“But, you say, your father will
restrain you and actually shut you up to prevent your study of philosophy.
Perhaps he will do so, but he will not prevent you from studying philosophy
unless you are willing; for we do not study philosophy with our hands or feet
or any other part of the body, but with the soul and with a very small part of
it, that which we may call the reason.
“This God placed in the strongest
place so that it might be inaccessible to sight and touch, free from all
compulsion and in its own power. Particularly if your mind is good your father
will not be able to prevent you from using it nor from thinking what you ought
nor from liking the good and not liking the base; nor again-from choosing the
one and rejecting the other.
“In the very act of doing this,
you would be studying philosophy, and you would not need to wrap yourself up in
a worn cloak nor go without a chiton nor grow long hair nor deviate from the
ordinary practices of the average man. To be sure, such things are well enough
for professional philosophers, but philosophy does not consist in them, but
rather in thinking out what is man's duty and meditating upon it.”
If I
define the value of my life by the property I own, or by my social standing, or
by the freedom of my body, then I will understandably be concerned when someone
in authority, making use of some external force, tries to hinder such things. It
would be what post-moderns might like to call an “existential threat”.
If,
however, I am informed by a Stoic model of meaning, one that looks to the merit
inside me instead of the circumstances that surround me, I will not be quite so
troubled.
It isn’t
that my inner Stoic is unfeeling, or in denial, or separated from the world; it
is rather that I can put all experiences, whether pleasant or unpleasant,
within a deeper context. I try to find peace in orienting wherever I find myself
to the building of my ability to know and to love.
There is
certainly nothing mindless or heartless in that!
Might I
have a preference for luxury, or fame, or freedom of movement? Perhaps, and if
I am still tied to old habits, most certainly. Yet I can turn to the truth in
my judgments, that who I am is not measured by what I have, or whether
others look my way, or where I may go.
Musonius,
like any good Stoic, insists that being a philosopher is nothing more or less
than living according to wisdom and virtue, and living according to wisdom and
virtue are, in turn, the very ends of human life. To “choose” philosophy is not
like choosing an outfit, or a house, or a career, but is a decision about what
it means to be human. Now there is the true existential content of life!
Can
anyone or anything else stop me from following this path? I am the only
obstacle, and any other hardship is transformed into an opportunity to become
better in my soul. My own thoughts and choices are what will make all the
difference; even when I face the end of my life, which I inevitably must, I
will still face it with my own thoughts and choices.
Can my
father block my way by cutting off my inheritance, or ruining my reputation, or
even locking me up? The beautiful irony is that if he tried to do so, he would
only be a giving me another chance to respect him all the more, by practicing virtues
like courage, and temperance, and kindness.
I
suppose it is no accident that many of the heroes who inspire me, like
Socrates, or Boethius, or Thomas More, or Franz Jägerstätter, or James
Stockdale, found their characters tested by the loss of worldly freedoms. They
became philosophers not in spite of these challenges, but because of them.
Written in 3/2000
IMAGE: J.F. Clemens, Socrates in Prison (c. 1786). In the background are Socrates' two daimons, the good silencing the bad.
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