We ought, therefore, to have some faculty to guide us in life, as the assayer has in dealing with silver, that I may be able to say as he does, “Give me any drachma you please, and I will distinguish.”
Now I can deal with a syllogism and say, “Bring anyone you like, and I will distinguish between him who can analyze syllogisms and him who cannot.”
Why? Because I know how to analyze them: I have the faculty a man must have who is to recognize those who can handle syllogisms aright.
But when I have to deal with life, how do I behave? Sometimes I call a thing good, sometimes evil. And the reason is just this, that whereas I have knowledge of syllogisms, I have no knowledge or experience of life.
Now I can deal with a syllogism and say, “Bring anyone you like, and I will distinguish between him who can analyze syllogisms and him who cannot.”
Why? Because I know how to analyze them: I have the faculty a man must have who is to recognize those who can handle syllogisms aright.
But when I have to deal with life, how do I behave? Sometimes I call a thing good, sometimes evil. And the reason is just this, that whereas I have knowledge of syllogisms, I have no knowledge or experience of life.
—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.3
A good doctor knows how to heal, and a good lawyer knows how to argue, and a good carpenter knows how to build. What does a good philosopher know how to do? He ought to know how to judge human character, and yet that is sadly not what most philosophers do. They are too busy writing syllogisms, preferably of the sort that will get them published.
If, like me, you are familiar with the lofty world of academia, you will either be laughing or crying, perhaps both, along with me right now. We are all broken, in our own peculiar ways, but philosophers are especially broken, because they are meant to recognize both the best and worst in human nature, to be experts on virtue and vice, and instead they somehow sidestep their entire vocation.
What use is there to being fluent in Kant’s Categorical Imperative if I can’t actually treat another man as an end in himself, and never as a means? Where is the merit in pontificating about modus tollens and modus ponens if I am incapable of deducing that I should not hate my brother, but rather love him? I expect a priest to be a master of piety, and I expect a philosopher to at least be struggling toward righteousness.
Yes, you’re laughing or crying again, aren’t you?
I was once in a logic class where the professor would, for some odd reason, always use examples of arguments that involved adultery. It was only much later that I learned he had been sleeping with his teaching assistant.
Let me not be so busy with my syllogisms that I forget to use my power of reason to become a more decent man. It is good for me to distinguish between a proof that is valid or invalid, sound or unsound. It is even better for me to distinguish between a life that is ruled by integrity or fraud, by good or evil.
Simply put, if the philosopher can’t judge about his own moral worth, and thereby the moral worth of others, he isn’t a very good philosopher.
Okay, you can stop with the laughing and the crying now . . .
A good doctor knows how to heal, and a good lawyer knows how to argue, and a good carpenter knows how to build. What does a good philosopher know how to do? He ought to know how to judge human character, and yet that is sadly not what most philosophers do. They are too busy writing syllogisms, preferably of the sort that will get them published.
If, like me, you are familiar with the lofty world of academia, you will either be laughing or crying, perhaps both, along with me right now. We are all broken, in our own peculiar ways, but philosophers are especially broken, because they are meant to recognize both the best and worst in human nature, to be experts on virtue and vice, and instead they somehow sidestep their entire vocation.
What use is there to being fluent in Kant’s Categorical Imperative if I can’t actually treat another man as an end in himself, and never as a means? Where is the merit in pontificating about modus tollens and modus ponens if I am incapable of deducing that I should not hate my brother, but rather love him? I expect a priest to be a master of piety, and I expect a philosopher to at least be struggling toward righteousness.
Yes, you’re laughing or crying again, aren’t you?
I was once in a logic class where the professor would, for some odd reason, always use examples of arguments that involved adultery. It was only much later that I learned he had been sleeping with his teaching assistant.
Let me not be so busy with my syllogisms that I forget to use my power of reason to become a more decent man. It is good for me to distinguish between a proof that is valid or invalid, sound or unsound. It is even better for me to distinguish between a life that is ruled by integrity or fraud, by good or evil.
Simply put, if the philosopher can’t judge about his own moral worth, and thereby the moral worth of others, he isn’t a very good philosopher.
Okay, you can stop with the laughing and the crying now . . .
—Reflection written in 6/2001
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