This
is the fruit of recent posts. I
haven't decided where to send it yet and would appreciate suggestions about
that too.
A
Problem with Socrates as a Model for the Philosopher
For some Socrates is the model teacher. Be like him before students, using the
question-and-answer method, and at the end you will have them telling you what
you want to tell them. For some he is the model inquirer. Be like him looking outward, theorizing
and testing and checking, and at the end you will have the most reliable
knowledge of the world. Be like
him looking inward and you will have the most reliable knowledge of yourself. And for some, adding his pursuit of the
good life, he is even higher on his pedestal, the model philosopher. And he has been this model for a long
time.
No wonder then that those who want to be, or be
called, a philosopher, try to be like him. I see them examining his behavior in Plato's Dialogues, and, if they do that
carefully, coming up with something like this: one must be (1) very careful
about what one believes, (2) very careful about how one speaks, and (3) very
careful about how one lives. Extraordinary care, rather than a particular
belief, or produced speech, or adopted way of life, that is what distinguishes
Socrates and, insofar as he stands for him, the philosopher.
I take it that in distinguishing Socrates in this
way I am also distinguishing the scientist. Never mind that many of Socrates' (or Plato's) beliefs fall
quickly under the scientist's tests.
It was the method that counted, the conjecturing and testing and
checking and re-theorizing that produced reliable belief. Distinguish the scientist and you have
distinguished the West. You have
distinguished the tradition unique to it, the academic tradition. And Socrates started that.
I am working in that tradition when I make the
following conjecture and submit it in this article for test by its readers:
that it is impossible for a human being
to meet the requirements to be like Socrates. My submission, though, will be outside of part of that
tradition, the scientific part, in that it will not limit itself to impersonal
observation. For reasons that I
hope will be come clear it will rely on personal narrative. It assumes that scientists, if they
could have a report from the rat in the maze, would welcome it.
All right, I'll begin with my care about
belief. I was once very careful [this
rat wants to be a philosopher] about my belief in God. I had reviewed the findings of the
people I had carefully determined to be the most careful I could find,
university professors. Their care
forced me to discard every proposition requiring belief in God's existence. I believed that Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, cinched the case. Then I plunged into the world with my
belief. I declared my belief at
coffee hour after a church service.
And the world spoke back.
"Great Heavens, watch your words," said my wife on the way
home. "You are going to hurt
a lot of feelings. Nobody will sit
next to you if you aren't more careful." I couldn't accuse my wife of carelessness. My extreme care had made me the careless one. And thrown me into painful conflict.
Reflection [this is a thinking rat] showed me that I
had created the conflict by introducing requirement (3), being careful about
how I lived. I had decided that to
live the good life I had to join the human race. Living alone in my head or my office was not a good
life. But the human race, I saw,
lives in tribes. I had joined the
tribe of church-goers.
My wife had pointed out that you can't join a tribe without respecting tribal
beliefs and speaking tribal words.
Belief-wise tribal words are careless words but speech-wise they're just
what care requires. I had been
careless.
Is it possible to be careful one way without being
careless the other? Well, looking
at the coffee-hour crowd I had to say yes. Long-time members of this church, known to me to be
non-believers, must have gotten it right regularly. Nobody avoided sitting next to them. They maintained contact with the human
race. They showed no signs of pain
or conflict. I just had to be like
them.
What would it take? Tact, sensitivity, rhetorical skill, as my wife could point
out. Acquire those and I'd have it
right. Learning to take my wife's
kind of care would solve my problem.
I thought I was capable of that.
But had I faced the problem in its entirety? Did my church coffee-hour take me
deeply enough into the world, into its most difficult challenges? I don't know what I am capable of until
I've been fully tested.
On then to this, the most difficult challenge I
think I have faced. I am at a
contemporary dinner party. I know
that I have to take the kind of care my wife took with speech. And I can't give up the kind of care
Socrates taught me. I still want
to be a philosopher. I see that a
more comprehensive kind of care will be required, but I haven't learned to exercise that kind of care
yet.
All right, at the table, questions of the day. Urgent questions. Is it true that blacks perform poorly
in the classroom? Is it true that
desire to perform well is not much encouraged by black parents? by fellow
blacks in school? Is there a
problem with black culture? I,
careful as I can be, report as fact the findings of those people that , again,
I have carefully determined to be the most careful I can find. So that we all can go on to the big
question: What do blacks need to do to get out of the fix they're in? Over the horizon is the question, What
can whites do to help? On the way
home my wife tells me that my reported facts have hurt a lot of feelings — of blacks
and their friends, mostly — and that I could wind up not being invited back.
She has shown me the prior problem. Before worrying about speech or belief
you've got to worry about where you are, whether you're in a tribe or not, and
if you are in a tribe, which one?
On this night I, with all my learned skill, had gotten my tribe wrong
and seriously underestimated tribal beliefs.
Now I came to that party thinking of the academic
tribe, descended from the tribe of Socrates, as the tribeless tribe, or at
least as the tribe that aspired to tribelessness, the one tribe that did
so. That gave it an advantage in
solving problems. Its members
started with a more objective view of reality, where the causes of the problem
were found. They avoided tribal
distortions. Example: When they
reported the percentage of blacks being incarcerated in the United States they
included the percentages that give such a percentage relevance: the percentage
of blacks in the population and the percentage of blacks committing
crimes. Failure to do this
distorted the picture, and revealed tribal interest.
Members of the academic tribe did not, in my mind,
engage in war, cultural or physical, but messages from them could be very
helpful to warring tribes in solving their problems. At the table I tried to deliver what I thought would be a
helpful message because I wanted to live the good life. A good life to me was a life engagé.
Does the fact that the engagement failed here mean that such
engagements will inevitably fail?
No. The delivery was
inadequate to the need. Though I
had taken account of who the audience
was, and where they were, I had
failed to take into account the times in which they and I were living, the when. This was the postmodern era. My tribeless tribe was being called "the tribe that kids
themselves." Appeals to
"reality" and "objectivity" were being denied. The message I was delivering had, in
itself, insufficient weight to counter the weights — mainly the hurt to
feelings — already against it.
So there was a problem prior to the prior problem.
And I didn't see a good solution, or at least one I was capable of. "Yes," I said to my academic
colleagues, "the objective message that hurts feelings may be just what
warring tribes need," and "Yes," I said to Socrates, "the
unexamined life is not worth living," and "Yes," I said to Max
Beerbohm, "the examined life is no bowl of cherries either," I know
all that, but I'm a frail human being, and I'm not up to knowing everything I
need to know about an era that will affect my message.
Joining the scientist we can say that the maze is
too difficult for this rat. Will
it be too difficult for all rats?
Can no rat ever be a philosopher on the model of Socrates? The scientist can't say. All he can say is that a rat of a
certain capacity, willing and able to report on his experience, attempted to
follow the Socratic model under the most difficult circumstances he could find
and failed. Though it might have
been possible for him to meet each of the requirements individually it was
impossible for him to meet them in combination, at the same time.
Though the eras and tests will vary, historians tell
me that if I think there are other eras where the challenges are simpler and
easier, then I haven't looked closely enough. And if I think there are other rats able to meet challenges
like this, super rats, psychologists will tell me I haven't read their work
closely enough. And when I learn
from linguists of all the changes in the weight of words, in hurt or credibility,
changes that will not stop, and count up all the eras and all the tribes
causing and reflecting those changes, and that I would have to know about, my
intuition tells me that it would be very unlikely that there would be a brain
with all the capacity, and all cells and all the synapses, that, even at the
highest firing speeds, could take it all in and make the owner of that brain,
even if he had the determination and persistence and other traits of character
Socrates had, able to take the kind of comprehensive care required of him. Thus my conclusion: it is not humanly
possible to be a philosopher on the Socratic model.
