The Dominant System of Thoughts and the Possibility of Dissent.
The dominant system of thoughts and the possibility of dissent.
Every society, every historic period has a way of thinking or a view of the world that is more common, more popular than others, that is dominant; nevertheless there is always a different way of thinking that starts at a certain time in that same society. Probably the most known of the ancient Philosophers, thanks to Plato who wrote a series of dialogues in which Socrates is the main character, Socrates was somebody who dedicate his life to questioning men and authorities and he paid with his own life his determination to pursue the truth above everything. Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, Jeanne d’Arc, Galileo Galilei, and many others have endured the attacks of the dominant system of thoughts directed against their life. This comes as no surprise.
Nowadays, in smaller or larger communities, the freedom of thoughts is not as threatened as it was in the past, nevertheless it appears that people are not thinking at all, they “are thought”, they don’t know what to do with their freedom to think.
On the other hand, when everybody has an opinion that’s what he/she has got, namely, an opinion. “Everybody is entitled to have an opinion” they say. Great. The point is to go beyond the opinion, as this is not knowledge: the aim of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, to remain in the ancient Greek Philosophy, was to attain, instead, an epistemic understanding, an unshaken understanding, an unshaken truth.
Although freedom of thought is essential to humanity, we cannot proceed in Philosophy by just saying every opinion has the right to exist: the aim of Philosophy is exactly not just the expression of any opinion. Otherwise we just fall through a Babel of voices without any direction as they go in all directions. And this is not freedom of thought.
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