Algis Mickunas | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

The text presents arguments, demonstrating what domain belongs to philosophy and what areas are ""unphilosophical"" and at time ""antiphilosophical."" The ""unphilosophical"" systems are claims are based on the notion--even if not explicit--of ""man as the measure of things,"" while the unphilosophical"" trend consists of pronouncements whose veracity is not to be questioned. Since philosophy, in principle, is a quest for rational justification of any claim, then its questioning of those pronouncements leads to the denouncement and, in principle, forbidding, destruction of philosophical writings and philosophers. The argument is extended to disclose that both mentioned trends end up in ""metaphysics of the will"" wherein the human self-understanding as not only the measure, but also the ""creator"" of all things through the scientific-technical, is hence isometric with the antiphilosophical trends and its pronouncements of the supremacy of the will of the creator. At this level, modern ""philosophical"" trends become identical with the metaphysics of the will--divine complex.

Counter to this trend is the philosophical classical tradition whose first principle is ""fallible reason"" and resultantly a demand and a duty to contest every claim, to find arguments for and against any position and its claim to the ""only truth."" Philosophy demands not only arguments, but a direct evidence in unhindered and uninterpreted phenomena--leading to the denial that ""man is the measure of all things."" The text purports to explicate--at the end--an ontological position that is also epistemological in order to encompass the classical notion of the primacy of the perceivable things of the world, but also of the principles of their space-time unfolding. At this level, there is a critique of the principles of ""first philosophies,"" both in their ontological and metaphysical forms