Philosophy
Religious Studies
|
Philosophers in the world
Philosophers are often thought of as hopelessly inept in the "real"
world, the theoretical counterparts of the 90-pound weakling on
the beach of the material world. Nothing could be more mistaken.
As mentioned, Alexander the Great studied with Aristotle and then
went on to conquer the world (well, the parts of the world the Greeks
knew). Coincidence? Perhaps, but the extent to which other ancient
figures were influenced by philosophy is far less ambiguous. To
take the most obvious example, Socrates was committed to a life
of social criticism and public debate, so much so that he was tried
and executed by Athenian officials who felt threatened by his influence
over the young.
Consider also the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (the guy Richard
Harris played in the movie Gladiator). As a young man,
Aurelius was so motivated by his love of truth (the Emperor Hadrian
nicknamed him "Verissimus") that he turned from studying
rhetoric to philosophy. Conscientious to his subjects and magnanimous
to his enemies, Aurelius sold off personal items rather than raise
taxes to fund the imperial expansion into Eastern Europe. Despite
his dislike of violence (he made gladiators fight with blunt tips),
Aurelius spend much of his reign on the battlefield fighting German
tribes on the Danube front; The Meditations was written
down as notes, sometimes in military camp at the end of a weary
and bloody day. Like many other ancients, Aurelius took the philosophical
life to be one lived in the world according to philosophical principles
and values, drawing on Epictetus' admonition:
Eat like a man, drink like a man, get dressed, get married, have
children, lead the life of a citizen … Show us all this, so that
we can see whether or not you have really learned something from
the philosophers. (Discourses III, 21, 5)
One important thinker who exemplified Epictetus' ideal was John
Locke. Bored with the scholastic curriculum during his studies at
Christ Church, Oxford, he spent much of his time as an undergraduate
reading French literature. After receiving his B.A. in 1656, Locke
plunged into the study of medicine and chemistry, later supervising
a surgery to drain an abscess on Lord Ashley's liver (the operation
probably saved Ashley's life). Locke saw his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding, the locus classicus for modern empiricist
philosophy, as providing part of the conceptual framework for the
new scientific advances of Boyle, Huygens, "and the incomparable
Mr. Newton". His Two Treatises on Government was the
single most important text for the constitution of the United States.
The founding fathers of American government certainly were engaged
in worldly matters (you can't build a country while locked in an
ivory tower), yet Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams and many others
were schooled in the philosophical, political and legal writings
of Greek, Roman and Medieval scholars. More importantly, they thought
that such schooling was essential training for public life!
Benjamin Franklin, born into a poor working class family, dropped
out of school at the age of 10, but he read widely through his teen
years. At the age of 16 he read John Locke's Essay. On
discovering Plato's dialogues, he became so taken with the Socratic
method of argumentation that in conversation with others, he consciously
put on the mask of "the humble inquirer and doubter."
The following quotation from James Madison: A Biography,
by Ralph Ketcham, is eye-opening (Madison was a primary architect
of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights,
and the 4th U.S. President):
In Madison's day the towering figures of Greece and Rome and
the priceless books of the ancient sages and historians were very
nearly sanctified as an incomparable source of insight into human
affairs. To understand Madison's mind, it is necessary to sense
in some way the broad and primordial impact upon it of the Greek
and Latin authors. Though, like most of his contemporaries, he
did not often "footnote" the ideas he took from this
classical studies, it is apparent that again and again he accepted
many of them as axiomatic when he considered public problems in
Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Washington. For Madison's generation
the wisdom of Greece and Rome furnished, so to speak, the folklore,
the "morality plays", and the schoolboy texts on fundamental
concepts of human nature and society. (p. 46)
To illustrate the point being made here, take a look at the following
exchange on the subject of education and the youth, between Thomas
Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, and John Adams, 2nd
President of the United States (the date is about 5 years after
the end of Jefferson's term as President). Note Jefferson's disgruntled
tone over what he perceives to be superficiality in the education
of the youth of his day (from The Adams-Jefferson Letters (1959),
edited by Lester Cappon; spelling idiosyncrasies are in the original):
Jefferson to Adams, July 5, 1814:
But why am I dosing you with these Ante-diluvian topics? [Jefferson
had just made some brief comments on Plato.] Because I am glad
to have some one to whom they are familiar, and who will not receive
them as if dropped from the moon. Our post-revolutionary youth
are born under happier stars than you and I were. They acquire
all learning from their mother's womb, and bring it into the world
ready-made. The information of books is no longer necessary; and
all knolege which is not innate, is in contempt, or neglect at
least. Every folly must run it's round; and so, I suppose, must
that of self-learning, and self-sufficiency; of rejecting the
knolege acquired in past ages, and starting on the new ground
of intuition. When sobered by experience I hope our successors
will turn to the advantages of education. I mean of education
on the broad scale, and not that of the petty academies,
as they call themselves, which are starting up in every neighborhood,
and where one or two men, possessing Latin, and sometimes Greek,
a knolege of the globes, and the first six books of Euclid, imagine
and communicate this as the sum of science. They commit their
pupils to the theatre of the world with just taste enough of learning
to be alienated from industrious pursuits, and not enough to do
service in the ranks of science. …. I hope the necessity will
at length be seen of establishing institutions, here as in Europe,
where every branch of science, useful at this day, may be taught
in it's highest degree. Have you ever turned your thoughts to
the plan of such an institution? I mean to a specification of
the particular sciences of real use in human affairs…?
Adams to Jefferson , July 16, 1814:
Education! Oh Education! The greatest Grief of my heart, and
the greatest Affliction of my Life! … If I venture to give my
thoughts at all, they must be very crude. I have turned over Locke,
Milton, Condilac, Rousseau and even Miss. Edgeworth as a bird
flies through the Air. … Grammar, Rhetorick, Logic, Ethicks, mathematicks,
cannot be neglected; Classicks, in spight of our Friend Rush [Benjamin
Rush advocated dropping Greek and Latin from the school curriculum],
I must think indispensable. Natural History, Mechanicks, and experimental
Philosophy, Chymistry, etc. (at least their Rudiments) can not
be forgotten. Geography, Astronomy, and even History and Chronology,
tho' I am myself afflicted with a kind of Pyrrhonism in the two
latter, I presume cannot be omitted. Theology I would leave to
Ray, Derham, Nicueuteyt and Payley, rather than to Luther, Zinzindorph,
Sweedenborg, Westley, or Whitefield, or Thomas Aquinas or Wollebius
[in other words, Adams would leave theology to proponents of "natural"
theology rather than to "revealed" theology]. Metaphysics
I would leave in the Clouds with the Materialists and Spiritualists,
with Leibnits, Berkley, Priestley and Edwards, and I might add
Hume and Reid ….
(It hardly needs saying, but it is difficult to imagine any two
Presidents in recent years having such a conversation!)
Karl Marx is, arguably, the thinker whose ideas have most influenced
the twentieth century. He received his Doctorate in Philosophy from
the University of Jena for a dissertation on the Greek philosophers
Epicurus and Democritus. Denied an academic post because of his
leftist politics, he became an editor for a paper in Cologne that
was shut down after a year. In his "Theses on Feuerbach', Marx
wrote: "The philosophers have only interpreted the
world differently; what matters is to change it." Though Marx's
theories of historical change were a key stimulus for the socialist
and communist revolutions of the 20th century, it would be a mistake
to identify Marxist philosophy with any of the state-sanctioned
political philosophies of communist and socialist governments of
the last (and this) century. History appears to have ruled the communist
experiment (Marxism-so-called, as distorted by Lenin, Stalin, Mao,
Pol Pot and others) a failure, but Marx's critique of classical
"idealist" philosophies, and of capitalist economic systems,
remains broadly influential today.
We needn't restrict our attention to politics to see philosophy
at work in the lives of influential people:
-
Albert Schweitzer earned a doctorate in philosophy
before becoming the world-renowned, Bach-playing, Nobel Prize-winning
humanitarian missionary doctor in French Equatorial Africa (present-day
Gabon).
-
T. S. Eliot wrote a doctoral dissertation on
the development of Leibniz's monadism before becoming one of the
most influential poets of the twentieth century, winning the Nobel
Prize for Literature along the way (he never returned for Harvard
to defend the dissertation).
-
Iris Murdoch did graduate work with Wittgenstein
before becoming a tutor at St. Anne's College, Oxford. Resigning
this position later to devote all of her time to writing, she
produced a host of philosophical and critical studies in addition
to 26 novels, including The Sea, The Sea, for which she
received the Booker Prize.
-
Others writers who majored (but did not always
graduate) or did graduate work in philosophy include: Mary Higgins
Clark (The Cradle Will Fall), Philip K. Dick (whose novel
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was adapted into
the film "Blade Runner"), Umberto Eco (The Name
of the Rose), Ken Follett (The Eye of the Needle),
Rebecca Goldstein (MacArthur prize-winning author of The Mind-Body
Problem), James Michener (Pulitzer Prize winning author of
the novel that was adopted to the musical "South Pacific"
and Centennial), Kate Millett (Sexual Politics),
Chaim Potok (The Chosen), Susan Sontag (Illness and
Metaphor and The Volcano Lover), David Foster Wallace
(MacArthur prize winning author of Infinite Jest), Elie
Wiesel (Nobel Prize winning author of Night ), and Yann
Martel (Booker award winning author of Life of Pi.)
-
Robert Motherwell got a B.A. in philosophy,
went for a year of graduate school, then took a break to travel
in Europe. While abroad he began to paint seriously, later becoming
one of the great American Abstract Expressionists.
-
A short, skinny 18-year old arrived from Hong
Kong to study philosophy at the University of Washington in the
early 1960s. (He even wore glasses.) Bruce Lee turned the stereotype
of the philosophy student as geeky dweeb on its head and spinning-side-kicked
it into the next room.
-
Banjo-picking comedic genius Steve Martin studied
philosophy as an undergraduate, and for a while wanted to go on
and teach it. He later said in "Wild and Crazy Guy",
"if you're studying geology, which is all facts, as soon
as you get out of school you forget it all… but philosophy, you
remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life".
-
Woody Allen: "I went to NYU myself, I
was a philo-major there, too. I took all the abstract philosophy
courses in college, like truth and beauty, advanced truth and
beauty, intermediate truth, introduction to God, Death 101. I
was thrown out of NYU my freshman year, I cheated on my metaphysics
final in college, I looked within the soul of the boy sitting
next to me".
-
Other comedians and arts celebrities who majored
or did graduate work in philosophy: Wes Craven (director of "Nightmare
on Elm Street"), actor Harrison Ford, journalist and TV newsmagazine
host Stone Phillips, director Patricia Rozema ( "Mansfield
Park" and "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing"), movie
critic Gene Siskel, and Jeopardy host Alex Trebek. Actor David
Duchovny deserves honorable mention since he was interested and
took classes in philosophy while majoring in English at Princeton.
-
Hard-core environmentalist, vegan, New York
D.J., rave artist and house music innovator Moby on his studies:
My favorite memories from college were long, heated debates
in philosophy class…. Perhaps my choice of major has given
me a slightly detached perspective on the circumstances of
my professional life. It's hard to take the professional minutiae
of the music business too seriously when you recognize the
collective subjectivism that informs our understanding of
the things that seemingly fill our lives. And if you go to
cocktail parties and say you were a philosophy major in college,
then people think you're probably smarter than you actually
are, which is nice.
-
Other musicians who majored in philosophy include
the composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Brad Roberts of the
Crash Test Dummies, and Kim Thayill of Soundgarden.
-
Philosophy majors are well-represented among
business leaders as well. A list would include Mark Hulbert (financial
columnist, FORBES magazine), Carl Icahn (CEO, TWA Airlines), Gerald
Levin (CEO, Time-Warner, Inc.), Carleton Fiorina (CEO Hewlett-Packard),
and Moses Znaimer (owner of CITY-TV and MUCH-MUSIC, Toronto).
(It's worth noting that less than 15% of CEOs in the United
States have undergraduate degrees in business fields, and
that of people in business management making above the median
income, people with undergraduate degrees in the liberal arts
make more money than people with undergraduate degrees in
business (USA Today).)
To sum up, Plato is right that "philosophy
begins in wonder", but it is a gross mistake to think that the
study of philosophy is irrelevant to the problems of living in the
real world. Indeed, the "real world" is unimaginable without
the contributions of people who have been inspired by the philosophical
life.
(This essay was prepared by Jack Davidson and Kevin de Laplante.
Please send comments or corrections to either Jack or Kevin.)
|
