Philosophy For The Common Man

Philosophy for the Common Man By Santiago Sevilla Both, the common man, and the cave man, as well, have raised existential questions. The main one is about God. The second one is about death, and thereafter. The third querry is about good and evil. To these questions priests and mighty kings have answered. They did not know the right response, so they invented one, which fitted their will for power. They created sacrifice as a supposed way to placate God: Abraham wielding his knife about to kill Jacob; Jehobah rejoicing in the slaughter of his own son, Jesus Christ; the Aztec priests eviscerating by the thousands their tribal neighbours, to please Quetzalcoatl, the great God of the tornadoes, feasting cannibalic banquets afterwards. Theorizing about God produced theology. But theology is at all the fruit of fancy; endless speculation about the Creator of the Universe, without ever interviewing Him, or approaching His whereabouts. Theology, in all religions, is human invention about the nature of God. Theology is not a valid part of philosophy. Religion itself is no more than mythology. Theologies are not wrong as works of fantasy, but to practice their imperatives seems ilogical, due to its doubtful conception. So the cave man, and our common man in the skyscrapers of New York, or the aborigines in Machu Picchu keep asking about God, without getting the right answer, which is in fact rather impossible, if accurate and sincere. But the marvel of creation, of nature, of macro-and micro-cosmos implies a precursor, a productor, an original maker of all things. We do need God for our mind to settle down in peace. We even dare to love him, happy as we are with our world, and with love. So the common man cannot do without God, and He is the corner stone of the common man's philosophy. Death has always been the question. To be or not to be? Hamlet says it all in his soliloquy. The Egyptians wanted to defeat death by embalming their dead kings and even their commons, and building pyramids to preserve them ever after for the second comming. Here, at death's door step, again, human wisdom fails, and both priests and kings come out to invent myths about after death: Paradise, Hell, Purgatory, Hades; and the useful menace of eternal punishment. Dante turns religion into most poetic and politic litterature. Kings and priests scare the children, get the rich dying men to confess and repent, and perhaps leave pious inheritance to the priesthood and the church, paramour of Jesus Christ. This most charitable and admirable martyr to the cross has, as a matter of fact, taken over the realm of God in a most disguised Coup d'Etat. The new government of Cosmos is a triumvirate, where a dove is the third party. Other religions have not contrived in the upraising, and the God of the Jews still reigns supreme on the top of heaven. For the common man, as a philosopher, God almighty is his last refuge in death. All men, cave men, sky-scraper men, when they are about to die, they pray to God, Creator of the Universe. They all want to go to him. They believe He is beautiful, and the sight of Him is a delight. So, the second basic question of the common man's philosophy is answered with a hopeful sigh of longing for God. The third great elementary question about good and evil is, once more, an unanswerable one. Here too, bishops, popes, kings, and pundits come out of their luxurious hideouts, and preach for their convenience. Nature contradicts. Cruelty is visible around nature everywhere: Disgrace and mayhem, holocaust, tsunami, genocide, war, famine, plague, murder. Society creates a penal code, to establish what is crime and punishment. Priests invent the sin, the excomunion, condemnation, independent from the penal code. But Pol Pot dies unpunished, and so end other murderers, and criminals. On the other hand, innocents suffer iniquity, children are violated, women enslaved. Good and evil fight for

predominance. Whole nations fall to the sharp claws of human predators. Germany, "das Land der Dichter und Denker", falls pray to Adolf Hitler, a monster of evil. More than ten million people die a painful death due to his demoniac demagoguery. Cave man and sky-scraper man discover the relativity of good and evil, which is as good as no answer at all. Nevertheless, they crave for justice. Good is all that favours our loved ones, bad is what harms them. The common man does not believe always what priests and kings call good and evil, moreover, love can engender rebellion defending the loved ones. So, the rule for justice to the common man is love. And love is a power which creates life. This issue of love has got little attention by philosophers. Poets know a great deal more about love than philosophers. The history of philosophy is a dead end street. Martin Heidegger calls it "Ein Holzweg". Friedrich Nietsche pretends that God is dead. Nietsche died of a brain tumor, notwithstanding his brilliancy of language. Immanuel Kant criticizes die Reine Vernunft. Economists develop "die Unreine Vernunft". Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russel, great mathematitians, unable to trust plain common language to express philosophy, despair and die. Here again, poets have faith in the power of language to share ultimate knowledge with the common man. Petrarca, Shakespeare, and Calderon de la Barca write sonnets, and plenty of perfect verse to speak properly about God, death, good and evil. Life is a but a dream! The cave man in Altamira composes images of animals of unequaled beauty, a divine way of elementary worship. Where they philosophers or poets? The common man knows more than one would trust him to wit. From his skyscraper he enjoys a bird's eye view of the wide world.