Philosophy and Religion used to provide guidance to us. Now, psychology has taken over the role of guide for human behaviour. It is a role that psychology is ill equipped to perform.
Plato taught us to examine the soul. Aristotle taught us how logically to present an argument. What is left of contemporary philosophy is only rhetoric, persuasion, and language analysis. In the 20th century, philosophy turned logic into arithmetic and called it symbolic logic. Then they said that logic is a closed system and does not relate to the world of experience. That means philosophy can’t argue for the truth anymore, because you can’t argue at all. Then philosophy said that there is no truth, only what I want. So we are left not with arguments in search of the truth, we are left with persuading people to do what we want, what we want them to do.
Richard Rorty, one of our past great post-modern philosophers wouldn’t take an endowed chair in the philosophy department of the University of Virginia because he thought that philosophy had reasoned itself out of existence. He had them design some sort of cultural analysis department that he taught in.
So we are left with expressing our feelings, accepting ourselves good or bad, and affirming ourselves, worthy or not. Those are principles of psychology. And as a consequence, we get “The Girl on the Train.” A very long, uninteresting movie about the feelings of a girl, and her life–a life I didn’t much care about.
But I do care about people, and religion taught me to love others. However, I have also been taught to love the good in people, to nurture it, and to bond with it. Aristotle said that only virtuous people have the kind of temperament that can sustain friendship. They are virtuous themselves and their psyche is not at odds with itself. But philosophy has reasoned itself out of existence. And religion’s influence is fading, has faded in society. And we are left with The Girl on the Train.
David Fekete 