On the Power of True Words
My search for truth, which began when my daughter was born, had actually begun in ancient times as the wisdom of the ages was passed from generation to generation, sometimes culture to culture, often by word of mouth. Though nothing in my education, at least, so much as mentioned any of this.
As first a parent, and then a student, a teacher, and a writer, I’d already discovered that words can be used in many different senses, one purpose of philosophy is to distinguish one sense from another, to sort the mere appearance of truth from the real thing. For there is all the difference between the mere appearance of, say, happiness, or wealth, or friendship, love and beauty, and these things in their truest form. Likewise, we can discern the difference in what we call justice, or courage, or wisdom, from what is actually just, or courageous, or wise…if only because we cannot hit targets we don’t aim at.
I learned when my baby girl came along that what I had been calling love bore little resemblance to the real thing.
For this reason alone, understanding words for all they’re worth is essential to true learning. Because we use words in different senses, and some have more truth to them than others. So to know the difference between, say, the mere appearance of love, and the real thing... the state of mind many call happiness, and the kind of genuine happiness we crave…the mere pretense of friendship, and a true friend...this can make all the difference in the quality of life we achieve. These ideals are the end objectives of living, after all, but we are unlikely to hit any target we don’t aim at.
It was one of the primary missions of ancient philosophers to help us better understand the words we use. Not because meaning lies in words themselves, but because actualizing our highest potentials in this life depends upon a genuine understanding of that for which words stand. Words are powerful tools, when used well, but they can as easily lead to evil as to good when understood poorly. And since our very happiness depends on seeing things as they really are, so that we might actualize what could be, it’s in our lifelong interest to give some time to think these things through.
For instance, consider how we use the word friend. We all have friends (in fact, it would appear on Facebook that some of us have thousands!) But the ancients would have us ask ourselves – how many of them are true friends? What’s more, how many are we true friends to? When we call someone a friend -- but do we mean they are a friend in the truest sense? Or are they merely acquaintances? Or are they useful? Or maybe they bring us pleasure? True friends may also be of great benefit to us, or they bring us pleasure and company we enjoy. But how many of them do we care for, not as means to our own ends, but as ends in themselves? Not for our own good, but for theirs? A friend, in the truer sense, is what Aristotle calls “another self.”
Anyone who gives it sufficient thought will agree that there is this difference between a friend in the lesser sense that we typically use the word, and this truer sense.
Likewise, consider the word love. We desire many things in life, and – as Socrates laments – we often say we love that which we only desire. We love our new car, our dog, our job, sometimes our friends, and ideally (or at least occasionally), even our lovers. But how often do we use this word as a mere tool, a means to our own ends, to achieve our own pleasure, our own utility, our own benefit of some sort (sometimes even at the expense of those we claim to love)? How many a young man has won a young girl’s ‘virtue’ (or vice versa) by way of those three little words? And how often (or seldom) does this mean the same to him as it does to her?
The meanings of such words exists far beyond words themselves, inside us, where pure experience is prior to all wording – the quality of our subjective experience, our window on the world, will measure the quality of our time here on earth, which can be a paradise for those who can live it well, or hellish for those who do not.
Because we use these words in different senses, we can see that not all of the senses would qualify as a good friendship or true love. When asked, most people indicate they consider love to be a feeling, a pleasant emotion. But if love is merely a good feeling, then what happens to it when loving becomes difficult, say, when a child behaves badly, when a spouse grows old and needs care, or a parent develops Alzheimer’s? If love is only the feeling we tend to associate with the word, then what happens to it when it calls for effort that does not elicit that feeling of joy we like to associate with it? When love brings unpleasant feelings, is it no longer love? Does love end if and when that good feeling ends?
The answer any reasonable person would give is, not if it’s real and true love. So true love is something more than that to which we typically refer when we use the word. We might say it stands to reason that, if it is possible to care for others, not merely for our own sake, but for theirs (and maybe even for theirs alone, even at our own expense), then there is at least one sense of the words friend and love that any reasonable person would agree to be truer than the other senses in which we use these terms.
And so the good friend and true lover will care more to give love, than to receive it. True friendship and love may well elicit love in return, or even be its own reward, but these are serendipitous side effects of loving well, rather than the reason that we love. So a good friend and true lover will not seek friendship and love of just any sort, the ancients say, but will rather seek to be worthy of the friendship and love they desire.
Indeed, the words good and true can themselves be used in different senses, and if we use them to mean that which is more genuine, more authentic, more of what any reasonable person would agree is actually good and true – would we then need to ask further, what is a reasonable person? And what makes such a person a better judge than an unreasonable one? The answer will always be, the one who has thought these things through, has undergone the process that is true education, which never really ends, at least not for a thoughtful person.
This may seem an infinite regress, but in fact, it is not, for each of these questions does indeed have an understandable answer, albeit one that may well lead to yet another question. Which is precisely why asking them is such an important part of the process of becoming a reasonable and thoughtful person – that is, one who speaks with understanding of the words that they use.
All such things are connected and one who hasn’t thought them through is unlikely to understand or achieve the happiness they seek in life. We tend to think of happiness as getting what we want, but what if what we want is not good for us? Then getting it hasn’t done us much goo, has it? So it is wanting what IS good for us that secures our true happiness. Lesser understanding accomplishes only the appearance of these ideals - i.e. friendship, love, and happiness – while the real thing remains beyond our reach.
So it behooves us to understand such words better, at least if we hope to actualize their potential in our lives. And it’s for this reason that understanding itself becomes the ideal purpose of philosophical inquiry, that is, of education. For not all kinds of knowledge are true knowledge. For instance, you might learn all the right words to give a right answer on an exam - but when you think about it, would you call this kind of knowledge true understanding? We have all ‘learned’ many things for the sake of taking tests and passing classes, but (as a recent study of how much students learn or don’t learn showed) knowledge, in the sense we typically think of it and the way we typically learn it, simply doesn’t stick. Can we say we truly know or understand something if we don’t remember it?
True knowledge, the way the ancients understood it, is not only remembered, but is understood well enough that it translates automatically into action. Socrates and Aristotle had a debate about this (although Socrates was long dead before it began), as Aristotle worried about how quickly we forget, and how easily old habits can override new learning. But Socrates won this argument, all the same, because he understood (and any reasonable person who asked the hard questions would come around to agree) that while we may well learn many things that we call knowledge by way of words alone, we would not call such learning true knowledge if it so easily slips away. So a person who claims to be a friend, but then uses others for their own purposes, does not truly know the meaning of the word friend. Only when such words are understood well enough that they translate automatically into action would we call this true knowledge – until then it’s only true belief, at best, untrue belief at worse.
"True opinion is as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly,"(97b-c) but opinions "are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason... Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and then they are stable. That is why knowledge is something more valuable than right opinion. What distinguished one from the other is the tether."(Meno, 98)
There is much temptation in our time, just as there was in the golden age of democracy, to want to believe what we are told. But there is all the difference, Socrates learned the hard way, between a mere belief and a true belief – between taking something on faith, and actually understanding it. Those who put Socrates to death for questioning the official gods of the state called themselves democrats, but a democracy that suppresses and represses freedom of thought and speech is democracy in name only, and does not understand, or perhaps even know, the true meaning of its own name.
So when we say we know something, maybe we do, and maybe we don’t. Our understanding may indeed be based on good evidence, But those who claim to know when they merely believe (sometimes against evidence to the contrary), apparently don’t even know what it means to know.
In fact, as the ancient sages knew, to understand what they tried to teach us, we must put their advice into practice. It is not enough to simply believe the word of others, for words themselves can be quite slippery. As Alan Watts put it, “Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.”[1] As has been said, “A finger is used to point at the moon, but let us not confuse the finger with the moon.”
Words are indeed pointing tools, but what they point at is an inner experience that cannot be understood by words alone. We must, rather, experience these things for ourselves - if we hope to have true knowledge. Only then can we do our own reasoning, and so learn what a reasonable person knows that an unreasonable one does not. Then, and only then, can we ask ourselves, do I really understand what I’ve put my faith in? Or do these words mean more than I have understood? Am I merely taking someone else’s word for it?
Aristotle made this case best when he said that it is not enough to have theoretical wisdom, we must rather put it into practice to truly understand. Theoretical wisdom [sophia] may seem "the better part of the soul,"[2] if only because it "grasps necessary and permanent truths," but practical wisdom [phronesis] is especially concerned with “the things that make a man happy.”[3] Practical wisdom shares the same sphere of dominion with understanding [synesis], and so exhibits good sense, a forgiving and mature intelligence, that is, a sympathetic understanding of the problems of others and a true sense of what is fair. Theoretical wisdom is a necessary part of full intelligence, but only experience gives us an eye with which we can see things as they really are. So only those with both, theoretical and practical wisdom, "have the capacity of seeing what is good for themselves and for mankind."[4] And both are necessary for true intelligence of what the ancients call simply the whole truth.
So Socrates would have us discern between the strong senses of these word, and those weaker senses that pass for knowledge in our age. And so it is for this reason – because we may learn something sufficiently to put it into words, but not truly know it until it is understood sufficiently to be remembered in our actions – that the purpose of philosophy, which is to say, education, is not merely knowledge, in the popular sense, but understanding, and self-understanding, at that.
Which opens the door again to the meaning of the word philosophy itself – for is the love of wisdom and the search for truth the very purpose of education? This word, of course, has come to mean different things to different people, and the question of which is the true meaning of the words philosophy or education would certainly stir up some controversy among different kinds of either. But I began this project with the primary intention of showing philosophy to be the practical and valuable skill that it truly is -- or rather, was, when it was still understood in its original sense – what I call small-p philosophy. Certainly, many of my colleagues may take issue with this intention, for as most anyone who has taken a Philosophy course in the last century knows first-hand, this is no longer how we conceive of the discipline in academia.
But what ancient philosophers would have us remember, that modern philosophy seems to have forgotten, is that the most important knowledge is self-knowledge, and becoming attuned to and aligned with the consciousness that is at our core is the very purpose for which we learn. It cannot help but make us more thoughtful, and in a sense, better, more loving people, if only because we cannot begin to understand others until we understand ourselves. And so it is by developing our own thoughts and voices in this way, true philosophy has the potential to uplift us to our highest potentials. And yet philosophy as the dialogic activity of mutual self-improvement is the furthest thing from what we find in college classrooms today. And this is only one of those aspects of ancient wisdom that we have either forgotten, or ignored, and arguably to our great detriment.
And it is just such a process, the ancients would argue, that gives rise to a better understanding of the true meaning of intelligence. We value intelligence, but – as many have understood better than we do today – there is all the difference in being smart and being wise. And yet we use these words more or less interchangeably, with the consequent that many seemingly smart people apparently don’t know what it means to be truly intelligent. Indeed, we see everywhere in our time those who claim great knowledge, in a certain sense, but have precious little understanding of what they claim to know, and sometimes only belief.
There are many other essential terms we fail to distinguish from their lesser senses, including health, wealth, power, and god. And this inevitably compels us to further examine what we call education, politics, economics, science and religion, or what passes for these in our day. These are only a few of many examples of words we tend to use too loosely, and they can help us see how often language itself can be the source of so much conflict, just as it can help us resolve it. Words can, and indeed must, also be the source of resolution for our misunderstandings and miscommunications, but without sensitivity to the different senses in which we use them, all our efforts to talk things out can go awry, if and when the words themselves get in the way.
For all these reasons, one of the most important functions of philosophy is to sort the true sense of the words we use from lesser senses. And only then can we discern the difference between a good argument, and a lesser one. Because words can be used in different senses, understanding what sense we’re using, as well as how others might hear the same word differently, makes it possible for us to both understand and communicate more clearly. For while words can, when used well, help us understand one another, they can also be used too loosely, carelessly, even deceitfully, and so can ultimately do more harm than good, cause more conflict than resolution. Too often our aim is to win some imaginary battle, rather than to understand one another. But essential words do have real (prelinguistic) meaning that we would do well to understand better, at least if we hope to actualize their potential in our lives.
Only then do we have some chance of understanding, much less achieving, true happiness, true wealth, true friendship, true love, and true education. We can easily achieve the mere pretense or appearance of these, but the real thing requires a deeper understanding of the meaning underlying these words.
“Many of us have lost the ability to put our thoughts into words and have responded with apathy.”
“In modern Western societies, we have long observed a tendency away from the pursuit of wisdom and contemplation towards those forms of knowledge that can be tackled by natural science. The fight against religious dogma has paradoxically led to the belief that those things that can be described in numerical terms are somehow closer to the ultimate truth than words.”
“Apocalyptic rhetoric is fitting here: A cosmic battle is raging between the world of letters and the world of numbers.”
“What stupidity! Of course, words can express truth. Those who argue that only the universalistic appeal of numbers can convey truths fail to see that it has been precisely the cultural context and uniqueness of words -- their embeddedness in the history and fabric of a particular civilization -- which has enabled us to seek answers and raise issues that demand to be named and discussed through speech. As it says in the bible, "in the beginning there was the word." Speech is closer to our humanness than mathematics.”(And When the Last Scholar Has Died..., by Alexander Goerlach, Founder and Executive Editor of the Blog, The European, 7/12/2012)
Socrates will argue that words are necessary that we might climb toward this better understanding of what is by way of the dialectic process, as well as a better understanding of one another. Words are the best tools humans have for communication and mutual education, and while self-knowledge may be the ultimate end of all learning, we do have a great deal to learn from one another in the process.
Philosophy, in the ancient sense, can help us sort the mere appearance of what is real, true, good, and right from the real thing. It can help us sort truth from deceit. In other words, it can help improve our BS meter! This is why we say that philosophy teaches a very practical skill -- for what could be more valuable than to able to discern when we are being deceived? Especially considering we live in a world that is awash in fallacy. In our day and age, our young grow up practically drowning in manipulative rhetoric – words used in less than the true sense specifically for the purpose of manipulating them to do, or believe, or most often, to buy this or that product or candidate or value system. From advertising to political campaigns to religious purposes -- we have been taught from day one to simply follow along with what we are told, to simply believe what we’re told, as if it is true, whether or not it really is. In fact, more often than not, it is in someone else's economic or political interest to persuade us that it is. We are persuaded, by way of what we come to believe to be in our best interest, to do, or believe, or behave in certain particular ways it seems to be good for us -- whether or not it really is.
By my time, philos (‘friend of’ or ‘search for’) sophia (‘wisdom’ or ‘truth’) was no longer the dialectic process of following one’s questions toward higher understanding (thesis…which brought antithesis…and together, synthesis…which presented a new thesis…and thus a new antithesis…and with this, a new synthesis…and so on up as the mind climbed). Nor was philosophy the grand hall filled with ancient wisdom through which each and all would pass and return again and again throughout their life. Philosophy with a Capital-P had become instead a specialized discipline at the top of the academic hierarchy, carried on in a few back rooms of ivy covered towers, where good ol’ boys playing logic games became visibly annoyed at any mention of the practical wisdom of the ancients.
But I had learned enough to understand, by now, what Einstein meant when he said, “The ancients knew something, that we seem to have forgotten.” And it was something that made perfect sense of life…though too few others seemed to notice. All the same, as it had resolved the problems of living for ancient peoples (the best of them, that is, not the rest of them), so I discovered it illuminated answers to my questions, solutions to my problems, and inspiration to my learning, writing, and teaching process.
And among the most powerful lessons they imparted for me what that intelligence does not come from others, but by way of learning from our own experience. By contrast, ignorance comes of ignoring what our experience is trying to teach us. Education that does not help us understand this is the mere appearance of education, and philosophy that does not help us seek truth in this way is the mere appearance of philosophy.
Philosophers may hear me to be claiming that they have not been doing their jobs, but it is more an observation that philosophy, in the small-p sense, has not been made available as a tool in the toolbox we use to solve our human problems. For what the ancients sought to pass on to us was practical wisdom, skills that solve problems and insights that answer to the very questions that most plague our age. Indeed, the primary reason we should take these ancient voices seriously is because what they offer is help with our problems. And contrary to what many seem to think today, ancient philosophers did not see this as contrary to or in competition with theoretical wisdom, but rather as complementary to it. True wisdom, as Aristotle argued, requires both.
As the ancients understood, the search for truth must involve both Philosophy – the actual historic dialogue that illuminates the theoretical wisdom of history’s greatest thinkers, and philosophy – the art and practice of dialogue that illuminates the practical wisdom that makes the subject of practical benefit to us as individuals. In this sense, philosophy is purposeful, which is to say, it is an actual skill that aims to be of use to all who take it seriously. Not merely as an academic subject, but as a personal coping tool that aims to be of use to us as a lifelong guide for the well-being of our psyche (the Greek word for soul). Contrary to popular conceptions, philosophy in this sense seeks real answers to real life questions, practical solutions to the actual problems of living and learning.
And this is the reason Socrates would say we should “take no one’s word for anything!”[5] Socrates would no doubt have agreed with Confucius, who lived a century before him and halfway around the world, when he said, “Recognize that you know what you know, and that you are ignorant of what you do not know. Hear much, leave to one side that which is doubtful, and speak with due caution concerning the remainder.” [6] Besides, you won’t really understand something “until you hear your own voice say it.”[7] So, “You be the judge!”[8]
As it is, people aren't convinced of the value of true philosophy because they've only seen its conventional form, never the real thing, only imitators. We mistake fighters with words, a thing for which genuine truth seekers don't have time, with true philosophy. But one true philosopher is worth all the pretenders in the world. As for what I call Capital-P Philosophers, Socrates said, “Well, everyone ought to be loved who says and pursues and works out anything which is at all like wisdom…Still, all the same, we shall do well to see them as they really are.”[9]
So while I studied for many years under the watchful eye and heavy hand of Capital-P Philosophers, my actual search for truth took me beyond the confines of this or any discipline, into the thought and theory of many ways of knowing, many worldviews and complementary disciplines, diverse cultures across all the eras of human history, in search of what Socrates called ‘the science of all sciences,’ ‘multiplicity in unity,’ by which the whole truth might be discovered by any earnest searcher employing the art of dialectic thinking – the ability to look at things from multiple perspectives, which brings depth of understanding the same way a second eye adds depth to our vision.
[1] (Watts 1957, 4)
[2] (Aristotle n.d., VI.13,1144b8)
[3] (Aristotle n.d., VI.12,1143b20)
[4] (Aristotle n.d., VI.5,1140b5-10) In Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes practical wisdom [phronesis] from theoretical wisdom [sophia], arguing that these are excellences of different parts of the soul.[VI.11,1143b15] "Truth is the function of both … Therefore, those characteristics which permit each part to be as truthful as possible will be the virtues of the two parts."[VI.2,1139b11-13] Theoretical wisdom may seem "the better part of the soul,"[VI.13,1144b8] if only because it "grasps necessary and permanent truths," [i.e. universals]. But practical wisdom is especially concerned with “the things that make a man happy,”[VI.12,1143b20] and is therefore necessary to virtue. It "is concerned with human affairs and with matters about which deliberation is possible."[VI. 7,1141a9] Since "no one deliberates about things that cannot be other than they are or about actions that he cannot perform,"[VI.4,1140a33] practical wisdom "deals with things that can be other than they are."[VI.5,1140b27] Practical wisdom then is a virtue of that part which forms opinions,[VI.4,1140a25-26] "It is a truthful characteristic of acting rationally in matters good and bad for man..."[VI.5,1140b5] Only those with "practical wisdom...have the capacity of seeing what is good for themselves and for mankind...".[4][VI.5,1140b5-10] Practical wisdom involves excellence in deliberation, meaning correctness of reasoning which attains what is good and leads to true conviction.[VI.9,1142b20] Likewise, practical wisdom exhibits good sense, which is to say, a sympathetic understanding and correct sense of what is fair, i.e. a forgiving, mature intelligence. It also shares the same sphere of dominion with understanding [synesis] of practical problems and of others; "understanding...deals with [all such] matters concerning which doubt and deliberation are possible."[VI.10,1143a6] However, understanding only passes judgment, while practical wisdom issues commands for action.[VI.10,1143a15] While we usually think of this deliberation process as concerning our own person, but "surely one's own good cannot exist without household management nor without a (healthy) political system." [VI.8,1141b8-9] Therefore practical wisdom also concerns the state, and it is there called legislation, as "a decree is the last step (in the deliberative process.)"[VI.8,1141b28] Whereas theoretical wisdom is concerned with universals, "practical wisdom is concerned with particulars as well, and knowledge of particulars comes from experience."[VI.8,1142a15] This is why we tend to think that good sense, understanding, and intelligence come by nature, but that theoretical wisdom does not – because only experience gives men an eye with which they can see correctly. "Therefore," he says, "we ought to pay as much attention to the sayings and opinions, undemonstrated though they are, of wise and experienced (people) as we do to demonstrated truths;"[VI.10,1143a13] We need to have both theoretical and practical perspectives on our choices. For example, we need both the universal theoretical wisdom (major premise: that a true friend acts for the other’s good) and the particular practical wisdom (minor premise: that this action is indeed good for the other), in order to come to a correct conclusion (about whether one is acting as a true friend would.) "Virtue determines the end and practical wisdom makes us do what is conducive to the end."[VI. 12,1145a6] "Thought alone moves nothing."[VI.2,1139a36]
[5] (Plato, Cratylus n.d., 436b)
[6] (Smith, p.116)
[7] (Plato, Alcibiades n.d.)
[8] (Plato, Apology)
[9] (Plato’s Euthydemus 307)
My search for truth, which began when my daughter was born, had actually begun in ancient times as the wisdom of the ages was passed from generation to generation, sometimes culture to culture, often by word of mouth. Though nothing in my education, at least, so much as mentioned any of this.
As first a parent, and then a student, a teacher, and a writer, I’d already discovered that words can be used in many different senses, one purpose of philosophy is to distinguish one sense from another, to sort the mere appearance of truth from the real thing. For there is all the difference between the mere appearance of, say, happiness, or wealth, or friendship, love and beauty, and these things in their truest form. Likewise, we can discern the difference in what we call justice, or courage, or wisdom, from what is actually just, or courageous, or wise…if only because we cannot hit targets we don’t aim at.
I learned when my baby girl came along that what I had been calling love bore little resemblance to the real thing.
For this reason alone, understanding words for all they’re worth is essential to true learning. Because we use words in different senses, and some have more truth to them than others. So to know the difference between, say, the mere appearance of love, and the real thing... the state of mind many call happiness, and the kind of genuine happiness we crave…the mere pretense of friendship, and a true friend...this can make all the difference in the quality of life we achieve. These ideals are the end objectives of living, after all, but we are unlikely to hit any target we don’t aim at.
It was one of the primary missions of ancient philosophers to help us better understand the words we use. Not because meaning lies in words themselves, but because actualizing our highest potentials in this life depends upon a genuine understanding of that for which words stand. Words are powerful tools, when used well, but they can as easily lead to evil as to good when understood poorly. And since our very happiness depends on seeing things as they really are, so that we might actualize what could be, it’s in our lifelong interest to give some time to think these things through.
For instance, consider how we use the word friend. We all have friends (in fact, it would appear on Facebook that some of us have thousands!) But the ancients would have us ask ourselves – how many of them are true friends? What’s more, how many are we true friends to? When we call someone a friend -- but do we mean they are a friend in the truest sense? Or are they merely acquaintances? Or are they useful? Or maybe they bring us pleasure? True friends may also be of great benefit to us, or they bring us pleasure and company we enjoy. But how many of them do we care for, not as means to our own ends, but as ends in themselves? Not for our own good, but for theirs? A friend, in the truer sense, is what Aristotle calls “another self.”
Anyone who gives it sufficient thought will agree that there is this difference between a friend in the lesser sense that we typically use the word, and this truer sense.
Likewise, consider the word love. We desire many things in life, and – as Socrates laments – we often say we love that which we only desire. We love our new car, our dog, our job, sometimes our friends, and ideally (or at least occasionally), even our lovers. But how often do we use this word as a mere tool, a means to our own ends, to achieve our own pleasure, our own utility, our own benefit of some sort (sometimes even at the expense of those we claim to love)? How many a young man has won a young girl’s ‘virtue’ (or vice versa) by way of those three little words? And how often (or seldom) does this mean the same to him as it does to her?
The meanings of such words exists far beyond words themselves, inside us, where pure experience is prior to all wording – the quality of our subjective experience, our window on the world, will measure the quality of our time here on earth, which can be a paradise for those who can live it well, or hellish for those who do not.
Because we use these words in different senses, we can see that not all of the senses would qualify as a good friendship or true love. When asked, most people indicate they consider love to be a feeling, a pleasant emotion. But if love is merely a good feeling, then what happens to it when loving becomes difficult, say, when a child behaves badly, when a spouse grows old and needs care, or a parent develops Alzheimer’s? If love is only the feeling we tend to associate with the word, then what happens to it when it calls for effort that does not elicit that feeling of joy we like to associate with it? When love brings unpleasant feelings, is it no longer love? Does love end if and when that good feeling ends?
The answer any reasonable person would give is, not if it’s real and true love. So true love is something more than that to which we typically refer when we use the word. We might say it stands to reason that, if it is possible to care for others, not merely for our own sake, but for theirs (and maybe even for theirs alone, even at our own expense), then there is at least one sense of the words friend and love that any reasonable person would agree to be truer than the other senses in which we use these terms.
And so the good friend and true lover will care more to give love, than to receive it. True friendship and love may well elicit love in return, or even be its own reward, but these are serendipitous side effects of loving well, rather than the reason that we love. So a good friend and true lover will not seek friendship and love of just any sort, the ancients say, but will rather seek to be worthy of the friendship and love they desire.
Indeed, the words good and true can themselves be used in different senses, and if we use them to mean that which is more genuine, more authentic, more of what any reasonable person would agree is actually good and true – would we then need to ask further, what is a reasonable person? And what makes such a person a better judge than an unreasonable one? The answer will always be, the one who has thought these things through, has undergone the process that is true education, which never really ends, at least not for a thoughtful person.
This may seem an infinite regress, but in fact, it is not, for each of these questions does indeed have an understandable answer, albeit one that may well lead to yet another question. Which is precisely why asking them is such an important part of the process of becoming a reasonable and thoughtful person – that is, one who speaks with understanding of the words that they use.
All such things are connected and one who hasn’t thought them through is unlikely to understand or achieve the happiness they seek in life. We tend to think of happiness as getting what we want, but what if what we want is not good for us? Then getting it hasn’t done us much goo, has it? So it is wanting what IS good for us that secures our true happiness. Lesser understanding accomplishes only the appearance of these ideals - i.e. friendship, love, and happiness – while the real thing remains beyond our reach.
So it behooves us to understand such words better, at least if we hope to actualize their potential in our lives. And it’s for this reason that understanding itself becomes the ideal purpose of philosophical inquiry, that is, of education. For not all kinds of knowledge are true knowledge. For instance, you might learn all the right words to give a right answer on an exam - but when you think about it, would you call this kind of knowledge true understanding? We have all ‘learned’ many things for the sake of taking tests and passing classes, but (as a recent study of how much students learn or don’t learn showed) knowledge, in the sense we typically think of it and the way we typically learn it, simply doesn’t stick. Can we say we truly know or understand something if we don’t remember it?
True knowledge, the way the ancients understood it, is not only remembered, but is understood well enough that it translates automatically into action. Socrates and Aristotle had a debate about this (although Socrates was long dead before it began), as Aristotle worried about how quickly we forget, and how easily old habits can override new learning. But Socrates won this argument, all the same, because he understood (and any reasonable person who asked the hard questions would come around to agree) that while we may well learn many things that we call knowledge by way of words alone, we would not call such learning true knowledge if it so easily slips away. So a person who claims to be a friend, but then uses others for their own purposes, does not truly know the meaning of the word friend. Only when such words are understood well enough that they translate automatically into action would we call this true knowledge – until then it’s only true belief, at best, untrue belief at worse.
"True opinion is as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly,"(97b-c) but opinions "are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason... Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and then they are stable. That is why knowledge is something more valuable than right opinion. What distinguished one from the other is the tether."(Meno, 98)
There is much temptation in our time, just as there was in the golden age of democracy, to want to believe what we are told. But there is all the difference, Socrates learned the hard way, between a mere belief and a true belief – between taking something on faith, and actually understanding it. Those who put Socrates to death for questioning the official gods of the state called themselves democrats, but a democracy that suppresses and represses freedom of thought and speech is democracy in name only, and does not understand, or perhaps even know, the true meaning of its own name.
So when we say we know something, maybe we do, and maybe we don’t. Our understanding may indeed be based on good evidence, But those who claim to know when they merely believe (sometimes against evidence to the contrary), apparently don’t even know what it means to know.
In fact, as the ancient sages knew, to understand what they tried to teach us, we must put their advice into practice. It is not enough to simply believe the word of others, for words themselves can be quite slippery. As Alan Watts put it, “Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.”[1] As has been said, “A finger is used to point at the moon, but let us not confuse the finger with the moon.”
Words are indeed pointing tools, but what they point at is an inner experience that cannot be understood by words alone. We must, rather, experience these things for ourselves - if we hope to have true knowledge. Only then can we do our own reasoning, and so learn what a reasonable person knows that an unreasonable one does not. Then, and only then, can we ask ourselves, do I really understand what I’ve put my faith in? Or do these words mean more than I have understood? Am I merely taking someone else’s word for it?
Aristotle made this case best when he said that it is not enough to have theoretical wisdom, we must rather put it into practice to truly understand. Theoretical wisdom [sophia] may seem "the better part of the soul,"[2] if only because it "grasps necessary and permanent truths," but practical wisdom [phronesis] is especially concerned with “the things that make a man happy.”[3] Practical wisdom shares the same sphere of dominion with understanding [synesis], and so exhibits good sense, a forgiving and mature intelligence, that is, a sympathetic understanding of the problems of others and a true sense of what is fair. Theoretical wisdom is a necessary part of full intelligence, but only experience gives us an eye with which we can see things as they really are. So only those with both, theoretical and practical wisdom, "have the capacity of seeing what is good for themselves and for mankind."[4] And both are necessary for true intelligence of what the ancients call simply the whole truth.
So Socrates would have us discern between the strong senses of these word, and those weaker senses that pass for knowledge in our age. And so it is for this reason – because we may learn something sufficiently to put it into words, but not truly know it until it is understood sufficiently to be remembered in our actions – that the purpose of philosophy, which is to say, education, is not merely knowledge, in the popular sense, but understanding, and self-understanding, at that.
Which opens the door again to the meaning of the word philosophy itself – for is the love of wisdom and the search for truth the very purpose of education? This word, of course, has come to mean different things to different people, and the question of which is the true meaning of the words philosophy or education would certainly stir up some controversy among different kinds of either. But I began this project with the primary intention of showing philosophy to be the practical and valuable skill that it truly is -- or rather, was, when it was still understood in its original sense – what I call small-p philosophy. Certainly, many of my colleagues may take issue with this intention, for as most anyone who has taken a Philosophy course in the last century knows first-hand, this is no longer how we conceive of the discipline in academia.
But what ancient philosophers would have us remember, that modern philosophy seems to have forgotten, is that the most important knowledge is self-knowledge, and becoming attuned to and aligned with the consciousness that is at our core is the very purpose for which we learn. It cannot help but make us more thoughtful, and in a sense, better, more loving people, if only because we cannot begin to understand others until we understand ourselves. And so it is by developing our own thoughts and voices in this way, true philosophy has the potential to uplift us to our highest potentials. And yet philosophy as the dialogic activity of mutual self-improvement is the furthest thing from what we find in college classrooms today. And this is only one of those aspects of ancient wisdom that we have either forgotten, or ignored, and arguably to our great detriment.
And it is just such a process, the ancients would argue, that gives rise to a better understanding of the true meaning of intelligence. We value intelligence, but – as many have understood better than we do today – there is all the difference in being smart and being wise. And yet we use these words more or less interchangeably, with the consequent that many seemingly smart people apparently don’t know what it means to be truly intelligent. Indeed, we see everywhere in our time those who claim great knowledge, in a certain sense, but have precious little understanding of what they claim to know, and sometimes only belief.
There are many other essential terms we fail to distinguish from their lesser senses, including health, wealth, power, and god. And this inevitably compels us to further examine what we call education, politics, economics, science and religion, or what passes for these in our day. These are only a few of many examples of words we tend to use too loosely, and they can help us see how often language itself can be the source of so much conflict, just as it can help us resolve it. Words can, and indeed must, also be the source of resolution for our misunderstandings and miscommunications, but without sensitivity to the different senses in which we use them, all our efforts to talk things out can go awry, if and when the words themselves get in the way.
For all these reasons, one of the most important functions of philosophy is to sort the true sense of the words we use from lesser senses. And only then can we discern the difference between a good argument, and a lesser one. Because words can be used in different senses, understanding what sense we’re using, as well as how others might hear the same word differently, makes it possible for us to both understand and communicate more clearly. For while words can, when used well, help us understand one another, they can also be used too loosely, carelessly, even deceitfully, and so can ultimately do more harm than good, cause more conflict than resolution. Too often our aim is to win some imaginary battle, rather than to understand one another. But essential words do have real (prelinguistic) meaning that we would do well to understand better, at least if we hope to actualize their potential in our lives.
Only then do we have some chance of understanding, much less achieving, true happiness, true wealth, true friendship, true love, and true education. We can easily achieve the mere pretense or appearance of these, but the real thing requires a deeper understanding of the meaning underlying these words.
“Many of us have lost the ability to put our thoughts into words and have responded with apathy.”
“In modern Western societies, we have long observed a tendency away from the pursuit of wisdom and contemplation towards those forms of knowledge that can be tackled by natural science. The fight against religious dogma has paradoxically led to the belief that those things that can be described in numerical terms are somehow closer to the ultimate truth than words.”
“Apocalyptic rhetoric is fitting here: A cosmic battle is raging between the world of letters and the world of numbers.”
“What stupidity! Of course, words can express truth. Those who argue that only the universalistic appeal of numbers can convey truths fail to see that it has been precisely the cultural context and uniqueness of words -- their embeddedness in the history and fabric of a particular civilization -- which has enabled us to seek answers and raise issues that demand to be named and discussed through speech. As it says in the bible, "in the beginning there was the word." Speech is closer to our humanness than mathematics.”(And When the Last Scholar Has Died..., by Alexander Goerlach, Founder and Executive Editor of the Blog, The European, 7/12/2012)
Socrates will argue that words are necessary that we might climb toward this better understanding of what is by way of the dialectic process, as well as a better understanding of one another. Words are the best tools humans have for communication and mutual education, and while self-knowledge may be the ultimate end of all learning, we do have a great deal to learn from one another in the process.
Philosophy, in the ancient sense, can help us sort the mere appearance of what is real, true, good, and right from the real thing. It can help us sort truth from deceit. In other words, it can help improve our BS meter! This is why we say that philosophy teaches a very practical skill -- for what could be more valuable than to able to discern when we are being deceived? Especially considering we live in a world that is awash in fallacy. In our day and age, our young grow up practically drowning in manipulative rhetoric – words used in less than the true sense specifically for the purpose of manipulating them to do, or believe, or most often, to buy this or that product or candidate or value system. From advertising to political campaigns to religious purposes -- we have been taught from day one to simply follow along with what we are told, to simply believe what we’re told, as if it is true, whether or not it really is. In fact, more often than not, it is in someone else's economic or political interest to persuade us that it is. We are persuaded, by way of what we come to believe to be in our best interest, to do, or believe, or behave in certain particular ways it seems to be good for us -- whether or not it really is.
By my time, philos (‘friend of’ or ‘search for’) sophia (‘wisdom’ or ‘truth’) was no longer the dialectic process of following one’s questions toward higher understanding (thesis…which brought antithesis…and together, synthesis…which presented a new thesis…and thus a new antithesis…and with this, a new synthesis…and so on up as the mind climbed). Nor was philosophy the grand hall filled with ancient wisdom through which each and all would pass and return again and again throughout their life. Philosophy with a Capital-P had become instead a specialized discipline at the top of the academic hierarchy, carried on in a few back rooms of ivy covered towers, where good ol’ boys playing logic games became visibly annoyed at any mention of the practical wisdom of the ancients.
But I had learned enough to understand, by now, what Einstein meant when he said, “The ancients knew something, that we seem to have forgotten.” And it was something that made perfect sense of life…though too few others seemed to notice. All the same, as it had resolved the problems of living for ancient peoples (the best of them, that is, not the rest of them), so I discovered it illuminated answers to my questions, solutions to my problems, and inspiration to my learning, writing, and teaching process.
And among the most powerful lessons they imparted for me what that intelligence does not come from others, but by way of learning from our own experience. By contrast, ignorance comes of ignoring what our experience is trying to teach us. Education that does not help us understand this is the mere appearance of education, and philosophy that does not help us seek truth in this way is the mere appearance of philosophy.
Philosophers may hear me to be claiming that they have not been doing their jobs, but it is more an observation that philosophy, in the small-p sense, has not been made available as a tool in the toolbox we use to solve our human problems. For what the ancients sought to pass on to us was practical wisdom, skills that solve problems and insights that answer to the very questions that most plague our age. Indeed, the primary reason we should take these ancient voices seriously is because what they offer is help with our problems. And contrary to what many seem to think today, ancient philosophers did not see this as contrary to or in competition with theoretical wisdom, but rather as complementary to it. True wisdom, as Aristotle argued, requires both.
As the ancients understood, the search for truth must involve both Philosophy – the actual historic dialogue that illuminates the theoretical wisdom of history’s greatest thinkers, and philosophy – the art and practice of dialogue that illuminates the practical wisdom that makes the subject of practical benefit to us as individuals. In this sense, philosophy is purposeful, which is to say, it is an actual skill that aims to be of use to all who take it seriously. Not merely as an academic subject, but as a personal coping tool that aims to be of use to us as a lifelong guide for the well-being of our psyche (the Greek word for soul). Contrary to popular conceptions, philosophy in this sense seeks real answers to real life questions, practical solutions to the actual problems of living and learning.
And this is the reason Socrates would say we should “take no one’s word for anything!”[5] Socrates would no doubt have agreed with Confucius, who lived a century before him and halfway around the world, when he said, “Recognize that you know what you know, and that you are ignorant of what you do not know. Hear much, leave to one side that which is doubtful, and speak with due caution concerning the remainder.” [6] Besides, you won’t really understand something “until you hear your own voice say it.”[7] So, “You be the judge!”[8]
As it is, people aren't convinced of the value of true philosophy because they've only seen its conventional form, never the real thing, only imitators. We mistake fighters with words, a thing for which genuine truth seekers don't have time, with true philosophy. But one true philosopher is worth all the pretenders in the world. As for what I call Capital-P Philosophers, Socrates said, “Well, everyone ought to be loved who says and pursues and works out anything which is at all like wisdom…Still, all the same, we shall do well to see them as they really are.”[9]
So while I studied for many years under the watchful eye and heavy hand of Capital-P Philosophers, my actual search for truth took me beyond the confines of this or any discipline, into the thought and theory of many ways of knowing, many worldviews and complementary disciplines, diverse cultures across all the eras of human history, in search of what Socrates called ‘the science of all sciences,’ ‘multiplicity in unity,’ by which the whole truth might be discovered by any earnest searcher employing the art of dialectic thinking – the ability to look at things from multiple perspectives, which brings depth of understanding the same way a second eye adds depth to our vision.
[1] (Watts 1957, 4)
[2] (Aristotle n.d., VI.13,1144b8)
[3] (Aristotle n.d., VI.12,1143b20)
[4] (Aristotle n.d., VI.5,1140b5-10) In Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes practical wisdom [phronesis] from theoretical wisdom [sophia], arguing that these are excellences of different parts of the soul.[VI.11,1143b15] "Truth is the function of both … Therefore, those characteristics which permit each part to be as truthful as possible will be the virtues of the two parts."[VI.2,1139b11-13] Theoretical wisdom may seem "the better part of the soul,"[VI.13,1144b8] if only because it "grasps necessary and permanent truths," [i.e. universals]. But practical wisdom is especially concerned with “the things that make a man happy,”[VI.12,1143b20] and is therefore necessary to virtue. It "is concerned with human affairs and with matters about which deliberation is possible."[VI. 7,1141a9] Since "no one deliberates about things that cannot be other than they are or about actions that he cannot perform,"[VI.4,1140a33] practical wisdom "deals with things that can be other than they are."[VI.5,1140b27] Practical wisdom then is a virtue of that part which forms opinions,[VI.4,1140a25-26] "It is a truthful characteristic of acting rationally in matters good and bad for man..."[VI.5,1140b5] Only those with "practical wisdom...have the capacity of seeing what is good for themselves and for mankind...".[4][VI.5,1140b5-10] Practical wisdom involves excellence in deliberation, meaning correctness of reasoning which attains what is good and leads to true conviction.[VI.9,1142b20] Likewise, practical wisdom exhibits good sense, which is to say, a sympathetic understanding and correct sense of what is fair, i.e. a forgiving, mature intelligence. It also shares the same sphere of dominion with understanding [synesis] of practical problems and of others; "understanding...deals with [all such] matters concerning which doubt and deliberation are possible."[VI.10,1143a6] However, understanding only passes judgment, while practical wisdom issues commands for action.[VI.10,1143a15] While we usually think of this deliberation process as concerning our own person, but "surely one's own good cannot exist without household management nor without a (healthy) political system." [VI.8,1141b8-9] Therefore practical wisdom also concerns the state, and it is there called legislation, as "a decree is the last step (in the deliberative process.)"[VI.8,1141b28] Whereas theoretical wisdom is concerned with universals, "practical wisdom is concerned with particulars as well, and knowledge of particulars comes from experience."[VI.8,1142a15] This is why we tend to think that good sense, understanding, and intelligence come by nature, but that theoretical wisdom does not – because only experience gives men an eye with which they can see correctly. "Therefore," he says, "we ought to pay as much attention to the sayings and opinions, undemonstrated though they are, of wise and experienced (people) as we do to demonstrated truths;"[VI.10,1143a13] We need to have both theoretical and practical perspectives on our choices. For example, we need both the universal theoretical wisdom (major premise: that a true friend acts for the other’s good) and the particular practical wisdom (minor premise: that this action is indeed good for the other), in order to come to a correct conclusion (about whether one is acting as a true friend would.) "Virtue determines the end and practical wisdom makes us do what is conducive to the end."[VI. 12,1145a6] "Thought alone moves nothing."[VI.2,1139a36]
[5] (Plato, Cratylus n.d., 436b)
[6] (Smith, p.116)
[7] (Plato, Alcibiades n.d.)
[8] (Plato, Apology)
[9] (Plato’s Euthydemus 307)