Volume 15, Issue 1/2, 2005
Wisdom: Research, Education, Implementation
Ulrich Seeberg
Pages 141-156
Philosophy—The Narrow Door to the Teaching of Wisdom
A Kantian Position
The aim of this paper is to explain the Kantian concept of philosophy according to which philosophy can be understood as the narrow door to the teaching of wisdom. This discussion is guided by the question about the relation between logos and mythos. The thesis is that the awareness of the limits of logos, the scientific approach to the world, can be regarded as a presupposition for a proper understanding of mythos, the articulation of wisdom, which expresses the unity of contradictory elements of life. Philosophy has the function of mediating between reason and wisdom by making explicit the limits of scientific explanation. This opens a field of unrestricted and therefore not scientifically explicable thoughts: the sphere of ideas that are accessible in Ethics and Aesthetics.