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Essay on What is Synoptic Philosophy?
"The word "synoptic" comes to us from the Greek "sunoprikos," which means "seeing the whole together" or "taking a comprehensive view." It is an attempt to achieve an all-inclusive overview of one's subject matter and to see all its parts in relationship to one another."(Web,1)
"Synoptic philosophy sets out to see everything and see it as a whole. It is an attempt to view everything in the largest possible way. Synoptic philosophers, therefore, have a very wide range of interests and concerns and are intrigued by all areas of human knowledge. They want an overview of life, a worldview, and, it might be said, a universal view of each and all."
(Web,1)
The central question here is the meaning of our lives insofar as that meaning is linked to the meaning of history, of the world history to which we belong. This unifying question was central to philosophy under the influence of the German philosopher Hegel until twentieth century philosophy in the English-speaking world. At that time a revolution occurred that denied the seemingly overly ambitious kind of “synoptic” philosophy that could integrate eerything in a single philosophical system. This revolution came to be known as the “analytic” revolution in philosophy.
Progress was to be made in philosophy by minute, local
analysis of concepts and problems. To the objection that Hegelian synoptic philosophy is impossibly ambitious, the answer is that such philosophy will no doubt fall into errors at certain points, but that it will not fall into error regarding its method, which is a method of error correction. To be rational is not be avoid all error.
Research into unconventional, unpopular, and controversial areas of investigation is ridiculed and subjected to unreasonable attacks from those with a vested interest in the academic or cultural status quo............
