Dare to be wise

anametheus: A brilliant depiction of what a 21st century...

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:25:37 -0700

A brilliant depiction of what a 21st century Enlightenment can be.

Being Fully Human: Formative and Transformative Activities

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:26:05 -0700

Activities may be divided into two categories, formative and transformative.

Formative activities are any activities that by themselves leave our perception of the world unchanged. For example, watching a football game. The qualification ‘by themselves’ is inserted to remind the reader that potentially any activity given the right circumstances can become transformative. For example, going to the cinema is usually a formative activity, but there is a possibility that a movie will affect us in such a deep way that it literally transforms the way we view reality.

Formative activities may be pleasurable, but at the end of the activity we remain the same person we were when we started them, and sometimes we even feel a sense of emptiness at the end of the activity. The reason for this emptiness is that man is always trying to find the solution to the problem of existence, and he is trying all these activities with the hope (whether conscious or unconscious) that they will be the solution to his problem. When he realizes that they are not, since he is unchanged at the end of the activity, he feels a vague but nevertheless distinct sense of emptiness. It is the feeling of failure, which increases over the years as all the attempted ‘solutions’ fail to solve the problem of human existence.

As soon as he realizes that each of these formative activities do not solve the problem, he tries to perform them conjunctively with the hope that what one formative activity couldn’t solve many formative activities together would. He goes to work, but his work is boring, and if it is not, just the fact that he has to do it is enough to remove much of the enjoyment of it – but he realizes it is not the solution. He tries to buy things with the money he’s making, and he believes the more he can buy the more he will approach the solution, so he works harder in order to buy them. But as any rich person will tell you, things bought are not the solution; at best they are a temporary alleviation. The excessive amount of work he is required to do makes him idealize ‘rest’ and ‘relaxation’ and he thinks that if he could only not work and ‘relax’ on some beach in an exotic island he will solve the problem, but when he retires on that island he gets bored and realizes it is not the solution. He searches ardently for love, for ‘the one’ person that will be his salvation, but when he finds her and has a family with her, he realizes after a number of years that not only she and their children weren’t the solution, but now he is burdened with even more responsibilities and has to work even harder. He devotes himself to all sorts of hobbies: jogging, basketball, hiking, sky diving, rafting etc. he tries everything in case one of them is the solution. Then he believes he might find the solution by doing all of the above together; when he realizes it is difficult, he believes that if only he could find a golden ‘balance’ between all these activities he would find the solution, he would be happy. But adding zeros does not get you a one in whatever way you add them – it only postpones the realization of the result of a pointless addition. Sad though it might be, this postponement can last a lifetime, and thus, as Thoreau reminds us, people reach the end of their lives and realize they have not lived.

The solution does not lie in formative activities. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t engage in them, they make up the spice of life, but spices can’t replace a meal. The nourishment of the soul is to be found in transformative activities. As I mentioned earlier, the transformative quality of an activity may not be due to the activity itself but the conjunction of many factors simultaneously. However, there are some activities that are transformative themselves and do not require the simultaneous presence of additional factors. Transformative activities give birth to our inner potential and allow us to do more, think more, feel more – be more. What are some examples of transformative activities? The archetype of a transformative activity is philosophy. This is for the simple reason that the very aim of philosophy is the transformation of life into the good life, the life worth living. Philosophy as it is practiced in the universities these days has forgotten its real purpose; that the analysis of concepts and the examination of aspects of reality, is done in the service of the good life, and not as an end in itself. Contemporary philosophy has taken the means for the ends. But philosophy is an examination of both means and ends, and its domain is not limited to the crude division of academic departments. Philosophy deals with the totality of life, and the totality of life is not limited to logic and metaphysics but it encapsulates physics, psychology, sociology, biology, literature, history, just to mention a few. That is why specialization is nothing but a reflection of modern times rather than inevitable necessity. A plant cannot ‘specialize’ in gathering water, while being ignorant of how to face the sun. In the same way, a man will not flourish unless he has a thorough knowledge of himself and the world he is living. Only then, can he spread his branches, face the sun, and bear his inner and most beautiful fruits. Only then can he be fully human.

On Friendship

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:29:30 -0700

On Friendship:

The truest kind of friendship is that which exists between good men, as we have said more than once. For it is agreed that what is good or pleasant absolutely is lovable and desirable absolutely, and what is good or pleasant for a particular person is lovable and desirable for that person.

But friendship between good men rests on both grounds - the good are good and pleasant absolutely, and good and pleasant to each other. And when men wish well to those they love for their own sakes, this goodwill is not an emotion but a fixed disposition. Liking seems to be an emotion, but friendship a disposition; liking may just as much be felt for inanimate objects, but mutual affection is a matter of deliberate choice, and this springs from a fixed disposition. In loving a friend men are loving their own good, as a good man benefits a person whose affection he wins. Each party to a friendship therefore promotes his own good and makes an equal return in goodwill and in the pleasure that he gives. There is a saying, ‘Amity is equality’, and this is most fully realized in the friendships between good men.

Friendship is essentially a partnership. Also a friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend’s existence, when given reality by intercourse with him, makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, (emphasis added) excerpt found in The Oxford Book of Friendship, chosen and edited by D.J. Enright and David Rawlinson, Oxford University Press, 1991.

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honour, if you must needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend’s buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead of the noblest benefit.

Emerson, ‘Friendship’. (emphasis added), ibid.

Those we ordinarily call friends and amities, are but acquaintances and familiarities, tied together by some occasion or commodities, by means whereof our minds are entertained…If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him [his friend Étienne de La Boétie], I feel it cannot be expressed, but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself. There is beyond all my discourse, and besides what I can particularly report of it, I know not what inexplicable and fatal power, a mean and mediatrix of this indissoluble union. We sought one another before we had seen one another, and by the reports we heard one of another; which wrought a greater violence in us, than the reason of reports may well bear; I think by some secret ordinance of the heavens, we embraced one another by our names. And at our first meeting, which was by chance at a great feast, and solemn meeting of a whole township, we found our selves so surprised, so known, so acquainted, and so combinedly bound together, that from thence forward, nothing was so near unto us as one unto another’s.

Montaigne, ‘Of Friendship’, ibid.

There are few nobler spectacles than the friendship of two great men; and the History of Literature presents nothing comparable to the friendship of Goethe and Schiller. The friendhsip of Montaigne and Étienne de La Boétie was, perhaps, more passionate and entire; but it was the union of two kindred natures, which from the first moment discovered their affinity, not the union of two rivals incessantly contrasted by partisans, and originally disposed to hold aloof from each other. Rivals Goethe and Schiller were, and are; natures in many respects directly antagonistic; chiefs of opposing camps and brought into brotherly union only by what was highest in their natures and their aims.

To look on these great rivals was to see at once their profound dissimilarity. Goethe’s beautiful head had the calm victorious grandeur of the Greek ideal; Schiller’s the earnest beauty of a Christian looking towards the Future. The massive brow, and large-pupilled eyes- like those given by Raphael to the infant Christ, in the matchless Madonna di San Sisto- the strong and well-proportioned features, lined indeed by thought and suffering, yet showing that thought and suffering have troubled, but not vanquished, the strong man - a certain healthy vigour in the brown skin, and an indescribable something which shines out from the face, make Goethe a striking contrast to Schiller, with his eager eyes, narrow brow - tense and intense - his irregular features lined by thought and suffering, and weakened by sickness. The one looks, the other looks out. Both are majestic; but one has the majesty of repose, the other of conflict…

In comparing one to a Greek ideal, the other to a Christian ideal, it has already been implied that one was the representative of Realism, the other of Idealism. Goethe has himself indicated the capital distinction between them: Schiller was animated with the idea of Freedom; Goethe on the contrary, was animated with the idea of Nature. This distinction runs through their works: Schiller always pining for something greater than Nature, wishing to make men Demigods; Goethe always striving to let Nature have free development, and produce the highest forms of Humanity. The Fall of Man was to Schiller the happiest of all events, because thereby men fell away from pure instinct into conscious freedom; with this sense of freedom came the possibility of Morality. To Goethe this seemed paying a price for Morality which was higher than Morality was worth; he preferred the ideal of a condition wherein Morality was unnecessary. Much as he might prize a good police, he prized still more a society in which a police would never be needed…

Having touched upon the points of contrast, it will now be needed to say a word on those points of resemblance which served as the basis of their union…They were both profoundly convinced that Art was no luxury of leisure, no mere amusement to charm the idle, or relax the careworn; but a mighty influence, serious in its aims although pleasurable in its means; a sister to Religion, by whose aid the great world-scheme was wrought into reality…They believed that Culture would raise Humanity to its full powers; and they, as artists, knew no Culture equal to that of Art…

At this time, then, that these two men seemed most opposed to each other, and were opposed in feeling, they were gradually drawing closer and closer in the very lines of their development, and a firm basis was prepared for a solid and enduring union. Goethe was five-and-forty, Schiller five-and-thirty. Goethe had much to give, which Schiller gratefully accepted; and if he could not in return influence the developed mind of his great friend, or add to the vast stores of its knowledge and experience, he could give him that which was even more valuable, sympathy and impulse. He excited Goethe to work. He withdrew him from the engrossing pursuit of science, and restored him once more to poetry. He urged him to finish what was already commenced, and not leave his works all fragments. They worked together with the same purpose and with the same earnestness, and their union is the most glorious episode in the lives of both, and remains as an eternal exemplar of a noble friendship.

G.H. Lewes, Life of Goethe, (emphasis added), 1855, ibid.

All animals have interests. They are interested in satisfying their needs and desires, and in gathering the information required for their well-being. Rational beings have such interests, and use their reason in pursuing them. But they also have ‘interests of reason’: interests which arise from their rationality, and which are in no clear way related to desires, needs and appetites. One of these, according to Kant, is morality. Reason motivates us to do our duty, and all other (‘empirical’) interests are discounted in the process. That is what it means for a decision to be a moral one. The interest in doing right is not an interest of mine, but an interest of reason in me.

Reason also has an interest in the sensuous world. When a cow stands in a field ruminating, and turning her eyes to view the horizon, we can say that she is interested in what is going on (and in particular, in the presence of potential threats to her safety), but not that she is interested in the view. A rational being, by contrast, takes pleasure in the mere sight of something: a sublime landscape, a beautiful animal, an intricate flower, or a work of art. This form of pleasure answers to no empirical interest: I satisfy no bodily appetite or need in contemplating the landscape, nor do I merely scan it for useful information. The interest is disinterested - an interest in the landscape for its own sake, for the very thing that it is (or rather, for the very thing that it appears). Disinterestedness is a mark of an ‘interest of reason’. We cannot refer it to our empirical nature, but only to the reason that transcends empirical nature, and which searches the world for a meaning that is more authoritative and more complete than any that flows from desire. On this account, we should hardly be surprised to discover that the aesthetic is a realm of value. We perceive in the objects of aesthetic interest a meaning beyond the moment - a meaning which also resides in the moment, incarnate, as it were, in a sensory impression. The disinterested observer is haunted by a question: is it right to take pleasure in this? Hence arises the idea of taste. We discriminate between the objects of aesthetic interest, find reasons for and against them, and see in each other’s choice the sign and expression of moral character. A person who needs urgently to cut a rope and therefore takes up the knife that lies beside him, does not, in choosing that instrument, reveal his character. The knife is a means, and it was the best means to hand. The person with no such use for the knife, who nevertheless places it on his desk and endlessly studies it, thereby shows something of himself. Aesthetic interest does not stem from our passing desires: it reveals what we are and what we value. Taste, like style, is the man himself.

The same is true of all experiences and activities in which something is treated not as a means, but as an end in itself. When I work, my activity is generally a means to an end - making money, for example. When I play, however, my activity is an end in itself. Play is not a means to enjoyment; it is the very thing enjoyed. And it provides the archetype of other activities that penetrate and give sense to our adult lives: sport, conversation, socializing, and all that we understand by art. Schiller noticed this, and went so far as to exalt play into the paradigm of intrinsic value. With the useful and the good, he remarked, man is merely in earnest; but with the beautiful he plays. (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.)

There is an element of paradoxism in Schiller’s remark. But you can extract from it a thought that is far from paradoxical, namely this: if every activity is a means to an end, then no activity has intrinsic value. The world is then deprived of its sense. If, however, there are activities that we engage in for their own sake, the world is restored to us and we to it. For of these activities we do not ask what they are for; they are sufficient in themselves. Play is one of them; and its association with childhood reminds us of the essential innocence and exhilaration that attends such ‘disinterested’ activities. If work becomes play - so that the worker is fulfilled in his work, regardless of what results from it - then work ceases to be drudgery, and becomes instead ‘the restoration of man to himself’. Those last words are Marx’s, and contain the core of his theory of ‘unalienated labour’ - a theory which derives from Kant, via Schiller and Hegel.

Consider conversation: each utterance calls forth a rejoinder; but in the normal case there is no direction towards which the conversation tends. The participants respond to what they hear with matching remarks, but the conversation proceeds unpredictably and purposelessly, until business interrupts it. Although we gain much information from conversation, this is not its primary purpose. In the normal case, as when people ‘pass the time of day’, conversation is engaged in for its own sake, like play. The same is true of dancing.

These paradigms of the purposeless can be understood only if we take care to distinguish purpose from function. A sociobiologist will insist that play has a function: it is the safest way to explore the world, and to prepare the child for action. But function is not purpose. The child plays in order to play: play is its own purpose. If you make the function into the purpose - playing for the sake of learning, say - then you cease to play. You are now, as Schiller puts it, ‘merely in earnest’. Likewise the urgent person, who converses in order to gain or impart some information, to elicit sympathy or to tell his story, has ceased to converse. Like the Ancient Mariner, he is the death of dialogue.

The same is true of friendship. This too has a function. It binds people together, makes communities strong and durable, brings advantages to those who are joined by it and fortifies them in their endeavours. But make these advantages into your purpose, and the friendship is gone. Friendship is a means to advantage, but only when not treated as a means. The same applies to almost everything worthwhile: education, sport, hiking, fishing, hunting, and art. If we are to live properly, therefore - not merely consuming the world but loving it and valuing it - we must cultivate the art of finding ends where we might have found only means. We must learn when and how to set our interests aside, not out of boredom or disgust, but out of disinterested passion for the thing itself.

Roger Scruton, Modern Culture, Continuum, 2005.

On Leadership

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:08:16 -0800

On Leadership:

In an era still dominated by a naive belief in scientific method [1] many people believe that if they just diligently follow a step-by-step guide on leadership, in addition to imitating what their current leaders do, that will somehow eventually result in them becoming leaders too. But that is the mindset of those who obey, not those who lead. If it leads anywhere, it is not some place new other than a dull reproduction of the status quo.
Having the courage to disobey and venture alone into the unknown because you feel something better can be built there as an enactment of indepedent thought instead of a juvenile reaction to authority constitutes a large part of what it means to lead.
But where to? You’d think an answer to that question would make an essential chapter in every contemporary leadership book. Yet a casual glance at the contents of Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by John C. Maxwell, one of the most celebrated authors on leadership alive today, reveals that knowing where to lead is apparently not something a contemporary leader needs to know [2]. Perhaps the fact that we’re more interested in becoming leaders than in knowing where to lead is why we’ve been going nowhere.
Leadership is not just about expertise. What’s the value of expertly leading people over a cliff? Not much; by that logic Hitler and Stalin were great leaders. To make a fetish out of the techniques of leadership is to glorify the means over and above the ends. I think we can do better than that. We have to.
I studied philosophy, not management. I wanted to know what the good life is before trying to lead myself or others to it. You can’t be a good leader if you’re not a wise one, and wisdom is the province of philosophy, not management. We need to integrate both.
When you integrate both you want to lead somewhere better, not just lead. That’s what’s at the core of being an entrepreneur. If we want a better future, we need more entrepreneurs and better managers.
Successful leaders abolish the conditions that make them necessary, just like teachers through teaching students successfully, lessen the gap between themselves and their students till it disappears, thereby creating an equality that enables a more sublime relationship to emerge [3].

Notes:

[1] Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did a good job in demolishing the idea that there is a single prescriptive scientific method and that science progresses in a uniform way by following its dictates.

[2] Don’t be fooled into thinking Chapter 4 “How Should I Prioritize my Life?” has anything to do with overall ends. It’s more about how to prioritize not what those priorities should be and why.

[3] See Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955. New York: Owl Books, 1990, p.96-97.

Childhood, suffering and the meaning of life

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 11:49:26 -0800

Childhood, suffering and the meaning of life:

To look back to the circumstances under which a question arises helps us in understanding a question better thus making it easier to answer it. Moreover, it can even point to the dissolution of the question altogether and make the answer unnecessary or generate different, perhaps more interesting questions. The question regarding the meaning (or purpose, which is not exactly the same) of existence has a complicated origin, where many factors play a role and contribute to its emergence.

I will start with the simplest, and one that has been experienced by all. When we were children, we asked questions about everything. When children ask the question “What is that?” they do not merely want to know the name of something which captures their curiosity. They want to know what it does and what it is for. We categorize external objects not only by what they look like but also by what they do and what they are for. This mode of questioning is then transposed on whatever the child needs to know. When parents shout or beat their children, most of them make sure the child knows why this happens so the child won’t do it again. The child feels it was responsible for the parents reaction. So children associate certain behaviors and the subsequent pain or reward (be it physical or emotional) with a reason, and it doesn’t take much time to generalize (the tendency for children to generalize is well documented [1]) this to most internal states: anger, envy, jealousy, fear. Their experience with their parents being the most intimate and most frequent, their initial model for explaining their internal states is that an external agent causes internal states (e.g. Parent causing pain to the child or child making the parent angry). Thus, they mostly seek external causes for what happens within them.

Let us summarize the above insights in order to connect them with later ones. Children are heavily assisted in learning the meaning and purpose of things from an external authority figure. He/She symbolizes their source of knowledge. They are made to feel responsible for their parents reactions. They are punished and rewarded by the same persons and during those processes they associate external causes with internal states.

Having said the above, it is now not difficult to be in the position to understand the Freudian point [2] regarding Christianity. God, as the benevolent father with supreme authority, is the agent who teaches us the meaning and purpose of things. The Father who can answer what our father couldn’t because he’s omniscient. The Father who punishes and rewards and make us feel responsible for our sins. Where our sins explain the pain and evil in the world, like our bad behavior explained the punishment our parents inflicted on us.

Thus, unwanted internal states, are moralized from the beginning. Even if the child is not brought up in a Christian environment the punishment he receives is given a moral justification: “You did something wrong.” Thus, the moral interpretation of natural phenomena has haunted mankind for thousands of years. Earthquakes and floods were seen as punishments and good harvests and fertile wives as rewards.

Children, as well as adults, can withstand meaningful suffering because they can change it by their future behavior. The child can ‘behave’ and the adult can be a good Christian or a good citizen. But pointless suffering seems unendurable exactly because we cannot do something to change it.

Thus, the usual emergence of the question regarding the meaning of life comes from the experience of pointless suffering. “Why?” is the incessant question of a suffering mankind. If only we knew why we suffered, we could do something about it, and hence avoid suffering. It is this quest that has given birth to all religions. The Buddhists answered it by claiming that the root of suffering is desire. Hence if I eliminate desire, I eliminate suffering. The Christians thought mankind was suffering because it had a sinful nature, inherited from its parents Adam and Eve. If you’re a Christian or a Muslim there is a meaning in suffering but there is no escape – at least not in this life. Virtually every philosophy addresses the issue of suffering and why it is present. Some Stoics claimed that we suffer because we don’t live according to nature. The Epicureans because we do not prudently choose which pleasures to indulge in and which to avoid. Epictetus claimed we suffer because we care about things which are not in our power to change. Were we to concentrate on the ones that are truly within our power, then suffering would largely diminish and a happy, peaceful life would be possible. The list is endless but the point remains the same. We want to know why we suffer – for “If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. - Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that.”[3]

Notes:

[1] See A. Musgrave, Common Sense, Science and Scepticism, p.70-71, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

[2] See for instance, Civilization and Its Discontents, and The Future of an Illusion. In my opinion you’re probably better off getting a volume that contains both and more, like the excellent vol.12 of the Penguin Freud Library.

[3] F. Nietzsche, “Maxims and Arrows”, section 12, Twilight of the Idols, 1889. Penguin, 1990. The reference to the “Englishman” is of course a jab against the Utilitarianism championed by Bentham and Mill who were both English.

Wisdom and Hydrodynamics

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 02:55:02 -0800

Wisdom and Hydrodynamics:

The good life is a correct balance between know-that and know-how. Knowing in an intellectual way is simply not enough for a full understanding and embodiment of wisdom. In fact, a good definition of wisdom is embodied valuable knowledge. Or, in vernacular: (valuable) knowledge in action. On the other hand, wise action is impossible with ignorance in theory.

That doesn’t mean that a man cannot swim in life unless he knows the laws of hydrodynamics. But someone proficient in hydrodynamics can do things no Olympic swimmer ever could. That however, is irrelevant when it comes to the good life, broadly conceived. When it comes to that, it is more important to know how to swim well than to know hydrodynamics. The problem we have today is that people know hydrodynamics and have forgotten how to swim – if they had ever learnt to do so.

You can’t swim in life unless you get in the water. Contemporary philosophers are professors of hydrodynamics. That is why they cannot teach anybody how to swim well in the oceans of life. Poor students of philosophy, they enroll in philosophy hoping they will learn to swim and they are made to believe that hydrodynamics is all one needs to know. That is why contemporary philosophers can even seem incompetent when it comes to everyday life, whereas they should have been its graceful artists.

“Critics are to painters what ornithologists are to birds” Birds fly, painters paint. Critics criticize and ornithologists analyse and observe. Contemporary philosophy is in the same predicament. Instead of living life, they analyse and observe it. They cannot dance like the philosophers of the past. While true philosophy is learning how to fly, contemporary philosophy merely analyses what flight is.

Barry Schwartz talks about the the real crisis: We stopped being...

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 01:18:40 -0800

Barry Schwartz talks about the the real crisis: We stopped being wise.

I had written about the war rules wage on moral skill back in 2006. I recently unearthed it and re-posted it on my personal blog here.

"A new species of philosophers is coming up: I venture to baptize them with a name that is not free..."

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:16:00 -0800

“A new species of philosophers is coming up: I venture to baptize them with a name that is not free of danger […] these philosophers of the future might require in justice, perhaps also in injustice, to be called attempters [Versucher]. The name itself is in the end a mere attempt and, if you will, a temptation [Versuchung].”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, ‘The Free Spirit’, section 42.

"The missing ear - ‘So long as one always lays the blame on others one still belongs to the mob, when..."

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 19:50:00 -0800

“The missing ear - ‘So long as one always lays the blame on others one still belongs to the mob, when one always assumes responsibility oneself one is on the path of wisdom; but the wise man blames no one, neither himself nor others’. - Who says this? - Epictetus, eighteen hundred years ago. - It was heard but forgotten. - No, it was not heard and forgotten: not everything gets forgotten. But there was lacking an ear for it, the ear of Epictetus. - So did he say it into his own ear? - Yes, this is how it is: wisdom is the whispering of the solitary to himself in the crowded marketplace.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, vol.2, section 386.

Who is wise?

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:33:28 -0800

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in its article on wisdom, after summarizing the main views there are about wisdom, concludes with a rigorous definition of what it means for someone to be wise. Someone is wise if and only if he/she:

1. Has extensive factual and theoretical knowledge.
2. Knows how to live well.
3. Is successful at living well.
4. Has very few unjustified beliefs.

As to what kind of factual and theoretical knowledge is implied, the previous quote by Nozick, which was actually found in the same article, provides ample examples.

"Wisdom is an understanding of what is important, where this understanding informs a (wise)..."

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:20:22 -0800

“Wisdom is an understanding of what is important, where this understanding informs a (wise) person’s thought and action…Wisdom is not just one type of knowledge, but diverse. What a wise person needs to know and understand constitutes a varied list: the most important goals and values of life – the ultimate goal, if there is one; what means will reach these goals without too great a cost; what kinds of dangers threaten the achieving of these goals; how to recognize and avoid or minimize these dangers; what different types of human beings are like in their actions and motives (as this presents dangers or opportunities); what is not possible or feasible to achieve (or avoid); how to tell what is appropriate when; knowing when certain goals are sufficiently achieved; what limitations are unavoidable and how to accept them; how to improve oneself and one’s relationships with others or society; knowing what the true and unapparent value of various things is; when to take a long-term view; knowing the variety and obduracy of facts, institutions, and human nature; understanding what one’s real motives are; how to cope and deal with the major tragedies and dilemmas of life, and with the major good things too.”

- Robert Nozick, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, p. 267-9, Simon & Schuster, 1990.

"He who has little communication with people is seldom a misanthrope. True misanthropes are not found..."

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:10:48 -0800

“He who has little communication with people is seldom a misanthrope. True misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world. This is because it is practical experience of life, and certainly not philosophy, that makes people hate their fellows. And if someone who is a misanthrope withdraws from society, in his seclusion he loses his misanthropy.”

- Giacomo Leopardi, Thoughts, 1837, section 89, Hesperus Press Limited, 2002.

To be a philosopher

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:10:41 -0700

To be a philosopher:

Philosophy is not boring. It talks about the most important issues in life – and it doesn’t tell you which those are. It is not an order, it is a question. You are supposed to find the answer.

Philosophers who are boring are failing in life. A boring life cannot be a good one. “So what if a philosopher is boring? He may still be a good philosopher.” Yes – only if you subtract one of the main aims of philosophy: Living the good life. That contemporary philosophy is filled with boring professors of philosophy only accentuates Thoreau’s remark in Walden:

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.

Someone who has been a philosopher for years should be discernibly different in the things that matter from most people. He has supposedly made it his life’s task to live the good life. If he isn’t living better than most who haven’t set such a conscious goal for themselves, he is evidently not a good philosopher. Philosophy is not just another profession. It is a calling. You cannot be a philosopher from 9 to 5 and be a layman at night. Being a philosopher means being an example of your own philosophy. Walking the talk and talking the walk.

Of course, being a philosopher is a process, as most things are. If someone has just created the ideal to which he wants to strive, it is unfair to expect that he’s going to match it overnight. The ideals of philosophy entail your whole way of life. Changing your whole way of life overnight is highly improbable if not completely impossible. But being only a shadow of the ideal you still believe yet have sketched 20 years ago, should raise doubts about your sincerity or strength of will. Doubts that you should at least have personally raised and examined. That is why philosophies have been called confessions. They are the sublimated confessions of personal struggles to live out ideals; the triumphs and tragedies of human actualization.

To restrict yourself to offering a little nugget of truth (which seems to be the rule among philosophers these days) while living alone in an ivory tower of inauthenticity can hardly be called noble. Let us not let “noble” remain an honorific term for people who don’t deserve it. Let us not cower from aspirations to greatness. Let us not always equate the will to greatness with arrogance and conceitedness. It is time to believe that there is something more than nihilistic humility. Sapere Aude!

Wisdom is more important than knowledge

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:05:00 -0700

Wisdom is more important than knowledge:

With the tremendous advancements in science human beings have reached the technological capacity to exterminate themselves and their world. In fact, at least one time we came pretty close to a nuclear war. Over the past decades, with the rise of the environmental movement, we’ve become ever more aware of the impact we have not only on the health and well-being of our own communities but on the planet as a whole.
It is, therefore, no secret that we currently have the know-how to radically change the world. The crucial question, therefore, is not whether we can change the world. It is whether we are wise enough to act towards making it better, given that scientific know-how does not in itself make us wiser.

Shall we be more precise? Science is analytical description, philosophy is synthetic interpretation. Science wishes to resolve the whole into parts,the organism into organs, the obscure into the known. It does not inquire into the values and ideal possibilities of things, nor into their total and final significance; it is content to show their present actuality and operation, it narrows its gaze resolutely to the nature and process of things as they are. The scientist is as impartial as Nature in Ivan Turgenev’s (1818-1883) poem; he is as interested in the leg of a flea as in the creative throes of a genius. But the philosopher is not content to describe the fact; he wishes to ascertain its relation to experience in general and thereby to get at its meaning and its worth; he combines things in a interpretive synthesis; he tries to put together, better than before, that great universe-watch which the inquisitive scientist has analytically taken a part. Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom – desire coordinated in the light of all experience – can tell us when to heal and when to kill. To observe processes and to construct means is science; to criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy: because in these days our means and instruments have been multiplied beyond our interpretation and synthesis of ideals and ends, our life is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. For a fact is nothing except in relation to desire; it is not complete except in relation to a purpose and a whole. Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
- Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, p.2-3, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1961

“Philosophy?” someone may wonder in puzzlement. Could it be that such a seemingly outdated discipline may be required to play such an important role? Besides:

What is the task of philosophy today? We know the familiar answer: None –
for it is just the private business of a guild of specialists. These philosophers, we are told, occupy university chairs dating from the Middle Ages and meet in futility, at conventions which are the modern occasions for showing off. Their monologues are attested by a voluminous literature, scarcely read and rarely bought, except for a few fashionable publications with snob appeal.
If the press, as the organ of public opinion, takes note of these books and periodicals which gather dust in libraries, it does so without real interest. All in all, we hear, philosophy is superfluous, ossified, behind the times, waiting only for its disappearance. It no longer has a task.
Karl Jaspers, Basic Philosophical Writings, “The Present Task of Philosophy”, p.125, ed. and trans. by E. Ehrlich, L.H. Ehrlich and G. B. Pepper, Humanities Press, 1994.

But Jaspers did not end that thought on philosophy with that paragraph, but with this one:

Against such strictures we may point out, first of all, that not everything which goes by the name of philosophy should be confused with philosophy itself. Philosophy exists wherever thought brings men to an awareness of their existence. It is omni-present without being specifically identified. For no man thinks without philosophizing – truly or falsely, superficially or profoundly, hastily or slowly and thoroughly. In a world where standards prevail, where judgments are made, there is philosophy. There is as much of it in the cohesive faith of the Church as in a conscious, self-contained philosophical faith; there is philosophy even in the belief of the unbeliever, in nihilistic disintegration, in Marxism, psychoanalysis, in the many precepts for living that are not popular, such as anthroposophy and others [a contemporary example could be what may be roughly called ‘New Age’ philosophies]. The very rejection of philosophy goes back to a philosophy that is not aware of itself.
(ibid.)

It is time we become aware and do our best to recover and champion the traditional role of philosophy which is the development of wisdom, not just in our words and heads, but in our hearts and actions. It is time for the philosopher, as an ideal, to come out of his academic cave and return to the market (agora), where he was originally born, to help his fellow humans live a better life.