SIEVII: What Even Is Philosophy?

Philosophy. I’ve said that word a lot on this show.

What...is it? Why do I care so much about it? Why does anyone care?

Firstly, I don’t think my life experience is anything approximating a universal standard. I’m sure there are cultural traditions where philosophy is the absolute first subject taught to anyone. For someone coming from that kind of culture, what I’m about to talk about could be the most obvious of things, as if I were explaining in detail the ABCs and 1,2,3s of the universe.

But I can say a philosophical background is definitely not how I grew up. I had no idea it was even a thing until I got to college, where I happened to stumble on it and fell into it, really, as my major and primary objective. I was in academia for a long time, where philosophy is held in fairly high regard at least in my experience. But it’s still pretty common even now in my life for me to be asked “What do you do with a degree in philosophy?”

And that’s a good question, a fair question. We don’t have a standard system for teaching philosophy in schools, which absolutely boggles my mind, but more on that later. As a consequence, philosophy is a huge unknown for a lot of Americans. I use the things I’ve studied every waking moment of my life. I think philosophy is the most important thing I’ve ever done, but it’s so, so hard to explain that to someone who grew up the same as me in small town midwest America. These people are concerned with the practical use of things, and rightly so. College is expensive, and time is valuable. Life can be so hard. Why bother with some ideal that can’t put bread on the table?

In fact, That 70s Show lampooned the philosophy degree. Eric Forman’s sister in one episode announces that she’s majoring in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin where she attends. Eric quips that that’s good, because they just opened up a philosophy factory in Green Bay.

This is a misunderstanding of philosophy. It’s not about sitting around eating olives off the branch and talking nonsense all day. Philosophy majors can absolutely do that, but the primary objective if philosophy has one at all, is wisdom.

Linguistically, the word philosophy comes from ancient Greek. Sophia, means wisdom, and the beginning of the word, philo, indicates a love of. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. This of course raises more questions: what is wisdom? Why should one care to be wise?

When we think of smarts, there are two primary kind of smarts that come to mind. Intelligence is smart smart math genius or whatever that can process information more efficiently than other people. Wisdom is the other kind of smart: it’s knowing better. Intelligence is 16 year old chess prodigy, wisdom is 80 year old grandmaster. There is truth in wisdom that has to be earned.

It is very interesting for example in the Bible that wisdom is considered something transcendent. This comes from the book of Kings: King Solomon was granted a wish from God in his dreams. Solomon could have asked for anything, any earthly pleasure or delight or hedonistic desire. Solomon instead asked God for wisdom.

Why would he do that? Why not ask for military might and strategy to dominate the known world?

But to be wise is to know as best you can right from wrong. It is to be a just ruler, a good king.

Philosophy is a search for truth. Its tools were developed over millennia, beginning largely in the west with ancient Greece.

As I talked about last episode, Socrates from the city of Athens thought philosophy to be the practice of preparation for death. One must try to find what it means to be good if they are able in life. Death does not have to frighten someone who has engaged wholeheartedly in the activity of trying to be a good person.

Plato and Socrates shared this view of philosophy as searching out the form of the good, which they thought existed in an idealized plane of existence.

That’s one philosophical approach. But then came Aristotle. Aristotle was originally a student of Plato’s, but the two disagreed on that very fundamental axiom. Aristotle didn’t think that goodness existed outside the world only accessible by philosophy. Instead he thought as possibly the world’s first scientist: he gathered empirical evidence from the dirt and dust of the world and drew conclusions based on that knowledge. The difference between the approaches of Plato and Aristotle cannot be overstated. It’s night and day. Reading Plato is a constant argument of concepts, all done using rational reasoning. Aristotle’s writings are science. In fact there’s a part of the sea urchin called “Aristotle’s Lantern” because it’s described by Aristotle in his work “The History of Animals”. It reads like a biology textbook

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.4.iv.html

Science itself is a specific kind of philosophy. It’s a very rigorous analysis and search for truth using empirical evidence that we can touch. Every scientist is shaped by the philosophy of thinkers like Aristotle. The practicality of philosophy is so much more than historical intricacies. When you understand the roots of the philosophical frameworks you operate in, you can actually begin to manipulate those frameworks. The most influential of people are those who go beyond what everyone else is doing. New paradigms, new philosophies, cannot be born unless you also understand the old philosophies, if only to have something to contrast with.

And it’s a real shame when scientists don’t seem to recognize these things. Neil Degrasse Tyson, is a physicist, and a rather popular one at that. But he made the comment that philosophy no longer contributes to our understanding of the world, apparently not realizing that he is himself a practicing philosopher of natural science. He acknowledges that Isaac Newton for example called his treatise on physics “Mathematical principles of natural philosophy”, but doesn’t make the connection of why Newton called it that. Philosophy has not fundamentally changed since the time of Newton. It is still a search for truth, search for wisdom, in all its forms.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-value-of-philosophy_b_5330216

We owe our society, civilization, and technology to the ever-changing, ever-evolving search for truth. Philosophy is all that we see.

So far, I’ve explained philosophy as a concept. Now it’s time for practicality. What do we do to fix the gap in our understanding?

I don’t think our aversion to philosophy and general ignorance of the subject is necessarily sinister, though it’s possible it’s been influenced by bad faith actors. I think the answer is simple: education. Philosophy should be taught in all schools. Children naturally have an already inquisitive mind, and the tools of philosophy, of logic and reason, would be best served in minds that want to discover.

It would not be particularly hard to add curriculums on Socrates or Descartes to our already long list of common core educational standards. The tricky part is in getting students to understand that the entire point is not what is being taught, but how to learn and grow in their own philosophical mindsets. The philosophy classroom is unique in academia as the place where all subject matter is up for debate. I don’t even know if I would be good at teaching such a class. One cannot expect every school in America to be able to train and afford such a professional, at least not immediately. But the philosophical mindset if it is taught properly even in a portion of all schools, will trickle out into the world over time, compounding as an avalanche. It’s not unrealistic to imagine philosophy teachers to be as ubiquitous as math teachers in 50 years.

This is not beneficial, not an ideal world for those who want to keep people chained to ideologies, never to break out of the box. Too bad for them, eh? I think the understanding of philosophy would make our society so much better at everything, but being human most of all. I imagine a world where differences in opinion are treated not as personal insults but as problems to work out for the better understanding of everyone. Where politics are not toxic and life is as good as it can be.

All of the previous being said, I cannot speak for any society and culture besides my own. Not just on a “where we should go from here?” basis, but on a fundamental philosophical basis. The west primarily drew its philosophical influence from ancient Greece and the surrounding area. That’s what I studied in an academic setting, but more than that, the very core of our view and approach to life is shaped by philosophy, as I’ve already said. The socratic method, the questioning attitude of Athenian philosophers, is only one of the ways philosophy can manifest.

To be honest, I have no idea what it’s like growing up in an Eastern tradition. First of all, there’s hundreds, thousands of different eastern cultures. Obviously blanket statements are not going to work, for the east or west. The things I’ve learned suggest that the problems examined by early eastern thinkers are fundamentally different from the ones examined in the west. 

The Dao De Jing, written by the originator of Daoism, Laozi thousands of years ago, expresses this sentiment: 

Not showing that which can be desired

Ensures that the citizens’ minds do not become

   confused.

Thus the governing of the sage

Empties their minds, fills their stomachs,

Weakens their ambitions, strengthens their bones.

By always ensuring that the citizens are

   without-knowledge and without-desire,

Those who make men wise will not dare to act.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49965/49965-h/49965-h.htm

That kind of thinking seems to run diametrically opposed to what Socrates proclaimed: that the unexamined life is not worth living. Laozi and the Dao De Jing weren’t trying to get people to do that. Rather, the goal if it can be said to have one is to make people and society happy, or good, or something harmonious.

I’ve thought about that line from the Dao de Jing and its place in eastern philosophy. At first, I was kind of repelled by it. Why would it be a good thing to live a life of ignorance? But that thought of mine was itself ignorance. The philosophy runs a lot deeper than that.

Eastern philosophies like Daoism can approach life as if it’s no mystery at all. It’s perfectly obvious what you are and what your place is. It’s presence in the present moment. Adding questions and angst on top of life only serves to confuse, and increases the amount of suffering in the world. How to engage in proper living and reduce suffering is therefore the correct question for society to address.

Ironically, that point of view of real practical philosophy is already what Americans do when they practice politics and things of that nature. Anyone questioning the use of philosophy even after learning about its roots as the originator of Western civilization should read up on the approach of Laozi’s Dao de Jing, or Kongfuzi, Confucious, and the Analects. The similarities to American politics are absolutely striking, and more than a little controversial.

The point as always is that all of this is up for debate. The ideals of what it is to be good, of how to find knowledge and truth, and the very questions we need to ask to find them are in constant tension with opposing views. To not engage in the debate, to throw our cards down and walk away from the table is a mistake. And yet that’s what we’re doing by not talking about, teaching and practicing philosophy. If not for the love of wisdom, then for the love of ourselves and all we know and care about. I hope we make the best choices for our path in the future to come.

This has been Tony Talks Back. Thanks for listening.