What does Philosophy do?
There is no non-swimmer’s pool in the study of philosophy. No textbook tells students how to study philosophy. Students learn what philosophy is by themselves. Even the departments of different universities do not agree on what philosophy is, and there is also no consensus within a philosophy department as to what philosophy does. For this reason, each student must make up his or her own mind about why he or she should study philosophy.
Theoretical and practical philosophy are separated, with the result that research institutes and academic journals concentrate exclusively on certain areas of philosophy. Philosophical aesthetics are somewhere in between. Some philosophers write thick books, while others publish short articles. Some philosophers see themselves in the tradition of Plato’s Academy, while others would prefer to forget the history of philosophy.
I argue that professional philosophy is always in the tradition of Plato: without Plato’s professionalization of philosophy through the founding of the Academy, there would be no philosophy as an academic discipline.1 This means that the origin of systematic thinking and analytical problem solving can be found in the Platonic dialogues. However, Plato’s texts do not only attempt to clarify concepts. Above all, the dialogues are intended to stimulate personal reflection and wonder. As a result, these texts cannot be exclusively categorized as philosophy or literature. What is central to the dialogues is that they motivate readers to think for themselves. Every contemporary philosophical text tries to encourage us to think for ourselves, and the study of philosophy should lead to this goal. In my experience, however, this quality has almost been lost during the academic study of philosophy.
What could have led to the fact that the study of philosophy does not encourage independent thinking? During their studies, students learn to conform to certain orders and deadlines. The content presented to them is merely to be reproduced, and the study of philosophy also teaches students not to genuinely question the opinions of the authorities. Speusippus was Plato’s successor as head of the Academy.2 He rejected Plato’s doctrine of ideas.3 The opposite is taught at the universities. Students are taught not to doubt the opinions of their teachers. Even the opinions of fellow students are not to be radically challenged in class. In philosophy, as in any other field of study, students are not allowed to openly express their own opinions.
Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery (1766). Derby Museums and Art Gallery, England.
What can students do to think creatively and originally? They must retain the sense of wonder with which they began their studies, and which motivated them to study in the first place. This means that we need to form and consolidate our own opinions and not just focus on one area of philosophy. If I don’t work creatively and originally, my work can be taken over by an artificial intelligence, and if I only deal with one area of philosophy, I will lose my ability to think creatively over time. Therefore, you have to make up your own mind. The opinion of a freshman is no less valuable than that of a doctoral student.
In the final section of the first extensive biography of Plato, Waterfield writes:
Plato started practicing philosophy with Socrates and others at an early age. He found that there was no field of human endeavor where philosophy could not help. He perpetuated the practice of philosophy and philosophical principles in everything he did. It is not just that he wrote stimulating and profound books, but he himself returned to the murky cave of the real world. After his first failure in Syracuse, one might think that he would not have returned, but he did, and by doing so, he left us with a model of dedication to a cause and of how a philosopher might try to make himself useful in a political context—a model taken up by recent thinkers such as Bernard Williams. And he founded the Academy, a school that perpetuated philosophy for almost a thousand years. Plato’s life was truly a life in the service of philosophy, and that is why his life should still matter to us. The big questions do not go away.4
The great questions must not disappear during our studies. Once the fundamental questions disappear and the basic concepts are neglected, philosophy loses its raison d’être and becomes useless for our society. Philosophy cannot be reduced to clear argumentation, because it is much more than logic or a theory of language. At the heart of philosophy are wonder, creativity, and originality, and study regulations are only useful if they do not restrict students' independent thinking, but encourage it. Accordingly, an ethics seminar must always influence the students' own moral life. Logical models of argumentation and value-free theorizing are not the purpose of studying philosophy; they are merely methods of expressing the original wonder, the authentic search for wisdom.
Your ad-blocker ate the form? Just click here to subscribe!
One of the most important features of philosophy is its self-reflexivity, writes Shan.5 Philosophers are concerned not only with metaphysical, epistemological, conceptual, ethical, and aesthetic questions about the things around us, but also with the nature, value, methods, and development of philosophy itself.6 Students must engage with the complexity of philosophy during their studies in order to keep their own thinking as creative and receptive as possible, which means that philosophers must constantly reinterpret and modify their own work. Philosophizing is therefore an activity that never really ends. Philosophical inquiry does not end, for it is in the nature of philosophy to ask the right questions, not to give definitive answers.
◊ ◊ ◊
Luka Zurkic on Daily Philosophy:
-
Robin Waterfield, Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 123–157. ↩︎
-
Waterfield, Plato, 1. ↩︎
-
Russell Dancy, “Speusippus'', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 edition): para. 2, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speusippus/. ↩︎
-
Waterfield, Plato, 231. ↩︎
-
Yafeng Shan, “Introduction: The Unexamined Philosophy Is Not Worth Doing,'' in Examining Philosophy Itself, ed. Yafeng Shan (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2023), 1. ↩︎
-
Shan, Introduction,1. ↩︎
