Reflection 8
WHERE IS PHILO-SOPHIA IN MY EVERYDAY LIFE?
Let us ask ourselves: How much of my everyday life is influenced by my philo-sophia? How, in other words, is the fact that I am a philosopher expressed throughout my day?
I do not mean how many hours we spend reading books and writing articles. This kind of activity is not uniquely philosophical—it is also done by the academic historian or biologist or economist. Indeed, I am not talking about things we professionally do, but about how philo-sophia changes the person we are, how it is manifested in the way relate to ourselves, to others, to life. I am asking what difference our philosophizing makes to our way of being.
Let us not respond too quickly. Let us first recall concrete moments in our everyday life: how we sat down for breakfast this morning, the conversation we had today with our spouse or children, yesterday’s visit to the supermarket, our reaction to the broken faucet in the bathroom, the discussion with the boss. How, if at all, were those ordinary moments ‘colored’ by our love of sophia? To what extent were they enriched and deepened by it?
One might reply that philosophy ‘colors’ our life by sharpening our reasoning capacities. It helps us make distinctions, notice hidden assumptions, detect logical fallacies.
However, this hardly addresses the issue. Reasoning capacities may be useful tools at certain moments, but no more than that. They may help us, for example, to argue more forcefully in a political debate, or to choose between two brands of computer, but in themselves they do not fundamentally transform the way we live. It is hard to see how mere abstract reasoning can make us more profound—not just in thought, not just at moments of decision-making, but in the way we live, including the way we treat our friends, or behave under time-pressure, or speak with a suffering colleague, or wait in line in a store. A person trained in philosophical reasoning may perhaps make smarter decisions, but smartness in itself does not significantly enrich our way of being.
Furthermore, to the (limited) extent to which our reasoning capacities do make a difference to our way of life, these capacities are not uniquely philosophical. The field of philosophy has no monopoly over reasoning. I see no reason to believe that a person trained in philosophical reasoning can deal with everyday moments in a better way than, say, a psychologist or a medical doctor or a businessman.
Some philosophical counselors might object that our reasoning capacities are useful not only at specific moments, but also when we tackle personal problems of a more general nature. Philosophical reasoning, or more accurately critical thinking, allows us to think more clearly about our problems and find ways to solve them more efficiently. In this way we can free our life from many problems and live more fully, deeply, meaningfully.
I imagine that this objection might find favor among some adherents of the problem-solving approach to philosophical counseling, which unfortunately is still much too prevalent. The problem with this objection, I believe, is that it assumes that a deep life is the same as a problem-free life. It pretends that the important qualities of life are just a matter of clearly defining the problem and finding a way to fix it. It thus expresses the technological spirit of our times, which treats basic life-issues as problems to be fixed.
However, for anyone who realizes that life is much more than problem-solving, this answer is hardly an answer at all. Developing my capacity to deal with specific problems has little to do with the question of how I am to deepen my way of living life.
Thus we are back at the question of how philo-sophia can express itself in our way of being. It seems to me that addressing this issue is a formidable challenge for any philosophical practice that is worth its name. Until we, who aspire to be philosophers, seriously address this challenge—concretely, in the way we live, not merely in theory—the idea of philosophical practice will remain a fantasy. Because if philo-sophia does not help transform us, if it does not make a profound difference to the kind of person we are, then our learned articles and conferences and counseling sessions are little more than idle talk. Such a philosophy is a mere academic profession; it speaks about life, without actually manifesting itself in life.
Philosophers in ancient times were very much aware of the challenge. Indeed, philosophy was regarded, by and large, not as a mere abstract discourse (as in today’s universities), but as a way of life. The Stoics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Neo-Platonist, the Cynics and others attempted to incorporate their philosophy in the individual’s everyday moments so as to make life deeper, better, more beautiful and true.
However, these schools of thought were based upon specific philosophical doctrines—about the nature of the good, the cosmos, the soul, the gods, etc. And for a 21st century thinker, adhering to one specific doctrine is something difficult to do. Today we are too much aware of the existence of alternative ways of thinking, of the arbitrariness of assumptions, of the way ideas change through history and differ between cultures and individuals. Many of us feel that we cannot in good faith buy into one single doctrine without jeopardizing our intellectual integrity.
For those of us for whom adherence to a philosophical doctrine is not a viable option, philo-sophia becomes a search that is always open, always still on the way, never satisfied with finished products and final solutions. And this means that the challenge of philo-sophia in everyday life becomes even more formidable than it used to be in the past. It is no longer the straightforward question of how to apply a given doctrine to my life, but rather: How do I allow my open-ended philosophical search manifest itself in my way of being? This, I believe, represents a new historical stage in philo-sophia, and we ought to feel awed and inspired by it.
Since I mentioned the challenge, I might be expected to attempt to respond to it. However, although the issue has been with me for a long time, I will not try to offer here any solution. To offer a solution is to close the issue and to turn philo-sophia into a mere technique or doctrine, which means to belittle the challenge. The only possible response I can see to the challenge is to make it alive in our awareness, and to keep exploring ways of letting philo-sophia permeate our lives. This requires, among other things, shaking ourselves loose from the grip of complacency and automatic habits, regaining self-awareness in the face of the pressures of modern life, fumbling in the dark even when no ray of light can be seen, and forming companionships with fellow philosophers to keep the question alive.
This implies, I believe, that as philosophical practitioners we cannot satisfy ourselves with writing articles and solving counselees’ problems. We must do much more to philosophically deepen and enlighten our own personal way of life. Otherwise, if we lack the resolve or the inspiration to work towards philosophical self-transformation, then our counseling of others is in danger of turning into a pretense, our writings into empty talk, and the whole idea of philosophical practice into make-believe.
So let each of us ask himself or herself: How much of my everyday life is nurtured by my philo-sophia?
And if the answer is “Not very much yet,” then this is alright too. Because in philo-sophia we are always on the way. It is only natural that I have not arrived yet, that I am still grappling, still stumbling and failing and trying anew. The point, it seems to me, is not to reach perfection, but to keep the issue open and alive in us, and never let the stultifying hassles of life obscure it from our sight.
