Antiphilosophical Dictionary - Peter Naur

[Azarnac]

This has been on my to-read list for some time now, and I finally read it.

On the whole, Peter Naur's work could be useful for those who are dissatisfied with blurry definitions used by mainly modern European philosophers(especially of the Continental variety). Naur's search for precise definitions perhaps reflects his own occupation as a computer scientist. Naur does not conceal his own bias for William James, whom he quotes at length. This isn't surprising: James was, just like Naur, a fan of the descriptive thought, which they both view as more scientific.

From an academic perspective, the work is shoddy and cannot be taken seriously. Naur makes no secret for his contempt for a specific type of philosophy and what he imagines "philosophers" to be like, and ironically commits the same mistakes that he blames on philosophers: that they are divorcing concepts from their contexts or that they don't define their terms very well. This is shown in how he treats philosophy and philosophers as a monolith entity, does not define philosophy at all(perhaps he should have asked himself how the idea that philosophy is mere intellectual position taking without evidence is compatible with the root meaning of philo-sophia, the love of wisdom!)

Embarassingly, even amateur philosophers can glean from his work that he has not engaged with either primary sources(what did Aristotle actually write?) or scholarship on them(Late Antique philosophy has been shown to be spiritual schools engaged in philosophy as a way of life with concrete spiritual exercises, refer to the works of Pierre Hadot, Algis Uzdavinys or Peter Kingsley, for starters).
Naur sets off with the assumption that philosophy goes back to Aristotle(patently wrong), contents himself with quoting a few passages from modern "philosophers" such as Bertrand Russell or Karl Popper and usually compares them to what William James said in his Principles of Psychology, 2 volumes which he recommends every philosopher ought to put below their pillows at night if they want to return to sanity. He either consciously or unconsciously falls in line with a modern trend: the replacement of philosophy and religion with modern psychology, which is either implicitly or explicitly seen as superior. Naur seeks to create a kind of caricature of Greek philosophers; they are depicted as blabbering idiots that are dependent on slaves for practical tasks. He fails to mention that even among Athenian philosophers, this was rarely the case and he also seems to be unaware of the the importance of "leisure time", first created among Egyptian priests for the pursuit of wisdom.

I will quote a few passages to illustrate these points:

A more description-oriented psychology was developed by the English psychologists of
the nineteenth century. This development reached its highest point in William James’s
Principles of Psychology from 1890, which rejects Aristotle and philosophy completely. (66)

→This is why Naur is sympathetic towards William James. I still remember my professor who was walking around with William James' "The Variety of Religious Experiences" as if it was some kind of bible. He was also the same professor who taught us that a professional scholar can never engage in the spiritual practices he investigates, for fear of becoming "subjective". This was built on the erroneous colonial assumption that European intellectual theories are inherently superior to whatever the "natives" produced over thousands of years. It also stemmed from the fear of dealing with consciousness directly, instead of through the safety of a familiar intellectual framework.

It would
have become Eddington better if instead of all the previous nonsense he had followed this
lead. If so he might have realized that sensible talk about reality must build upon what we
experience in connection with our talking about reality. The description of this belongs to
psychology. (69)

→This is the taking over of philosophy and religion by psychology! Psychology cannot describe reality, because the ultimate states of reality described in ancient philosophy and religion are to be accessed through experience, not through description. A basic understanding of Schopenhauer's "Will and Representation" will show you that too. Schopenhauer understood that the intellect only gets you so far, but won't open up the vista of universal "will" or consciousness.

Philosophy goes back to Aristotle. He described the historical development of
civilization in terms of five main stages. The fourth stage is concerned with the study of the
material causes of existing things. The fifth stage reaches divine philosophy, when the mind
grasps the formal and final causes of things. The fifth stage is of course the highest, and
whoever deals with that will be superior to all others in insight. Thus philosophers are
presumption incarnate. Hence the clinging to Aristotle’s ideas that thrives among
philosophers until today. (61)

→oh my! He fails to mention that far from being a mere rationalist, Aristotle belonged to a group of Greek philosophers that were well aware of noetic realities, and discussed how far a philosopher could get in his search for truth(which is inevitably bound up with the perception of these divine realities). A distinction was made between the sage and the philosopher, according to Hadot, and while the former was said to possess wisdom and perception of divine realities, the latter was caught up in a kind of tragic quest for wisdom, which he never reaches.
This is true for the time of Plato and Aristotle, but the philosopher and the sage are far closer to each other in the time before(Pre-Socratics such as Empedocles and Parmenides) and after them(Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus). These groups would be seen as "mystics" instead of philosophers today, but in the true sense of the word, they were engaged in philo-sophia par excellence.
Rational discourse, in their schools, was a preparatory exercise for spiritual exercises that were designed to lead to the direct perception of Platonic forms, and also the practice of theurgy. These traditions pre-date Greek philosophy by possibly thousands of years, and were mostly transmitted from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece, as shown by Algis Uzdavinys and Peter Kingsley.
Contrary to Naur's uninformed claim, philosophy was not position taking without evidence, as spiritual powers and unusual knowledge was part and parcel of these traditions and Pythagoreans and Neoplatonists were regularly recruited by cities engaged in warfare to help out through both mechanical(i.e. the construction of siege weapons) and supernatural means. Clearly, they were not seen as mere intellectuals.
Naur's description of philosophers is much closer to the way the Sophists were described by their contemporaries. The Sophists were impostors in the sense that they were merely selling rhetoric(how to win any argument through talking, refer to the famous story of Achilles and the Tortoise engaged in a race) and became the object of ridicule by philosophers and mystics, as the latter sought to distinguish themselves from Sophists by living what they preached. The Sophist was just a regular man when he went home, just like the modern philosophy professor does not undergo any spiritual transformation, but just engaged in intellectual discourse.
Beyond mere description, many ancient philosophers, both in the East and the West, were aware of the confinement of earthly life, what people would call "matrix" nowadays. Hence, they were looking for methods of liberation and sought Truth(as in, the Truth about the place of humans in our world and what may be beyond it) above all. This is why philosophers are concerned with Truth and the essence of the things, as descriptions will not liberate the soul. Scientists makes discoveries, but do not attain enlightenment or dematerialise their bodies into rainbow bodies(as in Dzogchen), which is what philosophers and followers of religions pursue(Neoplatonism mostly got absorbed by Sufism and the more practical sects of Christianity and secret societies)

Descartes’s discussion was rejected in 1890 by William
James in his Principles of Psychology. James is not concerned with truth, but with
description.

description may reasonably be
claimed to be the core of science. More specifically, the scientific-scholarly activity is a
matter of coherent description.  (20)

Thus you can see that Naur misses the mark when it comes to philosophy.

Nothing is more foolish than the philosophers’ lack of understanding of feelings.
This is closely related to their adoration of logic. As ordinarily presented in a philosophical
context, feelings are an unreliable, wild element of immature persons, an element the truth-
seeking philosopher has ascended above (25)

→Naur does not understand the context in which the philosopher’s stance towards feelings has arisen. See the Sufi’s battles with the lower tendencies of human beings, which they call nafs(refer to Annemarie Schimmel's works on the Mystical Dimensions of Islam, which heavily depend on earlier Neoplatonism). Anyone acquainted with Fourth Way schools will also see that the philosopher's stance towards lower emotions and desires is anything but foolish.
Ironically, these things will not matter to pure intellectuals, which is what Naur seems to be, even though he seeks to depict "philosophers" as babbling intellectuals divorced from reality.

To this passage I can say for my part that I do not see the sense of asking “What is ‘being’?”,
and so I feel alien to the rest of the talk.  (32)

Can't help Naur, can we?

Present-day philosophical discussions consist for a large part in tagging labels, –isms,
on people, understood as a summary of their views. In a discussion with a philosopher one
tries perhaps to express a view of some controversial question. As the reaction one then gets:
‘Aha, you are an x-ist’, where x has to replaced by some designation. And so the philosopher
is satisfied; he (yes, he, I have never encountered or heard of a woman philosopher, women
have too much good sense to engage in such)—he has put you into a box with a label on it,
and so the matter to him has been settled. Philosophers also put such labels upon themselves.
For example Høffding in Dictionary of Philosophy is classified as a cautious idealistic
monist, while he called himself a critical monist. (32)

To this, I quote:

It is remarkable that in modern times Sufi teaching is, to a large ex-
tent, carried on by women again. Not only does the interest in the mysti-
cal path—modernized as it may be—apparently appeal more to women,
who hope to find a more "romantic" or poetic expression of religious
feeling than that offered by traditional religious forms, but some of the
most genuine representatives of mystical tradition, directors of souls, in
Istanbul and Delhi (and probably in other places as well) are women,
who exert a remarkable influence upon smaller or larger groups of seek-
ers who find consolation and spiritual help in their presence.
The verse about Raabi’a quoted by Jaamii (N 615)—who was, in general,
not too favorably inclined to women—is still valid in this respect:

If all women were like as the one we have mentioned,
then women would be preferred to men.
For the feminine gender is no shame for the sun,
nor is the masculine gender an honor for the crescent moon. (From Annemarie Schimmel's Mystical Dimensions of Islam(1975), p. 435)

Philosophy arose out of the earliests strands of religion and the practical part of philosophy(i.e. not dead academic philosophy) has again been absorbed by religions. If you take them in, most of Naur's points are rendered untenable.

All the investigations and descriptions of ever more phenomena is of no philosophical
interest. Take for example fields like chemistry, astronomy, or geology. They have neither
foundations nor crises of their foundations. Evidently they are philosophically poor fields at
a low scientific level. The investigations in chemistry of new substances and their properties,
and the development of new substances for numerous applications, e.g. medicines, all what
is collected in what Heidegger calls ‘handbooks’, is just insignificant. These kinds of things
are of no interest to the philosopher, who has slaves to attend to all that is practical.
For Heidegger there is only interest in ‘foundations’ and their ‘crises’.  (27)

→But the foundational assumptions are important and do constitute scientific revolutions. All current sciences are based on physicalism as a philosophy, and what constitutes proof is derived from these assumptions. A change will only come about if the assumption that all things are material is questioned enough and that would constitute a crisis. The idea of the philosopher being uninterested in practical utility and that he is dependent on slaves does not constitute a valid argument, for most philosophers throughout the ages were not aristocratic members of a Greek polis.

But to the philosopher, in his Aristotelian fixation, all this mathematical analysis has no
interest, because it does not talk about anything that is true or false. The mathematical
analytic descriptions are difficult to establish, they demand mastery of a large arsenal of
techniques of mathematics and computing. Part of the difficulty is that a mathematical
analytic description only in very few special cases may be worked out exactly. In by far the
most cases the mathematician has to simplify his problem by introducing approximations in
the mathematical description. Thus all such descriptions aim merely at finding
approximations to what may be measured about how the world behaves. And again the
descriptions never fit perfectly. Whether they would fit if they might be worked out exactly,
no one can say. (51)

→The philosopher comes from a different worldview, in which there is ultimate truth to be found and falsity reigns in the society in which he finds himself. The mathematician works for society, the philosopher seeks to escape or transcend from society. That would be a Diogenes in ancient society, or the alchemist Fulcanelli in modern times.

Let for example the goal be to find out whether or not the
Moon is above the horizon at this moment. Then a skilled reasoner from the state of the
world in its multiplicity will be able to select that quite special property which is called the
times of the rising and the setting of the Moon at this location on this day. These times may
be found in an almanac. What the reasoner finds in the almanac thus shares a similarity with
the rising and the setting of the Moon. In virtue of this similarity the data in the almanac
enable the reasoner to find the desired answer about the Moon.
James’s account of reasoning shows why descriptions, and thereby scholarship and
science, are useful to humanity. Through a description of an aspect of the world a reasoner
gets access to properties of the aspect that otherwise would remain unnoticed. (72)

→Useful to humanity, but not to the mystic individual in pursuit of liberation. Descriptions are bound in language, and language cannot transcend duality or frame mystical experiences that show a view that transcends human societies.

Naur made the mistake of not thoroughly researching where "philosophy" came from, its corruption in the times of Plato, and even more so when philosophy was made subservient to theology in the middle ages and became scholasticism(which mainly draws on how medieval theologians perceived Aristotle). There is plenty of scholarship on the different philosophical schools available, and how modern University philosophy professors(the main target of Naur) have little to do with the origins of philosophy.

"Ancient Hellenic and modern European ’philosophy’ have nothing in common but the name. Ch. C. Evangeliou therefore contents the uncritical assumption that ancient Hellenic philosophy is the origin of Western or European ‘philosophy’, arguing instead that the Socratic tradition, to which Plato and Aristotle belong, has more affinity with the Egyptian wisdom and the ‘remote philosophies of India and China’." -Algis Uzdavinys