Philosophy as a Way of Life
When philosophy is thought of today, most think of academic dissertations, full of an entirely separate language to discuss the lofty matters of metaphysics, and the meaning of reality. A philosopher is someone who holds a PhD, and teaches at the university. Those acts which distinguish a philosopher from non-philosophers are a) reading long books, b) writing theses, and c) sitting back in the office and smoking a pipe.
This was not how philosophy was classical conceived. To be a philosopher meant, first of all, to love wisdom, which is not synonymous with knowledge. Further, belonging to a philosophical school meant you inhabited certain places, and did certain things. The Stoics hung out at the Stoa, the Peripatetics walked around (the word literally means “to walk about”) the Lyceum, and did so because Aristotle, not being a citizen of Athens, could not own property, and the Academics spent time at the Academy. While we often refer to Peripatetics as Aristotelians, and the Academics as Platonists, it is illuminating to know that, in the literature of the time, students of philosophy were distinguished, in part, by where they studied.
In addition to each philosophical school having its own location, they had their own practices. The Pythagoreans were vegetarians, and had fasting practices. Socrates lived in voluntary poverty, and had a deep devotion to the god. Stoics had a number of watchful mental exercises that focused on discerning helpful, from unhelpful thoughts, and developing a healthy detachment from the world. You could, without probing into intellectual doctrine, quickly find out what kind of philosopher one was by looking at how he conducted his life, and what practices he regularly engaged in.
Drew A. Hyland, author of The Origins of Philosophy: Its Rise in Myth And the Pre-Socratics, a compilation of Pre-Socratic texts, with commentary, has a few relevant passages,
“Sophrosyne, it seems, is the middle term between self-knowledge and wisdom or knowledge of the divine. It is also necessary to note that wisdom, as Heraclitus understands it, is evidently not simply ‘epistemic’ or ‘theoretical’ knowledge. Wisdom is ‘to speak and act the truth, paying heed to the nature of things.’ Truth is not simply the content of propositions uttered. It is also a way of life. Self-knowledge seems to point beyond itself, to knowledge first of one’s limits, or sophrosyne, and consequently to knowledge of the relation between man and the divine, or knowledge of the structure of the whole, or wisdom. But it points as well to a way of life, an acting according to the truth of the nature of things.”1
Then later,
“But to gain access to a Logos which is itself moving, necessity of moving along at a rate commensurate with and true to the movement of the Logos itself. He finds this in the notion of attunement. Man gains access to the Logos insofar as he affirms and participates in its movement rather than resisting it…What Heraclitus presents us with is a knowledge more akin to the knowledge spoken of by the Old Testament writer when he says, ‘And Jacob knew his wife,’ than the conception exhibited by a twentieth-century scientist. For Heraclitus, the self-knowledge which is in fact sophrosyne and which leads ineluctably to knowledge of the cosmos is a participation in the world ‘according to the nature of things’; it is a way of living, of comporting oneself towards things in such a way as to truly affirm one’s belonging to the coursing of the world. It is a conception of knowledge present today in the writings of certain European existential philosophers such as Heidegger, Marcel, and Buber—a conception of knowledge in no way naive or primitive, but a genuine possibility for man as much as in Heraclitus’ time.”2
To know oneself, particularly one’s limitations, as the inscription above the Oracle of Delphi reads, was the beginning of philosophy for the ancients, for it required knowledge of our origins (anthropology, and cosmology), our nature, and our own proclivities. Knowing where we came from, where we are going, what we are meant for, and our vices, we then become able to live wisely in the world, rather than roaming aimlessly. Uncoupling knowledge from lived life, as many “professional philosophers” do today, as do most online “amateur philosophers”, would be unintelligible to someone like Heraclitus, or Socrates. If one does not live out the truth he discovered, then, no matter how “correct” he might be, then he rightly deserves the rebuke of The Dude, “That’s, like, just your opinion man.” For what makes an opinion different than truth? Most would say that truth corresponds to reality, or might be synonymous with it, whereas an opinion might, or might not, correspond, and certainly is not synonymous with reality. Should you actually discover the nature of reality, then if you truly believe it to be so, then it would be incomprehensible why you would not then live in accordance with that truth. You believe that if you walk off a cliff, you will die, yet you believe X, Y, or Z about ethics, or Man’s purpose, and you violate those ethics, and do the opposite of that purpose. By violating those truths, you turn them into an opinion. Ultimately, this is why I think almost modern day “pagan” have “just their opinion man”, because they do not live as Odysseus or Aeneas once did. Those on the Nietzschean right, also come under my suspicion, because of all their talk of “the will-to-power”, and the denigration of Christian morality you find in The Genealogy of Morals, they are rarely found imposing their will, and when someone else’s will is imposed on them, they, very commonly, start espousing “slave morality.”
Socrates is the face of philosophy, so to speak, and with good reason. Even until death, he lived in accordance with truth, in “a rate commensurate with the logos.” Because he really believed his words, “I think there is no greater blessing for the city than my service to the god. For I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively”3, he did not charge a fee for his teaching, because, in his words, “have neglected what occupies most people: wealth, household affairs…I thought myself too honest to survive if I occupied myself with those things. I did not follow that path that would have made me of no use to either to you, or myself.”4 Believing that instruction in virtue (translated “excellence” in this edition”) is truly a good thing, even the best thing, Socrates freely gives, as one would freely give water to the thirsty. If we would give water for free to a thirsting man, how sooner would we give instruction in virtue, which weighs on the health of the soul, to a man in need? All those around Socrates, particularly the Sophists, charged heavy fees for lessons, and you, over three-thousand years later, cannot study philosophy today at university without going into debt.
What is more, is that Socrates really believed in the immortality of the soul, and willingly accepted death because he was convinced that he would be inheriting eternal bliss.
“Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place. If it is a complete lack of perception, like a dreamless sleep, then death would be a great advantage. For I think that if one had to pick out that night during which a man slept soundly and did not dream, put beside it the other nights and days of his life, and then see how many days and nights had been more pleasant than that night, not only a private person but the great kind would find them easy to count compared with the other days and nights. If death is like this I say it is an advantage, for all eternity would then seem to be no more than a single night. If, on the other hand, death is a change from here to another place, and what we are told is true and all who have died are there, what greater blessing could there be, gentlemen of the jury?…Again, what would one of you give to keep company with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I am willing to die many times if that is true.”5
Applying this belief, Socrates accepted his death sentence, even though he was innocent, because he truly believed what he said above. Death cannot harm the innocent man, for either it is nothing, or is a benefit to the righteous, and thus threat of death is no threat of all. Socrates is occasionally compared to Jesus, and part of this can be attributed that Socrates never said anything that did not translate into action. Unlike many “philosophers” today, Socrates was a “true believer”, and as such, his life was not only a rebuke to the Sophists of his times, but equally so to the self-professed “wisemen” of today. Attempts to mythologize Socrates, or open distain of him (not uncommon on the dissident right), may just be the reactions of a wounded conscience, the same wounded conscience which condemned the Old Testament prophets to death.
Saint Nicholas Planas
If there is a comparison to be made between Socrates and a religious figure, I think Saint Nicholas of Athens (Papa Planas), serves as a better candidate than Jesus. A phrase in his life that initially brought the comparison to mind was “uneducated, but wise”, accompanied by a number of incidents whereby his humble life, and commitment to truth, Papa Planas was shown to be a living sermon. Recalling a few episodes from the life, I wish to draw attention to how Papa Nicholas lived Christianity, and did not hold it as an “opinion”, he did not treat the Faith as some intellectual system whose relevance is its ability to endure mental gymnastics, and win debates. Notice, first of all, his humility, an imitation of Christs’ Kenosis (the self-emptying mentioned in Philippians 2:7, “But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men”), and, second of all, his prayer life.
“He would commemorate names for hours on end. First, deceased patriarchs, metropolitans, priests, deacons, monastics, and- the people of Naxos and of Athens.
The names which they gave him he would commemorate regularly for many months. In order to give him a little rest, his spiritual children would secretly take the old ones and tear them up, because he took them with him to all the churches where he used to go. He would put them in two big handkerchiefs and tie them up into a bundle of sorts, and carry them in his bosom; they would press against his heart. When he finally managed to come home around five o'clock in the afternoon and relieve himself of the burden that he had on his chest because he had two bundles, the names and a little box with holy relics-we would say to him, "What are these bundles?" And he would answer, "My invoices and my contracts."6
“His tolerance, his patience, knew no bounds. He had a follower who always accompanied him and chanted for him when there wasn't anyone else. They called him Mihali. He loved Father Nicholas, but all the same, he tormented him with his bellowings. On frosty, snowy days when all the old men would be sitting by their stoves, this Mihali was forced to be with him in church.
He would slap his hands together in order to warm them and would shout to Papa-Nicholas, who was commemorating names: "Come o-o-o-o-on, Papa-a-a! . . .
You want to get the dead out of hell and bury us with the cold! . . . " And there he would be, slapping his hands and legs to warm them, while the snow was falling outside.
Another time, in summer, he was serving Liturgy at the Institute on King George Avenue, where there is a little chapel of Saint Anna. There, after the Liturgy, around three in the afternoon, the Elder sat outside the church on a folding chair, and immediately fell asleep. Mihali ran up, supposedly out of concern, and poked him hard and shook his chair, yelling, "You'll catch a cold, Papa-a-a!" This was because as soon as Liturgy was over, and he had a chance, he used to go and have a drink. This scared and startled the tired Papa-Nicholas to death. All his spiritual children who were present scolded Mihali for the way he behaved.
Papa-Nicholas, however, with his unfeigned humility, told us, "Don't scold him -he loves me, only he lets me know my place." That dumbfounded us; we did not know what to say to him. Even little children have their "nerves," their conceits, etc. He never learned what conceit or anger is. He would only become sad over one thing: when they left anything out of the prayers, he was crushed. This Mihali once did not let him do a Paraclesis to the Mother of God after the end of the Liturgy, and he was gloomy all that day, and would say to himself, "Imagine Mihali not letting me do a Paraclesis! . . ." And he would repeat to him-self, "Imagine, he wouldn't let me do a Paraclesis." When once at Saint John's there was a dispute between the churchwardens, he hid under the holy table so as not to take part. During the afternoon rest, he was advising one of his spiritual daughters on how to control her temper. He told her, "Do you think, my child, that I don't know how to speak out? I know, but I think of the results, and so I keep quiet."7
“Yet still another incident shows the unsurpassed faith and piety which he had in carrying out his sacred duties. There in his parish, in a narrow little alley, hid a man who was in an advanced state of leprosy. His lips had been eaten away by this terrible disease.
Once Father went to give him Communion, but his decayed mouth could not receive the Holy Body of the Lord, and it fell a little to one side of his mouth. Without any hesitation whatever absolutely none -Father leaned over and with his mouth took the Divine Pearl Which had fallen, and consumed It! Let those who find it hard to receive Communion because they're afraid of germs take a look at this!
… Actually, it is a great blasphemy: that the One God of the living and the dead, the Creator of heaven and earth, could be contaminated by germs! The ravings of mentally-darkened un-believers!
As for that sick man, he was found out by the police and sent to the leper-colony together with his daughter, who had also become afflicted and had her fingers eaten away. In spite of this, Father suffered nothing.”8
These short recollections of Saint Papa Planas show him as a man who experienced truth in a lived fashion, rather than as a mental object which one clutches like gold. You knew exactly what the little saint believed by simply watching him. Rather than writing a treatise on prayer, Papa Nicholas prayed every waking moment; instead of preaching patience from the pulpit, he became patience; and, when he could have discoursed on the ontological status of the Eucharist, and whether or not diseases can be communicated by it, he simply partook of the gifts which the leper had also partaken. Educated though he was, Saint Nicholas was (and is!) a true philosopher in the sense that Heraclitus, and Socrates were.
Truth and Practice
In our globalized world, we are confronted, on a daily basis, with alternative ways of being. Mass immigration has erased the nation-state, causing the given-ness of national identity to be questioned, interactions with foreign powers have made, in the minds of the average citizen, native political structures contingent, and contact with a variety of religious traditions has made both the pre-modern assumption of religion (if you are French, you are obviously Catholic), and the modern assumption of secularity (if you are French, you obviously think religion, if it is anything, a private matter) no more than a regional bias. With constant confrontation with otherness on the popular scale, the process of de-centering that Jacque Derrida described, where peripheral terms come to replace central terms, or, to frame the same thing differently, marginalized groups, and ideas, come to replace the privileged9 group, or idea, has become the norm, and is accelerating. Truth, because it has been conceived as right correspondence in the West since the time of Aristotle, has become suspect on account of accelerating de-centering. If truth is, instead of linguistic correspondence (and thus subject to the perils pointed out by post-structuralists), a way of life, defined by a series of practices, habits, and attunement, then it is fortified against globalization, and de-centering. So long as the lived community, wherein one attunes himself to truth, with all of its practices and habits, remains, then its corresponding way of living will continue on. Maintaining the health of the Academy, for the Platonists, or the parish, for Christians, however mundane it may become, is the praxis for staying on one’s feet in the post-modern landscape.
Hyland, A. Drew. The Origins of Philosophy: Its Rise In Myth And The Pre-Socratics. Humanity Books. Amherst, New York. 1998.148
Hyland, A. Drew. The Origins of Philosophy. 158
Plato, and John M. Cooper. The Apology. In Complete Works, 17–36. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009. 20a-b
Plato. The Apology. In Complete Works, 17–36 .36b-c
Plato. The Apology. 40c-41a
Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Papa-Nicholas Planas: The Simple Shepherd of The Simple Sheep. Boston, Massachusetts. 1981. 5-6
Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Papa-Nicholas Planas. 9-10
HTM. 29
It is a mistake in rightist circles to mistake “privileged” for “entitled” or “stuck up.” By “privileged”, Derrida simply means a term that is assumed to be central in a discussion. The market, and its signifiers, are privileged in economics, while environmental concerns are on the margins, and, if attended to, must be through the lens of the market.