I do not know if the quote in the subject box above is familiar to you but it comes from the book " The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It is a little book that you will find in the children's section of any book store. The reason I reference that particular book is because I believe it to be the most profound book of fiction that I have ever read. It is written in such child like simplicity and yet it shines the brightest light on man's greatest but least understood problem that so completely saturates his mind that he is hardly ever aware of it it. I would also like to quote a passage from Abraham Josua Heschel's book (Who Is Man). "The predicament of much of contemporary philosophy is partly due to the fact that ongoing conceptualizations have so far outdistanced the situations which engender philosophizing that their conclusions seem to be unrelated to the original problems. After all, philosophy was made for man rather than man for philosophy." That quote comes from a book that was published in nineteen-sixty-five. How can this statement by Heschel be true in the light of all the advances that man has made in every other conceivable field of endeaver? Philosophy is not a science of objective verifiable truths that lends itself to being easely confirmed by any man who happens to question it. Authentic philosophy like authentic religion can only be verified by men who are willing to live subjectively or intersubjectively in the Truth. Heschel's statement is echoed in another book by Pierre Hadot (What Is Ancient Philosophy) when he says " I intend to show that a profound difference exists between the representations which the ancients made of philosophia and the representation which is usually made of philosophy today- at least in the case of the image of it which is presented to students,because of the exigencies of university teaching." Hadot's book was published in nineteen-ninety-five.On the same page he also quotes these words of Aristotle "if one wishes to understand things, one must watch them develop and must catch them at the moment of their birth." So what does Aristotle's statement mean.
Does it mean that man is alienated not only in his personal relationship to philosophy but also in his personal relationship to religion. I believe that is exactly what it means. To catch Philosophy and Christianity at the moment of their birth in Plato and Jesus and to see and understand the truth of their teachings with an unprejudiced eye would be to better understand mankind's captivity under the yoke of what Socrates described by saying " they think they know what they do not know. I think that I will end this post with this final thought. Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and the movie "The Matrix" are closer to the truth of Man's actual predicament then he can at the present time imagine.
