am rereading Hadot’s book “Philosophy as a way of life”
and came across a very interesting paragraph which is, in part,
“All Hellenistic schools seem to define it in approximately the same terms:
first and foremost, as a state of a perfect piece of mind. (wisdom)
From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries,
anguish and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints
and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures;
for the Stoics, by the by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest;
and for the Skeptics, by false opinions”
so each school was trying to fix or be remedy for our worries, anguish
and misery… which was slightly different in each school, so for them,
philosophy was an attempt to cure our worries and anguish and misery…
and the only way to do that was by living philosophically…so the goal was to
either avoid worry and anguish and misery or to cured of it…
but I wonder… is the point of philosophy to really just avoid or be cured of
worry or anguish or misery? when I hear the word anguish, I tend to think of
the word angst…existentialism favorite word……
to learn to life with or to avoid angst or anguish seems to me to be a
not very lofty goal of philosophy…when I think of philosophy, I think of
rising to some lofty goal that enriches everyone… but here philosophy seems
to be only of value to learn how to manage feelings like misery or anguish or worry…
that is not a very engaging goal to strive for… it doesn’t reach for the stars…
rather it engages with the lower animal/human in us…it has been said
and quite often, that philosophy is simply to teach someone how to deal with death…
a rather limited and unrewarding goal for philosophy…why not be for something instead
of against something… philosophy as situated is against something, to avoid
worry or anguish or misery…why must philosophy take on such a negative role?
I want philosophy to be for something, not against something……
philosophy is a tool and like all tools, it can only be used by someone…
why should we use philosophy as a simple garden variety tool to manage
our feelings? if that is the case, we can simply dismiss philosophy and turn
to psychology instead of philosophy……
is wisdom, a “perfect state of mind”?
I find that rather hard to believe… for example, how does one define
“perfect state” in regards to the mind?
the question for me doesn’t seem to be about a “perfect state of mind”…
that seems to me to be in the future… the search for a “perfect state of mind”
is some future event after, after we have outgrown our animal/human side of us…
we are still attached to our animal side of existence and we must break free to
even begin to contemplate the “perfect state of mind”…
the goal of philosophy and history and economics and psychology is to
understand our current existence of animal/human and what it takes to
rise above that state…… the path has been animal, which we were for millions of
years, then somehow, someway we became animal/human which is our current state
and has been our current state for over a million years… the next step is to overcome
our animal/human nature and become human… which is to say, we overcome our
animal nature… it doesn’t mean we negate or disown our animal nature…
just like the Catholic church tried for over a thousand years…to proclaim
our nature, our animal nature as evil, as forbidden, as something worth
denying……… no, our animal side isn’t about that… it is about overcoming our
animal nature…… we cannot rise to wisdom by opposing our animal nature…
we must become and overcome our animal nature… by that I mean that
we simply accept and learn to control our passions and animal side of us…
repudiation of our animal side isn’t going to work, the Middle ages
is proof of that… we must be in control of our animal side…
I was a young man once… I know the force and power of the passions…
I too fell victim to them, more then once… I have been so angry that
I couldn’t see straight and I too have felt such lust for a women that
I would have done anything to be with her…and hate… I too have felt
hate…a bitter and mean hate toward a family member that lasted for years……
and perhaps still lasts… if I am to be honest…
I have seen, up close, the animal side of me… the out of control
hate and lust and greed and anger and bitterness…….they may not burn
as bright as they once did, but they still burn… I didn’t negate them…
I overcame them… made them part of me… I am, in part, full of the
animal side of passions and emotions and the fury, oh the fury that I have
unleashed over the years…my attempts are to be in control of my
animal side… I attempt to control my anger and my lust and my
greed… I don’t allow them to control me, I control them… at least, I try…
I have quite a temper, it doesn’t unleash often but when it does, get the hell away…
my passions, my anger, my fury can be a tool which I can use to
become more human… becoming more human doesn’t mean negating
or discarding my animal side… it simply means I am in control of it…
it doesn’t control me, I control it…
passion is a vital tool in becoming who we are……. it is passion that
drives so much of human behavior… passion to be the best, passion to
discover, passion to create, passion to enjoy…passion to love…….
we can use our often out of control emotions to reach new heights and new
viewpoints…it is not enough to negate, we must embrace and accept that
which we are… passions and hatred and anger is part of the human experience…
let us make it an unimportant part, let us control our animal side…
let us engage with those emotions, but with purpose and understanding
and control…
overcoming doesn’t mean negating… when we outgrow our childhood
emotions, it doesn’t mean we negate them, we simply outgrew them…
it was no longer needed because we were older and we had different
means of expressing ourselves…that is what I am talking about…
we don’t need to negate our passions, simply to outgrow them and
include them into our new understanding of being human…
think of the tools a baby has, crying and laughing was pretty much it…
as a child we become vocal and loud and throw temper tantrums…
we outgrow the temper tantrums, well most of us anyway, and
we learn a new response to the universe… as we age, we
learn to use our newly discovered tools of reason and logic
and compromise to navigate the human world…….
and so it is with us and the animal side… as we grow older, we
will learn to overcome our animal side just as we learned to
overcome our childhood instincts…….it is time to overcome
our animal side and grow into our next stage of existence…
from animal to animal/human to human, fully human……
from baby to infant to children to young adults to adults to
maturity to senior citizens to old age… we overcome as we age…
to overcome…… as we age…
that is the radical cause I work for…….
Kropotkin