Your desire, however, that I should dispatch to you my own writings does not make me think myself learned, any more than a request for my picture would flatter my beauty. I know that it is due to your charity rather than to your judgment. And even if it is the result of judgment, it was charity that forced the judgment upon you.
But whatever the quality of my works may be, read them as if I were still seeking, and were not aware of, the truth, and were seeking it obstinately, too. For I have sold myself to no man; I bear the name of no master. I give much credit to the judgment of great men; but I claim something also for my own.
For these men, too, have left to us, not positive discoveries, but problems whose solution is still to be sought. They might perhaps have discovered the essentials, had they not sought the superfluous also.
They lost much time in quibbling about words and in sophistical argumentation; all that sort of thing exercises the wit to no purpose. We tie knots and bind up words in double meanings, and then try to untie them.
But whatever the quality of my works may be, read them as if I were still seeking, and were not aware of, the truth, and were seeking it obstinately, too. For I have sold myself to no man; I bear the name of no master. I give much credit to the judgment of great men; but I claim something also for my own.
For these men, too, have left to us, not positive discoveries, but problems whose solution is still to be sought. They might perhaps have discovered the essentials, had they not sought the superfluous also.
They lost much time in quibbling about words and in sophistical argumentation; all that sort of thing exercises the wit to no purpose. We tie knots and bind up words in double meanings, and then try to untie them.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 45
Along with my weakness for hoarding books, I have also found myself inclined to becoming intellectually captivated by a certain personality or ideology. As much as I might believe this makes me stronger, it really just reduces me to being a lackey.
However charming or attractive someone might appear to me, let me not confuse his image with the fullness of the truth. In my early graduate classes, I was taken aback by the almost universal adoration for the German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, and how we were absolutely forbidden to question his brilliance.
I would smirk and roll my eyes, until I realized I was doing much the same with my hero worship of Thomas Aquinas, convinced that the Angelic Doctor could do no wrong. I was no better, for I had merely turned to an alternative philosophical infatuation.
It is no different with a blind obedience to this or that school of thought, which at the very best takes on the properties of a tribal loyalty, and at the very worst is twisted into a cultish conformity.
I am now deeply wary of anything that smacks of an “—ism”, and yes, I include any broad submission to whatever happens to be calling itself Stoicism at the moment.
Seneca does not wish for Lucilius to idolize him, but rather to recognize him as just another man who is striving, day by day, to make himself wiser and better. All of us are works in progress, even those who are old and gray, and none of us have a monopoly on the truth, especially those who find themselves dabbling in philosophy.
For every new insight, there will be many more errors. For each step forward, there will be so much awkward stumbling. While I must listen and learn from what others have discovered, I am, in the end, going to have to form my own judgments.
I must not permit myself to be tricked by the pushy dictates of those who turn philosophy into a battle for petty dominance—that way lies sophistry. I will occupy myself quietly while they squabble over footnotes and pronunciations.
Along with my weakness for hoarding books, I have also found myself inclined to becoming intellectually captivated by a certain personality or ideology. As much as I might believe this makes me stronger, it really just reduces me to being a lackey.
However charming or attractive someone might appear to me, let me not confuse his image with the fullness of the truth. In my early graduate classes, I was taken aback by the almost universal adoration for the German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, and how we were absolutely forbidden to question his brilliance.
I would smirk and roll my eyes, until I realized I was doing much the same with my hero worship of Thomas Aquinas, convinced that the Angelic Doctor could do no wrong. I was no better, for I had merely turned to an alternative philosophical infatuation.
It is no different with a blind obedience to this or that school of thought, which at the very best takes on the properties of a tribal loyalty, and at the very worst is twisted into a cultish conformity.
I am now deeply wary of anything that smacks of an “—ism”, and yes, I include any broad submission to whatever happens to be calling itself Stoicism at the moment.
Seneca does not wish for Lucilius to idolize him, but rather to recognize him as just another man who is striving, day by day, to make himself wiser and better. All of us are works in progress, even those who are old and gray, and none of us have a monopoly on the truth, especially those who find themselves dabbling in philosophy.
For every new insight, there will be many more errors. For each step forward, there will be so much awkward stumbling. While I must listen and learn from what others have discovered, I am, in the end, going to have to form my own judgments.
I must not permit myself to be tricked by the pushy dictates of those who turn philosophy into a battle for petty dominance—that way lies sophistry. I will occupy myself quietly while they squabble over footnotes and pronunciations.
—Reflection written in 2/2013
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