Topics Philosophy

Question Thoreau says that we have professors of philosophy but not philosophers. He said that over 150 years ago and it's obviously more true in 2009 than it was then. Could it be that what's missing today is leisure for philosophic souls to contemplate, inquire, wonder, converse, etc? What is the relationship between leisure--in the classic sense of schole or otium--and philosophy? I understand philosophy to be a love of wisdom that manifests itself as a way of life - especially a way of life predicated upon leisure and animated by the endless search for and cultivation of self-knowledge. Am I correct? Is leisure an essential prerequisite for philosophy, or can it be reduced to a mere profession, like law or medicine? What in the world do people mean when they speak of "doing" philosophy?

Accepted:
October 8, 2009

Comments

On Thoreau: Meh!

Thoreau apparently thought of "philosopher" as an honorific, meaning something like "wise person." If that's right, then I'm reasonably sure he was wrong in his day, and I'm reasonably sure that he'd be wrong today. There were, there are and with luck there will continue to be wise people. But (psst!...) being wise and being a philosopher aren't the same thing.

Many people who are wise wouldn't be good at philosophy. Many people who are good at philosophy aren't all that wise. Even though the word "philosophy" literally translates as "love of wisdom," philosophy has never, from its very inception, been solely concerned with what most of us think of as wisdom. That's because what we think of as wisdom is importantly a matter of having the discernment needed to live what, for shorthand, we might call "a good life, " and philosophy has always been concerned with more than that. By the way: I'm not offering a definition of wisdom, but I think my little comment gets us into the ballpark (or pond?) that Thoreau had in mind. And you don't need to spend too much time looking at the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant... to see that that's never been the whole of philosophy.

Philosophy is a loose aggregate of problems, questions, arguments, approaches that covers an astonishingly wide range. That's part of what makes it so intriguing. People who worry about what makes something good are worrying about a philosophical problem, and people who worry about whether when we're listing the kinds of things that exist, we need to include numbers are also worrying about a philosophical problem. The first arguably has a connection with "wisdom"; the second, not so much. But unless Thoreau insists that Aristotle, Ockham, Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley and countless others weren't doing philosophy in most of their writing, then there have been there are and there will be philosophers for some time to come.

As for "doing" philosophy, I'd describe it as serious engagement with the evolving philosophical tradition and with the kinds of problems it addresses. It includes trying to figure out what other philosophers (yes) meant, trying to decide whether their arguments are adequate, trying to propose more adequate answers to the same questions, trying to sharpen the questions themselves, trying to cast new light on old problems... Some people do it well; they are good philosophers, whether they are wise or morally good. Some people do it not so well, even if they happen to be wise or good. A philosopher (yes) who is writing on the question of whether some version of Utilitarianism is adequate to account for right and wrong is "doing" philosophy. So is a philosopher (yes) who is worrying about the semantics of fictional names like "Sherlock Holmes."

Thoreau -- or anyone else -- is free to insist that we use "philosopher" only as a high compliment to describe people who meet some standard of Wisdom with a capital "W." And Thoreau (or anyone else) is free to insist that what they mean by "philosophy" is "a love of wisdom that manifests itself in a way of life." But that sort of linguistic preference comes at a cost. It amounts to a brute stipulation that rules out large swaths of the history of philosophy. Most people who have thought long and hard about the philosophical tradition don't use the word that way, and that, surely, ought to count for something.

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Postscript on leisure: I'm reluctant to call law and medicine "mere professions," but even if they were, that seems a bit beside the point. Doing more or less anything well is likely to call for some time off. Doctors need it, lawyers need it, plumbers need it, and so do philosophers. Being wise (not the same as being a philosopher) may be more of a full-time thing, but thinking about what makes for wisdom likely calls for leisure to. (Thinking about what makes for wisdom, by the way, isn't necessary for being a philosopher and may or may not make anyone wise.)