Video Transcript: Introduction

Henry - Hi, I'm Henry Reyenga, president of Christian leaders Institute. And with  me is Dr. Roy Clouser, our resident philosopher here and you are at the  beginning of the introduction to philosophy. Now, this class is an intense class,  we get top notch reviews about this class. But make no mistake about it, you are going to dive deep into this introduction. And it will prepare you for other classes  here at Christian leaders Institute. So with me is Dr. Roy Clouser. And what  we're going to do with these interview segments, throughout this class, is sort of  talk about things that you're actually going to dive deeper into. And even some  of the things you're going to read may not totally connect with even what our  interview is. And that's okay. Because philosophy is about a journey of our  journey into asking the big questions, the important questions that guide all of  life. So Dr. Clouser, I'm glad that you're here at Christian leaders Institute, and  that you've done classes like Christian philosophy, which some of you may want  to take after you take this introduction of philosophy. So to get started, let's just  give it a little bio background. So quickly go over you. How did you become  interested in philosophy? What did you do to pursue your philosophical career? I know as the taping of this, you're 81 years old. So that's a good age to talk  about philosophy, because essentially, you've probably seen much of it all over  the years. So tell us a little bit about your background and why you got into  philosophy.  

Dr, Clouser - I got interested in it. When I was still a teenager, I got a little  paperback book of Plato's dialogues. Okay. And I was, I read that, and there  was a lot I didn't understand, but it did dawn on me that what he was asking  was, how can we be sure of anything? Okay. What is it we can really know? Yes, that kind of thing. And I immediately applied that to my faith. Okay. How do I how do I know Christianity is right. I mean, I believe it? I do. It looks true to me. But  how do I know? Right? So I pursued that a bit. And then I made a friend who  was somewhat older than I he was in college when I was still in high school. And he encouraged me to think about that stuff. He was Christian, too. Okay. And  then, some years later, he told me that he was going to go to reformed  Episcopal seminary, okay. in Philadelphia, I've never heard of that. Right? And  he said, Why don't we go together? And yeah, at the time, I didn't think it was a  good idea. But I did. And I've never regretted it. It gave me a background, I had  only started college and dropped out. And then I went to the seminary for three  years, three years of Greek three years of Hebrew, and three years of theology.  And I'm still looking for that answer. How do we know it moved me in the right  direction, but it didn't get me to the answer. Okay. I finished that. I went back and completed the work of seminary, went back and finished college as a philosophy major, okay, still looking and but during my senior year of that seminary,  seminary, Herman Dooyeweerd, came to Philadelphia and gave five lectures.  And I heard them, and I was fascinated, because here's the guy who's saying, 

there is such a thing as a Christian philosophy. And if you have that you have a  Christian take on all the sciences. And it sounds fantastic, and almost no one in  history. Ever thought there was a distinctly Christian. I mean,  

Henry Reyenga - they thought just there was philosophy neutral. Yeah.  

Dr, Clouser - Theology, yes, there's a Christian theology, but not a philosophy.  One thing put it this way, there's no more Christian philosophy than there is a  Christian mathematics or Christian biology. Well, on Dooyeweerd's view, there is a Christian approach, approach to biology or right in mathematics, and they are  very beneficial. Anyway, I got interested so I wanted I wanted to do to get a  degree to teach, I had to get a PhD. Right. So I applied to Harvard in the  university in the history and philosophy of religion. That was accepted. And I  started I did one year there, okay. As a starving student from there, then I  transferred to the University of Pennsylvania,  

Henry Reyenga - which, by the way, is a I believe, very powerful school in  philosophy.  

Dr, Clouser - Department. Being trouble was Harvard wouldn't accept  government loans. And so I went there. Yeah, and I finished a PhD work there  and propose to do my dissertation on Dooyeweerd. Okay, so they, the Chairman said to me, we're going to approve this on two conditions. One is that you go  there and work on it with him. That's the  

Henry Reyenga - Netherlands. That's where Dooyeweerd was at.  

Dr, Clouser - They gave me a fellowship to help make that happen. And the  second is, when you get done there, Dooyeweerd writes me a letter and says  you understood him correctly. Because nobody here is going to read all that stuff and examine you and whether you got him right. We're going to examine you  and whether you think he is right. Okay. So that's what I did. I wrote a  dissertation on him and defended that and then later turned a dissertation into a  book.  

Henry Reyenga - And that book is featured the text of everything in the Christian philosophy class here at Christian leaders institute that you can take after you  complete those  

Dr, Clouser- The Myth of Religious Neutrality is the name of the book.. The book argues that there's no such thing as a religiously neutral theory. That theories 

assume some divinity belief or other that tries to be an idol or can be, of course,  it can be false divinity belief. Right?  

Henry Reyenga - Okay, so, so then you've been teaching and you through your  whole career, you got your PhD and some other steps along the way. So where  have you been teaching philosophy over these years? 

Dr, Clouser - Okay, I started my first full time job was at LaSalle. Okay, in  Philadelphia, it was then LaSalle college Then LaSalle University, okay. And I  was the first non Catholic ever hired in the philosophy department. This was  1966. Okay. And I was there for a couple of years. And then I learned that the  state colleges in New Jersey, were all being turned from teachers colleges into  liberal arts college. And so the one in Trenton had no philosophy department,  right. So I applied to Trenton State College and was the first person hired in the  new philosophy department. This is before I got my degree. Okay, I finished it.  And in fact, there was a job freeze. Jobs was very scarce, right. And the five  people that they that they hired, started department had degrees from Columbia, Penn, Harvard, Pittsburgh, which is one of the top places for philosophy of  science. Really great schools represented and all of us went there and said,  Well, we're just here till we get published them, we're going to get out. And  nobody ever got out. There were no, we didn't factors. They their overall,  everybody published, but there was nowhere to go. There were no jobs.  

Henry Reyenga - Okay, so there you go. So now, we are launching into this  philosophy class. And so what we're going to be doing is having interviews, I'm  going to be interviewing our esteemed Professor here on some of these  subjects. Now you're going to go in depth and reading in this class of some  other presentations. And again, this class is a great introduction to you in a lot of philosophic subjects. So we're going to cover some of them together. Now,  here's my first question. It's sort of a launch into the so what is philosophy?  

Dr, Clouser - That itself has been philosophically controversial, I would imagine.  Yes. But I think that it's fair to say that the majority of people that have entered  that field, agree with the description I'm about to give, it's, it's hard thinking,  directed at the totality of our life, and experience the totality of reality. There are  two main kinds of theories in philosophy, a general theory of reality, and a  general theory of knowledge. Okay. Theory of reality has a couple of names. It's  proper name is ontology, probably a word you've ever heard. It has a nickname,  metaphysics. Okay. It got that nickname. Because Aristotle wrote a book on  physics. And then he wrote a book on the theory of reality. And they nobody  knew what to call it. So they call it the book that comes after the physics that's  what metaphysics is okay? And it became the nickname for anything that he 

brought up in that book, okay. And a general theory of reality means that we're  not doing what the sciences do. The science is picking to specific side of the  reality that we experience and investigate it. There's, there's a how much to our  experience, quantity, things have quantity, and we represent that by number and we develop mathematics, things have exhibit spatial characteristics, they have  location, size, dimension shape. We have a science of space, geometry, we  have physics, and we have biology and psychology and logic and we have  linguistics, sociology, economics, and so on. Many other ethics. People take all  these different sides, they investigate them, but philosophy asks What's the  whole what hangs them all together? What's they're connectedness so that it's a way of doing it everything. And, and that scares some people they say, oh my  God, I have terrible time just dealing with one at a time. Right? But for other  people, it gets them excited. Yes. How do we get the whole? How do we get  reality of which these are all aspects. Of course, non Christian approach to this  has often been to pick one of those and make it the cause of all the rest. So give an example of that. If we think of all these different fields of investigation, as  beads on a necklace, philosophy wants to know, what is the string? So if you're  a materialist, you pick the physical one. Okay, one the physics studies. And you  claim that causes all the rest or the rest are illusory. And there's only one  

Henry Reyenga - example of a you know, a materialist today. People a  philosophy that would be materialism, they might have heard of  

Dr, Clouser - there are, there are theorists who claim that things are exclusively  physical. They have only physical properties that are governed by only physical  laws, most materialists say, it's the things that are purely physical, that generate  anything that's not  

Henry Reyenga - beed would be a discipline, but underneath the beed would be  everything is matter.  

Dr, Clouser - That's right. Everything is basically physical. So physics is the  ultimate science. Okay. But then most of them will admit, there's problem  explaining human consciousness. Consciousness doesn't seem to be physical  one theorist put it this way. Our problem is, how does our Technicolor  experience arise out of soggy gray matter? Right? Yeah. So that's one example  of taking one of the beeds and making it the string that links Okay, creates  everything else. And of course, what we want to say as Christians is there's  none of those things that hangs them all together. God does. Its the power,  Colossians, Colossians 1, In Jesus Christ, all things hang together, the Greek  says and one, a very well known philosopher, American philosopher Wilfrid 

Sellars once said, philosophy is about how all things in the widest sense of  things hang together in the widest sense of hang together. Perfect definition. So  

Henry Reyenga - they only mean that part of it should be our working definition.  How all things in the widest sense of all things,  

Dr, Clouser - not just objects, properties and hang together, and Colossians 1  says what that is,  

Henry Reyenga - it's Christ, right. So as you begin the philosophy class, the  here's the working definition, and it's Colossians 1, in Christ, all things hang  together, hang together. Okay, so I have one more thing to add on that. So back  to Dr. Herman Dooyeweerd, in your study. Now, he talked a lot of ways about,  like, you know, naive, just you observe with your eyes experience. And then he  also talks about the science of studying that. Okay, so let's just introduce that,  thinking a little bit here. So that as we go through these courses, we can sort of  skip to foot. So in one sense, you know, we're all philosophers, we all have our  naive experience, what is naive experience?  

Dr, Clouser - He means there, that prior to making theories, from trying to make  theories about things, we just experienced them, okay, so I see the tabletop and  laptop and so on. As whole objects have all kinds of seem to have all kinds of  properties, right? So the table has spatial shape and size, physical, solidity, it  has sensory color. It's logically distinct from the laptop, but in, in our non  theoretical experience, think about logical properties and sensory properties.  We're not doing so sometimes introduce this class by saying, look around the  room, look at all the things that are here and tell me what kind of properties they  seem to exhibit, right, what kinds of properties, and the properties are law orders of laws, right? Properties and laws. And so they usually come up with well,  things are physical. Things have mathematical property, that's right. spatial  properties that often they think they don't have logical properties because a lot  of logic books speak as though only arguments, statements, logical properties.  They're consistent with those tables, logical property, conceivable things  logically distinguishable from other things. Oh, unable to be considered having a purpose and able to be conceived logically. Yeah. So in that sense, all things  have a passive property called,  

Henry Reyenga - Oh, yes. Also even so there is active property or passive  property. So there's, so in a sense, we look at things in non scientific naive way.  But if we you look deeper, at them there are even passive properties that are  inside of them, like the table with 

Dr, Clouser - potentiality, it has the potentiality, to be logically distinguished, or  we couldn't do it, right. We can, it's, it's flat out contradictory to say, I can  logically distinguish this table and it doesn't have the property of being  distinguishable. Nice. So what happens? Then, Dooyeweerd says as people  distinguish these different kinds of properties, and laws, they make that a field of study. Physics becomes a distinct study from biology, from psychology, from  logic, from sociology, economics, ethics, and so on. They're all distinct areas.  We we in the English speaking world, we tend to use science only to mean what we call the hard sciences, physics, biology and so on stuff that you do  experiments with in a lab. But in German, the word for science is Wissenschaft ,  it's a branch of knowledge. So that in that terminology, sociology, and ethics and  aesthetics are also sciences, they're areas of study. So people go into those  areas, and they make theories to try to get explanations. And then, of course,  the explanation of how they all hang together, in reality is a theory of knowledge. How they all relate in knowledge is a theory of knowledge. So we have a theory  of reality and theory of knowledge, ontology, and epistemology, epistemology is  the name for the theory of reality. They're the two backbones of philosophy,  when we get specific courses, like philosophy of, we can have philosophy of  mathematics, philosophy of biology, philosophy of science, philosophy of ethics,  and so on, then what we're doing is bringing a general theory of reality and  knowledge to bear on a specific science, saying here the consequences for that  science from the philosophical point of view.  

Henry Reyenga - So what you're gonna get in this class is going to dive in to  these kinds of questions, these kinds of inquiry, asking, not only what is there,  but why is something here? How does your naive or your just experience of the  world connect to a specific theory of your world?  

Dr, Clouser - And so philosophy does, the sciences and philosophy boasted that they enrich our naive or pre theoretical experience, right? So I see the sun rise  and set, right? Everybody does. Everybody has always yes. But now I know  about the earth turning and I add that to my experience right, doesn't detract it  adds to it.  

Henry Reyenga - So welcome to the philosophy class, we're going to get  engaged. Some areas of study you probably really never thought of before. If  you haven't studied philosophy and you have studied philosophy, you're also  going to get introduced to a Christian philosophy approach, where a matrix of  Christ who holds everything together is honored and glorified so that we glorify  and honor the God who made us so welcome to the introduction to philosophy  class.