introduction Of all those who start out on philosophyÐ not those who take it up for the sake of getting educated when they are young and then drop it, but those who linger in it for a longer timeÐ most become quite queer, not to say completely vicious; while the ones who seem perfectly decent . become useless. —, Republic (487c± d) Q Excerpted from EXAMINED LIVES: From Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller. Published in January 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by James Miller. All rights reserved. 042-44795_ch01_5P.indd 3 10/29/10 11:17 PM Excerpted from EXAMINED LIVES: From Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller. Published in January 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by James Miller. All rights reserved. 042-44795_ch01_5P.indd 4 10/29/10 11:17 PM nce upon a time, phi los o phers were ! gures of wonder. " ey o were sometimes objects of derision and the butt of jokes, but they were more o# en a source of shared inspiration, o$ ering, through words and deeds, models of wisdom, patterns of conduct, and, for those who took them seriously, examples to be emulated. Stories about the great phi los o phers long played a formative role in the culture of the W est. For Roman writers such as C icero, Seneca, and M arcus A urelius, one way to mea sure spiritual progress was to compare one's conduct with that of Socrates, whom they all considered a paragon of perfect virtue. Sixteen hundred years later, John Stuart M ill (1806± 1873) simi- larly learned classical G reek at a tender age in order to read the Socratic ªM emorabiliaº of X enophon (fourth century %.&.) and selected Lives of the Em inent Phi los o phers, as retold by D iogenes Laertius, a G reek fol- lower of Epicurus who is thought to have lived in the third century .*. A part from the absurdly young age at which M ill was forced to de- vour it, there was nothing unusual about his reading list. U ntil quite re- cently, those able to read the G reek and Roman classics were routinely nourished, not just by X enophon and Plato but also by the moral essays of Seneca and Plutarch, which were ! lled with edifying stories about the bene! ts and consolations of philosophy. A n educated person was likely to know something about Socrates, but also about the ªEpicurean,º Excerpted from EXAMINED LIVES: From Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller. Published in January 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by James Miller. All rights reserved. 042-44795_ch01_5P.indd 5 10/29/10 11:17 PM 6 exam ined lives the ªStoic,º and the ªSkepticºÐ philosophical types still of interest to D avid H ume (1711± 1776), who wrote about each one in his Essays, Moral and Po liti cal (1741± 1742). For H ume, as for D iogenes Laertius, each philosophical type was expressed not only in a doctrine but also in a way of lifeÐ a pattern of conduct exempli! ed in the biographical details recounted by D iogenes Laertius about such ! gures as Epicurus, the found er of Epicureanism; Zeno, traditionally regarded as the ! rst Stoic; and Pyrrho, who inaugu- rated one branch of ancient Skepticism. Besides H ume and M ill, both K arl M arx (1818± 1883) and Friedrich N ietz sche (1844± 1900)Ðto take two equally modern examplesÐ also studied ! e Lives of the Em inent Phi los o phers. Indeed, both M arx and N ietz sche, while still in their twenties, wrote scholarly treatises based, in part, on close study of just this work. Today, by contrast, most highly educated people, even professional phi los o phers, know nothing about either D iogenes Laertius or the vast majority of the ancient phi los o phers whose lives he recounted. In many schools in many countries, especially the U nited States, the classical curriculum has been largely abandoned. M odern textbooks generally scant the lives of phi los o phers, reinforcing the contemporary percep- tion that philosophy is best understood as a purely technical discipline, revolving around specialized issues in semantics and logic. " e typical modern philosopherÐ the K ant of the C ritique of Pure Reason (1781), say, or the John R awls of A ! eory of Justice (1971)Ð is largely identi! ed with his books. It is generally assumed that ªphiloso- phyº refers to ªthe study of the most general and abstract features of the world and the categories with which we think: mind, matter, rea- son, proof, truth etc.,º to quote the de! nition o$ ered by the outstand- ing recent O xford Dictionary of Philosophy. M oreover, in the modern university, where both K ant and R awls practiced their calling, aspiring phi los o phers are routinely taught, among other things, that the truth of a proposition should be evaluated in de pen dently of anything we may know about the person holding that proposition. A s the phi los o- pher Seyla Benhabib puts it, ªPhilosophical theories make claims to truth that transcend historical and social context. From inside the dis- cipline, the details of personal lives seem quite irrelevant to under- standing or evaluating a thinker's views.º Excerpted from EXAMINED LIVES: From Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller. Published in January 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by James Miller. All rights reserved. 042-44795_ch01_5P.indd 6 10/29/10 11:17 PM introduction 7 Such a principled disregard of ad hominem evidence is a character- istically modern prejudice of professional phi los o phers. For most G reek and Roman thinkers from Plato to A ugustine, theorizing was but one mode of living life philosophically. To Socrates and the countless classical phi los o phers who tried to follow in his footsteps, the primary point was not to ratify a certain set of propositions (even when the abil- ity to de! ne terms and analyze arguments was a constitutive compo- nent of a school's teaching), but rather to explore ªthe kind of person, the sort of selfº that one could elaborate as a result of taking the quest for wisdom seriously. For G reek and Roman phi los o phers, ªphilosoph- ical discourse . originates in a choice of life and an existential optionÐ not vice versa.º Or, as Socrates puts it in the pages of X enophon's M em orabilia, ªIf I don't reveal my views in a formal account, I do so by my conduct. D on't you think that actions are more reliable evidence than words?º In ancient G reece and Rome, it was widely assumed that the life of a phi los o pher would exemplify in practice a speci! c code of conduct and form of life. A s a result, biographical details were routinely cited in appraisals of a philosophy's value. " at Socrates faced death with dig- nity, for example, was widely regarded as an argument in favor of his declared views on the conduct of life. But did Socrates really face death with dignity? H ow can we be con- ! dent that we know the truth about how Socrates actually behaved? Faced with such questions, the distrust of modern phi los o phers for ad hominem argument tends to be reinforced by a similarly modern skep- ticism about the kinds of stories traditionally told about phi los o phers. C onsider the largest extant compilation of philosophical biogra- phies, the anthology of D iogenes Laertius. " is work starts with " ales of M iletus (c. 624± 546 %.&.): ªTo him belongs the proverb `Know thy- self,' º D iogenes Laertius writes with typically nonchalant imprecision, ªwhich A ntisthenes in his Successions of Phi los o phers attributes to Phe- monoe, though admitting that it was appropriated by C hilon.º H e de- scribes " ales as the ! rst absentminded professor: ªIt is said that once, when he was taken out of doors by an old woman in order that he might observe the stars, he fell into a ditch, and his cry for help drew from the old woman the retort, `How can you expect to know all about the heav- ens, " ales, when you cannot even see what is just before your feet?' º Excerpted from EXAMINED LIVES: From Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller. Published in January 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by James Miller. All rights reserved. 042-44795_ch01_5P.indd 7 10/29/10 11:17 PM 8 exam ined lives " e work of D iogenes Laertius has long vexed modern scholars. H is compilation represents an evidently indiscriminate collection of material from a wide array of sources. D espite its uneven quality, his collection of maxims, excerpts from poems, and extracts from theoretical treatises remains a primary source for what little we know today about the doc- trines held by a great many ancient G reek phi los o phers, from " ales and H eraclitus (c. 540± 480 %.&.) to Epicurus (341± 270 %.&.). D iogenes' anecdotes, on the other hand, have o# en been discounted, in part because he makes no e$ ort to evaluate the quality of his sources, in part because his biographies are riddled with contradictions, and in+part because some of the stories he recounts simply beggar belief. " e stories preserved by D iogenes Laertius occupy a twilight zone between truth and ! ction. From the startÐ in the Socratic dialogues of PlatoÐ the life of the phi los o pher was turned into a kind of myth and treated as a species of poetry, entering into the collective imagination as a mnemonic condensation, in an exemplary narrative, of what a con- sidered way of life might mean in practice.