only the firebird defeats evil Now that religion has seriously lost its social importance, we see an increasing interest in philosophy everywhere – as if we should expect all salvation from it now that God increasingly disappears into the background. In this context, philosophy, as a full-fledged philosophy of life, ever more often supplies the answers to practical vital questions and, therefore, raises high expectations in many people.
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f, for a long time, people turned primarily to theology for the solution to the problems of existence and the meaning of life, philosophy at best served as ‘ancilla’, as handmaiden of theology. It merely prepared the believer for the proper understanding of the revealed truths and studying them was, therefore, exclusively reserved for priests. Since the Enlightenment, however, philosophy has discarded this straightjacket and independently engaged in a dialogue with the emerging sciences. As a reaction to the mediaeval worldview, these sciences were non-religious and empirical; they were dominated by a mechanistic law of causality that let everything originate and occur without resorting to a view of God. This way of thinking also pervaded the philosophical ideas that dealt with all forms of metaphysics and rejected any influence of religion in terms of solving the most elementary questions of life. For many philosophers, the need for continuously making room in their thinking about the world for religious concepts disappeared, mindful of Nietzsche’s statement: ‘God is dead.’ No longer hindered by the outdated, theocratic worldview, the philosophers usually limited themselves to establishing moral guidelines on the basis of autonomous, individual freedom. However, in this field in particular, many a philosopher became confused, because he had to draw the conclusion that it was precisely these aspects of life that withdrew from the influence of the sciences. The philosophers did
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not succeed in bridging the gap between on the one hand, the way in which science approaches and investigates the world and the human being and on the other, the way in which many people struggle with vital questions that remain unanswered by the sciences. In the context of moral issues, they were eager to follow the lead of a materialistic and biological view of man. EVIL AND THE IMPOTENCE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS
If a philosopher departs from the idea that ethics is quite possible without religion, the question crops up on what the goodness ideal of solidarity should then be based. It becomes increasingly clear that this philosophical approach is also unable to compensate the loss of religion as the guiding influence in life. However, a return to the wisdom that was once taught in the mystery schools is able to offer this compensation. Another difficult aspect that clearly illustrates the failure of non-religious philosophy concerns the way in which it deals with evil. It seems as if in our time many forms of evil are manifested uncontrollably and wholly withdraw from the judgement of the philosophers. In this context, the American philosopher, This impression of the firebird by the French artist Uleski does proper justice to the energyrich vital power and the new dynamism – which is, after all, the symbolic meaning of the firebird. L’oiseau Phénix © Uleski, 2007
