Reflection 17
BEYOND THE WALLS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRISON
It is fascinating to see how new university students are initiated into philosophy. At first their thinking seems confused—at least relative to what we regard as good philosophical thinking. They fail to see obvious lines of reasoning, to detect fallacies, to notice hidden assumptions. Little by little, however, as they follow the example of their teachers and their texts, they learn to walk in the paths of mainstream philosophy. Soon they can quote Sartre, or discuss Hume, or formulate an argument. Now all this seems so natural to them, that they can hardly imagine how anybody can possibly think differently.
How fascinating: A mind has been trained. A mind has been initiated into… into what? What is the nature of this philosophical realm into which they have been initiated?
Western philosophy can be seen as a specialized form of discourse. It is a discourse which encompasses certain issues, theories, concepts, methods of inquiry, and which is largely inspired by a few ‘canonical texts’ or ‘philosophical scriptures’: the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, etc., plus a few ‘minor’ philosophers who occupy the periphery of this respectable club.
Numerous other thinkers throughout Western history are not included in this exclusive club. Many of them were ignored because powerful professors judged their ideas as uninteresting or irrelevant. Others were discouraged from writing, or were not even accepted to schools, because their ways of thinking were too different and ‘strange.’ Moreover, many potential thinkers never developed their thoughts because they were discouraged by the intellectual atmosphere that was so foreign to them. (Think how a young Wittgenstein would be discouraged in a Taoist culture!).
These thinkers and potential thinkers have been marginalized, ignored, or simply not heard. Their thoughts could have inspired different kinds of philosophy, but they have not. The discourse of Western philosophy came to be shaped by a small group of canonical thinker and their texts, methods, issues, and concepts. These define, more or less, what counts as Western philosophy. Indeed, you must learn this specialized discourse if you wish to be regarded as a serious philosopher. Otherwise, no respectable journal will publish your writings and no departments will hire you.
All this is curious. If philosophy is the search for wisdom and understanding, then why did it exclude so many forms of discourse? After all, in other cultures there are other ways of thinking, ones that are based on different assumptions or concepts, on different ways of thinking, on different approaches to life. What was the driving force that made philosophy such a specialized discourse?
The ‘official’ story, which we learn in philosophy classes, is that there are reasons that made Plato and Descartes etc. paradigms for what philosophy is. There are good reasons that explain why, for example, Diogenes the Cynic or some Mr. Anonymous have not become philosophical heroes. Presumably, reason is the judge that determines whether a given philosophical approach would flourish or perish in history.
But is this official story the true story? After all, history is often shaped not by reason, but by power struggles, personal interests, competition for fame and control. Is it possible that the ‘official’ story is one-sided, like propaganda published by the authorities?
Let us look at the history of philosophy from a sociological perspective. A specialized discourse, based on canonical texts and methods, means a tradition: a body of ideas that is relatively stable, that develops slowly, and that is revered, studied, discussed.
A tradition in this sense means conservatism. It promotes a discourse which requires much training and learning, and it rejects approaches that are personal and free-spirited. It draws a clear distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between legitimate philosophy (‘good,’ ‘deep,’ etc.) and illegitimate philosophy (‘superficial,’ ‘unreasonable,’ etc.), between the correct and the incorrect. A philosophical tradition promotes ways of philosophizing that produce products (theories, methodologies) which can be collected and transmitted, and it suppresses philosophies that are open-ended. It therefore prefers ideas that can be possessed in thought and in writing, as opposed to ideas to be lived in everyday life.
This is precisely the philosophy that we have today, the philosophy which has been preserved in history books, and which we call ‘Western philosophy.’
How did that happen? Who made Western philosophy such a conservative discourse? Who gained from this kind of conservatism?
The answer, it seems to me, is clear: The conservatism of philosophy is in the interest of institutions: the university, the academia, the church or the monastery, the philosophy journal. Institutions need stability. The philosophical establishment needs specialized terminologies, methodologies, texts, or else it would be unable to justify its special status. Institutional philosophers need knowledge and methods in order to maintain their authority. Only thanks to their professionalism can they draw a line between those who are initiated and those who are not, between acceptable philosophies and unacceptable philosophies, between the high and the low, between themselves and others.
In short, mainstream Western philosophy is the philosophy of the establishment, of powerful institutions. It is the philosophy of those who are in power and need to maintain their authority.
I do not mean to suggest that university professors are cynics who are hungry for power. I imagine that most of them, including those who are at the very top, are truly interested in philosophy. My point is that specific flowers grow in specific habitats. In the soil of institutions grow conservative philosophies. Of course, from time to time we might find even in the academic world alternative forms of philosophy (think of Kierkegaard, for example, or the ancient Cynics), but they cannot last for long. They will either quickly disappear from the scene, or they will be domesticated and re-interpreted and assimilated into the ‘orthodoxy.’
To see this, imagine what will happen if a certain philosophy department will start philosophizing in a personal, free, open-ended ways: No more worship of canonical texts and methodologies, no more reverence for the knowledge of old professors, no more professional journals that determine who will be published and who will not.
In such a department, there would no longer be a distinction between the old professor and the young professor, or even the student. Some kinds of philosophy might gain popularity and some individuals might gain influence, but this would no longer be based on the authority of the tradition. Orthodox philosophy would lose its footing, and professorship would become meaningless. Philosophy professor would no longer have anything to ‘sell’ to students. Their ideas would be ignored.
This is not to say that tradition in philosophy is bad. After all, tradition enables us to remember inspiring ideas, and to gradually develop and refine our thinking, as can be witnessed by the wonderful intellectual treasures of the past.
But there is also a heavy price to pay: Orthodoxy limits philosophy to a very specific kind of discourse, and it suppresses other potential forms of discourse. In Western philosophy, this happened when philosophy became focused on abstract discussions that are aimed at producing theories, while ignoring virtually every other way of way of understanding life.
This situation is especially problematic for philosophical practice, which is not the philosophy of academic institutions. Anybody who has ever done some philosophical counseling knows how irrelevant Aristotle and Descartes are for everyday life. Most great orthodox texts have very little to say about real life. Even those ancient philosophies that tried to guide everyday life are very far from the life of a concrete, particular person. What relevance do the rigid Stoic formulas have to the life of a person in the street?
Admittedly, as philosophical practitioners we can sometimes borrow from orthodox texts a specific sentence or idea, but not much more than that. Concrete life is much more complex and rich, much more multi-sided, much more contradictory and dynamic and personal than universal formulas. And orthodox philosophy is much too narrow and rigid to appreciate this.
To me this suggests that there is not much for us, philosophical practitioners, in the academic field that is called ‘philosophy.’ It suggests that we should stop our allegiance with the philosophical orthodoxy and look for new ways of understanding life. Let us free ourselves from the heritage of institutional philosophy. We no longer need to revere the orthodox philosophical heroes—Plato and Spinoza and Kant and the rest. Down with the kings! They are indeed great kings, but not our kings.
For many of us, philosophical practitioners, this is a difficult thought. We have spent so many years studying in philosophy departments reading philosophy books, writing philosophy articles, teaching philosophical courses, that it is hard to see ourselves as anything but philosophers. But we must realize that as philosophers, what we are looking for has very little to do with orthodox philosophy. Aristotle or Leibniz is no more relevant to us than Sigmund Freud or Mircea Eliade or Meister Eckhart or Dostoyevski or Rilke, or indeed a wise Amazonian shaman. As philosophers, we are not part of the specialized professional discourse which orthodoxy calls ‘philosophy.’ We are travelers in a much larger world.
Thus, if we want to seriously look for new ways of touching life, I think that we should break out of the walls of philosophical orthodoxy. This is a tremendous task. It is not a matter of formulating a new theory or a novel set of assumptions—to do so would be to remain within the prison of orthodoxy, or at most to invent a new orthodoxy. The goal is nothing less than learning new ways of relating to life.
One might ask me: But what are you proposing instead? What alternative discourse are you suggesting? If we break out of academic thinking, then where do we go from there? How do you want us to start thinking and understanding and discussing?
But of course, I have no intention of supplying an answer to these questions. I don’t want to offer another intellectual prison to replace the old one. There are already enough gurus and spiritual teachers and philosophers who are busy selling their answers to life’s problems, as well as their dreams of salvation and ultimate resting-place.
For me, as philosophers we are nomads without a resting-place. We belong to no particular discourse or method or discipline, we possess no theories or answers. We are those who feel all the human hopes and fears and pains, but who have no medicine to offer. We are interested in every kind of joy and predicament, but we are empty-handed. We know a thousand salvations but not one ultimate Salvation. We are familiar with many ways of thinking and understanding, but not with The Way. We are in touch with human folly and grandeur, with unquenched thirst and satisfaction, with the joys and pains of love, with hate and anger—but we don’t know how to map them out and squeeze them all into an organized theory.
This is, I think, who we are as philosophers. We are eternal nomads—not because of disillusion or cynicism, but because in these vast, strange, awesome expanses of life, this is where we find the fullness of human existence. This is where we encounter Reality, or Lu, or Being.
Our mission, therefore, is not to offer resting places for those who are tired, but to invite those who are resting to stand up and join us in our nomadic wanderings. Everybody is invited, not just those who have a doctorate or a degree in philosophy, but everyone who agrees to be an un-knower.
