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Can Virtue Be Taught?
Why do the Cynics shout over the choir? Why do they so visibly show themselves walking the walk of the philosopher’s life? It is to teach us a lesson. What lesson? That virtue is all that really matters and everything else is a matter of indifference. In this they presume an important idea: that virtue can be taught. In their case they think it is something best taught by example and learnt through experience. Whether or not virtue can be taught was a hotly-debated topic in ancient philosophy. It is an idea that can be challenged. Ancient philosophers would point… read more
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The Proper Time to Eat
‘What is the proper time to eat?’, someone asks Diogenes the Cynic. ‘When rich, whenever you want; when poor, whenever you can.’ A pithy phrase, apparently saying little. It is a seed. Perhaps you might remember it and reflect on it from time to time. At first glance it conveys a certain sense of living naturally: eat when hungry, sleep when tired, etc. Do as your nature wills. But perhaps there’s also a sense that the poor are unfortunate because they must do what they must and cannot do what they will. But isn’t Diogenes famous for being poor, and… read more
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Craft Your Nature
As natural as it should be to live in accordance with nature, we don’t take to it naturally. It takes practice and training and an amount of philosophical education to understand what nature requires and to align your will with those requirements. Our untrained nature often leads us astray. We’re naturally inclined to follow our desires for pleasure, for example, and will follow this desire far beyond any natural requirements, not realising these to be the small seeds of mistakes that will grow into entire forests; forests in which we will eventually get lost. We don’t like being poor. We… read more
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Align Your Will with Nature
Diogenes the Cynic sees a mouse, happily running about, not looking for money or prestige, and finds a lesson in the mouse’s behaviour: Diogenes says the gods have given us an easy life but we’ve made it difficult for ourselves by overlaying it with nonsense. Even in Diogenes’ time, to talk of ‘the gods providing’ would be taken metaphorically. This is all the more true in our more secular time. So we can replace ‘the gods’ with ‘nature’ here and the effect is the same. Nature has given us a relatively easy life but we’ve overlaid it with nonsense. We… read more
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Philosophy is a Magic Spell
Philosophy is like a kind of magic spell: you only need to say the right words in the right order and with the right intent you can change your world. Philosophy can turn poverty into wealth and sickness into health; it can free you from constraints, from the power of tyrants, from the fear of harm; it can protect you from yourself and warn you of errors before you make them; it can turn bad fortune into good. It is like a protective shield that makes you invulnerable to misfortune. Its effectiveness is limited to certain types of things. It… read more
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The Courage of Cynicism
I love the Cynics and I wish I were courageous enough to be one. I think they are essentially right in everything they say. A student once expressed surprise at this, when I said as much in a lecture, pointing out that I had celebrated Socrates’ prioritisation of the ethical. Weren’t the two incompatible? Socrates says there is nothing more important than living a decent life; the Cynics go around spitting in people’s faces and generally causing trouble. However you justify it, there’s not much ‘decency’ in Cynic life. I think that’s true, and I was glad to have the… read more
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The Purpose of the Problem of Evil
I think there’s something odd about discussing the weightiest matters for trivial ends. If I’m being honest, I think philosophers have lost sight of their true purpose, their ‘that for the sake of which’ they philosophise, especially about the problem of evil. Once upon a time, the purpose of philosophizing about the problem was to correct our attitude to the world, one way or another. Whether to alleviate our anxieties about pleasing the gods, or to remind us of our faulty opinions, or to reassure us about the ultimate underlying goodness of the physical world, we wanted to reconcile our… read more
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Shouting from the Sidelines
I’ve often thought there’s something absurd about a philosopher shouting from the sidelines of society, accusing everyone of being miserable. Most people seem quite content to go about their business; they don’t seem particularly tormented by being in ordinary society; it’s only the philosopher that is. Who is more miserable here? The one who is happy in the world or the one who lives outside of it? But then I look at the brief biographies of famous and successful people, or our leaders, the great and good, the paragons of ordinary society, the pictures of success, and although it is… read more
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Look Beyond the Body: The Phaedo
‘It’s easy to get caught up in material reality and forget what really matters. Caring for a newborn infant is a particularly clear example of this. Your life is made up of activities necessary for the care and maintenance of a body: feeding and cleaning and sleeping, inputs and outputs; these are all material measures. It’s easy to let those measures dominate your perspective and determine what you see. That would be a mistake. It only takes a moment’s philosophical reflection to see that your baby is more than just their body. They are not only a physical thing but… read more
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Philosophy is a Fruiting Tree
Whenever I consider introducing philosophy to people, it always seems like it’s the wrong time: too late for the old, because they don’t have time or inclination to change themselves, and too soon for the young, because they don’t understand why it could be needed. Only the young person who has suffered knows why you might need to defend yourself against life with an art of living. A philosopher can only offer what they have, which is philosophy. But philosophy is made of ideas and ideas are only seeds. Seeds are not fruit. Some of these seeds might take root… read more
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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