PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

1. The nature of inquiry in general. Inquiry may be provisionally defined as man’s

effort to integrate his experience as responsible agent. For this to be understood, a
word must first be said about how we are using the term “experience”. “Experience”
in this paper will signify the interactive process itself interior to which the human self
is in dynamic relation with the whole range of the other. In the sense, experience is
not something going on within the self in a kind of totality that is all-inclusive.
Nothing can be conceived as outside of or utterly divorced from the process.1
Within this process, man functions as the responder. This notion of
“responder” has its roots in that objective awareness, that presence to other as other,
that is characteristics of man. Unlike the brute animal which “lives as it were,
ecstatically immersed in its environment which it carries along as snail carries it
shell,”2 man finds himself standing over against the environment with which he is in
interaction. Hence his actions are never simply reactions tostimuli but are, in H.
Richard Niebuhr’s phase, “answers to actions upon him,” answers which must fit into
the ongoing process like statements in a dialogue and which, as a consequence, not
only look backwards to what has been “said” but are made in anticipation of reply, i.e.
of “objections”, confirmations and corrections.”3

2. The Matrix and Scope of Philosophical Inquiry. So far, we have considered

inquiry in relation to the active life of man. The point of this section is to view it in
relation to man’s communal life. For the responsible self, whose experience as
responder inquiry seeks to integrate, exists and functions only in a community of
selves. And this, I shall maintain, has important—and too often overlooked—
bearings not only on the nature of inquiry in general, but also on the origin and nature
of philosophical inquiry specifically.

Human experience is essentially shared experience. The environment with

which man interacts is not simply and utterly physical. It is not engaged merely in
terms of its immediate impingement on the human organism. It is dealt with
primarily as being also for others, as being something in common. Things are imbued
with meanings that have arisen in context of cooperative activity, which involves
common and shared ways of intending and relating to them. In fact, it is only as
ingredient in community action, i.e. as dealt with in common, that elements of the
environment acquire objective status vis-à-vis the human self and become things to
which the human self can respond and not merely react. In other words, man the
responder emerges only as sharing a way of life with other selves, only as
participating in a common culture only as member of an ongoing community, an
ongoing cooperative enterprise. It is through the acquisition of shared habits of belief
and practice, a kind of induction into a common system of interpretations and
valuations, which regulate the cooperative relation of members of the group towards
the environment and one another, that self-awareness and the capacity to act
responsibly arise and mature.

3. The Modes of Philosophical Inquiry. We have defined all inquiry as man’s

continuing effort to integrate his experience as responsible agent. We have
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distinguished philosophy from other forms of inquiry as that which looks to the
comprehensive integration of this experience, the integration of human life as end.
What we want to do now is briefly indicate three distinct, but the interconnected steps
in this effort.

a.)Logic. Man as responsible agent emerges to self-awareness through

participation with others in common ways of intending his environment. For any
individual these common ways in the form of acquired habits are presupposition of
his capacity of self-direction. He has them before he is in any position to judge them
critically. The same can be said of the community as a whole. Its common habits
were not developed reflectively but in response to various and direct existential needs.
They hang together as a kind of vital system, not an immediately logical one. Their
critical scrutiny, however, is not something that can be put off indefinitely.

To be aware of variety of regulative meanings which justification to be such is

not immediately evident is, for a responsible agent, to be called on to justify them.
The first step in such a justification is to seek to relate them to one another as
meanings. Unless they can be reflectively grasped as logical hanging together and
forming a coherent whole, the agent’s own life as shaped by them cannot be grasped
as whole. Whatever kind of sense it may make so long as he does not think about it, it
will lack the moment he does. The inherent tension of such a situation, therefore,
inevitably gives rise to an effort to think through habitual meanings in order to make
sense of them on the level of thought. This is the first condition for an adequate
philosophy—theoretical coherence. If philosophy falls short here, then, whatever
other virtues it may possess it is inherently inadequate to that unification of
experience, which is its raison d’etre.

b) Phenomenology. However, mere theoretical coherence is not enough. For

it is a notorious fact that meanings intended as meanings have a kind of life of their
own. They can be linked up, spun out, and developed into logical patterns almost as
things in themselves without regard for the context in which they arose and
functioned. The result is that in the search for an interpretation of life that can be
thought through consistently, sheer notional coherence can come to be emphasized at
the expense of practical relevance. A philosophy ca be elaborated that has nothing to
do with the very life from which it arose and of which it was supposed to be an
interpretation, nothing to do with human experience except as a kind of springboard
for taking off into the blue

c) Meta-pragmatics. However, self-consistency and adequacy to what is

already disclosed in the very living of life are not enough to constitute an adequate
philosophy. If philosophical inquiry is man’s effort to integrate his whole experience
as responsible agent, then, since philosophy itself is one of the thing he does it must
itself come under its own purview and relate itself to that aspiration for wholeness,
which animates it, and which it in turn seeks to implement and fulfill.

4. LEVELS OF INQUIRY
Depending on the level of experience, there are three levels of inquiry: Common
sense. Scientific, Philosophical.
1. Common sense: is generally accepted set of regulative meanings and procedures
applied to a particular circumstances. E.g. I feel like urinating, so I look for “WC”.
2. Scientific inquiry is concerned with a particular need, treats the world as a means
in order to achieve a concrete end. E.g. I have a stomach ache, I go to the Doctor, I
take medicine.

3. Philosophical Inquiry is inquiry into the Coherence, Sense of human life as

totality, as a whole, Comprehensive reality and ultimate(final) value. E.g. I have a
terminal case of stomach cancer; I am given only three months to live, so I ask “ What
is the meaning of my Life?”

“ Sens de la Vie”: “Sens” can mean the direction of a river, the texture of a cloth, the
opening of a door, the meaning of a word. Likewise, my life can have a direction,
texture, opening (possibilities), meaning.