Let us continue to understand philosophy in terms
of Socrates………
Socrates says he knows nothing and he knows he knows nothing
and he has nothing to teach…
compare that to other philosophers…Like Kant or Hegal…
or in fact like any other “university” professors…
university professors are people who teach for a living…
we have a large group of philosophers who were in the university’s……
for example, most the Medieval philosophers were university professors,
St. Aquinas and Peter Abelard and Duns Scotus for example…
and in the modern times, we have Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Wittgenstein,
Quine, Nietzsche, just to name a few…… the real question is how
many were not professors, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz,
and Socrates…………
so professors by definition, teach, and what they teach, for the most part,
is philosophy……. Descartes is famous, rightly so, about his attempt to
find certainty in knowledge by doubting everything…… he entire attempt
at philosophy was with the action of doubt or doubting…….
now if we look at Socrates, he never said, he had certainty,
his approach was from doubt… I don’t know anything…
I have nothing to teach………… and what method did Socrates
use? Questions, nothing but questions… he rarely if ever said,
this is what I believe to be true… in fact, that was a criticism
of him by his contemporaries…he never said what he believed in,
he avoided answering questions about what he personally believed in……
and another criticism was that he always said the same things…
he repeated his questions in the same way to every person he met…
and to get the same response, to get the person under questioning
to admit that they in fact didn’t know anything…… to get them to
realize that they were just repeating the myths, biases, prejudices
and superstitions that they were taught from childhood…
and those myths, biases, prejudices………… they had never been
examined by the person holding them to see if they were, in fact,
worth holding……….
the unexamined life is not worth living…
this is a motto that bears repeating…
the unexamined life is not worth living…….
we hold myths, biases, prejudices, superstitions and ism’s
that, if understood correctly, won’t withstand examination…….
that is one of the real basis of philosophy…
not just to know that specific philosophers
specific beliefs about say, space and time…
to have facts and knowledge about specific philosophers,
but to have a method of examining the basis of beliefs
that we and others hold…………….
in other words, philosophy is not about what we hold to be
true as facts and knowledge outside of us, but about what is inside of us
as to the basis of and understanding of the beliefs we hold inside of us…
“It is not enough to have the courage of our convictions,
but to have the courage for an attack upon our convictions”
to examine them, to attack them, to see if they really
correspond to that which seems to be reality…
but here we run into the problem of the question of “reality”
what is “real”? or what is “reality”?
as far as I can tell, Socrates never asked this question……
because he not was engaged with something outside of us…
and Socrates never engaged with questions about things
outside of us……….
His questions were about the nature of love, of justice, of what is moral,
what is right…………………….
so what is justice? we cannot answer that question until we actually understand
what justice is……… and I have given my answer, justice is equality under the law…
justice is simply being treated the same legally as everyone else is treated…
if under the law, people are treated differently, due to wealth or power
or position, that is unequal, unjust…………… and is not justice………
justice and equality are the same thing…………. that is the type of question
Socrates would have asked…………. and the facts and knowledge we have,
are simply used to answer the question about if we have justice…
if blacks and whites commit the exact same crime, and the
conviction rate for blacks is twice that of whites, that is not equality,
that is not justice…… for different standards are used for different
class of people… it is not equal, it is not just, it is not justice…….
that is how facts and knowledge should be used… to better help us understand
how values are being used…………… values like justice……
and some facts and knowledge have no connection to values…
like how does the fact that earth lies 93 million miles from the sun,
create any use for a value? it doesn’t……………
it is just a fact or some knowledge that only has a value as a fact or
knowledge……………
the unexamined life is not worth living……
and how does the fact of the earth being 93 million miles from the sun,
helps us in understanding the unexamined life?
many of us think, and I admit I was one of them, that having facts
or knowledge was having some sort of wisdom… a fact that made me
wise… nope………………having facts or knowledge doesn’t have anything
to do with wisdom, with values……………
so when we understand the statement, the unexamined life is not worth
living… what exactly are we examining? the values that we hold,
not, not the facts or knowledge we have… the values like justice or love…
and for many of us, the values we hold are the myths and biases and
prejudices…… we were taught in childhood………….
so in philosophy, we are not asking if the sun is 93 million miles from earth,
that is a fact, a piece of knowledge… we are asking ourselves about
the values we hold and if what we believe about those values are really
the values we should be holding or the values we believe to be true,
are in fact, true………
the unexamined life is not worth living………
that is a quote that should be in every home, work place and place
of worship in every country in the world…………
the unexamined life is not worth living…
that is asking, in fact, for one to begin the search
for the truth in doubt…… for it is doubting
that leads one to the truth about values……
the question about the unexamined life is basically asking
for a person to doubt………….
do you begin with doubt or do you begin with certainty?
the answer to that question really is the basis for which we can
decide if you are a “true” philosopher…
Kropotkin