Submitted by Andrew McCarthy MD, Sep 27, 2007 03:21

The confusion of any philosophical science that has no heart

What I find so alarming is that our most learned, our most intelligent, our most trusted are the ones who have accepted the idea that man is primarily a rational thinking being without question. With this thought that man is only rational and that he is progressing in this cause, we have seen teacher after teacher tell us about the supremacy of power, of rationality, of science, of calculation, of intelligence, and of freedom.

With these words we see the world as a place for all of these things to progress in a logical fashion. We see the different schools of thought, with emphasis on capitalism or socialism, on gender and sexuality, on economic power or redistribution. It is all about the whole (nothing about the single individual) in regards to history and progress and every school of thought gives its pupils a sense that they can progress in a manner that they shall have fulfillment. We accept either a secular social Darwinism or a religious enlightenment of man's intelligent design.

So we have Hegelians and Popperians. We have Neo-Platonists and the Neo-Cartesians. We have our evolutionary thought machines along with our war machines.We have our scientific groups that believe in the double blind prospective study. We have religious groups that scientifically believe that they know exactly what the words in the Bible mean. Neo-Nietzsche and Neo-Lockians abound amongst us. We have those that see Hobbes as the master or Hume as the light.

In short it all depends upon the idea that man can think independently of the heart. It makes all thought subsistent to either mechanical means or with a complete break from the heart. There is no room for the thought that perhaps they all may be wrong. The hidden has become the non-existent. All can be learned and all can progress. The idea that was Plato's amazing discovery becomes something technical. Words as ideas become a kind of life-theory and lead to all kinds of life philosophies. We have the Open Society or the Democratic Society or the Socialistic Society or the Capitalistic Society.

The advent of computers has catapulted these ideas into cyberspace. Words flow with such ease as well as ideas. Violence occurs between every school of thought because that is what happens with free floating ideas. They exist only in the mind and every mind wants a kind of supremacy. Every mind wants to be the one that finally understands it all.

The mind, what an idea! How we want to unleash it via its cognitive and evolutionary powers. It matters little if you are from the right or the left. We want what we want. Freedom shall be ours in a new world of human progress. We all may not agree with the Neo-conservatism of Francis Fukuyama yet in our hearts we all would like to see the end of history in some ways. Let us have riches. Let us have peace. Let all of mankind achieve a kind of scientific progression and let that be our new god.

Yet Kierkegaard understood the failure of all of this. So did the Kotzker Rebbe. And figures in the 20^th Century did try to warn us. Ludwig Wittgenstein warned us about the words we think we know. Martin Luther King warned us about thinking that skin color translates into superiority. And finally Abraham Heschel warned us what happens to a world that only believes in the science of reason devoid of the heart.

The visible world may end in failure, not because it is inevitable but because man wants it to be a kind of objective success story. We want to think we can break it down in a cognitive manner. We think we can stop its spinning perceptions that we assume to be real. We think that our hearts that break can be healed with thought and with progress. But it is not to be.

The exact study of the mind cannot be done. There can be no exact psychological configuration of the brain. Nor can there be a rational explanation of how life is contained within neurons. Cognition as a way to progress falls at its first movement because cognition as an entity is idea only. Its very nature lies within a world of measurement or definition. It is the invention of man and how he mingles and commingles words and numbers and ideas into all these schools of thought.

Thus every school of philosophy lacks the truth as does every science, as does every idea if they make the first movement in the wrong manner. Once one takes one step with confidence then all is lost. Once you think you can define, or measure, or combine the two in a way that you know truth well all is lost and you can never return from whence you came if you take this as truth.

Is there any way out of this? Well I think that perhaps if we were willing to accept the thought that there may be a world that is imperceptible to us, we just may understand our dependence upon such a world. And it will take a willingness to turn religious thought from schools of cognitive determinations into a sense of fear and trembling, into what it really means to believe in God. I am amazed that almost all religions that believe in One God share the common theme of containing love and kindness in our actions towards each other, even if we do not really understand each other.

The heart must have primacy over thought. Thought is enslaved within our world of perceptions. It can do nothing else but calculate or measure or define. Whereas the heart lives within what is hidden. It relies on its maker and never lets such a devotion leave its soul. It allows the remainder of what is human to endure our tragic world.

How we all want freedom. Of interest to Christians is as we have used the word freedom in so many avenues here in America it has almost become our religious mantra. How we want to be free at last. Yet there is little mention in the New Testament of freedom. My favorite time it is mentioned is in John and it is with this phrase, "The truth shall set you free." And I believe that was what Abraham Heschel wrote about in his book Passion for Truth.

Yet what is amazing to me about Heschel is he did not want to have the book named Truth. He wanted it to be called Passion for Sincerity. And he describes what our first step shall be if we want to find truth. Truth is hidden as is the real world. If our sincerity of thought does not lead us in that direction we shall never know truth.

Thus the only true philosophy is within the hidden heart. Man is lost without knowing he is far from his real home. The visible world, by its nature makes us step away from what is true. And only having a sincerity for truth allows us to have the dignity to return from whence we came. I learned of a great saying a few years back and it capsulizes this for me: to repair the world. I think the world that we first must repair is our own hearts. Then any step we take will never be away from where we belong, a place where we cannot know except within the goodness of our hearts. There is no other philosophy that matters and thus we shall be good to each other and ourselves too, no matter what is in store for us in this world that tries to mislead us from truth. May we endure so that that our hearts never lose such singlemindedness.

Andrew McCarthy

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