ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΙΑ

I want to adopt – or probably more accurately, to instigate – a convention for the use of the word “philosophy.” What I’m proposing is to use a capital P to refer to what was discussed and practiced in ancient Greece and successively into the Roman period, and a small p for everything else.

There are, I think, good reasons for doing this. It was after all the Greeks who created and defined the term φιλοσοφια to describe what they were doing. It would be reasonable to reserve the use of the word to references to that particular set of activities and to find some other word to refer to activities that are significantly different, even if the latter are in some way derived from or imitative of the former. However, there is no generic term other than “philosophy” for the numerous schools and tendencies of thought that have arisen since the fall of Rome, so I’m proposing that we recognize the distinction by treating the word as a proper noun for Philosophy properly so-called and not so for everything else.

And there most definitely is a significant distinction between what was practiced and taught in the Hellenic and Hellenistic schools of Philosophy and the so-called philosophy that came to be practiced and taught after and outside them. The two began to diverge even during the heyday of Philosophy when Christian apologists and other religion-focused groups (the so-called Gnostics and Hermetists or Hermeticists, for example) began to appropriate ideas, terms and practices from the Philosophical schools in an attempt to give themselves intellectual respectability.

This disingenuous tendency is apparent already in the writings of Philo of Alexandria, whose project was to allegorize the Hebrew scriptures into an exposition of Platonic doctrine and Moses into a philosopher, and then to claim priority and superiority for the Mosaic writings. The Gospel of John goes Philo one better by rendering the narrative of Jesus’ life as an exemplification of philosophical theology that trumps both the Philosophers and the Jews.

By the third century, this project was in full swing in Alexandria, where Clement and Origen both embraced Philosophy with both arms. If one accepts their self-explanation, Philosophy was true but incomplete, and the Christian revelation was precisely what was needed to complete it. On a somewhat less tendentious reading, Christianity was indeed a “revealed” religion, with all the raw, emotional, even self-contradictory details that accompany any visionary breakthrough. It needed some intellectual reinforcement to make it palatable – indeed, to make it understandable – to a theologically sophisticated audience.

It’s from this point, and for these reasons, that the tendency grew to regard philosophy as “the handmaid of theology,” which prevailed until the Renaissance. The Christian (and later the Muslim) theologians happily pilfered or cherry-picked the findings of a millennium of hard-won Philosophical teaching to augment their own arguments, while denigrating the Philosophers themselves and ultimately shutting down their schools and sending them into exile.

When the grip of the church(es) over intellectual life finally began to ease, a large part of the legacy of the domination of theology over philosophy played out as a rejection of theology in all its forms by the newer thinkers. In particular, the new philosophers from Erasmus and Ficino forward seem to have focused exclusively on the content of philosophical discourse while ignoring or rejecting the Philosophical practices that had formed the basis of monastic life and Medieval mysticism.

That the Philosophical schools were in fact the model for Christian monasticism is at this point undeniable.

The late Pierre Hadot established with impeccable scholarship the fact that Philosophy was at least as much a “way of life” as a project of research into the principles of existence, and that the two were inseparable:

… there can be no question of denying the extraordinary ability of the ancient philosophers to develop theoretical reflection on the most subtle problems of the theory of knowledge, logic or physics. This theoretical activity, however, must be situated within a perspective which is different from that which corresponds to the idea people usually have of philosophy. In the first place, at least since the time of Socrates, the choice of a way of life has not been located at the end of the process of philosophical activity, like a kind of accessory or appendix. On the contrary, it stands at the beginning … Philosophical discourse, then, originates in a choice of life and an existential option – not vice versa. … The [ancient] philosophical school thus corresponds, above all, to the choice of a certain way of life and existential option which demands from the individual a total change of lifestyle, a conversion of one’s entire being, and ultimately a certain desire to be and to live in a certain way. This existential option, in turn, implies a certain vision of the world, and the task of philosophical discourse will therefore be to reveal and rationally justify this existential option, as well as this representation of the world. (Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? trans. Michael Chase, p. 3. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002.)

In the same work, Hadot goes on to describe a general curriculum of the Philosophical schools, running from ethics to physics to psychology to theology, which can be found consistently across schools as far apart in their “theoretical” teachings as the Platonists and Stoics. He also enumerates a number of what he calls “spiritual exercises” that likewise are found across the Philosophical spectrum, such as meditating on the inevitability of death and cultivating a “cosmic” view of life. And unsurprisingly, he shows how these exercises continued to be essential in the writings and practices of the early Christian monastics.

Hadot, as befits an academic scholar, proceeds cautiously in these matters, drawing almost entirely on the writings of the philosophers themselves and rejecting suggestions that Philosophy was in any way a development from, for example, shamanism. (He does, however, accept in a sort of postscript that the Philosophical schools might have received some influence from India, specifically from yoga.) However, with no academic reputation to protect, I can range a bit further.

What I would point out first is that the writings of the “Desert Fathers,” as found in the Philokalia, for example, clearly show that the early Christian monastics’ understanding of “metaphysical anatomy,” so to speak, is precisely that of the Philosophers, and in particular that of the Platonists: the lower, “irrational” soul consisting of a desiring (“appetitive”) and an emotional (“incensive”) component; the rational soul (διανοια, dianoia, or discursive, dualistic reasoning faculty); and the νους (nous, the unitive, intuitive, holistic understanding). Moreover, the goal of monastic practice is precisely the same as that of the Platonist schools: to extricate the practitioner from over-involvement in physical reality and “turn” him or her toward the “higher,” truer reality of Form and, ultimately, God.

As Plotinus states quite specifically (Ennead 1.1.3), one goal of Philosophy is to turn the soul away from its desire for matter and turn it toward reason and the beyond-reason of nous. How is this done? In one important passage (VI.7.36), he writes:

We are taught about it by comparisons and negations and knowledge of the things which come from it and certain methods of ascent by degrees, but we are put on the way to it by purifications and virtues and adornings … [emphasis added]

And in another key passage, Plotinus writes:

How can one see the inconceivable beauty which stays within the holy sanctuary and does not come out where the profane may see it? Let him who can, follow and come within, and leave outside the sight of his eyes and not turn back to the bodily splendors which he saw before. … Shut your eyes, and change to, and wake, another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use. (I.6.8; emphasis added. Both translations are by A.H. Armstrong in the Loeb Classical Library edition, published by Harvard University Press.)

What we are seeing here are obviously references to some form of what we call meditation today. In Plotinus’ time, the Latin words meditatio and contemplatio referred to two different modes of mental activity, meditatio being “discursive” and dualistic, contemplatio being non-dualistic and unitive. Those terms remained standard in the Western Church until the 20th century. In Greek, the equivalent of contemplatio is θεορια (theoria); various words and phrases (e.g., συννοια, sunnoia) refer to introspection generally and may be translated as “meditation.”

The point, now that I’ve finished with the footnotes and glosses and flourishes, is that a school of Philosophy, in its practices, bore much more resemblance to, for example, a Buddhist monastery than to a modern university’s Department of Philosophy. And not just in its practices, but equally in its goals. No matter how much lip-service modern educators may pay to the idea of turning out “well-rounded” individuals (and in fact they’re advocating that approach much less these days than they did a few decades ago), what they’re really about is preparing people to become cogs in the machinery of the modern global economy.

From that point of view, absolutely the last thing our educational system wants to do is turn people away from physical objects and desires and toward a real, heartfelt understanding of the oneness and wholeness of reality. But that’s the one thing each of us needs if we – and our world – are to be healed and whole.

Name-Calling

Are you rational? Am I? Is anyone? Have you made judgments about who or what in our society represents rationality or its opposite?

These are important questions because of the high value we place on rationality in modern society. Indeed, if we can label something as “irrational,” we end the discussion: If you’re irrational, or what you believe is irrational, I can safely disregard anything you say; I don’t have to make any further argument.

This attitude reflects what I’ve referred to as “hyper-rationalism,” by which I mean the belief that the only way to understand anything in an accurate way is by means of rationality, whatever that is. It’s an attitude that has been with us for a fairly long time now, arising in the late 17th century and really gaining the upper hand in the 18th – the so-called “Enlightenment” or “Age of Reason.”

Those names reflect the widespread self-understanding of the noted thinkers of those times, their belief that they had advanced immeasurably from their predecessors of only a few years before: the religious “enthusiasts” and “fanatics” who had made the Reformation such a vicious, bloody mess. (The novel Q by “Luther Blissett” conveys a vivid impression of the violent craziness of the period, despite having been written by a committee.)

But in more recent times, we’ve seen how the application of an insistent rationalism can produce results that are equally or even more catastrophic; for example, in the Soviet Union, or in the whoring of science in general to political (think atom bomb) or economic (think psychological pharmaceuticals) purposes and interests.

We continue, however, to regard rationality as the supreme standard for judging ideas, worldviews, lifestyles; everything, in fact. I’m not convinced we really believe in it at this point, but we’ve found it useful for a long time as a justification for imperialism, both domestic and foreign, so it’s a bit hard to let it go.

What I mean by that is the claim that northern Europeans and their descendants in North America are the most rational people on Earth (which is justified ipso facto by the fact that we’ve succeeded in gaining control over almost everyone else), while all those other, darker-skinned or intellectually pre-modern (i.e., religious) people are “emotional” or “politically volatile” or just plain “backward,” so it’s incumbent upon us to guide them toward a better understanding of reality, a better approach to politics, and of course to a more efficient and remunerative exploitation of the natural resources buried under their feet.

This is precisely the attitude that led to the United States’ policies of “gunboat diplomacy” and support for “banana republics” (Latin American nations that were bribed and/or threatened into becoming nothing more than plantations for gringo landlords). We told ourselves that “those people” were incapable of creating stable societies and governments for themselves, so they needed our help; but our “help” consisted of making sure they never created stable societies or governments for themselves, because then they might be able to enforce demands for realistically adequate compensation for the labor and resources we were exploiting.

The same sort of thing has gone on in other parts of the world, of course; for example, the Middle East, where American and British oil companies (including one called British Petroleum) were interfering (and browbeating their own governments into interfering) with the political process in such countries as Iran and Iraq. The average American may not recognize the name Mossadegh any more than Allende, but the people of Iran and Chile haven’t forgotten.

So now we hear Americans asking, “Why do they hate us?” And the answer we get from the mainstream media and the corporate-owned talking heads who pose as experts, is simply, “Because they are irrational, backward people.” When in fact a rational examination of the past behavior of the United States and the United Kingdom is certainly likely to provoke distrust at the very least.

I’m quite fed up, frankly, with the tossing around of “rational” and “irrational” as labels, without deeper examination of such claims. Beyond international politics, the “clash of civilizations,” it’s also a factor in the so-called “culture wars” within the U.S.: “New Atheists” such as Dawkins and Hitchens happily hurl the “irrational” label at all religious believers willy-nilly, in the same way political and economic hegemonists use it to label the countries they want to dominate.

There are two angles of attack against this (mis)use of the idea of rationality. One is of course to argue the specifics, i.e., that the particular idea(s) or people labeled as rational or irrational are inaccurately so labeled. The other is to argue that rationality/irrationality as a concept is wrong, or at least so seriously misunderstood as to be useless. If the latter view is correct, it presumably makes it likelier that the former criticism will also be true.

It probably will come as no surprise that I believe the latter view is indeed correct. I’m convinced that almost no one who upholds rationality as the sine qua non of belief, thought, behavior, has any clear idea of what rationality really is. So what is it?