Criticisms of philosophy

Philosophy was criticized as of its birth. Some critical are external with the philosophical speech (for example, critics of the common direction, or criticisms due to the more scientific disciplines), others are to him interns (critical philosophers between them).

The reproach generally called upon against philosophy is to be a sophistical , a kind of play of language which ultimement would be only of the powder to the eyes. It seems however that it has there here a confusion between philosophy as a whole and the Métaphysique, which tends to be a Spéculation disconnected from reality, with contrario of other fields of philosophy (like the political Philosophie, the moral Philosophie, the epistemology, etc).

A discipline disconnected from reality?

The critic of the common direction is perhaps the critic of the oldest philosophy. She consists in reproaching the philosophers for being disconnected from reality, and for losing themselves in the world of the ideas. Here is an example: One reports on Thalès a famous anecdote, taken again by Plato, in the Théétète : “the philosopher which falls into the well open under its steps because it is occupied looking at the things of the sky. ” . Plato tells that a servant would have made fun of him while saying: “How do you hope to include/understand what occurs in the sky if you do not even see what is with your feet? ”. As we explains it Plato, the Philosophe, occupied of things which exceed the common direction, can show an awkward being, which is unaware of the value of the behaviors of its similar: it does not include/understand them, and the latter see in him a laughable character.

However, it could also benefit from its observations. Aristote tells that Thalès, envisaging an abundant olive harvest, would have monopolized the presses for better monnayer their services; he wanted to thus show that the wise one is able to make fortune without attaching an particular importance to this one.

Undoubtedly can one say that the philosophical activity releases us from certain prejudices by its reflexive character which pushes to reinterrogate what one believes to know. It first of all makes lose balance with that which starts to practice it. It does not have any more the support of its opinions and the loss of its beliefs causes a violent pain: the speeches of philosophy wound more wildly than the viper. (Alcibiade in the dialog of the Banquet of Plato).

The critic of the common direction also took another aspect in the history, while coming from the philosophers themselves. Several philosophers criticized philosophies which bring to deny apparently obvious data of our everyday life. The fact that the things are separated, the existence of the matter, or other things which seem to belong to the daily newspaper were blamed by certain philosophies (Berkeley or Hegel for example). Philosophers thus carried an internal criticism to philosophy in the name of a “philosophy of the common direction” (Moore for example).

Dogmatism and vanity of philosophy

Some criticisms underline the uselessness of philosophy while pretexting of sound Idéalisme (it seems to be unaware of the Réalité):

Some declare philosophy a dead discipline.
According to some, science would answer in a way much more precise and concrete some of its questions; for example, the definition of the substrate of the world, the matter, is in perpetual evolution according to fundamental chemistry and physics. The taste, studied by Kant, is in fact also in sociology (cf Bourdieu, the distinction ). In the line of this criticism, some reproach the philosophers for not being rather interested step various sciences.
philosophy would be a Idéologie related to one time, with a social situation.
It currently appears a current, still disseminated, which tries to carry out a positive approach of the philosophical field. While taking philosophy and its history for objects, sociology could contribute a share to the effort of this discipline to release itself from the constraints which imprison it. But the teaching staff of the philosophers considers, most of the time, any sociological analysis of the practices and the philosophical institutions as a “attack” against philosophy itself. These, whose professional ideology the reading of the philosophical philosopher's stones like act of “re-creation describes”, applicant to republish “creation”, challenges any social determination, therefore any incorporation of the philosophical speech in a history.

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