Reflection 16
The POWER of Living ideas
Philosophy deals with ideas. And philosophical practice, too, is inspired by the power of ideas, and seeks to use it to broaden life, to edify it, to enlighten it.
The trouble is that traditionally, philosophical IDEAS have been equated with philosophical THEORIES. This implied that philosophy’s primary role is to theorize. However, it seems to me that ideas can do much more than to serve as general, abstract statements about the way things are.
My philosophical companion Stefano recently wrote the following ‘philosophical sketch’ on the forum of our companionship
This morning I shook hands with a person I didn't know and whom I will never see again. At that moment I understood the meaning of the philosophical problem of ‘communication’. And I understood that the way we usually deal with it is wrong: It makes no sense to ask how it is possible to meet the other person. I must realize that I simply do not exist without the presence of the other. I cannot think of myself without the other, because the other belongs to me (and vice versa).
“Returning home, I wondered: what consequences does this thought have for my relationship with my wife, with my daughter, with my friends?
This brief text might seem like a philosophical theory about the nature of self-identity. But is it really?
If Stefano meant his text to be a theory, then he is committed to defending it as a universal truth, to accepting its logical implications and presuppositions, and to arguing against contradictory theories.
But is he really committed to all this? If he found his idea enlightening in one particular situation, what forces him to apply it to EVERY possible situation? What stops him from finding it significant and instructive, but not universally true? Why can’t he find it meaningful at one moment, and a moment later find meaning in a contradictory idea?
I think that like Stefano, most of us experience interesting realizations from time to time, and we often put them in words, whether in a conversation, in a letter, or in a personal journal. When we do so, I don’t think we are necessarily attempting to construct a general theory, but rather to give voice to a certain idea that moved us. We write down the idea not as a final intellectual product, but as a moment in our ongoing interaction with life, like a sentence in a conversation, like a musical phrase in an ongoing symphony. Our idea is meaningful to us because it points to something previously unnoticed, because it intrigues, inspires, challenges, questions our convictions, responds to our wondering and raises new questions. In short, a ‘philosophical sketch’ like Stefano’s is not primarily a fixed description of a fixed opinion, but a movement in the dynamics of life.
One might object that if this is the case, then a ‘philosophical sketch’ is only a subjective expression of a personal experience. And if so, then it is not really philosophical.
But in fact, the text is much more than merely subjective. Because it may express a theme in the melody of life, which is common to many lives, and which often surfaces in the lives of many people. Indeed, the dependence of my self-identity on others is a prominent theme that appears in many situations – although not universally, not always, not in the same way. We are all familiar with times at which Stefano’s inter-dependence theme is prominent in our lives. But we are equally familiar with different times, of blessed solitude, when we experience ourselves as independent monads. Still at other times, the two themes may appear side by side, or fight each other, or merge together to give birth to some synthesis, or simply disappear when the question of self-identity is not at issue.
Like a musical phrase in a symphony, a theme in life may appear and disappear and appear again, and in the process change forms and contexts and meanings. Think, for example, of the opening ta-ta-ta-ta of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and how it appears and reappears in all kinds of variations, sometimes resembling only vaguely the original phrase. But although a theme in life cannot be generalized into a universal theory about, e.g. the essence of self-identity, it is nevertheless an important thread in the fabric of human reality. This is why we can read somebody else’s philosophical sketch and be moved by it.
In this sense, the philosophical sketch gives voice to something beyond the writer’s particular life. The idea which it expresses functions as a theme that is woven in the lives of many. Life ‘speaks’ through the philosopher and through his words. And to the extent that the philosopher is attentive and sensitive and truthful and articulate, he or she can give voice to life, and give life to its voices.
Doing such a philosophy is obviously not a matter of inventing and analyzing ideas with our brain-power, but rather of attending and letting life speak in us, to us, with us. Here, philosophical ideas no longer serve as theories that capture reality, but as ‘voices’ of reality. Unlike theories, they are part of life; they are alive – they are living philosophical ideas. This is why I prefer to call them ‘themes’, because the word ‘ideas’ implies something too abstract, static, and remote from concrete life.
From the perspective of theoretical philosophy, philosophical sketches – and the living ideas which they express – may seem too vague, too undeveloped. Stefano’s text, for example, when judged as a theory, is much too brief and superficial. It leaves many issues unanswered: In what sense are other persons part of me? Why can’t I exist by myself as a Robinson Crusoe? What about alternative approaches to personal identity, such as John Locke’s memory-theory?
However, it is not the purpose of a philosophical sketch to provide a complete picture that answers all questions once and for all. Its aim is not to solve an issue, to determine, to fix, to settle, but on the contrary – to unsettle, to challenge, raise wonder, make us look in new ways, give us words for further quests, or in short, to open a window to new realms beyond our current boundaries.
This means that an idea may be powerful, even though – and precisely because – it is sketchy and undeveloped. Its power comes from the fact that it opens life.A forty-page theory that is finished and complete would not have the same effect.
This seems to me the kind of discourse which we need to develop in philosophical practice. If philosophy is to be woven into everyday life, then it must reject the traditional hegemony of descriptive truth. Because living ideas are powerful as active forces that open up, rather than as finished products to memorize and analyze.
The implication of all this seems to me far-reaching. It is not merely an issue of method, but of an inner revolution. Because it means that as a philosophical seeker I let go of my attempts to capture reality with theories, I let go of my convictions, of my attempts to be right and justified. It means that I give up the desire to stand on the ‘firm’ ground of certainty, of solutions, of answers, and renounce the hope that any such theoretic ground could offer me rest and relief. It means that I embrace the groundless and indeterminate human reality, which is always more than what it is and is open beyond itself.
But in giving up all this I discover that I am not really losing anything. On the contrary, by letting go of descriptive truth I become more truthful to human reality and to its radical openness. I then discover that openness is not a nothing, that it is not a lack, but a full and rich reality. I realize that no-answer is more than an answer, and no-theory is more than a theory. And I find that I myself am an openness – an open space for the many voices of reality to speak in me by means of my encounters with the world around me and with my fellow humans.
The great power of ideas is to open. To be sure, ideas can also close: define, determine, circumscribe – and sometimes this is an important function. But for us as philosophical seekers, they are more significant in their capacity to open a window towards the indeterminate, towards the groundless, which is, I think, towards what some call wisdom, or love, or reality, or Being, or Lu.
