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LOVE OF WISDOM: THE EXAMINED LIFE

PART 1

As many know, the literal meaning of the word ‘philosophy’ is love of wisdom. And that achieving wisdom requires that one examine one’s life is why Socrates is said to be the wisest of all men. For what Socrates knows on self-examination, as well as the examination of others, is that he knows virtually nothing, and also that other men know virtually nothing as well; they are different, however, in that they are convinced that they know a great deal. So it is this: their failure to know that they know so little, their conviction that they know far more than they do, which convicts them of knowing less than Socrates, and thus being profoundly ignorant – for it is this knowledge of his own ignorance that leads the Oracle to say that no one is wiser than he. Having said this, let us pause to consider the critical importance of assumptions in philosophy. Another philosopher reading my opening paragraph will immediately recognize some of my assumptions. I am clearly stressing the primacy of pursuing wisdom as the work of philosophy. A professor who told a student a number of years ago that philosophy is “no longer in the business of discovering the meaning of life or wisdom” would no doubt find my opening paragraph objectionable. So too he or she might object to a corollary, that philosophy has much to do with making people better. Or he might not entirely object but he would want at the outset to be clear that making better is something narrower in scope than I seem to be saying in my stress on wisdom. He might say `better’ in the sense of being clearer about what we say, or better in being more logical. He might also be wary about what appears to be a stress on self-examination, or

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the interior life. He might also complain that I am making philosophy sound too close to psychology, or possibly religion. We could go on like this but my purpose here is not to give an exhaustive list of possible objections to my opening – or alternatives to it (nor certainly am I denying that being `clearer’ or more `logical’ are an important part of doing philosophy). We are not seeking to answer these possible complaints – that would take us very far afield. My purpose here is to stress that I and, yes, every other philosopher begins with a set of assumptions about philosophy, or at least stresses on what is of greatest importance, that shapes the way he does it. The student should know this for a number of reasons; one reason is that if he should find that he has a strong affinity with, say, the above list of possible objections he might want to consider finding someone more compatible to study under. Or he should understand that he may be challenged, and that is fine if he really does want to be challenged! The student should also understand, however, that the way we are doing philosophy here is hardly unusual or controversial. It is in fact the way philosophy students have been introduced to philosophy for thousands of years! As suggested by the phrase, ‘love of wisdom’, it is the definition of the very word itself which goes back to the ancient Greeks hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. And I think it fair to say that most philosophy teachers today, and by far most from the past, would have no major objections as I’ve suggested some might. So among other things I am stressing at the outset that philosophy, though resembling the natural sciences in certain ways, unlike the natural sciences does not begin at least on the elementary level with a set of generally uniform agreed upon assumptions or premises. And the student will see as we explore the thinking of a number of philosophers the still considerable differences among them. This

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is why, though the word does mean what it does and most philosophers would have no problem in stressing that, what philosophy is is not fully contained in the literal definition of the word. Vey thick and different books have been written seeking a definitive answer to the question, What is Philosophy? So we are not here to settle that in a few words – or in many words! But Socrates, the first of the three greatest philosophers of the ancient world, as I’ve said, believes, and lives out the conviction that philosophy is about passionately (he willingly dies in its pursuit) acquiring wisdom. Here we will do what we typically do: We ask, What do we mean by wisdom? Socrates showed by his life, and what is recorded of what he said by his greatest student, Plato, that it is lived truth. In other words it is not enough to know a lot, and certainly it is not enough to know a lot of technical practical things, such as how to repair an automobile engine or a chariot wheel, how to make a clay pot, or how to persuade people in a court of law, or even how to write a poem (though this is a more complicated matter that much more could be written on). It is about permanent truths, fundamental principles that go to the very heart of things – and living them. Here we need to say something about truth. If wisdom is lived truth, and we have an idea of what it means to live out something, then what is truth? This is critical; it is absolutely fundamental. The answer: Truth is the correspondence between what we say or think and what is. Think about it. (I stress the word ‘think’ here because doing philosophy can never be about mental automatic pilot, clichés or simply repeating what someone, including the instructor, says.) Virtually everyone in the opening of this course has in the past said something like: Truth? It is what everybody says. Or, What all scientists say. Or, What my experience

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tells me. Or, What the latest scientific experiments tell me. Or, What my doctor tells me. Or, What my parents told me. Or, What mostly everyone in Hollywood tells me. Or, What philosophers say. Or…? Add your own. In fact some students even after having it explained (as I am about to do) when asked again and again will give an answer of the above kind. This is what I mean when I used the phrase above, ‘automatic pilot’: not thinking but repeating what one has heard and thought in some vague way all of one’s life, thus inside a mental rut, unreflectively saying what is inside one’s head. All of the answers above are statements about how one knows the truth. They vary in that some are better indicators of how to know something is true. Surely we can say more confidently that what all scientists say is true is true than what mostly everyone in Hollywood says. But history tells us that there have been times when what even all scientists said was true was not true. This is not a criticism of science or scientists. Scientists are the first to point it out. Or again, one might say that truth is what everybody says is true. In a nation which operates not only politically as a democracy, but has come to extend the democratic principle beyond government to virtually every avenue of life, this is for many very compelling. And in fact what everybody says is true should catch our attention. We should pay it close attention because what everybody says, especially as G.K. Chesterton noted, allowing for the wider democracy of the dead, is very very likely to be true. And yet, again, that is how we come to know something is true. It is not what it is to be true. And it is not always what history would suggest. Play with the thought in your mind; think about it. Notice the difference between how we might consider something to be true and what it is to be true. We are not asking how, we are asking what. Students (or better, more generally, people) when they are confronted with a question

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they can’t answer, or don’t want to answer, often resort to altering the question in some way, and then answering the question they would rather have been asked. Socrates in the Dialogues shows this with his interlocutors numerous times. Turn on the television and listen especially to certain politicians (most) who are being interviewed; you will see it done numerous times and often very deftly! But both Socrates and we are about truth not about how cleverly we can evade the truth – or promote falsehood. All the above answers, however, even among those who are lying! point us in the direction of what we, yes, we mean when we claim that we are speaking the truth: We are claiming to say what corresponds to what actually is. The politician would have us believe that what he or she is saying is really what is so. (He may know it is otherwise and this is called lying, or as we often euphemistically say today, `spin’) When I see my physician, I earnestly desire that he or she discovers what really is at the bottom of my medical problem. When I say my parents tell me the truth, I at least mean that I can trust them to tell me what they believe is so, or if I am a young and naïve child I believe they know everything! Think about it. In all cases without exception, whether intentionally lying or simply saying what we or others hold as true, we are claiming that what is said corresponds to what is objectively the case. We say objectively because the object being pointed to, whether it be the politician’s foreign policy and its efficacy, or the symptoms my physician diagnoses in order to discover my medical problem, or the parents’ advice about some important matter, is what governs the truth. In other words we take it as given that the physician is telling us what is so about the real medical issues at stake. When we pay him for the truth, his diagnosis, we are not asking to be entertained, or asking for a beautiful narrative, we are asking for what is demanded be known and done for the thing

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that is causing our pain, and possible imminent death or permanent harm, if nothing is done about it. To be sure some matters are much more complicated, or couched in ambiguities, than others, and therefore knowing how to know, or confirming with real confidence, what is true may be extraordinarily difficult, or may even be impossible. But this is hardly always the case! In a court of law if credible witnesses appear who all describe the same incident in the same way, the judge and the jury consider what they have described as true – meaning that what really happened is what they say. Of course they could still be wrong! Courts of law are not perfect but in a just system they try to be. We can think of an indefinite number of examples from everyday life of a similar kind.

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PART 2

Plato’s Apology, a reading of which students have begun the study of philosophy for more than two millennia, is very much about assumptions; but more to the point it is about ill considered assumptions. I opened by describing how it was that Socrates discovered the meaning of the Oracle’s saying that he was the wisest of men. He tells us this in the Apology: He doesn’t know more than anyone else. In fact he knows less than many about many things: He knows less about the various crafts of the craftsmen of his time. He knows less than many about speaking well. He can’t write a poem! But he knows that he knows virtually nothing; and everyone else, full of themselves about what they know, are certain that they know very much more than they do! The Sophists are the worst offenders in this matter. Here we need to stress that the philosophy student needs to understand that everything we are now talking about is not just about 500 B.C. in Athens, Greece. It is about today, this very minute. This doesn’t mean that the answers which Socrates or Plato, or anyone else we study later, give are the golden truth (more about this soon) but they are close: they are avenues to a thoughtful reflection that can lead to important permanent truths for those of us who are willing to do its work. Ill considered assumptions. Let’s dwell on this: Again, I opened Part 1 by following up on Socrates’ rare wisdom in freely acknowledging how little he knows with a statement that announced some of my own assumptions about the study of philosophy. We all begin with certain assumptions whenever we think or do anything that involves a choice. Of course we do things that do not involve choices, and then some (for some

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people, many) choices are made with so little reflection, so little consciousness, of a choice that we might almost say no assumption was made because there is no consciousness of it. Beginning a set of reflections or meditations with no assumptions at all is a notion Rene Descartes (1596-1654?) introduced into philosophy at the dawn of modern philosophy, and you can occasionally see a sticker on someone’s automobile bumper that says Assume Nothing. (We’ll have an opportunity to examine that when we study Descartes later.) Were my assumptions at the beginning of Part 1 ill considered? I considered them seriously enough after more than fifty years of reflection to share them with you. I considered them important enough for you to understand them about me as a philosopher when at the outset of this course you take them into account before going further. Are they all considered? You decide. The purpose is to think about what is meant by ill considered. Let’s take another example. A number of years ago reading a “Dear Abby” column I read from a questioner who asked and stated: “Why do kids go bad? Is it that they were born that way? Or is it that they were raised that way? I’m sure you don’t know the answer but would you call on your team of experts and when they give you the answer, please Abby, give us the answer.” This is of course the famous nature vs. nurture question this person has posed. Do our questions sometimes have buried within them assumptions, sometimes very ill considered assumptions, about the way things are which lead us to ask the questions we ask? I think so. Let’s think about this question but let’s first extend its range and define a thing or two so we don’t get bogged down in an interminable debate about side issues. We could better say `people’ rather than `kids’ because the question really goes to people in general

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rather than to the subset, `kids.’ And let’s just say that going `bad’ refers to serious matters like serial murder, serial rape etc so we don’t talk until the cows come home about whether some triviality or other comes under the heading of `bad.’ We stipulate for the sake of a rational discussion that we are talking about a `bad’ that all of us could agree is really bad. So back to the question: What is assumed? Is it assumed that it can only be one of two possibilities? Can it be a combination? Is there a fourth possibility? Can choice play a part in some of the things we do? Many people would say, and for centuries many people have said, that choice is central to what it is that we do. I earlier said it myself. Could we at least say here that it should not be ruled out? Furthermore, could we say that this requires serious consideration and reflection? But there is no sign of that here. What about this business about `experts’? Are all or most questions people can ask definitively answerable by panels of experts? Some experts would be very happy with that general assumption because it would give them plenty of business and great respect -- and all the benefits (power and influence) that go with great respect in society. This is not an attack on experts because many of them would shrug off such a claim knowing better than the `Dear Abby’ questioner the fallible limits of their expert knowledge. This has not always been true, however, because some experts, or people with specialized knowledge, have suffered from hubris in extending a claim to greater knowledge than they had. Let’s take an example: Phrenology was a scientific theory that took hold in America and much of the Western world some time through the late nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century. The theory was that predictions could be made as to a person’s future behavior by mapping the geography of a person’s skull, that is to say, the

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shape and exact configuration which is unique to each of us, though all of us fit into certain patterns. It had of course many practical applications. An obvious one was in early childhood education. Test all of the children coming into a school system and then place them into educational tracks that anticipate certain behavioral patterns, and train them accordingly. This of course had many advantages for those working in a, say, educational system swamped by a great number of pupils in major urban areas that had to contend often with an influx of many immigrants. It also had profound disadvantages which I will leave for you as a student to reflect on. I believe they are pretty obvious and you can be trusted to think them through thoroughly. I hope this is not a bad assumption! It should also be worth reflecting on that not everything that is `practical’ is good or, even in the long run, practical, except perhaps to some people who have an interest in a certain outcome. But the point here is not to condemn those educators and psychologists, or to bemoan the backwardness of a good many people in earlier generations who just didn’t have our supposed superior knowledge and sophistication about human behavior. The likelihood is that many of these experts meant well, as many do today, as well as we, generally mean well when we come up with theories about human behavior and human needs which we apply across the board as part of a professional or governmental policy. Many philosophers would say that the phrenologists didn’t adequately examine their premises. I agree with that but I don’t think that it was wholly a question of logic. This is an important point and therefore needs careful consideration To see it, let’s go to the Plato texts beginning with the Euthyphro. There are many ways to open a study of the Euthyphro. A long standing very common way is to examine

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the arguments Socrates springs on the young man, Euthyphro, to show him the inadequacy of his answers to his question, what is the holy or piety? All of that is quite important and should be examined; it examines the logic of their exchange. But let us examine the backdrop to all of that by way of asking some simple questions that all of us can ask at the outset about Euthyphro the man, which may illuminate a fuller understanding of what is at stake here. Euthyphro announces to Socrates quite casually, as they meet outside the Athenian courtroom where Socrates is soon to answer the charge of atheism and corrupting Athens’youth, that he has come to accuse his father of murder. Socrates is quite surprised, if not shocked, by the easiness with which Euthyphro says this. And Euthyphro responding to Socrates’ wonderment at this says that he is surprised that Socrates should think that justice should take into account the relation of the accuser to the accused. Whether it is a stranger or his father should make no difference to him or anyone else in the matter of justice, he says. Now there is a certain appeal in this considered exclusively from a logical point of view. But there is a question which arises in Socrates’ mind and should in ours. You might explore it if you ask yourself this question: How would you respond to someone who announced to you quite matter-offactly as you bumped into him on campus that he was on his way to the local courtroom to charge his father with murder -- or some other very serious crime. Yes, he’d be occupied for a few hours, he tells you, but perhaps later in the evening the two of you could get together and share a few drinks at the local pub! You would think it, at the minimum, very strange, would you not? What is missing? What is missing is an apparent failure to appreciate that one’s father, or any

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member of one’s family, has a special relationship to you that a stranger does not. Hence Socrates asks a question that goes beyond justice and asks what the holy is. You would be missing the point entirely if you assumed that justice is unimportant or secondary here! That is not at all where we are going or where Socrates is going. At the same time, should we be so focused on one thought, howe...