The Journal Entry That Initiated the Netanya School

This page was hung at the entrance to the philosopher's living room and everyone who entered was required to read it before wasting the philosopher's time

Everyone who entered the philosopher's place was required to know the password on the page, which became the battle cry of the school in all fields of knowledge  (Source)

I decide, in a cynical manner, to discover what the next stage in philosophy will be. And I go to the national library and read through the shelves. And I come out of there, realizing that the minimal group of great philosophers, from which one cannot remove a single finger (meaning: there is no one who is clearly smaller and less important than the others), can be counted on one hand: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein. And between the last 3 there is a constant interval of 140 years, meaning that every philosophy in the modern era has 70 years of ascent, then reaching its peak, and then 70 years of descent. So 70 years after the last one, a new stage is expected to begin (meaning now), which will reach its peak in 70 years. And what is this stage?

Because in every era there is one word, a foundational idea, which miraculously suddenly appears in all disciplines, including what is discovered in the natural sciences. And this idea comes from philosophy, because it is that thing, like an elephant made of mice. And all philosophers think they are in search of truth, but no one tries in a cynical way to guess what this next word will be, which will replace "language" in the future, which replaced "man", which replaced "God", which replaced the "nature" of the Greeks. And then from that idea, one can discover innovations in all fields (like the genome - the language of biology, the computer - a language machine, the network - computers talking to each other, etc., not to mention the humanities and culture and society and art, everything comes from the philosophy of language). And what will replace language?

And in the first half year I am trapped in structuralist thinking that structure is the most basic category in philosophy. At the foundation of everything there is a structure, and I see structure everywhere, and then in a dark room I understand that to rotate the structure is a different way of looking at the same structure, meaning there is something outside the structure (perspective), and I finally break free from the structure, which comes from talking about legal and mathematical constructions. For example, there could be a mechanism that moves the structure, like a muscle to a bone. Or just a mechanism, without structure, and this could be the basic metaphor of philosophy instead of structures, and this is a dynamic category. Because according to the library, all the history of philosophy is just a slope where things become more dynamic, and the next philosophy is action in relation to the previous one, which becomes a fixed object. God is dynamic from the Greek idea, and man is dynamic from God, and language categories are dynamic from categories of reason, and use is dynamic from meaning, and language games are dynamic from picture. And what will be more dynamic than language, in relation to which language is an object?

And it occurs to me in the bathroom, that maybe "to do" is the next word, and action is the basis, and the next category of philosophy instead of language. Here we already see it in speech acts, or in the definition of philosophy as an activity and not as a doctrine. It's dynamic, and everything static in such a philosophy will be defined as a derivative of a verb, because actions will be the basis. But it's too close, not far enough for a paradigmatic revolution.

And I see that the main sweat of this Wittgenstein was to take the word he chose, language, and turn it into a system, meaning: to understand that it is a system, and that everything else is outside the system. Meaning to explain what is "in the system", which is familiar to anyone who has studied law and knows the view of law from within and arguments in its own tools, as opposed to thinking about it from the outside. Language game means - within the system, and even early Wittgenstein is the same principle, just with a different system, and outside the system is not its concern and one must be silent, only what is inside it (and the same for Kant in categories, Descartes in the I, etc.). Meaning, give any general word - and you can build a philosophy on it like this, turn it into a basis - into the "relevant plane", which is cut out of the world, and spoken within it (and connections outside it are not relevant, even if they are the causes of what happens in it, like needing to be able to speak on the plane of the soul without reduction to the brain, or within the plane of law without irrelevant social questions, and within every legal system in its own tools).

To find the next system, one only needs to make a deep extrapolation, at the level of revolutions, and grasp the internal logic in the history of philosophy. And I think that if all the history of philosophy was written in the library, just in reverse order, it would also look like a logical and expected direction of development (thought exercise): first the later Wittgenstein, who was naive, and then the polished early one, and then Frege, and then Kant, and then Descartes (and all the development between them in detail), and then the Middle Ages, and finally Aristotle the father of new philosophy, and his student Plato who distilled philosophy to marble ideas.

And I walk on the street at night and think that maybe "defenses" is the issue, to keep truths remaining truths, otherwise the system doesn't survive, an active action is needed that protects and preserves the structures in the system, and as long as they are maintained they hold up and are correct, because they have no existence on their own. And I get excited: maybe a legal system is the solution. This is the evolution from a language system, to a system that is artificial but forceful and works and holds truth - legal truth is the only truth that exists, and in fact all these systems are legal systems: mathematics, language games, any specific form of thinking, etc., and they have forbidden and allowed. It is precisely the arbitrariness that gives validity, and lack of external reliance. Why? Because. In a legal system there is no philosophical illusion that there is something beyond it. Many such systems can be invented, but they still maintain a valid truth value, and laws, and institutions maintain them and vice versa, and truth is determined in procedure, and no one asks who said or who determined, or that the meaning is fluid. Because there is someone who determined - legally. And a legal institution cannot decide arbitrarily - because there is a mechanism that preserves it, and it works. And here there is already a beginning of this in Searle's institutions, or in language games. And everywhere I see legal systems.

And it occurs to me that there could be a system of a different kind, even more dynamic than the activity of "doing", because the activity in it itself is the object of activity, and this is - thinking, and that the system of thinking is the solution, and this is the future. Because everything is only as it is perceived by thinking. And in fact this is not perception, like in categories or language, but action, like how the plus operates on the number and doesn't perceive it. In thinking there is no perception but only action, and one can also act on the plus function itself in a functional, and this is the peak of the trend that stretches from Kant, the activity that is the most basic, and there is nothing beneath it - so I thought. It's not the input (Kant), or the coding (language), but the calculation itself that is the relevant plane. There is no logic, only the form of the action of thinking. And here we already see the beginning of this direction in the full shelf in the library on philosophy of mind. And now we need a new field of how thinking works, which no one has thought about, because thinking is beneath thought. And I also thought for a short time that learning is the solution, but I rejected this, because the teacher transfers material to the student, and this doesn't explain from within, like thinking itself. This is from outside.

And I see that philosophy progresses in loops, where each great philosopher is an X - the convergence of two previous schools and the splitting into two new ones. And the trick of the X is to take the question and turn it into the answer, like Kant or the later Wittgenstein. To say this is how it is, it's not bad, it's good. And all of philosophy is to transfer from the why to the how. At each stage two directions of progress, for example rationalism and empiricism, and in synthesis Kant, and then the solution itself expands to the field of the next problem: the categories themselves become the subject, and the tool of the previous becomes the object of investigation, to dynamic, and two directions emerge: towards logic (building categories), towards subjectivity (dynamic categories). And then Wittgenstein brought the meeting between them - language. And what are the two directions that come out of language? Law - which is too skeletal, and thinking - which is too fluid, without structure. And it's like tiling squares that progresses diagonally: the X square is the philosophy of language, and from adjacent sides emerge the squares of philosophy of law and philosophy of thought, two important and valid philosophical schools with internal logic, and between them the missing square - the next X.

And I lie in the dark in bed and come up with models for the development of philosophy. First they set a point, the idea, and then they added another second point, man, which is the worldview of the Greeks, Plato and Aristotle. And then they started to deal with the connection between them, added an arrow from the first point to the second, and the exit outwards in a line from the first is the perception of God, looking at what everything comes out of, and then looking at the entrance inwards to the second, this is the I, where everything enters. And then looking at the line which is the connection between them, these are the categories that become language, and a whole system of connections between them is formed, and the subject becomes the line itself, and not the points that it is the tool between, and this system is a circle that surrounds the arrow inside. Meaning there was a movement here of outwards, inwards, inside, and according to the model of prepositions and use one can trace 7 basic forms of thinking in human history: when the preposition. as-metaphorical pagan thinking, that-the Bible, says that, the-Greeks, the object, the idea, from-God, to-man, and-connection structure logic (early Wittgenstein), in-language in system (later Wittgenstein). And where is the next letter?

And not once I lie in bed and decide that I'm not getting up until I find the solution, and as a result I don't get up in the morning. And I start to despair. Who promised me that I would succeed? If someone had told me at the beginning that it would take more than two years non-stop, without telling anyone. And I hallucinate about alternatives to "picture", some image that is a thinking aid, that is not too totalitarian and necessary, and also doesn't slide into meaninglessness. Recipe for example. These are partial instructions. Or mapping, as opposed to picture, it's not always in relation to reality, but shows a way, guidance at every location. And I walk in circles in the room and think that direction, no, better: guidance, this is the solution. Everything guides our thinking, or another development, and also in the legal system, there is no necessary causality, but guidance. A text also doesn't force thinking into a certain state, but it's guidance. Unlike cause, where one can go backwards to what caused, guidance is a one-way arrow, one-directional, that doesn't determine the development, but only gives it guidance. And that's how we think and act. I don't know why I thought. And it's hard to find the right solution, but with guidance it's easy to pass through it, and hard to understand afterwards what was difficult. Like a proof in mathematics. And unlike language, it's a one-way connection, and I start to see guidance everywhere. But it's too technical.

And I have an important exam, and I can't start studying before I solve this, and I will fail, like I failed all the exams, because it's already too late to start studying but if I just succeed now in thinking in one moment it will be worth all this. Every deadline I pushed myself to the wall to think with all my might, I raised the stakes more and more, and now there's no turning back. And I actually intend to get up... and I stay in bed not going to the exam. And they're about to return already. And then I remember learning, now after direction, and from so much adrenaline I jump out of bed. Because everything comes out right. And this is the solution. Learning is the missing square, it is the dynamic development in a legal system (like in the Talmud), and it is the development of thinking that has structure (learning constitutes thinking) - and it is the combination between the two. And it uses guidance, within the system, like evolution, or organizational learning. And what delayed this is the incorrect picture of learning from outside from a teacher, learning must be within the system. There is no learning outside the system, just as there is no private language. And what cannot be learned - cannot be thought about. And not spoken about, and not perceived. What is at the basis of every system (and constitutes it) is the learning in it, through its development. Learning created the current system and creates the future one, and this is the relevant plane - learning.

And if there is no learning it's not interesting, and everything affects us and is perceived by us only in learning. And truth is also learned. How do you know? I learned. And the basic category of our brain is learning and not reason, and learning solves the problem of language, because language is also learned. The question is always a question of learning, for example: how does one learn language. How does one learn aesthetics, or mathematics, or painting, or a certain concept. Or learning in a country, or in economics, or in any system one wants to examine. And interest is the interest of learning, the will, the ethical part. Learning in morality. Learning in everything. Meaning, the organizing principle will gradually change from language to learning. And according to this the great developments in the next century will be with the help of the constitutive idea of learning, which is the process that creates interesting systems: learning in mathematics, learning in physics, learning in computers, learning in the network, learning in the genome, learning in the brain. Science and culture are learning systems, hence their complexity and efficiency. There are no wonders, everything is learned.

And I return to the models and check myself that I didn't make a mistake. The triangle of the arrow inside the circle - this is guidance, and together with the circle this is learning within the system. And in other models: noun-Greeks, adjective-God, verb-man, adverb-language, infinitive-learning. Timeless-Greeks, past-God, future-man, present-language, infinitive-to learn. This-Greeks, he-God, I-man, you-language, plural-system. Female-learning in system. And as they said that Jews are the people of language and the book, now they will say that they are the people of learning because of Torah study.

And time passes, and I start to think how the unreasonable efficiency of philosophy will be explained. It's not magic, it's learning. It's hard to learn, but once we've learned, it seems easy. The constitutive idea is just a central metaphor of the era, at the center of the ideas of the era, which is useful and gains popularity. Unlike other philosophies that are final, deluding themselves that they have reached philosophical truth, the philosophy of learning contains within it its own death. They talk about the metaphor, but how they arrived at it they don't say, how Wittgenstein arrived at language at all. The development of philosophy - the philosophy of philosophy, that it progresses through philosophical learning. Just as they attacked philosophical language, the decadent stage will always come where the central idea will seem hollow, and they will say that language fails, or that one cannot learn.

The philosophical fallacy - the result is always a distillation of the method, of the way of learning, when you clean away the waste you get the basic assumptions, it's circular. Therefore one needs to write the way in which I arrived at learning, this is the learning. Only the learning process explains the result, every honest philosophy opens with a confession. And I think that if I send this to someone from philosophy, then he will steal it and use it, so I can't tell anyone. And I start to sink again, thoughts of what will come after learning... creativity? Intelligence? No, it's simply too far, beyond the horizon of learning. But the place that language took in the 20th century, will be taken in the 21st century - by learning. And the philosophy of language will be replaced in the next century by the philosophy of learning.

This is the password: The place that language took in the 20th century, will be taken in the 21st century - by learning.