A Guide For The Perplexed Part 1

Book Review

A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

E. F. SCHUMACHER

ABACUS       1977

PART I

 

Introduction

A Guide for the Perplexed was published shortly after Dr Schumacher’s (better known for his book Small is Beautiful in which he proposes a dramatically new perspective on economics) death and was described by one reviewer as ‘last words to a muddled world from one of its few members who saw clearly.’ This book examines Man’s relationship not just with his immediate environment but with his own evolution and beliefs about the universe.

Chapter 1. On Philosophical Maps

 

PART I

• Given a map of Leningrad he was surprised to find that there were no churches marked, even though he could see several enormous churches from where he was standing. This was not the first time he had been given a misleading map. All through school and university he had been given maps of life and knowledge that failed to show the things of utmost importance for the conduct of life.
• The maps he had been given advised that virtually all ancestors had been pathetic illusionists who conducted their lives on irrational beliefs and absurd superstitions. Knowledge of the past was of no value in coping with problems of the present.
• Preoccupation with religion was just one of many signs of underdevelopment; every educated person knows there is not really a God. Not knowing about evolution, our ancestors invented myths. Maps of real life show only things that could be proved to exist. Present day map makers worked on the principle of ‘if in doubt, leave it out.’
• Limiting ourselves to knowledge that is true beyond doubt increases the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life. ‘The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of higher things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.’
• Philosophical maps supplied at school failed to show large ‘unorthodox’ sections of both theory and practice in medicine, agriculture, psychology and the social and political sciences, art, occult or paranormal phenomena; nothing was shown unless it could be interpreted as profitable for man’s comfort or useful in the battle for survival.
• When Dr Maurice Nicoll asked his headmaster the meaning of a parable, the answer was so confused that he realized that no one knew anything about what really mattered and from that moment he began thinking for himself, realizing that inner individual authentic perception is the only source of real knowledge. The maps produced by modern materialistic scientism leave all the questions that really matter unanswered.
• The ever more rigorous application of scientific method to all subjects and disciplines has destroyed even the last remnants of ancient wisdom in the Western world. How is anyone to resist the pressure of objective science unless, like Maurice Nicoll, he receives an inner revelation of knowing that men, however learned they might be, who say such things, know nothing about anything that really matters?
• ‘The present danger,’ says Dr Viktor E. Frankl, a psychiatrist of unshakeable sanity, ‘does not really lie in the loss of universality on the part of the scientist, but rather in his pretence and claim of totality. What we have to deplore therefore is not so much the fact that scientists are specializing, but rather the fact that specialists are generalising.’
• After many centuries of theological imperialism, we have now had three centuries of ‘scientific imperialism’, and the result is bewilderment and disorientation that can lead to the collapse of our civilization.
• For happiness you need wisdom – but what is wisdom? For happiness you need the truth that makes you free – but what is the truth that makes us free? Who will tell me where I can find it? This book looks at the world and tries to see it whole. Socrates said: ‘Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom; for herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself.’
• The most important part of any enquiry or exploration is the beginning. If a false or superficial beginning has been made, one may employ the most rigorous methods during the later stages of investigation but they will never retrieve the situation. What is missing in current map making is the very beginning when people ask: ‘What does it all mean?’ or ‘What am I supposed to do with my life?’
• Map-making is an empirical art that clings to reality with something akin to self-abandonment. Its motto, in a sense, is ‘Accept everything; reject nothing.’ If something is there, if it has any kind of existence, if people notice it and are interested in it, it must be indicated on the map, in its proper place.
• Map-making is not the whole of philosophy, just as a map or guidebook is not the whole of geography. It is simply a beginning – the very beginning that is at present lacking, when people ask: ‘What does it all mean?’ or ‘What am I supposed to do with my life?’
• My map or guidebook is constructed on the recognition of four Great Truths – landmarks, as it were – which are so prominent, so all-pervading, that you can see them wherever you happen to be; and if you know them well, you can always find your location by them, and if you cannot recognize them, you are lost.
• The guidebook, it might be said, is about ‘Man lives in the world’. This simple statement indicates that we shall need to study: ‘The world’; ‘Man’ and his equipment wherewith to meet ‘the world’; His way of learning about the world and ; What it means to ‘live’ in this world.

• The Great Truth about the world is that it is a hierarchical structure of at least four great Levels of Being.
• The Great Truth about man’s equipment wherewith to meet the world is the principle of ‘adequateness’ (adaequatio).
• The Great Truth about man’s learning relates to the ‘Four Fields of Knowledge’.
• The Great Truth about living this life, living in this world, relates to the distinction between two types of problem, ‘convergent’ and ‘divergent’.
• A map or guidebook does not solve problems or explain mysteries; it merely helps to identify them. Thereafter, everybody’s task is as defined by the last words spoken by the Buddha: ‘Work out your salvation with diligence.’  
• For this purpose, according to the precepts of the Tibetan teachers, a philosophy comprehensive enough to embrace the whole of knowledge is indispensable; a system of meditation which will produce the power of concentrating the mind on anything whatsoever is indispensable; an art of living which will enable one to utilize each activity (of body, speech and mind) as an aid on the Path is indispensable.’
• Traditional wisdom tells us that Man’s happiness is to move higher, to develop his highest faculties, to gain knowledge of the higher and highest things and, if possible, to see God. If he moves lower, develops only his lower faculties, which he shares with animals, then he makes himself deeply unhappy, even to the point of despair.

 

PART II

• The more recent philosophers of Europe have seldom been faithful map-makers. Descartes (1595-1650) said ‘Those who seek the direct road to truth should not bother with any object of which they cannot have a certainty equal to the demonstrations of arithmetic and geometry.’ ‘We should never allow ourselves to be persuaded excepting by the evidence of our Reason – of our Reason and not of our imagination nor our senses.’
• Descartes limits his interest to knowledge and ideas that are precise and certain beyond any possibility of doubt, because his primary interest is that we should become ‘masters and possessors of nature’.
• There is no guarantee that the world is made in such a way that indubitable truth is the whole truth. Are all men adequate to grasp all truth?
• Descartes broke with tradition, made a clean sweep and undertook to start afresh, finding out everything by himself. This kind of arrogance became the ‘style’ of European philosophy. It led Descartes to what amounted to the ‘withdrawal from wisdom’ and the exclusive concentration on knowledge as firm and indubitable as mathematics and geometry. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) had already pleaded in a similar vein.
• From the point of view of philosophical map-making, this meant a very great impoverishment: entire regions of human interest, which had engaged the most intense efforts of earlier generations, simply ceased to appear on the map.
• But there was an even more significant withdrawal and impoverishment. Traditional wisdom believed that it was not only meaningful but of essential importance to distinguish always and everywhere between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ things and Levels of Being.
• The new thinking strove with determination, not to say fanaticism, to get rid of the vertical dimension. How could one obtain clear and precise ideas about such qualitative notions as ‘higher’ and ‘lower’? Was it not the most urgent task of reason to put into their place quantitative measurements?
• The proper task of philosophy was formulated by Etienne Gilson as follows: It is its permanent duty to order and to regulate an ever wider area of scientific knowledge, and to judge ever more complex problems of human conduct; it is its never-ended task to keep the old sciences in their natural limits, to assign their places, and their limits, to new sciences; last, not least, to keep all human activities, however changing their circumstances, under the sway of the same reason by which alone man remains the judge of his own works and, after God, the master of his own destiny.

 

PART III

• The loss of the vertical dimension meant that it was no longer possible to give an answer, other than a utilitarian one, to the question, ‘What am I to do with my life?’
• The answer could be more individualistic-selfish or more social-unselfish, but it could not help being utilitarian: either ‘Make yourself as comfortable as you can’ or ‘Work for the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’
• Nor was it possible to define the nature of man other than as that of an animal. A ‘higher’ animal? Yes, perhaps, but only in some respects; in many other respects many animals could be described as ‘higher’ than man, and so it would be best to try and avoid nebulous terms like ‘higher’ or ‘lower’, unless one spoke in strictly evolutionary terms.
• None of this leads to a helpful answer to the question, ‘What am I to do with my life?’
• Traditional wisdom had a reassuringly plain answer: Man’s happiness is to move higher, to develop his highest faculties, to gain knowledge of the higher and highest things and, if possible, to ‘see God’.
• If he moves lower, develops only his lower faculties, which he shares with the animals, then he makes himself deeply unhappy, even to the point of despair.
• These teachings, which are the traditional wisdom of all peoples in all parts of the world, have become virtually incomprehensible to modern man, although he, too, desires nothing more than somehow to be able to rise above ‘the whole state of present life’. He hopes to do so by growing rich, by moving around at ever increasing speed, by traveling to the moon and into space.
• Most modern readers will be reluctant to believe that perfect happiness is attainable by methods of which their modern world knows nothing. Belief or disbelief is not the issue. The point is that without the qualitative concepts of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ it is impossible to even think of guidelines for living that lead beyond individual or collective utilitarianism and selfishness.
• The ability to see the Great Truth of the hierarchic structure of the world, which makes it impossible to distinguish between higher and lower Levels of Being, is one of the indispensable conditions of understanding. Without it, it is not possible to find our where everything has its proper and legitimate place.
• Everything, everywhere, can be fully understood only when its Level of Being is fully taken into account. Many things are true at a low Level of Being and become absurd at a higher level, and vice versa.
• We therefore now turn to a study of the hierarchical structure of the world.

 

Chapter 2. Levels of Being