What Is Philosophy?

by Dietrich von Hildebrand, Robert Sokolowski (Introduction)

What Is Philosophy? is a foundational study in epistemology by the eminent phenomenologist Dietrich von Hildebrand. Hildebrand begins by analyzing closely the receptivity that is proper to all kinds of knowledge. As a result, Hildebrand holds a robust philosophical realism according to which the mind does not impose its terms on the object known, but receives the object on the object’s own terms. He does acknowledge that certain aspects of the physical world do indeed depend on the human mind, such as color qualities, but he avoids idealism by the way he embeds these qualities within things that are known in their own proper being. Perhaps the major contribution of this work lies in the account that Hildebrand gives of our knowledge of the essential structures and laws of being (what the phenomenologists called eidetic intuition). Such knowledge is inconceivable to those empiricists who think that we connect with the world only by way of empirical observation. Hildebrand shows that in addition to such observation we also possess rational insight into what things essentially are and are not. With great originality, Hildebrand examines just what kind of essential structure it is that makes possible rational insight into necessary laws of being. He also engages in debate with those empiricists who think that these necessary laws of being are reducible to tautologies. He argues that these laws are not just grounded in our word-meanings, but in the very being of things. He thus agrees with Kant that we possess necessary truths that we express in synthetic propositions; but he disagrees strenuously with Kant’s idealist account of how such propositions are possible. Hildebrand’s What Is Philosophy? is perhaps the most significant and nuanced work we have that defends the position of realist phenomenology.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion

Kindle Edition

First published March 20, 1960

About the author

Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German Catholic philosopher and theologian who was called (informally) by Pope Pius XII "the 20th Century Doctor of the Church."

Pope John Paul II greatly admired the work of von Hildebrand, remarking once to von Hildebrand's widow, Alice von Hildebrand, "Your husband is one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century." Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has a particular admiration and regard for Dietrich von Hildebrand, whom he already knew as a young priest in Munich. In fact, as young Fr. Ratzinger, he even served as an assistant pastor in the church of St. Georg in Munich, which von Hildebrand frequented in the 1950s and 1960s. It was also in St. Georg that Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand were married.

The degree of Pope Benedict's esteem is expressed in one of his statements about von Hildebrand, "When the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time." Von Hildebrand was a vocal critic of the changes in the church brought by the Second Vatican Council. He especially resented the new liturgy. Of it he said "Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he could not have done it better."

Von Hildebrand died in New Rochelle, New York, in 1977.

Reviews

[Peter Blair]

Review (reportedly) forthcoming

[Gonzalo Joaquín Sánchez Garrido · Rating 1 out of 5]

Failure —an absolute one— in the attempt to preserve the paradigm of classical (and naïve) realism. The phenomenological pretensions are nothing more than a recoding, in categories of little worth, of what has already been said. The aporia of attaining access to the “thingness” of things is supposedly resolved through a vague and hollow dissolution into basic intuition—one that borders on mysticism. Likewise, it presupposes instances of ontic hierarchies that are nothing but the Christian and deifying residue of epistemological absolutism. Crude and utterly insufficient: a requalified vomit of archaic ramblings from cassocked simpletons.

[Walt]

This is the second book on philosophy I’ve read. As such, I don’t feel comfortable rating this book as much of it was over my head. The parts I understood were brilliant, and I hope to reread it in the future.

[Jed Ojeda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very strong account of how we can use the method of phenomenology to know things as they are. In particular, I find it very interesting that Hildebrand says that his brand of phenomenology can be found in Plato's Meno, Aristotle's Organon, and St. Augustine's "Si fallor, sum".