Musonius Rufus, Lectures 8.2

But to distinguish between good and bad, advantageous and disadvantageous, helpful and harmful is the part of none other than the philosopher, who constantly occupies himself with this very question, how not to be ignorant of any of these things, and has made it his art to understand what conduces to a man's happiness or unhappiness.

Therefore it appears that the king should study philosophy.

I often notice how the things we should attend to the most are precisely the things we end up thinking about the least.

If I ask a real professional, whether he be a welder or a neurosurgeon, to tell me something about his trade, I will be amazed at the depth and complexity of what he knows. He should rightly be proud, and I should rightly be impressed. He is not a trained animal, but rather a mind willing and able to understand the meaning of what he does, how he does it, and why he does it.

I can only ask myself how much of that commitment, and all the years of hard work that go along with it, I might be willing to put into the greatest calling of all, of being human first and foremost, of doing the job I was made for, not just the job that pays the bills.

The accountant is the master of his figures, and the carpenter can craft any sort of wood. The lawyer will argue the minutiae of any case, and the gardener will make most anything grow. Now why am I not the man who can properly form himself into a decent man?

To do this, to turn myself into something worthy, I would need to know something about my own nature within the order of all of Nature. This would require dedicating my entire body and soul, all of who I am, to learning about what is true and good in this life. I would need to plunge into the depth and complexity of what it means to be happy.

Well, this is what the philosopher does, whether or not they pay him for it. It is the ultimate profession, the only one that matters.

“Yeah, I was a philosophy major in college, and I learned so much!”

“Ah, What did you learn?”

“I read about Plato, and Nietzsche, and Kant . . .”

“Sorry, I didn’t ask what you read. What did you learn?”

“See, it really helped me to focus on the things that matter in my career . . . “

“Of course! What are those things?”

Rarely will the conversation progress beyond this point. I am then usually introduced to some acquaintance standing around, or asked to try a tasty hors d’oeuvre. 

The practice of philosophy, and notice I do not merely say the academic study of philosophy, is the very core of life, for the simple reason that it allows us to charge everything we do with meaning and value. Whatever the skills we may use to buy nice things, we need the art of living well to inform it all.

I still wait for the day when I ask that pesky question, and that Very Important Person looks me straight in the eye, with absolutely no dissimulation or hidden agenda, and says something like this:

“I learned that I should know right from wrong before I do anything else. I learned that I should stick to my guns if I am following my conscience. I learned that my feelings shouldn’t rule me, but that I should rule my feelings. I learned that I should love my neighbor as myself, because we’re all in this together.”

I have heard words similar to these from many fine people, but never have I heard them, to this very day, from someone who brags about having “studied” philosophy.

If you ask the people you meet what they care for the most, they will tell you that they wish to be happy. What does that entail?

They may say they want good things in their lives. They may tell you about the comfort of wealth, or the security of power, or the ecstasy of pleasure. They will likely give you a list of things, and things are all they are, that they must be given in order to be happy.

“Will being happy always be something good?”

“Of course!”

“Are wealth, or power, or pleasure always good for you?”

“No, I guess they could be bad.”

“Then they aren’t the essence of happiness, are they?”

I have found that kind of questioning annoying, and you have also found it annoying, not because it is just some clever Jedi mind trick, but because it gets to our weakest spot. It makes us recognize that we are quite clueless about why we are alive.

What will guide us to happiness instead of misery? What will help us rather than harm us? Have we thought it through, or are we just living on empty assumptions? That is the human vocation, the most important job there ever was.

If all of us should take up the challenge, shouldn’t our leaders be doing so with bells on? 

Written in 9/1999