What is philosophy? When is philosophy ‘real’ and not pseudo? This question has troubled me for some years. I have been a student and an academic and a lecturer. I have studied philosophy, discoursed about philosophy, published in it, taught it, defended it, and sold it. In all this philosophical activity, I certainly looked like a philosopher. I had doubts. These activities are all the visible show of what philosophy does, but a show is not a sufficient condition. These activities are all achievable by someone skilfully pretending to be a philosopher. Like an actor playing the heavyweight champion of the world, who certainly looks like a boxer, and trains like one, and acts like one. The show is convincing, but we know it’s not real. Put them in a real contest and you will see what they are.
What is missing? Nothing superficial. What’s missing is the substance behind the show, the reality beneath the reputation. In that it is something fundamental, and in that it defines the essence of the thing. You must be what you would show yourself to be, as Socrates would pray that ‘the outward and inward man be at one’. It is a matter of being consistent with yourself. Anyone who teaches logic ought to see this very clearly and distinctly.
And so what is a philosopher, really, beneath the show of philosophical activity? Remove the clothes and judge the soul naked before the gods. Look to authoritative examples. What is Socrates? A philosopher. What are Plato, Aristotle, Antisthenes, Diogenes, Epicurus, Zeno, Epictetus? They are philosophers. What is it that makes them what they are?
Is it writing philosophy for publication? I think Socrates would disagree. Is it publicly debating with philosophers? I think Antisthenes would disagree. Is it teaching philosophy, or selling what is taught? I think Diogenes would disagree. Is it studying technical philosophy and discoursing about it? I think Epictetus would disagree. But they would all agree that philosophy is something that you ought to live by. It ought to teach you what you are, to lead you to true beliefs about what really matters, and to enable you to make some attempt at living in accordance with that understanding. They would all agree that philosophy is amongst the most important of human activities and that to be without it is to be without something that is essential to a good life.
Am I stuck in the ancient past? What are Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant; Hobbes, Locke, and Hume; Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche; and what is Wittgenstein? We say they are philosophers. There is a family resemblance, but they are not the same as Socrates and the students of Socrates, I think. Something has changed. See how they live and you will see differences. They work to different purposes.
We could look to the modern roster of academic philosophers who make a name for themselves but the less said about them the better. If I recognise a descending trajectory away from an ideal, we see it now at its lowest point. Hyperbolically: it is a death spiral. Philosophy is no longer something to live by but a way to make a living. Philosophy studies ethics but is no longer the source of it. What caused this change? In a word: theology, which borrowed ethics from philosophy and did not return the loan. Philosophy sold its soul to the monks, to survive, and has never been the same since. It survives now by selling itself to the sciences.
Has anything essential survived? Can you imagine Socrates applying for a professional philosophy position? What would his academic CV look like? No qualifications. No areas of specialisation. Years of military service followed by the management of his estate, interspersed with his ‘hobbies and interests’ of walking about the marketplace, barefoot and visibly poor, harassing passers by and asking them questions about justice. ‘Where are your publications?’ There are professional standards in the modern university. But if Socrates doesn’t qualify as a philosopher by those standards then I would say that those standards must be wrong-headed.
If the universities are peddling a wrong-headed standard of philosophy, perhaps you will find the heart and soul of philosophy outside of the university, in popular practical philosophy. Take up your self-help handbook and learn the rules of life: they are simpler than you might think. But no philosopher worthy of the name can be content to be that ignorant. Knowingly or not, these popular practitioners advertise their lack of understanding with every bit of content. The effect isn’t subtle. A schooled philosopher hears two sentences and sees three mistakes. But enough of this; it is not my business.
I have come to believe that real philosophy has two necessary conditions. The first is what we see exemplified in the academic world. It is a matter of knowing and understanding enough about philosophy, its concepts and content, its lines of reasoning, its methods and approaches, its debates and arguments, its history and principal characters. With this knowledge comes a certain know how: to construct and appraise arguments, to spot errors, and in short to ‘think well’. If you do not know how to think well then you are not a philosopher, that much is clear enough to most people who understand these things.
The second necessary condition for real philosophy is a matter of application. It is a matter of being consistent with yourself and not having your ‘philosophy’ be an empty show. You must know how to apply your cultivated capacity to think well. You must apply yourself to living well as a human being and live in accordance with your philosophical understanding. If you do not do this, then you are only an actor playing a role or a child playing dress up. But philosophy is not a game of make believe.
From these two necessary conditions for real philosophy it follows that there are two forms of pseudo-philosophy, or two ways in which philosophy can fail to be real. Popular practical philosophy is pseudo-philosophy because of the mistakes that it makes. It lacks schooling or, really, the intellectual humility required for schooling. That much is obvious to anyone with an informed understanding. What is less obvious is that academic philosophy is also a form of pseudo-philosophy. It is not sufficient; it is not enough; it is not real enough. For me, at least. I would be what I would claim to be, and I would not claim to be an argument-winner or a repository of technical details. I would not claim to be a writer of philosophical publications, a lecturer of philosophical lessons, or someone who sells qualifications that increase earnings potential. I would claim to be a philosopher and a student of Socrates, and a student of Socrates would shun all of these activities, recognising them to have no real value. I have investigated these things and have become convinced by these rational accounts. It has changed my understanding, and a real philosopher must live in accordance with their understanding. And so I turn away from the honours that most philosophers seek and, through philosophical activity, look to live as well as I can.
I look to authoritative examples. I think Zhuangzi and Socrates understood something that we have forgotten. Real philosophy is shown by conduct and not only by words. And it is not an empty show of conduct, and certainly not an empty show of words, because behind these expressions of philosophy there is what philosophy is: a cultivated capacity to think well. This is the function or task or work (ergon) of philosophy: to think well. But in thinking well, you realise that our purpose or goal or aim (telos) as human beings is to live well, and so this becomes the product of philosophical activity: to live well in accordance with good reason. This is the change that philosophy brings about; this is what philosophy does. But this means that philosophy is something that is done and not only something that is known about. Its purpose is essential to what it does, and what it does is essential to what it is. A philosopher has good reason and lives by good reason. We think well to live well; we live well because we think well.
And to live well requires that we understand what it is to live well; and to think well requires that we understand what it is to think well. To come to this understanding, we need to think it through, we need to work at it, and this is the activity of philosophy. We can inform this activity but we can’t outsource it: you must think for yourself; you must learn how to think for yourself. Because whilst all human beings have a capacity to think, thinking can go well or badly. When it goes badly, we surely suffer the consequences. But if you cultivate your capacity to think well, through philosophy, then you will fare better.
And so my business as a philosopher is not to sell philosophy books, nor even to write them, but to live in the way that they instruct. My business is not to teach but to take my own lessons. The lesson is an old one. It is a matter of digestion. If you don’t eat food then you will starve. But if you eat food only to throw it up, in order to show what you have eaten, then you will starve just the same as if you hadn’t eaten anything at all. You must eat, and digest, and allow what you have eaten to become what you are. I have eaten a feast of philosophy; I have eaten enough to fill the belly of any soul. Do I now vomit it up for all to see, and in doing so call myself a philosopher? No. I digest. I am fed and I consider myself fortunate.
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