You wrote defining philosophy:
The modern emphasis for philosophy is secular philosophy defined as concerned with feeling the meaning of which is revealed by our senses. Since our senses are limited to the world below Plato’s divided line it is limited to our world. Secular Man searches for meaning leading to wisdom in the secular world. The world must serve Man in its need for meaningPhilosophy consists of the contemplative investigation of the most fundamental aspects of existence, life, knowledge, and value. Philosophy concerns itself with how to live one's life (ethics), what one knows, can know, and how one knows it (epistemology), and what can be said to exist (metaphysics).
The word philosophy comes from the Greek word philos, meaning love/affinity/friendship, and the Greek word sophia, meaning wisdom. So a philosopher is literally a lover of wisdom.
However there is a minority who are still attracted to universal philosophy. Man is not the center of the universe but rather a part of a universal conscious whole. From this perspective the meaning and purpose for Man is not found in how the universe serves the needs of Man but rather how Man can serve the purpose of this living machine called universe.
Previously Man needed a God to serve the secular worldly needs of Man. However for some it is no longer the case. They have become open to noesis and feeling how Man can serve the universe. Einstein explains:
The essence of religion and the essence of philosophy are the same in their need to feel reality. Plato's GOOD is both religious and philosophical but is their common cause now dying in favor of secularism and the domain of politics and the senses? Nietzsche said God is Dead and wondered what would replace it? My gut feeling is that the attractions of modern technology create a fascination assuring the death of universal philosophy. Do you think that Man can eventually remember what is being lost through its obsession with modern fragmentation and regain its ability to connect above and below which leads Man to wisdom? I cannot see it happening. Nothing at this point can stop the collective rush to hit bottom and the catastrophe it results in. What does your interest in philosophy suggest to you?The development from a religion of fear to a moral religion is a great step in peoples lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based purely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on guard. the truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.
Common to all types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he want to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
Albert Einstein, Science and Religion, NY Times, November 9, 1930.
