Musonius Rufus, Lectures 6.3

Therefore upon the learning of the lessons appropriate to each and every excellence, practical training must follow invariably, if indeed from the lessons we have learned we hope to derive any benefit.

And moreover such practical exercise is the more important for the student of philosophy than for the student of medicine or any similar art, the more philosophy claims to be a greater and more difficult discipline than any other study. 

The reason for this is that men who enter the other professions have not had their souls corrupted beforehand and have not learned the opposite of what they are going to be taught, but the ones who start out to study philosophy have been born and reared in an environment filled with corruption and evil, and therefore turn to virtue in such a state that they need a longer and more thorough training. 

Like everything else in life, the trends in the world of education will move in cycles. Every few years, a different model of formation will spring forth, and almost everyone will eagerly cling to it, insisting that it is so fresh and progressive. Yet there is nothing new about it at all, though it did have a slightly modified trim the last time I saw it; it has simply come around again.

One such recurring scheme is the love of “hands on” learning. Thank God, there is at least some common sense in it, that the thinking should be applied to the doing. What can so easily happen, however, is that the doing is stressed at the complete expense of the thinking, and then the theoreticians will eventually take over once more. It all comes around again.

Yet this passage suggests something far more radical, perhaps even far more subversive, than any of the reformers could possibly have imagined. If you are studying to be a doctor, or a nurse, or an engineer, or a teacher, or a lawyer, it would do you well to get your feet wet in the field, to apply what you are learning. Then, and only then, will you understand it in all its depth, and be able to make good use of it.

Then why do philosophers, and all other sorts of academic thinkers, never go into the trenches? They read, they write, they study, and they attend many important classes. When they are done doing this, they are given a pretty piece of paper, and they go on to tell other people how to read, write, study, and attend important classes.

In the meantime, they have never been required to practice their art, not for a single moment. They have been asked to talk about it, but never to do it.

And we wonder why philosophy has such a bad reputation! It is because most philosophers do nothing at all, but read, write, study, and attend important classes. Yes, by that standard they are quite useless.

They don’t even teach, once they have made their names. They have their graduate assistants teach for them, while they write articles that a few dozen of their peers may read. Then they bicker with one another, and, if they are very clever, turn their ideas into a profitable brand. It is bought and sold, like so much oil, or gold, or shares in soybean futures.

And it is all because we do not even grasp who the true philosopher is. Any person, in any condition, can be the philosopher. It asks only that he love the truth, and then proceeds to live it. All of us are made for this vocation, not just the few.

What a beautiful world it might be, if philosophers were asked to do all the things they talk about:

Go out in the streets, and have an honest conversation with someone in pain, seeing the life that he must lead. That will apply prudence far better than any advanced degree ever will.

Enlist as a grunt in an army, and earn you way up to fighting in an actual battle. Then you will learn something about courage, at the very moment you are soiling your trousers from crippling fear, begging for your mother’s love.

Spend some time with drunks, or addicts, or sex workers, and you will suddenly have a very different conception of temperance. You will see the actual struggle for human decency, not the bookish posturing.

Become poor, not by circumstance but by your own choice, and feel how it is to be rejected, discarded, and unloved by others. When you can do nothing profitable for another, you will now know what justice entails.

Here’s the clincher: People in any other profession just need to learn their jobs, but philosophers need to unlearn everything else, absolutely everything they have ever been raised in, to even think about doing their jobs.

We have been taught that pleasure, and money, and power are what we need, but we need to unlearn that to be philosophers. We have been taught that sex, and profit, and image make us big, but we need to unlearn that to be philosophers.

It’s actually quite easy to become a good lawyer, because you just need to learn the lawyering. It’s actually quite hard to become a true philosopher, the definition of a good man, because you need to learn about being virtuous. You will have to take very many steps back before you can ever inch your way forward.

Written in 7/1999