Sophistry, wisdom and wonder

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 07:56:20
Kym asked this question:

Hi, my questions are:

1) why philosophy is not sophistry?

2) why philosophy is not wisdom?

3) why philosophy begins with wonder?

Thanks...

Having once described myself as an 'internet sophist' (see My Philosophical Life) you could say that I deserve this question. I am proud to belong to the tradition of Sophists, which includes the great figures of Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Prodicus and Gorgias. These were thinkers of stature who ventured out into the market place, as I have done, not to talk to anyone willing to listen like Socrates — a most unsuccessful Sophist if there ever was one — but rather on the understanding that their time was worth something, that they deserved recompense for their work. These contemporaries of Socrates and Plato were highly respected. The term 'sophist' had no negative connotations at that time. The closest translation would be 'professor'.

However, I accept the assumption of Kym's question: that there is an accepted sense of 'sophistry' (indeed, no-one these days would use the term any other way) which implies strong criticism and rebuke. To engage in sophistry is to use bad arguments deliberately to confuse your audience, in order to manipulate their beliefs. I hope that I have never done that, deliberately, or even as a result of carelessness or inattention. I share Socrates' passionate concern for the truth. Nor will I criticize his life style. There is nothing commendable about being wealthy. I make a living at what I do — working as an independent philosopher outside the Academy — but no more than I need for a very modest subsistence.

But pity poor Xanthippe. Pilloried by historians for being a fish wife, she had to live with the consequences of Socrates' decision to give up his well paid profession as a stone mason, choosing poverty and despising all comforts in order to follow his muse.

It was, above all, the founding of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum which put the final nail in the coffin of the honorable profession of Sophists. If you didn't belong to a school, then you didn't belong, period. To be a genuine 'philosopher' was to be recognized as such by other 'philosophers'. If you were not a member of the Philosophers' Party then by definition you were no lover of wisdom. That still holds true today, although universities are now under increasing pressure from the marketplace, as the recent scandal over the massive hike in UK university tuition fees has demonstrated. It is high time the university professors recognized that they no longer have the monopoly on excellence.

There are indeed signs that the prediction I made back in 1999 when I wrote my piece for The Glass House Philosopher was not so wide of the mark: 'The university departments have had their day. Time has come for a more democratic arrangement.' If I may venture a plug for my philosophy school, Pathways to Philosophy, you can do a highly acclaimed BA (Hons) degree in Philosophy from the University of London, with a higher standard of tutorial support from Pathways than any of the universities is able to provide (including Oxford and Cambridge with their long-established tutorial systems) for less than £5000 all in, for a complete four-year course, a fraction of what it would cost you if you applied as an internal student to the least 'expensive' university today. — And you don't have to give up your day job!

(I think I have earned the right to blow my trumpet now and then. After all, no-one pays me to do this blog.)

Well, what about wisdom. There are examples of great philosophers you could point to who were not very wise. Possibly the most catastrophic example from the 20th century would be Heidegger, whose flirtation with the Nazi regime (whatever gloss you place on it) cannot be justified or explained by any amount of sophistical reasoning. Bertrand Russell, rightly regarded as one of the most important figures in English-speaking philosophy and one of the founders of the tradition of philosophical analysis, was a serial womanizer, who alongside his brilliant views on logic and epistemology was prepared to entertain ideas on social reform which many today would consider opiniated and uninformed. Finally, there is Gottlob Frege, possibly the most important of all the founders of the analytic movement, about whom Michael Dummett in the Preface to his monumental first book Frege Philosophy of Language (1973) laments,

There is some irony for me in the fact that the man about whose philosophical views I have devoted, over years, a great deal of time to thinking, was, at least at the end of his life, a virulent racist, specifically an anti-semite. This fact is revealed by a fragment of a diary which survives among Frege's Nachlass, but which was not published with the rest by Professor Hans Hermes in Freges nachgelassene Schriften. The diary shows Frege to have been a man of extreme right-wing political opinions, bitterly opposed to the parliamentary system, democrats, liberals, Catholics, the French and, above all, Jews, who he thought ought to be deprived of political rights and, preferably, expelled from Germany. When I first read that diary, many years ago, I was deeply shocked, because I had revered Frege as an absolutely rational man...

Which just goes to show that the capacity for logical reasoning doesn't always go together with wisdom. That's not to say that we should take a sanguine view of philosophers who do not aspire to wisdom. There is a point in speaking of the 'love of wisdom', it's not just hot air or a mere political slogan. I view my own lapses from wisdom with regret, but it doesn't seem to me that my failings in that respect make me any less of a philosopher. One could have also pointed out that there are many persons whom one would consider wise, who have never ventured into philosophy. My old grandmother Rose was wise, though to my knowledge she had never read a word of philosophy. To put the point in terms of the language of logical analysis, being a philosopher is neither a sufficient condition for being wise, nor is being a philosopher a necessary condition for wisdom.

Finally, wonder. The motto on the web site for the International Society for Philosophers is 'Philosophy begins with wonder'. When I came to write this answer, I couldn't remember whether it was Plato or Aristotle who said this. Then I found this answer from Hawkinsian on Yahoo Answers:

Plato puts the following words in the mouth of Socrates at Theaetetus 155 d (tr. Benjamin Jowett): 'I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.'

Aristotle echoes the Theaetetus passage at 982b12 of his Metaphysics: 'It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them.'

What many miss, however, is that Plato and Aristotle are both talking about the search for theoria, for a knowledge and understanding of the nature of the cosmos and our place in it, in a sense which today would include the great figures of science as well as those of philosophy. (I guess that Hawkinsian is a fan of Stephen Hawking.)

Another motto — which I penned for the PhiloSophos web site — is, 'Philosophy is for everyone and not just philosophers. Philosophers should know lots of things besides philosophy.' Philosophers should know about Hawking — and Dawkins and all the rest. Nor do you need any specialist academic training in philosophy to be a philosopher, to feel that special sense of wonder. That's why I said that philosophy is for all, and I meant it. But not everyone does feel that sense of wonder. My explanation would not be that the non-philosophical multitude lack sufficient knowledge or intelligence for philosophy. Rather, as the great Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus said, they are like people asleep. They sleepwalk through life, never once thinking of the Logos, the ultimate principle of all existence whatever that may be. The question never occurs to them. But it can occur to anybody.

I date the beginning of my interest in philosophy with that question. I have grappled with the question all my career, although, if the truth be told, there has been a long gap where my attempts to make progress with it had to go on the back burner (roughly, from the date when my book Naive Metaphysics appeared). Now I'm back on the case. If I may end this post with another plug, I've started another blog, Hedgehog Philosopher where my daily attempts to put the the jig-saw pieces together is recorded. I may never succeed. In fact, given the ambitiousness of the project, it is almost guaranteed in advance that I will not succeed. But while I remain engaged, I am filled with wonder, I am doing the thing that I do best. I can without blushing call myself a 'philosopher'.