I'll skip the introductions and jump right into my ideals. Besides, the best way to know someone is finding out what they believe they know.
In my ancient philosophy course at Baylor, we started the year with Hesiod and Homer. That is to say, we read enough of their works to know where they were coming from. We also got an introduction to David Roochnik, the author of our text book Retrieving the Ancients and found out what he thinks of Hesiod and his myths. Now I've only read the first 17 pages, but I think I'm going to like this Roochnik character. There is one big point that we both agree on, myths are not philosophy.
In his text Roochnik started off by saying that in the west, philosophy started with Thales because Thales correctly predicted an eclipse in 585. At first I was confused. What does an eclipse have to do with philosophy? If Thales had discovered the meaning of life he would have had something. As I read on and reflected on the reading it became clearer. Philosophy isn't just unknown questions, its answers too. Of course, unless you're in my head that last statement makes little sense, so I'll explain.
When I see the word philosophy I think of it in the today's sense which is finding answers to questions like "What it the reason for life?" or "What does it mean to be moral?" Basically, philosophy’s finding the answer to questions that don't seem to have answers. What I forget is that the unanswered questions of today are not the same as the questions of 585. Whereas today I would classify the cycle of solar eclipses as science back then it was a mystery. They didn't have NASA around to tell them it was simply the moon trying to upstage the sun, and I'm sure there were a whole lot of Homers and Hesiods around saying the gods are doing it. What separated Thales from the rest is that he didn't settle for some casual explanation. Anyone could take an afternoon to make up a story, say the Muses told them, and go on about their day. But Thales didn't. He went after the truth because he was a lover of truth, a lover of knowledge, a lover of wisdom. Now that we have the answer, it's easy to say that an eclipse falls under the rim of science, but back then it was just as perplexing as the meaning of life. As a question without an answer, it fell (and still falls) under philosophy. That's what I mean when I say philosophy is unknown questions AND answers because it includes the answers to questions previously unknown.
To bring my wondering mind back to the point of this post, I am a philosopher and not a storyteller because I, like Thales, search for truth. Homer and Hesiod were storytellers, Hesiod especially. For class we read lines 1-139 of Hesiod's Theogony. This guy starts off by saying that this story isn't his own, but rather it was given to him by the Muses. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but if someone's telling me a story and starts off by saying his beliefs are not his own, but something he heard from a mythical creature in the middle of a field somewhere, I'm thinkin' shady. To make it worse, these very same Muses told Hesiod they could be just as soon be lying as telling the truth. This is quintessential storytelling. Roochnik put it well when he wrote, "By invoking the Muses the poet [Hesiod] denies ultimate responsibility for, and therefore knowledge of, his own poem." It's as though Hesiod was adding that disclaimer you find at the front of fictional novels saying all of the characters of the story are the product of the author (the muses) whether or not they reflect the real world. Hesiod was simply the publisher.
The difference in a philosopher is there is no disclaimer. When a philosopher tells you something they are taking full responsibility over what they say, be it right or wrong. They don't feel a need to disconnect themselves from the belief by saying they heard it somewhere else because what their telling you isn't something they just made up. Where a storyteller comes up with an answer, a philosopher finds an answer. They search for what they want to know. Even when they think they have it right, they give their new found answer careful consideration and, if possible, testing before they share it. That's why when Thales predicted the eclipse he was christened a philosopher. It was obvious he had thought about and discovered the eclipse’s true cause as opposed to just coming up with something.
Every question won't be as black & white as "What is the cause of a solar eclipse?” Inquiries about the source of a person's moral or ethics for instance are quite gray. You can't determine if your answer is right by simply looking at the sky. So how does one consider and test these answers to ensure that they are philosophizing, and not just telling stories? By sharing what they know, without qualification. You know you're talking to a philosopher when they will willingly take responsibility for their answers and tell you where they're coming from. Not only that, but if you expose a flaw in their reasoning, their answer changes. Some people call this wishy-washy, but I call it smart. If you find out something you believe to be true is in fact not, why would you continue believing it? That's just stupid.
I end this post by saying, I am a Philosopher. What I post I have considered, if possible tested, and take full responsibility for. If you leave a comment that exposes a flaw in my thinking, I revise my thought and thank you for making me that much closer to the truth.
I'm Lily,and I like your point of saying "while storytellers come up with an answer,philosopher finds one".Thank you for sharing with us your philosophical inquiry. It seems that your major concern of philosophy lies in the ethical part, the meaning of morality and how to live a good life, since you mentioned for several times that some big questions are just not as simple as eclipse, but rather unanswerable most of time. I agree with you. Maybe one thing amazing and respectable about a philosopher is that he can provide us with ideas insightful and enlightening, though maybe not applicable to all circumstances. By the way, on the other hand, there is also philosophy of science which seek to reveal the basic knowledge and understanding of scientific analysis. Although we are now living in a world filled with fantastic modern technologies and science, there still remains bountiful of questions regarding the nature of scientific researches. Some revolutionary works by Popper and Kuhn are also interesting. Curiosity about both the external world and ourselves give rise to the work of philosophy.This is some of my little ideas after reading your post. I quite enjoy this reading experience. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWhitney,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I have a few thoughts, and would like to challenge one of your main claims.
You say that you are a philosopher and not a story-teller because you seek the truth. Is this fair? Doesn’t this view unfairly put truth on the side of philosophy, and falsehood on the side of story-telling? Here is one reason to think that stories do in fact give us access to truth.
Self-deception, for example, can often be dissolved through a story. And to be self-deceived is to be in the grip of some falsehood. To have it dissolved is to be given access to truth. Take the example of the biblical king David. He was blind to the moral abhorrence of his voyeurism, adultery, and murder, until Nathan the prophet told him a story. It is precisely because the story was made-up that David’s self-deception collapsed at its close.
My point: stories often can, and do give us access to truth, and perhaps even in ways that philosophy may not be able to. This is only one example, but David’s experience is common enough to generate a rather large body of philosophical literature that studies the epistemic and moral psychological benefits that fictional stories can provide.
It also seems to me that many storytellers, at least contemporary writers, do take responsibility for their work, and have to stand by it in the face of critical response.
I do think there are significant differences between philosophical inquiry and story-telling, but I think Roochnik for one is unfair, and I suspect that we need to get beyond the notion that one is about truth and taking responsibility, while the other is not.
Thoughts? Thanks for a very thought-provoking post!
Lily,
ReplyDeleteYou are right in saying there are many ways to study philosophy. I'll admit that I am partial to ethical philosophy myself, but I can't deny that there is a philosophy of science as well as other majors. These deserve just as much respect and acknowledgment as ethical philosophy. Thanks for pointing that out.
Nathan,
I have given your argument some thought and you do make a good point. Stories can remove self-deception and offer social insights. I will concede to you point, but still feel a need to draw some distinction between story-telling and philosophizing.
I would say that in the situation with Nathan and David, the story was a sort of buffer for the harsher, more forward logic behind it. Nathan new if he came in with logos alone David would not listen as is often the case. Also sometimes logos alone is harder to understand than a story or metaphor. With that said I am willing to amend my earlier post and say that all story-telling is not, and can often aid in revealing the truth. Just the same, what Hesiod told was not an aid at the truth, but rather an attempted to give an answer without finding one first.
In response to your last part about some authors taking responsibility for their work, you are completely right. I shouldn’t have discounted every story-teller in the world so quickly. I fear the freedom of blogging might have gone to my head. :)
Thanks so much for your comments. I really enjoyed them.
Whitney,
ReplyDeleteI think you are right to say that some stories (i.e. Nathan's story to David) often have a logic behind it. One thing you might mean by this is that stories have propositional content woven into the artistic form itself. So one implicit proposition in Nathan's story might have been: "It is morally wrong to unjustly take possessions from a person." But, the story doesn't say WHY this is wrong, i.e. give a list of supporting reasons like we might expect from a philosophical account of the wrongness of such actions. So, here might be one difference between story-telling and a philosophical logos.
However, the larger question is how it is that we come to know the truth. Sometimes it is by giving some propositional statement, and then listing a number of supporting reasons for it. Other times it is by embedding a proposition in an imaginative story, whose embedding is supposed to make the proposition compelling by revealing something about ourselves or the world we live in. Either way, some access to truth is at least possible, as well as the potential for being led into falsity.
But on an even larger scale, it looks to me like both stories and logoi at some point can be reduced to some claim for which no reasons can be given. What reason, for instance, does the naturalistic scientist give for allowing ONLY natural explanations of various phenomena into his account? Only natural causes count, but if you ask a scientist why, they'll tell you a story! It's just a convention you have to accept if you want to be taken seriously as a scientist (but why, we could ask, should "being taken" seriously" be such a good thing? Give me a real reason!) In philosophy these often go by the title "basic beliefs," and the goal is to show how these are either self-evident or self-justifying (i.e. no reason, beyond telling a story, can be given for them).
So, maybe Hesiod, for instance, is telling a story much like philosophers (eventually) have to do, but he just doesn't go back far enough. For instance, what is the reason Justice (Zeus) embraces and allows the next generation to come into being? What does this acceptance of change say about justice itself? We are not told, but only expected to believe that justice is this way.
In either logos or mythos, it seems to me that story-telling is inevitable. So the question might be, HOW should we tell our stories in a way that is philosophically incisive and defensible, and not just engaging in throwing assertions about what we think at people? I don't know the answer here, but it's worth thinking about.
Well, just some random thoughts...