August 10, 2004
Conversation Spreads
Phil at Umbrae Canarum linked to this long meditation on why serious conversation is important and valuable:
Let's get back to the question of whether serious discussion (which as you can see I equate with philosophy) is mere vanity. Why persist in this leisured sport that no one else understands? The answer has to be what Strauss called "natural right" -- that this activity is the (or, conceivably, a) fulfillment of our nature as human beings. For Socrates, I think, one was simply not a man unless one was a philosopher: "The unexamined life is not livable for a human being"; dwellers in the metaphorical cave of the Republic appear to the man above-ground to be shades of the dead. We have to do this because it is what we are meant to do; our happiness (in the strong sense) depends on it.
This line of thought reminds me of various defenses of art. Why do we feel the need to defend these things at all? Weren't they once universally recognized as important and necessary for a good life? Are we all just paranoid? Sadly, I don't think so. As "simplify" was Thoreau's watchword, our age's might be "trivialize." I blame tv.
Phil makes a good point when he points out how the Greeks saw philosophy as analagous to hunting--an activity requiring skill that fostered intellectual (as opposed to martial) skills. The battle to be fought is not so much whether philosophy and art are directly beneficial to society, but rather whether they are better leisure activities than what is dominant today. Where, for example, are the Great Books clubs that we had in the 50s? Where are the Progressive luncheons and weekly meetings? What chances do ordinary citizens have to get together and test their intellectual skills and develop intellectual curiosities?
We have to face the possibility that we are a society that is devaluing systematic and serious intellectual reflection, and that this could have huge consequences.
...Agreed Ludwig, while at the same time universities and their graduates continue to grow in number and percent of population. A strange correlation, don't you think?
I have my theories...