Since it's always advisable to give students closure at the end of a course, I spent the last few classes helping them sort through their reactions to philosophy. However, students can sometimes give a more nuanced reaction to something by responding to a series of reactions to that same thing. This last written assignment, therefore, asked them to critically evaluate eight different reactions to philosophy. What follows are the eight reactions in bold print, followed by a summary version of their collective critique in italics.
1. Philosophy is a waste of time since it cannot give us absolute certainty. The life of the mind betrays us with empty promises. We feel disappointed, cheated, disillusioned and demoralized.
Most students found this an overreaction. A little "disappointed," perhaps, which would gradually wear off, but hardly "cheated, disillusioned and demoralized." In general, they dismissed this reaction as naïve, since no one could realistically expect that philosophy could bring certainty about the big questions of life. Those wanting certainty from philosophy are really looking for magic, not honest answers. Philosophy isn't, after all, mathematics with right and wrong answers, but a manner of thinking, a critical tool for examining theories. It's not a what, but a how. The fact that philosophy enables one to see through deception and nonsense is liberation enough from systems of thought that take over the mind with ready-made answers. Such "mind-forged manacles" are nothing but group-think, which spares one the anguish of finding one's own answers. How could learning to protect oneself against indoctrination be wasting one's time? On the contrary, philosophy saves one from being brainwashed and wasting one's life!
2. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Since we cannot have certainty, isn't it better to enjoy ourselves by a life of pleasure, rather than throwing away our lives in pointless speculation? If we're going to be food for worms, what does it matter what we think about the eternal questions?
This is simply an excuse for living a life of excess rather than one of dignity. It goes from one extreme to another -- from wanting unattainable certainty from philosophy to self-dissipation. Why take out one's disappointment on oneself by putting oneself in an early grave? If anyone is throwing away one's life it's certainly not someone who's trying to lead a meaningful life, but someone who's seeking one's self-destruction. And who has certainties in this world about anything? A life of certainty would be too boringly safe! If one is here today and gone tomorrow, then why not enjoy the good things of life in moderation? Why make one's life miserable simply because one cannot be certain? It seems such a childishly extreme reaction with no sense of proportion.
3. Since we cannot have certainty about life's ultimate questions, isn't it better to stay with the answers we grew up with? At least we're familiar with them and perhaps even happy. Since we cannot prove anything anyway, why not simply keep what we have?
These are the thoughts of a slug and a coward. Who's to say that the ideas one grows up with are true or make one happy? They could very well be false and make one miserable. Anyone in any culture could make the same case about staying with inherited answers, but how could all those different answers be true? This sounds like what a PR man would say to defend the status quo. But if one feels unhappy with traditional answers, why not reject them? Staying with what one was brought up with is just fear of the unknown and lack of initiative in taking charge of one's life. Besides, who's to say that those dying with the "certainties" of familiar ideas aren't also deluded?
4. Life must be lived, not endlessly pondered. The real world demands decisions, not fruitless discussion. Too much thinking brings paralysis and gets us nowhere. Let us simply move on by immersing ourselves in life's practicalities.
This misrepresents what philosophy does. Of course, life must be lived, but philosophy keeps one from living blindly and winding up in a ditch. It allows one to live life more intensely by thinking more deeply about the stakes involved. Life demands constant decisions, and what better way of proceeding than by first weighing the options and choosing what's best, which philosophy helps one to do. What causes paralysis isn't too much thinking, but not thinking at all. One simply drifts and waits for Godot to solve all one's problems. When despair becomes overwhelming, one retreats to inaction instead of rallying oneself. Philosophy is life's faithful companion that enhances one's enjoyment of life by living it wisely, rather than submitting to what happens and calling it fate. It counsels one to change things and to make one's own fate. Immersing oneself in practicalities brings a healthy balance to life, but a life of all practicalities can make one a drudge. "Everything in moderation"!
5. We live for ourselves, our families, our jobs, our careers. We become involved in causes, interests, hobbies, politics, or whatever brings happiness. We lose ourselves in the joys of the here and now.
While this, too, is commendable, the problem lies in its all-inclusiveness. It's healthy to embrace all these good things, but, again, it seems an overreaction. Philosophy isn't an either/or choice of having either philosophy or family, but one of both/and, having both good things to live for and philosophy's added dimension of insuring that these good things stay good. Someone who is only about the here-and-now can become too addicted to the present to the exclusion of the larger picture. Anything, no matter how good, can be abused and become a way of escaping oneself and the awareness of any higher significance. Philosophy keeps life in perspective.
6. We continue to search for answers and nourish ourselves on questions. We make our peace with open-endedness. If certainty isn't attainable, we make do with probability or possibility. In the process, we grow. It is the journey, not the destination, which is the goal. And if we are wrong, then we are wrong, and there is dignity in making our own mistakes and not those of others.
This seems fine on the surface - keeping one's options open in order to grow like Jack Kerouac's being always "On the Road," never settling down, staying eternally young, and being always in motion like a rolling stone for fear of being defined by any one view. However, this Journey-not-the-Destination motif can lead to too contemplative a way of relating to life, becoming a passive observer, and avoiding life altogether by being everything in potential, but nothing in actuality. One should, after all, finally grow up and take a stand, not waffle on the important questions of life. Granted, some see fixed beliefs as prison cells that stifle growth, so they shed old beliefs as snakes do old skins, while others feel uneasy with such eternal becoming. Perhaps it's a matter of temperament as to which choice is right.
7. We aren't interested in theories for their truth, but for their utility or enjoyment. We "try on" different world views as so many lenses through which to savor the world. We enjoy these theories or answers for the aesthetic or emotional pleasure they bring. They are mental "as if" games that reveal different faces of the world to us.
Some dismissed this as a mind-game for avoiding reality. One doesn't take anything seriously, but simply redefines it out of existence to cope with a world one cannot control. By adopting a series of different attitudes (of a Stoic, an Epicurean, an Existentialist, a Marxist, Freudian, Jungian, or whoever), one distracts oneself by relishing the subjective reactions that come with that role rather than on what one should be reacting to. One prefers one's subjective mood states induced by these poses instead of being concerned with dealing with what one is confronting. Others took exception to such a negative view and found this "as if" approach an exciting way of relating to the different aspects of a Protean reality which these "lenses" reveal so that one can broaden one's world.
8. We need something absolute to believe in to give our lives meaning. We want tradition, ritual, ceremony, pageantry, mystery, and faith to provide us with true, objective, and eternal answers. It is only in surrender that we find ultimate peace and liberation.
This struck some as the highest wisdom and a beautiful vision that brought infinite comfort to those who believed it; others saw it as the reaction of a theater person in love with make-believe and the ritualized existence of playing a part in a mystery play of cosmic yearning, which refused to accept the joys of this world for those one hoped might exist in the next. One needed the stage-props of a romanticized past and tradition to steady oneself in the mundane world of the present, which one was loath to accept as it is. Others felt that one could find religious transcendence in poetry, as others find their poetry in religion.
It was apparent in discussing their reactions to the course that some students found it hard to accept that there are no universally agreed-upon answers to the big questions of life; that a number of plausible answers exist to those questions; and that some questions may not even admit of an answer.
There were also students who found the uncertainty engendered by philosophical questioning initially unsettling, but as the year progressed and they encountered the dozens of theories about the myriad topics discussed in the course, they felt profoundly relieved and liberated, eager to push on, without fear or commitment, to the boundless reaches of the possible.
They had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge and felt themselves joyfully banished from the Garden of Innocence and were now ready to take their chances with whatever might come.
Most heartening to their teacher was the courage of these new seekers of wisdom in exploring the uncharted seas into which their Odyssean journey had led them, the radiant glow of young minds in ferment, and the possession of that rarest pearl of great price -- being grounded in oneself.
A few closing remarks about teaching philosophy. As mentioned in Part 2 of this series, I always presented a number of theories about every question raised in the course. There were so many questions that students gradually realized that the life of the mind was a turbulent night sea journey upon endless questions, and that the more one discovered, the more one was overawed by the immensity of these questions and the utter inadequacy of our makeshift answers.
The secret of teaching is asking questions. Questions and theories open the mind; answers only lull it to sleep. Lecturing is the kiss of death, but if you want students to think, ask questions, many of them, relentless, rapid-fire, follow-up questions that give them no quarter.
At other times, ask open-ended questions with much time to think so that the magnitude of these questions can be palpably felt. Ask questions that drive students to the brink and abandon them there. Resolve nothing. If things are too clear, you have failed as a teacher.
There is also a kind of thinking that needs vagueness and shadow for the answers to come, as these answers need shielding from too much light. Teach students to struggle and wait for the answers to life, the best teacher which comes with no book of instructions or answer key.
On the temple at Delphi were inscribed the words: "Know Thyself," to which Oscar Wilde replied, "Only the shallow know themselves." Philosophy begins in wonder and mystery and, if one is lucky, may end there, too.