Alex Betley

What’s the Use of Philosophy?1

Philosophy’s etymology is well enough known, stemming from the Greek philosophia, meaning “love of wisdom.” Prima facie, this doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing. After all, who would claim not to love wisdom? Likewise, shouldn’t that seem to make philosophers of most us? And yet, besides the fact that such propositions might put a good many college professors out of job, few would claim themselves to be philosophers. On the one hand, there is the obvious practical limitation. Philosophers usually write articles and books. They have graduate degrees. Somewhere in some library in some untouched stack of books (probably left untouched) rests a bounded dissertation: “So and so, Ph.D.” Others might say the limitation is more a matter of style. Philosophers are tweed-vest bearing males, rubbing their forefinger against their thumb, pensive-faced and furrow-browed, cross-legged, engaging in the dilemmas of the mind. Perhaps a century ago, we can see them in their office, bow-tie laden across their neckline, pipe in hand. They contemplate big words most are unfamiliar with: epistemology, existentialism, phenomenology, critical theories, virtue ethics and Kantian ethics and utilitarian ethics. The list goes on. A philosopher, in one way or another it is pictured, is the intellectual. A philosopher “questions everything.” Edward Said, in his lecture “Representations of the Intellectual,” describes the intellectual as maintaining a “state of constant alertness.” Essentially, I take this to mean the intellectual is always thinking, is always critical. However, Said also says embodying the lifestyle of the intellectual “doesn’t make one particularly popular.” This seems quite odd. If the intellectual is the philosopher, as almost none would doubt him or her to be, how could “loving wisdom” make one unpopular? Surely we all love and respect the godly knowledge of our rather learned thinker mentioned above. A quick Google search of “wisdom” will bring up a rather sterile definition: “The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement.” Again, as in the case of philosophia, such a definition seems rather uncontroversial and harmless. What does it tell us? Socrates, Plato’s famous protagonist, no doubt, was a philosopher, that is, a lover of wisdom, that is, a lover of “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement.” But who among us would claim signing one’s own death warrant, as Socrates most famously does when he refuses to

1 I will routinely reference Edward Said, as his short collection of lectures entitled The Representation of the Intellectual has led me to this meditative paper. Betley 2

recant on his “corruption of the youth,” is an act of having wisdom or experience of knowledge? “Perhaps the act of a lunatic,” many will say. Or they will say: “That is all and well for Socrates, and I respect him for such commitment to his beliefs, but I could certainly do no such thing myself.” Or, maybe someone will rejoin, “Well perhaps this Socrates fellow was corrupting the youth after all! Seems to me these liberal college professors are doing the very same thing these days!” Love of wisdom. Love of “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement.” For Immanuel Kant it was more than just love. It was Sapere aude!—“dare to know” or “dare to be wise.” Loving wisdom, then, becomes more complicated. It is a dare, a challenge. It is not easy, it is strenuous. In daring to be wise, we seek enlightenment, “the human being’s emergence from his self- incurred minority.” Self-incurred, yes, because the mark of the minor is “laziness” and “cowardice,” that is, not having the “courage to make use” of one’s own “understanding.” To dare to be wise—Sapere aude—is to claim independence for oneself, to stand on one’s own two intellectual feet. To be wise (and perhaps one is not required to love this wisdom), to be a philosopher, can become rather discomforting. “Experience, knowledge, and good judgement” becomes burdensome. As Tolstoy, roughly paraphrased, lamented in his A Confession, “How can one bring themselves to unknow what they know?” How Tolstoy looks at the Russian peasants around him in admiration. They are simple. They show up to church. They don’t ask questions. And how he looks at many of the intellectuals of his day, himself once firmly placed within their circle, with disgust at their vanity and ego. But while Tolstoy is contemplating suicide, neither the peasants nor the egoistic intellectuals seem to face such distress, anguish, and desperation. After all, “it is so comfortable to be a minor.” Now perhaps we can begin to see Socrates a bit more clearly—experience and knowledge come with a price. In our philosophical martyr par excellence, the tragedy is not in his death. Rather, it is in his daring to be wise, his Sapere aude, his challenge, his commitment to his principles. This is critical. As plenty before me have remarked, principle in the face of indifference is little principle. Principle in the face of challenge comes to define principle. If we take Kant at his word, and we take Socrates’ death as our example of the philosopher or the intellectual “speaking truth to power,” as someone like Said says is the essential function of such people, the act of philosophy becomes inherently rebellious. In daring to know the truth (veritas), to have knowledge and to love wisdom, we oppose those attempting to exercise unjustified power and control. But it is also useful to ask: “How do we envision this ‘power’ or ‘control?’” Foucault would come to develop his le savoir-pouvoir, “knowledge-power.” That is one consideration which I believe fits the bill appropriately in describing how power and knowledge function—that the control of knowledge Betley 3

justifies power, and that power then is able to shape knowledge further to its particular liking. Foucault’s response to le savoir-pouvoir elucidates specifically why philosophy is both subversive and liberating, as Kant before him seems to indicate. We must live on the boundaries of modernity, pressing up against conventional wisdom in much the same way Baudelaire sought to do. It is not enough to simply be in modernity, that is, the “attitude of the times.” We must push the various discursivities of modernity. We cannot go beyond them, but we can straddle the boundary, tether it to our intellectual efforts, and push and pull, push and pull. Sapere aude then becomes a constant, and potentially unpopular, task. This is somewhat of how Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus chooses to live. Dedalus famously states, “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some form of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning.” A rejection of tradition, of Kant’s minority, a desire to mark the world in one’s own way, Sapere aude, this is what Stephen Dedalus commits himself to. It is likely, as Stephen suggests, he will be alone during this time. But that is also his defense. His “silence, exile and cunning” are his arms. To bring Said once more into the discussion: “The exilic intellectual does not respond to the logic of the conventional but to the audacity of daring, and to representing change, to moving on, not standing still.” The intellectual is always moving, simultaneously rejecting and creating. He rejects the conformity of the “attitude of the times,” and in his rejection seeks to create the future. If modernity is the “attitude of the times” as Foucault suggests, then it is little surprise the intellectual is always living on the margins, the fringes of a world defined, most comfortable with the existant definition. To think beyond convention, Sapere aude, undermines the power of the time. But what do we move towards? Perhaps it is better to ask: How do we “be.” That is the question that defines the intellectual or any “lover of wisdom.”2 Sartre offers an answer in his celebrated essay, L’existentialisme est un humanisme—we simply take responsibility: “mais l'existentialiste, lorsqu'il décrit un lâche, dit que ce lâche est responsable de sa lâcheté.”3 The coward is only guilty of being a coward. We are always and at all times held responsible for our actions, these actions defining us. This is precisely Socrates’ fate. Was Socrates’ death simply the result of an unremitting pride? I suspect not—it was martyrdom. We, of course, know Socrates accepted the law—

2 Indeed, it seems that forms the basis of the intellectual or philosopher’s work; to constantly be asking the questions of where and towards what? As Slavoj Žižek has famously stated, “The point of philosophy is not to provide the right answers, but to ask the right questions.” 3 http://www.sandamaso.es/uploaded_files/2_sartre_lexistentialisme_est_un_humanisme.pdf Betley 4

that was his vindication—but he opposed its logic nonetheless. It was the ultimate act of speaking truth to power, indeed, the most powerful—those possessing the legal authority to take one’s life. To be a lover of wisdom, then, becomes no small task. It is one burdened with responsibility, at times loneliness and pain, but mostly with the indefatigable task of always pushing conventional wisdom, no matter its source. Ultimately, that is the use of philosophy.