What is the point of questioning?

Recently, I had a brief thoughtful exchange on Instagram. In response to a reel I had posted about the existence of G*d, someone wrote: “G*d exists, but in a way that is hard for us to understand. Maybe if we use both our mind and soul, we can understand a little bit, but the mind alone is not enough.”

I understood what the writer was reaching for: the idea that reality exceeds our concepts and ideas; that some forms of knowing are deeper than mere calculation; that reason alone cannot exhaust the fullness of existence. Mystics across traditions have said similar things in different ways.

But the Instagram exchange also raised another question for me: why bother with philosophy at all? If ultimate reality exceeds language and concepts, why not simply abandon reason and rest in mystery? My answer is this: not everything that calls itself mystery actually is mystery. Some claims to mystery are simply muddled thinking. Two plus two equals five is not a mystery. It is an error.

Another example: the claim that a loving G*d would create people only to torment them eternally is not mystery. It is incoherence. Nonsense is not depth, contradiction is not transcendence, and wooly thinking is not spirituality.

This is where philosophy becomes important. Philosophy clears the ground. It examines assumptions, and exposes contradictions. It asks whether our words actually make sense. So, good philosophy does not destroy mystery. It protects it from confusion masquerading as profundity.

At the beginning of my book Love as a Guide to Morals, I suggested that love is trans-rational. I then wrote a whole book trying to clear away the confusions about love, while analyzing the many facets of love. In other words, I tried to make sense of love. In my conclusion, I restated that love is trans-rational. But that does not mean irrational. I had spent a couple hundred pages clearing away irrational claims about love, to finally remain with the mystery of love. Irrational claims about love are not mystery. They are just silly. The mystics were rarely anti-intellectual. Many were extraordinarily disciplined thinkers. What they resisted was the arrogance of thinking that concepts could fully contain reality itself.

Philosophy, at its best, leads toward humility. It teaches us where language reaches its limit. It reveals the difference between genuine depth and mere obscurity. But then another difficulty appears. If mystery is simply “what remains when there is nothing left to say,” then mystery can begin to sound like a leftover category, a kind of remainder after explanation fails. I do not think that is quite right. Mystery is not mere absence. It is fullness.

Reality is not mysterious because it is empty of meaning. It is mysterious because it is richer, deeper, and more inexhaustible than our concepts can fully grasp. The ocean is not mysterious because there is nothing there. It is mysterious because there is too much there to take in all at once. The same may be true of existence itself.

Words are important. Clear thinking matters. Philosophy is essential. But the wisest philosophy eventually learns modesty before the fullness of what actually is. In the end, as the young Wittgenstein might say, we are left with silence.

But before we reach silence, we first have to pass through the noise that masquerades as profundity. Not every obscure statement is deep. Not every contradiction is wisdom. Not every vague spiritual claim points beyond reason. Sometimes confusion is simply confusion.

Philosophy helps clear away the counterfeit forms of depth. It asks whether our words actually mean anything, and whether our claims cohere. It asks whether we are speaking carefully or merely gesturing toward something we have not really understood.

Good philosophy, then, is not hostile to mystery. It is hostile to muddle. The goal is not to explain everything away. The goal is clarity and sometimes genuine clarity leads us to the edge of language itself, where reality appears larger, richer, and more inexhaustible than our concepts can contain. At that point, silence is not emptiness. It is wonder before fullness.

I think that is what my correspondent on Instagram meant. At least I hope so.

+Ab. Andy