The Arrogance of Philosophy, the Destruction of Human Existence, and the Return of Truth – Chapter 97

Soyo Existence Ethics (Existence itself is Ethics)

Philosophy has Traditionally Been Regarded as the Love of Wisdom.

However, a closer examination of human history reveals that philosophy has frequently diverged from the pursuit of wisdom. While philosophy claimed to illuminate the human condition, it often dismantled rather than revealed humanity. Its efforts to explain, understand, and systematize relied on language, logic, analysis, and structuralization, which ultimately became instruments that dissected human existence. This leads to an unavoidable question:

“If God is Truth, then how can conscience, the very place where God dwells within the human, be subject to philosophical deconstruction?” This question has been largely avoided by philosophy for millennia. Although philosophy claimed to inquire into the human condition, it consistently refused to address the core of human existence: conscience, pain, love, the breath of existence, and the trace of God. It is possible that philosophy did not perceive this core, feared to acknowledge it, or never intended to recognize it.

When philosophy asserts, “We seek truth,” it draws truth into the domain of concepts, analyzes it, and reconstructs it within the confines of its own language. If truth can be reduced to a mere idea, it ceases to be the truth of God. Truth ceases to exist the moment it is subjected to analysis. Truth is not a static object of knowledge; it is a living flame that burns in the deepest chamber of human existence, the place of conscience. This flame becomes ethics because its origin is love, and it cannot be dismantled because its source is God.

The Arrogance of Philosophy: The Attempt to Imprison Humanity in Knowledge

Philosophy claimed to understand the human being, yet what it truly attempted was to confine humans within a framework of knowledge.

• Dividing human beings into mind and body

• Reducing the soul into a concept

• Explaining pain as a structure

• Analyzing love as psychology

• Interpreting conscience as a cultural product

• Burying the place of God inside language

In this process, philosophy failed to reveal the essence of the human being and instead lost it. Humanity cannot be fully understood through explanation; it is revealed only through lived experience. Philosophy chose discourse over living, dismantlement over embrace, analysis over witnessing, and conceptualization over genuine understanding. The result was not the preservation of human dignity, but an excess of language, not the depth of human existence, but the arrogance of knowledge. Philosophy declared itself the lover of wisdom, yet it valued knowledge alone and produced only distance between humanity and wisdom. As a result, philosophy is no longer a discipline of wisdom; it has become a rigid system constructed upon the remnants of dismantled knowledge.

The Indestructibility of Human Existence: What Philosophy’s Failure Reveals

Ironically, the long history of philosophy seeking to dismantle the human being proved something unmistakable: Human existence cannot be dismantled. Humanity is not merely a sum of structures, a collection of conceptual fragments, or a linguistic object to be explained. The human being is an integrated life that bears the breath of God. Every philosophical attempt to fragment humanity failed to provide a deeper understanding, and in this failure, the mystery and nobility of human existence reemerged. Similarly, every philosophical attempt to define truth ultimately revealed a fundamental fact:

“Truth cannot be defined by logic, and truth cannot be grasped through analysis.” Truth is not acquired through knowledge; it is lived through conscience.

The Parallel Drift of Philosophy: A History That Lost Essence and Changed Only Forms

The history of philosophy does not represent progress; rather, it is a record of evolving forms of dismantlement.

• Antiquity dismantled the soul.

• The Middle Ages dismantled God.

• Modernity idolized reason.

• Contemporary philosophy reduced humans to language.

• Postmodernism erased the human.

Philosophy has never advanced toward essence. It has continuously moved in a direction parallel to essence, always near yet perpetually diverging. This parallel drift must now cease, as human existence cannot be dismantled and the truth within humanity cannot be confined by language, logic, or knowledge. Truth is a living flame, a trace of God that burns only in conscience.

Truth Is Reborn Through the Human Being

Philosophy sought to dismantle the human and define truth. Yet all such attempts failed. That failure now speaks clearly: “The human cannot be dismantled. Truth cannot be defined.”

The flame of conscience within humanity is the place where God dwells. It is no longer the role of philosophy to speak; it is now the era of human existence. This is not the era of knowledge, but of the ethics of conscience, not of analysis, but of love. Truth is reborn through the human being. Because humanity bears the flame of God, it cannot be dismantled, damaged, or extinguished. This is the declaration of Soyo Existence Ethics and the path by which philosophy may restore the humanity it has lost.

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo Existence Ethics. Author of The Silence of Existence, The Flame of Truth

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