20 February 2001
Robert Parmach
“We have
got on to slippery ice, where there is no friction,
and so in
a certain sense the conditions are ideal:
but also,
just because of that, we are unable to walk.
We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
Under ideal conditions, mathematical problems work out nice and neat and give nice and neat solutions. In physics, if we dismiss friction as something we choose not to concern ourselves with, problems regarding momentum, velocity and acceleration work out nice on paper. That is fine when we are first learning, but soon enough we need to enter into reality – the world of messy stuff - stuff that does not necessarily work out as answers in rounded off numbers with no decimal points remaining. As Albert Einstein often commented, “reality is the business of physics,” and physics (fusis) is based on investigating the nature of things. The intricate world around us and our place within it are two topics that have kept people thinking long before Einsteinian physics arrived on the scene. What propelled these ancient thinkers? The same thing that propels today’s thinkers – a love of wisdom.
Historically, philosophers were originally referred to as wise men. However, like many brilliant thinkers, Pythagoras had a problem with this nomenclature, specifically what it constituted, what it excised and hence expressed. Pythagoras first invented the term philosophy (jilia ths sojias, love of wisdom) given his understanding that, strictly speaking, wisdom alone belonged to God alone, and therefore man should be issued the name friend or lover of wisdom rather than wise man.[1] But what does it precisely mean to be such a lover and friend of wisdom? Must we love or befriend wisdom in a specified manner and within a restricted region? Does this love of wisdom involve a personal membership or a participatory membership within a community of wisdom seekers? In short, I wish to investigate two main questions in this paper: first, “What is precisely at issue for the lover of wisdom?” and second, “What would constitute such a participatory membership for the lover of wisdom?”
I. What is on the Agenda for the Lover of Wisdom?
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Since the early Greeks, such lovers of wisdom have investigated the constituents of nature (fusis) and reality and were called natural philosophers. These early scientists formed a lens in which to observe the world whose imprint, in turn, has helped to sharpen our modern day focus of such a world of knowing. These inaugural scientists of thinking were charged with the timeless propulsion to investigate first principles and first causes – the point of the discipline of philosophy – that is, a human “wisdom whose nature consists essentially in knowing.”[2] Language is the conduit to intelligibility, for it structures how we see the world and thus makes it understandable. And what propels a lover of wisdom to observe the world as intelligible is her proceeding by way of the language of philosophy - the love of human wisdom – an unrelenting desire to know by examining causes with certainty, in short, proceeding by way of a specifically oriented science.
“You say one must philosophise. Then you must philosophise. You say one should not philosophise. Then (to prove your contention) you must philosophise. In any case you must philosophise.”[3] For Aristotle, philosophy is not a mere insignificant and obtuse endeavor. On the contrary, philosophy is unavoidable since it lies at the heart of humankind, what the early Wittgenstein would have called an activity rather than an untouchable set of doctrines or theses.[4] Philosophy, propelled by a certain ‘active’ love, breaks open the lover’s thoughts, organizes them and orchestrates the arguments. Philosophy is active participant and referee all in one. It is within the arena of wisdom to investigate and study the highest principle causes: sapientis est altissimas causas considerare. Metaphysics alone, being the science of absolutely first principles and causes, reserves the title of wisdom absolutely speaking (simpliciter) while the other branches of philosophy (physics, mathematics, logic, ethics) proceed by way of some derivative sense (secundum quid).[5] The lover of wisdom seeks wisdom by way of simples.
What is this love of wisdom exactly? This simple question is precisely what remains inscribed on the working minds of those who engage in philosophy. That is, precisely when a person philosophizes does philosophy’s issue come forward. A difficult discipline to nail down, the love of wisdom for some is “nothing but common sense in a dress suit” while for others, such as Thomas Hobbes, philosophy outright and ultimately demands leisure if it is to be done right at all. For Socrates, this love seemed to work its way into the thinker only if another kind of love was poor or eradicated as he humorously puts it, “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” The scope of the love of wisdom seems to involve both issue and participation. Like other loves, this love has limits I suppose. But then again, where does this love of wisdom start and where does it finish? Some might argue that one does not necessarily require a powerful love of wisdom to effectively proceed in life when paying my bills, caring for my dog or painting the house. (“If everybody contemplates the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera”).[6] However, some would argue that once such a love of wisdom is ignited, it is difficult to say when, and if, it can really be extinguished or even allowed to die down at all. The Monist claim “Once I know, I cannot not know” begins to take shape. This love often comes unexpected, unambiguous and demands a resolve. And so it seems that, in a real sense, if I do live with this kind of love, it does remain with me both at obvious occasions and during the usual dealings of my day because this love of wisdom remains ignited within me during both my intellectual and mundane days.
The love of wisdom has an internal scope beyond the general aim of making sense of the world around us. This love involves a range of ‘mental calisthenics’ to expose new pathways of thought and to provide clearings to exactness of jumbled thought. This love investigates everything from poetry to medicine, biology to legal ethics, language to the hard sciences – all in a certain manner of orchestrating arguments to yield the lucid and best ones. Some consider this love to be integral in seeking justice and the good life. For Thucydides, “What is just is arrived at in human argument, such that the strong assert what they can while the weak yield what they must.” The love of wisdom, specifically this sense of orchestrating the best arguments, seems to have a place in determining the just for Thucydides. A line of reasoning as the one just mentioned may cause us some intellectual uneasiness when deciding how powerful this love of wisdom can be – and that is exactly the point! This love of wisdom indiscriminately works to intellectually disturb its exact possessor of love. The true objective of this love does not offend but rather ignites one’s informed thinking to new, often uncomfortable, levels. Stemming from a different kind of love than the love of wisdom, we often hear a member of a human to human relationship profess the following: “So and so (insert your loved one’s name here) is very difficult!”, “It is as if I need to learn a new language to understand so and so” and “How does so and so relate to my life?”. Interestingly, all three questions could likewise be posed to the love of wisdom and the lover of wisdom.
What remains at issue for this love of wisdom? A critical analysis of thinking is crucial, and there is no way around it for the love of wisdom to remain vibrant and faithful to its aim. Beyond grappling with texts, the lover of wisdom needs to grapple with her own mind’s capabilities and shortcomings, that is, to employ her own thinking as both resource and victim in a relationship – to be vulnerable yet vigilant and responsive, to listen intently and respond with purpose and thought. For St. Augustine, “There is no reason for man to philosophize unless with a view to happiness.”[7] For Aristotle, “A man who will not reason is no better than a vegetable.” I think happiness and reason are two important things that internally propel the lover of wisdom, for happiness and reason work to work-out why one would love wisdom at all and therefore spend so much time on it (ex opere operato). In the Meno, Plato investigates the question of whether virtue can be taught or rather comes by practice, or by natural birth, or by nature, or by other causes. We can take this same line of interrogation to further question whether or not a love of wisdom consists of certain learnable knowledge as teachable or simply a perfected ‘performative’ show to engage in. In light of Plato’s Ion, we may ask whether performance and memory is enough for the lover of wisdom, or does the lover of wisdom really need to know beyond what is said or explainable?
Does there come a point where the lover of wisdom feels a loss of his empowerment? Is one to regard the lover of wisdom as inevitably vulnerable and, as the early Wittgenstein cryptically concludes in the Tractatus [8], left to “pass over it in silence” when it comes to explicating his love because it “cannot be said” out of the sheer way it has to work to be called as a love of wisdom? For the lover of wisdom, there is a relationship existing between exposition and critical response, in short an intellectual relationship of procedure and purpose. Instead of a “question and answer period”, this relationship requires a question and further question period, one which examines the exposition of content, namely what is addressed, and the critical response to what is addressed, namely an engaged dialogue which often emits no audible sound at first. This is because the love of wisdom first gets legitimized in the lover of wisdom as individual before she is able to participate in dialogue with other lovers of wisdom. One must understand the love first by testing its features and limits before one can extend its breadth to others in a true and meaningful way in a communal relationship of the love of wisdom. Let us now continue to delve into this love and lover of wisdom with the hope of seeing how the nexus of relationship operates.
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II. Participatory Membership for the Lover of
Wisdom
(a) An Orphaned Lover
(b) A Participatory Member
Now, the dialectic reaches out to other wisdom seekers who share the same mission in extraordinary ways. It is at this point where and when the true ‘art of debate’ (dialektike) permits a further informed discussion of discussions. As Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “I am part of all that I have met.” The minds and thoughts of others, in a community of lovers of wisdom, in turn, create and foster a radicalized partnership and participatory membership. They rely on one another. Both offer, accept and reject something in the relationship and continue to do so. Now, the lover of wisdom takes the simple and goes deep to explore pathways of thought, questions and themes he may not have even thought were in the distance to begin with when he only defined himself as orphan.
In time, a lot of re-discovering goes on for the lover of wisdom as both orphan and reciprocal partner. Now, the lover of wisdom finds himself an informed, passionate partner in a relationship based upon a rigorous personal and communal allegiance to seek not only the wise but along the way to pick up usually more of the un-wise as an apophatic marker. Now, the lover of wisdom recognizes and savors the embrace of a community of wisdom lovers that holds the same objectives. This love of wisdom is a shared commitment that is intriguing, for it breaks open one’s thinking by way of crystal clear analysis and engaged dialogue which in turn leads to better thinking and understanding. This love of wisdom is a shared commitment that is challenging, for it keeps its members vigilant and vulnerable to recognize that in such a relationship “you can’t always get what you want. But you might just find you get what you need.” [11] The lover of wisdom is tied up in a nexus of love, stemming from issues, a personal orphanage and communal participation in insightful thought. This love of wisdom is powerful, independent and contagious. Its aim is to make sense of the world around us with us embedded in it and with other lovers of wisdom.
[1] Maritain, Jacques, An Introduction to Philosophy, 17.
[2] Maritain, Jacques, An Introduction to Philosophy, 102.
[3] Aristotle, Protreptikos (fragmentary work).
[4] Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
[5] Maritain, Jacques, An Introduction to Philosophy, 104.
[6] Rich, John.
[7] Augustine: “Nulla est homini causa philosophandi; nisi ut beatus sit.”
[8] Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.44.
[9] Basho, Matsuo.
[10] “No one can give what he does not have.”
[11] McJagger