The Complete Idiot's Guide

Hard to put a finger on the exact date but somewhere around the time personal computers were baffling everyone there appeared the most astoundingly simple books, "Computing for Dummies" and "The Complete Idiots Guide to Computing". Clearly I was born too early for these books spawned a concept that would have made my sophomore year so much easier. Today there are a plethora of "Dummies" for every subject including the one I needed most: philosophy.

Perhaps a bit more serious are two books recently discovered that have helped me wade through the swamp to a stable ground for understanding the history of thinking: Karen Armstrong, "A Case for God" (she is on the best sellers list more than once) and Robert Wright, "The Evolution of God" (more accurately the evolution of philosophy and religion but titles sell books you know).

There are few original thinkers currently among us six billion on this third rock from the sun and I'm not going to guess how many billions have come before us. I don't count myself among those gifted thinkers but rather as one who struggles to discover what the truly talented are saying that I might glean for my own life. "Thank you, gifted people, for doing the heavy lifting." I'm not breaking new ground on these pages anymore than other simple authors but merely using this space to put into words how serious thinkers have helped me find my way out of darkness to a place of light where lives meaning, purpose, and a sense of peace. The invitation to journey with me is always out to those who have similar desires--and plenty of coffee.

The very idea of intellect or reason being such a path is relatively new if you count from the very beginning of the universe, or, just the part where we human's come into the picture. Aristotle lived around 300 years before the current era and was one of Plato's most brillant students. His thinking, built on that of his teacher and Socrates, affected the course of philosophy, theology, and science until the modern period of Enlightenment. In fact, these three disciplines were all but inseperable thanks to Aristotle.

Where Plato was heavy into mathmatics Aristotle was more a biologist spending years in Asia Minor dissecting animals to study their evolution and decay. The science of Aristotle encapsulated the idea that everything in existence was moving toward a goal, i.e., had a purpose to fulfill, that gave it direction. He tagged it a "final cause". Aristotle thought the universe was eternal so his definition of God was not the Creator but a more distant "First Cause", the Unmoved Mover that set it all in motion. His God was impersonal and did not fit former concepts be they Jewish, Greek or Roman. He was convinced, however, that with proper dedication to training the intellect, one could experience this remote diety to some small degree.

The ability to reason and to move reason further into contemplation was for Aristotle that which seperated man from all else in creation. Plato had established "Forms"as the reality of which life was a mirror. For Aristotle reason was man's "Form", the culmination of that for which man was destined to be. Like many in his time Aristotle believed that thought and the capacity to reason was activated by the object of of reason's focus, therefore, to comtemplate God was in some manner to participate in the life of the divine.

According to Karen Armstrong the "discourse about God" was for Aristotle the primary philosophy because it was about the highest form of being. The practice of philosophy was not merely the gathering of knowledge or practicing theory but was an activity that involved spiritual transformation.

Obviously great philosophers such as Aristotle have too many layers for me to peel through here, but, grab a second cup and when I get back we'll sip our way through how these three founding fathers of philosophy shaped the world of Western thought by their influence on other great thinkers.