Now, I sharpened up this brief conversation to make a point:  this is the moment that any honest and self-aware philosophy professor dreads more than any other.  What do I say next?

Do I go on and on about how the humanities are not respected in academia (despite the lip-service paid them), about the miserable job prospects for one who wants to pursue humane learning in a professional capacity, about the viciousness of campus politics (because, as they say, so little is at stake), that academia seems to breed negativity, etc.?  Who’d recommend to a young person that way of life?  And do I say that the humanities are just something we do for a while, now, while we (at least you) are young, that getting a job is the main thing because so much else in our lives hangs on our economic circumstances, about how the humanities are seemingly useless to living in a consumer society such as ours, about how just because we do not enjoy something does not mean it is not good for us—I teach (about) Aristotelian virtue, after all—etc.?

On the other hand, how do I tamp down the obvious enthusiasm—even love—that I have for philosophy and for what I do with my life?  The students can’t miss it.  And they want that or something like that.  It doesn’t have to be academic philosophy, but they want something that will produce the effusive joy in living and doing in them that they see coming from me.  They know I’m not doing it for the money (Lord knows).  They know I had a career in business that brought in a very nice income.  They know I got to see a little of the world—maybe more than most do.  But they see that, after all, here I am.

And they see that how I experience the philosophical life generates a joy in me that is akin to the joy someone else might find in stamp collecting or ice hockey or cooking—but that it’s also more than that.  The philosophical life is about life itself, about us, even all about me in a non-superficial, non-egocentric sense.  Students in college (and even—maybe especially—the “non-traditional” students, the returning adults) are at a point in their lives where it seems to be “all about me”—again, not just in some superficial, selfish sense.  In fact, you might say that the superficial, selfish manifestations of “all about me” arise just because there is no authentic arena for thinking about, wondering about, imagining what “me” means for most of these students.  When students find such a space, they gravitate towards it.

And yet, the self-aware, honest philosopher would have to ask: This “joy” you’re referring to—is it genuine?  Is it coming from pursuing philosophy itself (if it has an “itself”)?  Or does it come from being in charge in the classroom, from being on stage, raptly attended to (if you are any good at performing), from being the know-it-all in the room, from not having to meet payroll anymore, or deal with neurotic funders or board members or troublesome employees, or the bottom line?  Is philosophy, for me, “all about me,” in a superficial sense?  And am I in any way encouraging the same quest for selfish ego-gratification in others, in perhaps impressionable young people?

Just asking oneself these questions is—inescapably—philosophical, an occupational hazard of the philosophical life, the price to be paid for a joyous pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful.  It’s all in the game.  And the answer is:  Sure, it’s selfish.  But it is not only selfish.  When my students drive away in better cars, I know it is not only selfish.  What I do is fun, but it is also serious.  It is to me, and it is to the students around me.  I should really say fellow-students, because (selfishly, yes!) I am still learning, yearning for learning.  I know that I do not know.

Knowing computer programming, accounting, or animal husbandry is useful.  Not knowing is useless.  Constantly examining one’s life is useless.  Philosophy is useless.  It gets in the way of the useful, upends efficiency and effectiveness, makes trouble where no one noticed anything troubling.

I think this truth about philosophy infects academic philosophy.  I would be willing to bet that most departments might frown upon taking philosophy personally—or at least worry over when it gets “too personal,” as if it is not really about persons, teacher-persons and student-persons.  Departments, I would imagine, tend to worry about confusing eros with philia.  It is a fair concern.  If philosophy is personal—about persons—then some sense of intimacy might develop.  And then, call the lawyers!  It wouldn’t be useful to make education be so personal—not just for these reasons, but also because we’ve made education all about certification.  We have tests and grades and such in order to be able to certify.  So a “good” philosophy student is one who knows about philosophy—which one might be even if one is not a philosopher—does well by knowing names and dates, how to define terms, the stock arguments, who influenced whom, etc.  Making philosophy to be knowing-about-philosophy is very useful for academic philosophy because you can assess it.  If you teach virtue ethics, for instance, you could ask questions about Aristotle and Alasdair MacIntyre.  But you could never follow a student around the rest of her life trying to assess how virtuous in living she’s become.  That’d be creepy.

Knowing about philosophy might be useful outside the academy…it is hard to see how, though.  What would you do…open up your own little philosophy shop?  I guess you could engage in interesting cocktail party conversation.  You could win big on Jeopardy!, I suppose, being able to ring in fast with, “Who was Descartes?”  But it won’t come up on a regular basis in corporate headquarters.

I could try to re-describe philosophy—academic philosophy—in terms that make it appear as if it were useful.  In academic philosophy, you learn the art of careful, close reading; argumentation; debate; critical thinking; seeing the “big picture;” etc.  All these are eminently useful skills to develop.  My students know, for instance, that a big part of the reason I made a buck or two in the business world was simply because I developed these skills.  I never had business, information technology, or manufacturing courses, but I ended up having a bunch of people who did have these courses work for me.  It would be impossible for me to argue that philosophy—at least academic philosophy—has been useless to me.

But all of that makes up the form of academic philosophy, not the content.  You should be learning all of those skills across the liberal arts curriculum.  But for me, the content—what philosophy is all about—matters.  It would be better if conversations about Aristotle, Kant, and Mill came up on board rooms and shop floors as much as in lecture halls.  But they usually don’t.  So, for many reasons, philosophy happens intensely only on college and university campuses (if it does at all).

Speaking of Aristotle, he defines happiness as an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.  Happiness is not a feeling or emotion, but an activity, an actualization, a way of being, a state once achieved that is permanent.  Aristotle says we do all things for the sake of happiness.  What this means is that everything we do we do because it at least seems useful to us for getting what we ultimately want:  happiness.  But this means that happiness—in the sense Aristotle means it—is useless.  It is not for the sake of anything.  There is no “in order to” that follows happiness.  On the contrary, everything else is “in order to” be happy.

If happiness—again, not to be confused with mere pleasure, although it includes it—is what we want, then what we want is, itself, useless.  What students see in me—someone taking joy from the ultimately useless, i.e., someone pursuing genuine happiness, someone working on being happy—is just exactly what they are looking for.  I don’t mean me, that it is peculiar or specific to me.  There is no cult of personality going on here.  I mean they see something in me and what I’m doing that goes way beyond me, that, in fact, makes them forget all about me (in both senses of that—forget about EW and forget about their own superficial “all about me” attitude) and start to be able to grasp who they are and what happiness means to them.  And they start to question whether “getting a job”—the most useful thing in the world—will mean happiness for them.

But—again—the problem for me, their teacher and somewhat reluctant advisor—is what to say to them about all this.  If I say the most important things are the most useless things (i.e., they are goods in themselves, regardless of whether they are useful for anything else), I don’t want them to think there is nothing useful for getting to the “useless.”  Aristotle would be emphatic about this.  There are many things that are useful for getting to happiness (even as they should not be confused with being “happiness” itself).  But if I emphasize just how important the useful things are (like accounting and computer programming, engineering and law, architecture and culinary arts), I don’t want them to think that we’re just wasting time, then, on this useless philosophy stuff.

So my student friend was wondering, in effect: Should I trade useful for useless?

Now what kind of advisor would I be if I simply were to say:  Yes, go for it!?  Part of me thinks I ought to be sued for nonsupport were I to do so.

My academic advisor answer is:  “You know, philosophy is a great minor.  Goes great with business management.”

It’s a useful response.  Still, I want to give them something a little more useless because, well, useless is more….

(from the archive: originally appeared October 4, 2009)

Journey to Ithaca – World Hum

The attribute of discernment must be acquired to reach wisdom. Discernment is the ability to discriminate, to distinguish different levels of knowledge and to apply understanding in a prudent way. Discernment comes largely from experience, learned as we move through life acquiring the ability to weigh what is more or less meaningful in a particular context.

More.

Now, I sharpened up this brief conversation to make a point:  this is the moment that any honest and self-aware philosophy professor dreads more than any other.  What do I say next?

Do I go on and on about how the humanities are not respected in academia (despite the lip-service paid them), about the miserable job prospects for one who wants to pursue humane learning in a professional capacity, about the viciousness of campus politics (because, as they say, so little is at stake), that academia seems to breed negativity, etc.?  Who’d recommend to a young person that way of life?  And do I say that the humanities are just something we do for a while, now, while we (at least you) are young, that getting a job is the main thing because so much else in our lives hangs on our economic circumstances, about how the humanities are seemingly useless to living in a consumer society such as ours, about how just because we do not enjoy something does not mean it is not good for us—I teach (about) Aristotelian virtue, after all—etc.?

On the other hand, how do I tamp down the obvious enthusiasm—even love—that I have for philosophy and for what I do with my life?  The students can’t miss it.  And they want that or something like that.  It doesn’t have to be academic philosophy, but they want something that will produce the effusive joy in living and doing in them that they see coming from me.  They know I’m not doing it for the money (Lord knows).  They know I had a career in business that brought in a very nice income.  They know I got to see a little of the world—maybe more than most do.  But they see that, after all, here I am.

And they see that how I experience the philosophical life generates a joy in me that is akin to the joy someone else might find in stamp collecting or ice hockey or cooking—but that it’s also more than that.  The philosophical life is about life itself, about us, even all about me in a non-superficial sense.  Students in college (and even—maybe especially—the “non-traditional” students, the returning adults) are at a point in their lives where it seems to be “all about me”—again, not just in some superficial, selfish sense.  In fact, you might say that the superficial, selfish manifestations of “all about me” arise just because there is no authentic arena for thinking about, wondering about, imagining what “me” means for most of these students.  When students find such a space, they gravitate towards it.

And yet, the self-aware, honest philosopher would have to ask: This “joy” you’re referring to—is it genuine?  Is it coming from pursuing philosophy itself (if it has an “itself”)?  Or does it come from being in charge in the classroom, from being on stage, raptly attended to (if you are any good at performing), from being the know-it-all in the room, from not having to meet payroll anymore, or deal with neurotic funders or board members or troublesome employees, or the bottom line?  Is philosophy, for me, “all about me,” in a superficial sense?  And am I in any way encouraging the same quest for selfish ego-gratification in others, in perhaps impressionable young people?

Just asking oneself these questions is—inescapably—philosophical, an occupational hazard of the philosophical life, the price to be paid for a joyous pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful.  It’s all in the game.  And the answer is:  Sure, it’s selfish.  But it is not only selfish.  When my students drive away in better cars, I know it is not only selfish.  What I do is fun, but it is also serious.  It is to me, and it is to the students around me.  I should really say fellow-students, because (selfishly, yes!) I am still learning, yearning for learning.  I know that I do not know.

Knowing computer programming, accounting, or animal husbandry is useful.  Not knowing is useless.  Constantly examining one’s life is useless.  Philosophy is useless.  It gets in the way of the useful, upends efficiency and effectiveness, makes trouble where no one noticed anything troubling.

I think this truth about philosophy infects academic philosophy.  I would be willing to bet that most departments might frown upon taking philosophy personally—or at least worry over when it gets “too personal,” as if it is not really about persons, teacher-persons and student-persons.  Departments, I would imagine, tend to worry about confusing eros with philia.  It is a fair concern.  If philosophy is personal—about persons—then some sense of intimacy might develop.  And then, call the lawyers!  It wouldn’t be useful to make education be so personal—not just for these reasons, but also because we’ve made education all about certification.  We have tests and grades and such in order to be able to certify.  So a “good” philosophy student is one who knows about philosophy—which one might be even if one is not a philosopher—does well by knowing names and dates, how to define terms, the stock arguments, who influenced whom, etc.  Making philosophy to be knowing-about-philosophy is very useful for academic philosophy because you can assess it.  If you teach virtue ethics, for instance, you could ask questions about Aristotle and Alasdair MacIntyre.  But you could never follow a student around the rest of her life trying to assess how virtuous in living she’s become.

Knowing about philosophy might be useful outside the academy…it is hard to see how, though.  What would you do…open up your own little philosophy shop?  I guess you could engage in interesting cocktail party conversation.  You could win big on Jeopardy!, I suppose, being able to ring in fast with, “Who was Descartes?”  But it won’t come up on a regular basis in corporate headquarters.

I could try to re-describe philosophy—academic philosophy—in terms that make it appear as if it were useful.  In academic philosophy, you learn the art of careful, close reading; argumentation; debate; critical thinking; seeing the “big picture;” etc.  All these are eminently useful skills to develop.  My students know, for instance, that a big part of the reason I made a buck or two in the business world was simply because I developed these skills.  I never had business, information technology, or manufacturing courses, but I ended up having a bunch of people who did work for me.  It would be impossible for me to argue that philosophy—at least academic philosophy—has been useless to me.

But all of that makes up the form of academic philosophy, not the content.  You should be learning all of those skills across the liberal arts curriculum.  But for me, the content—what philosophy is all about—matters.  It would be better if conversations about Aristotle, Kant, and Mill came up on board rooms and shop floors as much as in lecture halls.  But they usually don’t.  So, for many reasons, philosophy happens only intensely on college and university campuses (if it does at all).

Speaking of Aristotle, he defines happiness as an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.  Happiness is not a feeling or emotion, but an activity, an actualization, a way of being, a state once achieved that is permanent.  Aristotle says we do all things for the sake of happiness.  What this means is that everything we do we do because it at least seems useful to us for getting what we ultimately want:  happiness.  But this means that happiness—in the sense Aristotle means it—is useless.  It is not for anything.  There is no “in order to” that follows happiness.  On the contrary, everything else is “in order to” be happy.

If happiness—again, not to be confused with mere pleasure, although it includes it—is what we want, then what we want is, itself, useless.  What students see in me—someone taking joy from the ultimately useless, i.e., someone pursuing genuine happiness, someone working on being happy—is just exactly what they are looking for.  I don’t mean me, that it is peculiar or specific to me.  There is no cult of personality going on here.  I mean they see something in me and what I’m doing that goes way beyond me, that, in fact, makes them forget all about me (in both senses of that—forget about EW and forget about their own superficial “all about me” attitude) and start to be able to grasp who they are and what happiness means to them.  And they start to question whether “getting a job”—the most useful thing in the world—will mean happiness for them.

But—again—the problem for me, their teacher and somewhat reluctant advisor—is what to say to them about all this.  If I say the most important things are the most useless things (i.e., they are goods in themselves, regardless of whether they are useful for anything else), I don’t want them to think there is nothing useful for getting to the “useless.”  Aristotle would be emphatic about this.  There are many things that are useful for getting to happiness (even as they should not be confused with being “happiness” itself).  But if I emphasize just how important the useful things are (like accounting and computer programming, engineering and law, architecture and culinary arts), I don’t want them to think that we’re just wasting time, then, on this useless philosophy stuff.

So my student friend was wondering, in effect: Should I trade useful for useless?

Now what kind of advisor would I be if I simply were to say:  Yes, go for it!?  Part of me thinks I ought to be sued for nonsupport were I to do so.

My academic advisor answer is:  “You know, philosophy is a great minor.  Goes great with business management.”

It’s a useful response.  Still, I want to give them something a little more useless because, well, useless is more….

Where does the power of this word come from?   Superficial can only be bad in comparison to its opposite, depth or profundity.   We’d like to hear from a deep thinker, not a superficial thinker.   We’d like to learn from a profound philosopher, not a superficial one.   We all crave deep relationships (they are “meaningful”) rather than superficial (“meaningless”) ones. Of course.

But let’s check our thinking on this. The word superficial refers to surfaces, of being on or above the surface.   Let’s assume there is something to the binary opposition of “surface” and “depth.”   But why do we always privilege depth over surface?   There are historical and philosophical reasons.   In the beginning of our story of Western philosophy, 2500 years or so ago in Ionia, some thinkers were wondering about what’s “behind” the way the world appears to us. Most of the ancients–just like most of us–experienced trees, rocks, people, animals, buildings, music, colors, smells, food, etc.   But some–a very few–wondered whether there was something that tied all these various appearances together, something behind or underneath that despite the apparent diversity at the surfaces of things bound things together as one. This is the birth of the problem of the many and the one, perhaps the single driving force in philosophy.   The one was thought to be reality; the many to be (mere) appearance.   Profound, deep thinkers wanted to get to the one, lusted after it, perhaps even came to love it.   Philosophy–the very word–means love of wisdom, and love is a powerful thing.   And this power was tied for evermore with the deep, the profound, that which was beneath the surface.   The goal was to leave the world of surfaces, of (supposedly) mere appearances, and venture into the depths of reality, to the Truth-with-a-capital-T.

Some of the historical fallout of this venture led to the birth of modern science.   We’ll bypass for now the question of the split that developed between philosophy and science (between wisdom and knowing).   We’ll simply note that science–the science we all learned in school–teaches us that the reality of things is in their deep structure, the molecules, the atoms, the quarks and charms, the basic particles that make up all the varied things we experience.   We are all taught, for instance, that the table on which we work is “mostly empty space,” according to physics.   And we believe it (after all, we believe EVERYTHING that bears the sacred imprimatur of SCIENCE, don’t we?).   We don’t fully grasp this “truth,” but we believe it.   And then we go on with our lives using the table “as if” it were a solid thing, suitable for working upon.   But we never forget that it is the deep, rather than the surface, that is the Truth-with-a-capital-T.   Despite the fact that we never encounter the table otherwise than a very useful solid plane upon which to work.   Never.

What about superficiality regarding people?   We might be forgiven dealing with our world in a “superfical” way, such as writing at our desks and talking about trees and rocks and buildings, etc., as if they were “real.”   But what about people?   Now we’ve arrived at a moral and not just an epistemological problem (i.e., not just a problem of knowing but of being responsible, able to respond appropriately).   What do we say?   “Beauty is only skin deep.”   “Looks don’t matter.”   “Hey, I’m up here!” (Said by well-endowed women when having a “conversation” with some wondering-eyed, scurvy dog.)   We want to be loved for who we are, not what we look like.   Right?   We are not simply what we look like.   There is depth to us, below the surface.   We are frustrated when things remain at the surface level, left hanging, unfulfilled.

I think all this is true.   Nevertheless, I would like to offer praise for the surfaces.   I am tempted to say: not in a superfical way, but in a deep way.   A deep appreciation for surfaces.   I am not going to argue that we should only have relationships based on surfaces.   I am going to argue that we cannot have any relationships were it not for the surfaces of things.

I can only come to know things by their surfaces.   Without surfaces, there would be no sense to speaking of depths.   There is something to the binary opposition of surface and depth, but it must not be forgotten that it is binary, that both surface and depth are inextricably bound together.   Further, we might rethink privileging–at least all the time–the deep as opposed to the surface.   It’s via the surfaces that we come to the depths.   We cannot go the other direction.   It is only because there are things like tables that we can have physics at all (think about it!).   We cannot start our knowing and, indeed, our loving from the depths. The surface, the superficial, is profoundly, deeply important and meaningful.

I don’t know about you, but I like my surfaces.   The largest organ of the human body is the skin–the surface.   I am grateful for my surfaces, and I especially like when there is a lot going on with my surfaces.   My surfaces love the feel of a cool breeze, of desert heat, of ocean waves, of strong fingers, of tongues, of aromatic oils, of being wrapped up in other people’s surfaces, of muscles at work, of flavors, of scents, of music, of talking, of drinking.   Don’t you?   Is a person to be called “superficial” who loves these things?   Rather, a person who didn’t love these things would be debilitated or deranged.

But am I confusing the issue?   Of course we like these things, but don’t we want something more, something deep and profound?   Yes, of course we do.   But what usually happens when we are deeply and profoundly in love with another person?   What is the expression of that love?   Isn’t it usually expressed through the surfaces:   in eating and drinking together, talking together, enjoying music together, getting our bodies as close together as we can?

Yes, but what about people who “stop” at the surfaces?   Aren’t those the ones we are referring to by the term, superficial?   No doubt, we want the whole thing, the whole enchilada, so to speak.   In short, what we really desire is wholeness.   Like that dopey line in that dopey movie, we want to say (and have said to us):   “You complete me.”   However, we have to get there, don’t we?

Let’s take “superficial” talk.   I know a lot of people who say they hate small talk, and by “small” I assume they mean that it is talk that is superficial.   Think about the people you know who say something like that.   What do you think about those people?   Aren’t they a little off-putting, a little less pleasant to be around, a little more crabby, a little too intense?   I like small talk.   It is the grease of the social machine.   I happen to know a little (usually very little) about a lot of stuff.   I used to beat myself up because I wasn’t an expert on any one thing.   I had surface knowledge, not deep knowledge.   However, as it turns out, I have found a great pleasure in being able to wander the world and strike up a conversation on just about anything.   This has led to further not so superficial conversation, and, occasionally, in the old days, even the baring of additional surfaces, if you catch my drift.   There used to be a wine called Cella (maybe there still is, but I’ve moved on…).   The wine was hawked by a character they called Aldo Cella.   There was this great commercial with Aldo–short, chubby, balding, with oily Italian features–sitting at the head of a long table with a great feast spread upon it, wine all around, outdoors with a fantastic background, with Aldo surrounded by some fabulous babes.   The voice-over said:   “He is not tall.   He is not pretty.   But Aldo Cella knows what women like.”   Now aside from the oily Italian features (I have oily non-ethnically-descript features), I am Aldo Cella.   But despite appearances (the surface of things), I’m not really talking about me.   We are all–if we let ourselves be–Aldo Cella (substitute genders where appropriate).   I think we do know what each other wants and we all enjoy getting it and giving it too each other.   Our surfaces aren’t all we are, but we are not unless we have surfaces.   Our goofy features, our pedestrian looks, don’t look goofy or pedestrian unless that’s the way we’re looking at them.   [Don't get me started on my objections to commercially, industrially manufactured ideas of beauty!]

Do you flirt?   It’s totally superficial, right?   But don’t you flirt?   Or, if you are a shy person, don’t you enjoy it when someone flirts with you?   A little bit?   C’mon, you know you do.   I’m not saying   you have to look at it the way Zorba (the Greek, from Kazantzakis’ great novel) does, as he recounted to his boss the time he failed to sleep with a woman who wanted him. Zorba was warned by a wise man:   “…he who can sleep with a woman and does not, commits a great sin.   My boy, if a woman calls you to share her bed and you don’t go, your soul will be destroyed!   That woman will sigh before God on judgment day, and that woman’s sigh, whoever you may be and whatever your fine deeds, will cast you into Hell!”   Zorba accepted his fate with remorse.   He says, “If Hell exists, I shall go to Hell, and that’ll be the reason.   Not because I’ve robbed, killed or committed adultery, no! All that’s nothing.   But I shall go to Hell because one night in Salonica a woman waited for me on her bed and I did not go to her….”   All I’m saying is that even our superficial desires for each other, manifested in flirting or even in just idle banter, have a deep impact on our souls.

Don’t you hate it when a clerk at the grocery store never even looks up from his shoes when you are going through the line?   What about a simple Hello?   What about eye contact?   Would we be satisfied with his answer if, when questioned about this, he says he can’t stand “superficialities”?   Some would argue manners are merely superficial custom…but they would have a completely unsupportable argument. If manners are superficial, that only means that the superficial is incredibly important to living our lives together.

A word about the inspiration for this little unpolished, probably superficial essay:   Facebook (and other social networking activities).   I posed a question about the value of FB that–surprise!–got some people thinking (see earlier post).   If FB is as superficial as its (mere) surface appearance might suggest, then why did a post on FB get some people thinking?   One friend thought the following:   “i’m a pathetic woman for enjoying the many facets of facebook, including sharing what male features are a turn-on and my favorite drinks.   therefore, i’m leaving facebook in hopes of a better quality of life…”   Well, then I’m a pathetic woman too (so to speak, ahem)!   I enjoy (some of) the many facets of FB.   I enjoy sharing what male features are a turn-on (well, sharing which of my male features I like to have turned on–just so’s ya know, just in case it were to come up, so to speak…).   I love sharing my favorite drinks–although how someone did that on FB is beyond me, but maybe talking about them virtually on FB might well lead to sharing them actually.

So, my little point here is that leaving FB in the hopes of a better life might not work out.   Instead, what I think we should desire (I know, “should desire” is a problematic saying…) is a better quality of life, FB or no FB.   And to get a better quality if life, I am suggesting that we not overlook the profundity of the surfaces, the deep and abiding value of so-called superficialities.

What do you think?

We philosophers ask for bread, and what stones are we handed?  Commentaries on commentaries on commentaries….  What is the matter itself?…

I think that a philosopher is a seeker, and that any genuine philosophy is an adventure in thought.  As an adventure, it cannot be judged before the search has begun.  There will be many who scoff on the dockside as the ship heaves off.  They will congratulate themselves on their prudence in valuing the security of safe harbor, and the solid land.  They will even feel superior to those who launch out into the unknown, those who risk their thinking.  They feel sure in advace it will come to shipwreck.  But perhaps these wise homebodies are the already defeated.  How dare you do metaphysics?  I do dare.  But you must also dare, if you want an answer to your question.

And if we philosophers took to heart these prudent discouragements, we might never stir from the spot.  Alas, we too seek for home, but we must seek for home to be at home.  We are fools, no doubt, to dream of something more.  But since the world is so wise, and since the standing army of its sages is always swelled with new recruits, the stray folly of metaphysical adventuring will perhaps be excused in us.  We have been told not even to try, so we will not blame the fashionable commentators for the outcome–be it what it may.

Sound like we might have an interesting book here?  Want to read it?  Better get ready, because this is who Desmond wants for a reader:

Let the wise read as the philosopher writes.  I do not ask for uncritical readers, but I do ask for disciplined readers–readers who have studied hard and long, who can take their time to think; readers who have not shunned solitude; readers suspicious of themselves before being suspicious of others; readers patient when demands are made on them; readers themselves adventurers; readers who ask for more than the rhetorics fashionable in academic philosophy, and who hate the substitution of ‘relevant’ ideology for the seriousness of truth; readers with souls full of an intellectual, indeed spiritual generosity, beyond the hermeneutics of suspicion; readers who desire to hear fundamental questions addressed with a genuine intellectual, not to say, spiritual seriousness; readers philosophically rich enough in themselves as to be able to laugh at the pretensions of what sometimes passes for ‘philosophy’; readers who long for a simple human voice to speak again about the essential issues that perennially perplex us.  I do not ask for the impossible.  I do ask for what now is rare.

I’d like to be worthy to read this book (yes…some books we might just have to merit the privilege of reading, and maybe this is such a book…. Who knows?)

No wonder true metaphysicians are rare.  Common sense does not rise above the level of imaginable realities, and , when it is a question of metaphysics, the vulgus includes many a mind eminent in other fields. Scientists, artists of genius, great statesmen–all those who like to proclaim:  ”I only know what I can see and touch,” even though in other respects they may be eminent specimens of the human kind, are nevertheless unfit for metaphysical speculation.  Let us add, for their consolation, that they are perfectly normal men.  Anyone who says, “I understand nothing of what you call metaphysics,” is quite justified, and there is for him nothing to feel ashamed of.  But he should stop there.  That one does not see any light, may be a fact; to infer from it that there is no light, is a non sequitur.

–Etienne Gilson, The Spirt of Thomism, 1964

Pegasus

My soul was an old horse
Offered for sale in twenty fairs.
I offered him to the Church–the buyers
Were little men who feared his unusual airs.
One said: ‘Let him remain unbid
In the wind and rain and hunger
Of sin and we will get him–
With the winkers thrown in–for nothing.’

Then the men of State looked at
What I’d brought for sale.
One minister, wondering if
Another horse-body would fit the tail
That he’d kept for sentiment–
The relic of his own soul–
Said, ‘I will graze him in lieu of his labour.’
I lent him for a week or more
And he came back a hurdle of bones,
Starved, overworked, in despair.
I nursed him on the roadside grass
To shape him for another fair.

I lowered my price.  I stood him where
The broken-winded, spavined stand
And crooked shopkeepers said that he
Might do a season on the land–
But not for high-paid work in towns.
He’d do a tinker, possibly.
I begged, ‘O make some offer now,
A soul is a poor man’s tragedy.
He’ll draw your dungiest cart,’ I said,
‘Show you short cuts to Mass,
Teach weather lore, at night collect
Bad debts from poor men’s grass.’
     And they would not.

     Where the
Tinkers quarrel I went down
With my horse, my soul.
I cried, ‘Who will bid me half a crown?’
From their rowdy bargaining
Not one turned. ‘Soul,’ I prayed,
‘I have hawked you through the world
Of Church and State and meanest trade.
But this evening, halter off,
Never again will it go on.
On the south side of ditches
There is grazing of the sun.
No more haggling with the world…’

As I said these words he grew
Wings upon his back.  Now I may ride him
Every land my imagination knew.