of the frontiers of human thought, East and West, as they exist at the present time. One can only read this thing with a certain delight. After all, mind (as H. G. Wells thought) may not after all be at the end of its tether. And we may still, as human beings, have something very important to say, and not be reduced to simple trivialities.

In case you should want to acquire this book, let me give you its title again: The New World of Philosophy by Abraham Kaplan—K-A-P-L-A-N. It’s published by Random House, sells at $4.95. It’s just out.