The great philosophers are just another group of great thinkers. Philosophers offer many things. They can offer a method to properly live your life. They can give you a code of ethics. They can give you a theory of the mechanics of the world. Some of them can even give you their key to happiness. When thinking about this, I wonder if we can consider religious figures philosophers? Both religious and non-religious may balk at this idea.
The religious may think of this as blaspheme. From Christ to Buddha to Muhammad to Vishnu, they all have huge groups of followers who think of them as more than human. To them, it might be wrong to compare them to human philosophers. Besides, these beings have access to information that mere human philosophers just can’t receive. To them, the info these beings provide is of much more value then the info from a philosopher, bound by the limits of human understanding.
The non-religious might just think I’m trying to shoehorn religion where it ought not to be. They may argue that religion belongs in it’s own realm, and that bringing it into philosophy would just muddy the conversation. Besides, we can’t even confirm the existence of half of these mythical beings. Ignoring ethical concerns, why should we listen to people that we aren’t even sure are real?
To both parties, I say so what? To the religious: Despite their individual claims to divinity, each one of these figures connects to us on a very human level. Don’t try to tell me that Christianity would blow up like it did regardless of it’s appeal to our humanity. Don’t try to dissuade me of my belief that the appeal of these religions are their proposed solutions to very human problems. Don’t argue that the Buddha, who is confirmed to be a historical person, didn’t focus entirely on human concerns, with the same knowledge that his fellow man is capable of accessing. After all, doesn’t he teach that you should try to get this knowledge yourself through meditation, rather than being taught?
To the non-religious, consider the idea that these religions didn’t come from nothing. Divinity aside,these schools of thought are like any other: A person making a claim. Jesus is a person who claims that he is the Son of God. Muhammad claims to be a prophet for Allah (the same God that Jesus says gave him life). The Buddha claims that,through intense meditation, he tapped into a deeper enlightenment which gave him the key to inner peace. We don’t 100% believe all of a philosophers theories do we?
Aristotle believes that the constantly moving cosmos is moved by a gods hands. According to the Stoics, logos (god) runs through all matter. We don’t discount the philosophers just because they had religious views. We just push those views to the side and analyze the meat of their arguments. If we can do that for philosophers from Plato all the way up to Locke, who also believed in God, can’t we do that for these religious figures? If we can, there’s value in the exercise.
I’ve already proven in a previous article that there’s overlap between Voltaire, who was critical of organized religion, and the Bible, which by default would disapprove of Voltaire’s theories and lifestyle. The fact that normally opposing forces can agree on the subject of fools tells me that what they’re saying might be true. On the subject of fools, neither party is biased, since they arrived at the same conclusion.
Check out my previous article for the proof.
What else can we learn? Is there overlap between the Buddha and Machiavelli? How do the ethics of Muhammad compare to Plato’s views on ethics? What’s the overlap between the philosophy of Jesus and Voltaire, who both despised religious hypocrisy?
So despite our moral unease, religious figures can and should be considered Philosophers. Whether we believe their claims of divinity or not, there’s value in all of their teaching (and I mean all. Don’t push Vishnu to the side just because Jesus is more familiar). In fact, maybe they’re more value this way. Instead of taking their words at face value, we’ll examine them critically, like we would with any other philosopher. And like with any other philosopher, maybe we’ll learn a thing or two.
Philoso-raptor 