And the Winner Is ...
November 16th 2008 20:17
I don’t normally rate the books I read, but if there was a prize for the most thought provoking book read this year it would have to go to Clive Hamilton’s The Freedom Paradox: towards a post-secular ethics.
Literally oozing with metaphysical and ethical arguments and the work of philosophers (mainly Kant and Schopenhauer), it does tend to send the layman’s head spinning at times. But Hamilton’s intensions are clear; for us to find freedom, true freedom, we do not look to our politicians, our church, our bank managers, magazines, e-bay or TV, we look within ourselves. He painstakingly (and this takes a lot of patience on his part) divides our world into the phenomenon and the noumenon. In other words, the reality we can see and the reality we can’t. He does acknowledge that for a large number of people, theology explains their noumenon. But in a world where the religious are fading, we need other answers. Enter metaphysics.
Now I’m not going to pretend to understand everything Hamilton covers here … it’s no easy read, and I’m no philosopher, but one of Hamilton’s true gifts is to be able to break-down complex information to an understandable format, thus sharing theories that would normally be beyond the average reader.
It is always reassuring to find a personal view point shared by someone else. It makes one think they are not so crazy after all! And the importance of listening to one’s conscience has always been a stronghold in my moral beliefs. After all, it is your conscience you have to live with, 24-seven. How are you going to lie to someone you can never leave?
History has shown that placing faith in the phenomenon (the world of perception) can fall a long way short of creating true happiness. From the time we are born until we die, we seek the knowledge of happiness – Where is it? He has it, I want it. How can I get it?
Paradox talks a lot about self-deception and ‘akrasia’ or lack of self-control. Certainly something all humans are prone to. Unfortunately, today we are bombarded with options and ‘freedoms’ that through perceived social convention promise us the elusive world of happiness. Yet, statistics show that we are no happier, and indeed less happy than we’ve ever been.
Hamilton tries to explain that in the noumenon - that is within us all - we become one because once out of this phenomenon world we are all the same (is your head spinning yet?). Does that explain why those who have near death experiences often report similar sensations? Maybe once we leave this world we do find a place where we can be our true selves. Where we are all truly equal.
Call it heaven if you like … but could it be that upon death, the energy that gives us life is transferred back into the noumenon – our never ending life, which allows our phenomenon world to continue?
Now that really would make life worth living, wouldn’t it?
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