Chapter 81
Philosophy and philosophers; the love of wisdom; philosophical method and its schools.
442 passages · 186 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Philosophy is the one idea in these books that examines the very activity the books themselves pursue. The name means the love of wisdom, and the Harvard Classics show it in many guises: a discipline of life and a rehearsal for death, a body of sciences divided into parts, a family of quarrelling schools, a method to be reformed, a rival or servant of religion and poetry, and a presence in the councils of states. It is a great idea for these books because almost every author must, sooner or later, say what wisdom is and who may claim it. Carlyle calls the existence of philosophy a mark of man’s imperfect state, yet unavoidable, since man cannot help asking what he is1. Augustine dates his own turning toward immortal wisdom from reading Cicero’s exhortation to philosophy2. Socrates, near death, names philosophy the noblest music and the pursuit of his whole life3. Against all such praise stands Hamlet’s reminder to Horatio that heaven and earth hold more than his philosophy has dreamt of4.
The oldest praise of philosophy is that it guides and consoles. Cicero commends it because its disciple can pass every age of life with unruffled feelings5. He calls it the best friend and gift of the gods, one that has been brought down into forum, senate and camp6. Marcus Aurelius goes further. For him philosophy is the only thing able to conduct a man through the flux of things7. One should return to her as one applies a remedy, not as to a master8. She is a mother, and the court only a step-mother9. He commends Epicurus, who discoursed calmly on nature while ill, as an example of never deserting philosophy whatever happens10. George Long sums up this Stoic teaching: philosophy keeps the inner divinity unharmed, sets a man above pain and pleasure, and lets him await death cheerfully11. Montaigne gives the same consolation a lighter face. True philosophy, he insists, is cheerful and gladdening, not grim12, and it is the touchstone that teaches us what to wish, what we are and what to fear13. Milton’s “divine philosophy” is likewise musical rather than crabbed14. Dissent comes from two directions. Pascal judges the consolations of Socrates and Seneca futile, resting on a false principle15. Byron’s Manfred has tried philosophy and found it of no avail against his grief16, calling it the motliest of vanities17.
The Platonic praise runs deeper still: philosophy is the practice of dying. In the Phaedo the true philosopher is misunderstood because his life’s pursuit is death18. His study is the soul gathered into itself, apart from the body19. Philosophy frees the imprisoned soul and bids it trust its own intuitions rather than the deceiving senses20. Calm of passion, it follows Reason toward the true and divine21. Such a man will be willing to die, though not by his own hand22. Yet even within the dialogue this confidence is called vain unless it can be demonstrated23. Montaigne takes over the formula through Cicero, holding that to philosophize is to learn to die24. He then turns it into a test: only death shows whether philosophical discourses were truly held or merely worn as countenance25.
Can ordinary minds share in all this? The Pythagoreans, Copernicus recalls, passed on their secrets orally lest the noblest truths be despised by the stupid26. Montaigne answers that philosophy has become an idle name only because sophistries made it seem inaccessible to children27. Its simple discourses suit infancy and old age alike28, and none should shun it29. Channing holds that whoever earnestly seeks truth is a philosopher30, even the child who breaks a toy to find its cause31. Wordsworth names the child the best philosopher32. Rousseau’s vicar rejects the formidable apparatus of philosophy, observing that we can be men without being sages33. Akin to this democratic strain is philosophy as the pleasure of contemplation. More’s Utopians hold that searching nature’s mysteries pleases its maker34. Cicero finds it the comfort of a leisured old age35. Cowley calls husbandry next of kin to philosophy36. Thoreau warns that a philosophy which cannot hear the cock crow in every barnyard is belated37.
On what marks the genuine philosopher, the Roman authors speak with one voice. Epictetus rebukes a man who has read compendiums and calls himself a philosopher38. He asks to be shown a single man actually modelled on the Stoic doctrines he professes39. Unchanged desires prove that abstract principles have not made a philosopher40. Expounding Chrysippus makes a man a commentator, not a lover of wisdom41. Better, like Socrates, to act on one’s principles without ostentation42. A philosopher is known by his acts, not his dress43. Pliny praises Euphrates for living the social principles he teaches44, and Artemidorus as sincere, laborious and abstemious, unlike most modern philosophers45. Montaigne calls philosophy the art of living well, practised in life rather than in books46. Such a life demands discipline. Socrates vows never to cease examining himself and others47. Epictetus makes the first task the casting off of conceit48. He calls the philosopher’s school a surgery where one ought to feel pain49, and says the student must watch, labour and accept contempt50. Harvey adds that true philosophers do not pin their faith to the ancients, knowing how much remains unknown51.
The pretender’s vices became a modern theme. Hobbes finds philosophers the most prone to absurdity, for want of method52. Adam Smith borrows Cicero’s jibe that nothing is so absurd but some philosopher has asserted it53. Browne notes that Aristotle, the Stoics and Diogenes failed to live by their own doctrines54. Pascal observes that even those who write against vanity want glory for doing so55. Rousseau’s vicar is harshest. Philosophers, he says, agree only in disputing56. They defend their systems from pride57 and multiply doubts while resolving none58. Philosophy can even let a man ignore a murder beneath his window59.
Philosophy has also been mapped into parts. Long recounts the Stoic division into Physic, Ethic and Logic60. He finds Antoninus’s philosophy chiefly practical and moral61. Kant keeps the threefold division but splits each part into empirical and pure62. Hobbes draws a table running from first philosophy down to natural and civil63, and calls the science of the laws of nature the only true moral philosophy64. The line between natural and moral inquiry is old. Socrates denies speculating about heaven and earth as Aristophanes portrayed him65. More’s Utopians differ among themselves about the causes of sea and heavens but agree on ethics66. By Faraday’s time natural philosophy can be entered through the humble candle67.
The schools gave philosophy its history. Newman pictures Athens, where Epicurus, Zeno and Aristotle taught in rival groves68. Pascal traces the sects to the three lusts, each placing the good where it could69. Voltaire, by contrast, insists philosophers never founded sects that caused discord70, and Goethe satirizes the schools, each interpreting the devils by its own creed71. Socrates and Plato receive the widest honour. Dante seats them beside Aristotle, master of the sapient throng72. Mill calls Socrates the prototype of teachers of virtue73. Lowell finds no loftier vantage of speculation than Plato’s74. Emerson reads English genius as Platonic at its height and sees the ancient strife between seers of identity and of difference75.
Stoics and Epicureans divide judgment more sharply. Long credits Stoicism with shaping great characters for nine hundred years76. Montaigne admires its solidity alongside the Epicurean77. Cicero’s Roman worthies scorn the Epicurean who refers all to pleasure78, and Dante condemns Epicurean doctrine as heresy79. Hume finds the Stoic consolations sublime but ineffectual in practice80, and Stoicism capable of becoming refined selfishness81. Pascal’s pairing of Epictetus with Montaigne is the most searching comparison. They are the two great sects that conform to reason82. Each knows only half of man83. Epictetus shows the road but wrongly thought that regulating the heart lies in our power84. Yet set against each other they correct each other’s vices85.
Doubt is itself a school. Augustine once thought the Academics wiser than the rest for teaching doubt86, and Plutarch’s Cicero adheres to the New Academy87. Bacon blames both dogmatists and sceptics for injuring inquiry88, since the sceptics gave no helps to sense89. Pascal calls Academic doubt folly to Christians90. Berkeley’s Philonous claims to oppose the scepticism of Academics and Cartesians91. Hume takes the middle road: moderate scepticism is a necessary preparative to philosophy92, while Pyrrhonism yields no durable good93. Among the moderns the quarrel takes new shapes. Mill sets the school of Intuition against that of Experience and Association, holding the former erroneous and Hamilton its chief pillar94,95. He also sought to free radicalism from sectarian Benthamism96,97. Carlyle expects contending philosophies to annihilate one another before faith can rise98. Emerson finds English philosophy since Locke mechanical99,100.
Disputes of this kind provoked the great modern reforms of method. Descartes found philosophy all in dispute and counted the merely probable as false101. Finding nothing certain in its principles, he resolved to establish them afresh102,103. Pascal thought the result useless and uncertain104. Hume complains that moral science, hampered by ambiguous terms, has advanced less than geometry105. Bacon likened Greek wisdom to the boyhood of knowledge, able to talk but not to generate106. He saw philosophy degenerating as followers merely embellish their founder107, and offered a method that does not flatter preconceived notions108. Newton defines philosophy’s task as inferring forces from the phenomena of motion and deducing further phenomena from them109. Voltaire hails the Novum Organum as the scaffold of the new philosophy110. He judges that even Descartes’s errors opened Newton’s path111. Emerson, characteristically, prizes Bacon’s imagination more than his fruits112.
Behind the reforms lay an attack on Aristotle and the schoolmen. Chaucer’s clerk still prefers twenty books of Aristotle to rich robes113. Luther would abolish Aristotle’s Physics and Ethics as contrary to God’s will114,115. Raleigh scorns principles accepted merely because Aristotle laid them down116. Descartes compares the master’s followers to ivy that never rises above its tree117. Their obscure distinctions, he says, let mediocre minds fight like a blind man in a dark cave118. Hobbes ridicules the insignificant speech of the schools119,120. Manzoni’s Don Ferrante, who refuses to read Aristotle’s opponents, comically embodies the servility the reformers attacked121.
A further question of method divides abstract from practical philosophy. Hume distinguishes an easy kind that moves the heart from an abstract kind that seeks foundations122. The easy kind wins more durable fame123, though the abstract lends it exactness124. Philosophy should be human and refer to action125. It should modestly return to common life126, whose reflections it merely methodizes and corrects127. Burns likewise sees the wranglers end in an appeal to common sense128. Kant moves the opposite way. He grants that philosophy is not needed to know what is honest129. Yet moral philosophy must be pure, cleared of everything empirical130, since popular practical philosophy is confused131 and reason is forced into critique to secure its principles132.
Christianity judged pagan philosophy without abolishing it. Augustine learned from the Platonists to seek incorporeal truth but found in them no humility or charity133. Even so, they led nearer to God than the other philosophers did134. Milton’s Christ dismisses the Athenian sects as dreams and conjecture135,136. Pascal argues that the philosophers could not know man’s true state137. They knew God without knowing their own wretchedness, hence their pride138. Hugo sees partial gleams in Socrates and Plato beside Christ’s full light139. Bacon offers a reconciliation: a little philosophy inclines to atheism, while depth brings men back to religion140. Browne finds nature bearing the marks of divinity141. Poetry presses a different claim. Sidney grants the philosopher method but denies him the power to move, since he gives only bare rule142,143. He adds that philosophers took their knowledge from the poets and then turned on their guides144. Shelley erases the distinction, naming Plato and Bacon poets145. Schiller fears that analysis kills living truth146. Hume notes that philosophical systems pass with fashion while poetry endures147.
Finally, philosophy and the state. More’s Utopia cites Plato’s hope that kings philosophize148. It also doubts whether corrupted kings will heed counsel149, and whether anyone can counsel them honestly without either contradicting their madness or abetting it150. Its compromise is a civil philosophy that adapts to its stage like an actor151. Plutarch contrasts the self-sufficient contemplative with the statesman who needs means to put virtue to use152. Pliny’s Euphrates calls public justice the noblest part of philosophy153. Pascal deflates the whole question: Plato and Aristotle wrote their politics as if laying down rules for a madhouse154. Hume recalls that philosophy flourished in ancient freedom155. Burke, confronting the French Revolution, condemns metaphysicians who would treat mankind as laboratory mice156 and whose hearts are like evil itself157. Mill, by contrast, expects the ascendancy once held by priests to pass to philosophers158.
The open questions remain those these authors leave in tension. Is philosophy a way of life or a science? Is it for all men or a few? Should it rise to pure principles or return to common life? Is it a ladder to faith or a rival to it? The Harvard Classics give no single verdict, but they show that each answer is itself an act of philosophy.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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See also: Knowledge, Education, Science, Opinion, Man, Logic