I had an odd argument the other day. And it took me almost two weeks of letting it sit in the back of my mind to figure out what was going on. Clearly there was a struggle between me and the other person. I was struggling with what they were trying to do. And they were struggling with what I was trying to do. But I think I see now what was going on. This discussion is going to be even more vague and wandering and hard to understand than my usual entries because I really don’t want to reveal any of the details, for personal reasons.
The real crux, the point of disagreement, was over their attempt to linguistically maneuver their position so that it became the default position. The position that could be taken for granted as a baseline. And then any other positions could be evaluated in contrast to it. That was the heart of what they were trying to do.
My arguments, which were very difficult for them to respond to, essentially boiled down to a stubborn insistence that they couldn’t take their position for granted and then use that foundation to argue against others. I insisted that their position was a position, a theory, not a given baseline. Everything is a position, including what you take as a baseline “things as they are” to which you’re adding nothing and therefore are not sticking your neck out in any way and are invincibly defensible.
And that greatly perplexed them. And there was just a moment, when I wouldn’t back down but kept making the same arguments, when they actually seemed to consider them for a moment. “Then how are you supposed to know what to believe?” they asked. “How are you supposed to tell what’s true or decide between anything or make any judgements, if everything is uncertain and everything is a position and nothing can be assumed?” And I sensed that that was a moment of possibility. But unfortunately we got interrupted. And we never got to continue our discussion.
Maybe I was being belligerent. But I was also arguing what I knew. I knew that the positions they were arguing for had been challenged many timez, that there were plenty of people with alternative explanations and theories, and that it was only narrowness of focus that made them think that their own position was anything like a default.
But what really struck me were two things. First, the resentful nature of their objections. The sense that I was taking something necessary and solid away from them, and that that was a kind of absurdity. Didn’t I see that I was removing the foundations of thought? And the second thing I noticed was their
fear. That, someone having decided to stand outside their solid position and declaring it to be as much a sargasso island as the others they perceived and criticized around them, they seemed to consider for a second that might actually be right. And if that was true, where could anyone stand? What if there was no solid ground? What kind of awful world was I suggesting?
It is a terrifying prospect. The suggestion that our mental frameworks float unsteadily on a sea of undifferentiated and shifting experience, each a lonely island untethered to anything but our own subjective experience. Relativism deals with this terror simply by embracing it. It accepts the sea and the uselessness of seeking anything other than the reality of our own entanglement, and makes that the measure of solidity. Since you’ve given up the idea of a fictional tether to some imagined solid ground, a bold heart can embrace the solidity and finitude of relativism as all the solidity and all the infinity of reality we will ever need or know. If there is no all, then any part is enough to be all that matters.
Not that I actually agree with relativism or subjectivism as positions, despite seeming to argue for them in this case. But sometimes you have to break down your false assumptions before you become able to ask the questions that actually matter. A method that takes it own premises unthinkingly for granted and uses them to criticize other theories can never be really useful. It not only fails to understand its opponents, because it has not truly entertained their alternative premises, it does not even understand itself, because it never exposed its own premises. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re wrong, only that they don’t really know why they’re right.
I’m fact, the question of what to do when we actually become aware that there are alternative explanations for the same phenomena is one that has been very thoroughly appreciated and explored for quite a long time. That is the very problem that gave birth to philosophy. The Greeks were quite aware of it as an issue to be addressed. That doubt, that concern, that problem, is the beginning of philosophy. But reaching the solution requires first an appreciation of just how difficult our position actually is.
Socratic wisdom is the beginning of philosophy because it is the moment when you realize that you don’t know as much as you think you did, and stop taking it for granted that you already have all the answers and so don’t have to really think about them or engage in any kind of examination or discussion.
So what did the Greeks propose as a solution to the problem that Socrates forced into their consciousness? Because the realization of the problem didn’t break them or cause their understanding to crumble. Quite the opposite. It causes it to expand at an unprecedented rate. But how?
Logic, dialogue, reason, discussion. Instead of just taking a position for granted, they learned to take it apart and put it back together. Learned to identify the underlying and hidden premises behind an argument, the bones that provide the solid foundations that allow it to do its work. Learned to identify the connective tissue, the kinds of leaps and deductions being made that led to the conclusions, that connected one solid structure to the next. I could extend the metaphor to learning to recognizing and trimming away the fat that obscures the underlying meat, but by now you should get the idea.
Concepts are built much like living bodies, because in a way they are. They animate, they extend, they grow, they have order and purpose and a design of intelligence to them, just as all living things do. And you can address such constructs just as you address a living body. You can play physician of the soul. You can take apart your subject and see how it is constructed. You can compare it with other subjects. And you can observe your patient in living, embodied action and see what it is capable of and what it can do and what it grows into.
Far from being cold and abstract and mathematical, such rational examination is an exploration of the very nature of life. It is the pursuit and understanding of beauty. It is the love of that which brings life and health and growth.
Wisdom, the pursuit of the philosophers, is more than mere knowledge. There is a deeper, living, embodied dialectic to it. There is a struggle, a process, a balance, a union, a tension, a love. It’s not merely a knowing, it is a relationship. It’s not static, not crystallized or ossified. It is alive, an animating spirit that walks.
For all that I wax eloquent about the greatness of wisdom, there are many small and simple things that people can learn to do to start to follow it and to sort their way through the chaos that confronts us. Some of them are more like techniques and others are more like virtues.
Logic is useful. The ability to identify hidden and unspoken premises, the ability to recognize fallacies and spot inherent contradictions, those are all wonderful skills. Imagination and humility are also very useful. You can only examine what you can conceive, and recognizing your own limitations and mistakes is part of the path to self-knowledge that keeps such wonderful yet flawed creatures as ourselves on a sensible trajectory. Learning to be afraid of the right things is one classical definition of wisdom, and is quite practical and not excessively scholastic. Learning to love the right things and see their beauty is another virtue worth cultivating.
I don’t think you have to be a genius to make sense of the world. Or to be right about it. Or to walk a proper path through it. In fact in some cases it might be a hindrance to be a genius, we have such a proclivity for falling in love with our own theories and constructions. We are often willing to bend and break the world to preserve them rather than give them up. But we do owe many thanks to those geniuses through the ages who have helped make things clearer and done some of the work for us. They’ve helped to blaze a trail we can follow.
The interlocutors of Socrates often walked away frightened, resentful, and disappointed. They often saw their discussions with him as exercises in futility and disappointment, with him having stripped away everything they were certain of and leaving them with nothing. And yet these sorts of discussions were the beginning of philosophy, attempts to set the feet of the Greeks upon the path of wisdom. I think the ultimate reaction of Socrates’ efforts shows how much people appreciated it.
Making Nobody Happy 