Probably more than all these partial qualifiers, the species is
the only one known to question everything. As language experience
marked the genetic condition of the human being, questioning
marked it too, probably through language mechanisms in the first
place. When the child articulates the first question, the entire
genetic endowment is at work.
We are who and what we are in our inquisitive interaction with
others. Our minds exist only through this interaction. This
statement says in effect that to philosophize became part of the
process of human self-constitution and identification. The only
referent of philosophy is the human being constituted in
practical experiences. Together with other surviving literacies,
philosophic literacy will be one of many. The philosophy of the
civilization of illiteracy will reflect the circumstances of work
and life characteristic of the pragmatic framework. It will also
be subjected to the severe test of market exigencies as these
reflect efficiency expectations characteristic of the new scale
of humankind. Science can justify itself by the return in
investment in new explanatory models. It also leads to new
technologies and to higher levels of efficiency in human
practical experiences. Philosophy certainly has a different
justification. Philosophic necessity is evasive. Short of living
off the past, as literacy, religion, and art do, it needs to
refocus on reason as the compass of human activity.
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