The Political Vocation of Philosophy. Donatella Di Cesare

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СКАЧАТЬ Fifth-century BC Athens aspired to the beautiful and to the clear. This anticipates a tópos that will recur frequently throughout this text: for just as what is beautiful is not useful, the sophía to which philosophers aspire evades any criterion of usefulness.

If for Thucydides philosophy was a peculiar prerogative of the Greeks, for Plato and for Aristotle it distinguishes humanity itself. All aspire to that knowledge of knowledges, to that non-knowledge which can provide the only basis for wisdom. Plato specifies its origin: thaumázein.³ To philosophise is, first of all, to look around oneself in wonderment, to interrogate, marvelled. More than an action, it is something one experiences. It is, therefore, a páthos, a passion whose hold one cannot escape. Whoever philosophises is ineluctably bewildered. And the inverse is also true: who does not feel bewildered cannot philosophise. The beginning is not a beginning, like when one sets some action going. For páthos is something one experiences: it comes from outside, is produced by another. What bursts into one’s field of vision is surprising, extraordinary, it has no place in the ordinary; it leaves everything out of sorts. Yet the philosopher passively allows herself to be taken away by marvel at what she has around her, which strikes and disconcerts her, in a crescendo. She does not remain stubbornly impassive, coldly indifferent. On the contrary, she is aghast. For what previously seemed obvious to her no longer is. At a stroke, all her certainties melt away and everything wobbles. A certain malaise is inevitable, here. The páthos of philosophy is a passion. It consists of allowing oneself to be disoriented. It is wonder that drives the desire to know, but this wonder itself serves to debunk the knowledge that has been learned (see Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982b).

      But is this not, at least in part, also the approach followed by those who study nature? Such an objection seems more than justified. Aristotle describes the procedure followed by the scientist who, once he has arrived at understanding, frees himself from wonderment. But if this also applied to philosophy, then philosophy would itself end as soon as that destination had been reached. This conception prevails among those who see philosophy as, at most, a duplicate of science. Moreover, for them it is a duplicate that becomes ever more useless as science makes progress. At root, even the scientist stands bewildered faced with whatever unknowns he runs into. But what grips him is not passion, but rather his curiosity. He does not yet understand, but readies himself to observe, to survey, to examine. The Greeks termed theoría that contemplation of things which accompanies wonder.

The philosopher and the scientist would seem to advance in tandem, brought together by a shared wonder, a shared theory. Both stumble across something which they find striking, and which they thus try to observe. But the similarity stops there. For the scientist, the surprising represents a problem that can be resolved through method, on the basis of already acquired results, with a view to a more extensive understanding of the object, its qualities, its substance.

      For the philosopher, too, wonder is connected to theoría. Surprised, she hones her sights. It is thus wonder that makes things visible. The philosopher – who is certainly not lacking in senses – opens her eyes. But philosophy demands that the eyes, having been opened, are then closed in order to allow for that singular way of seeing that is thought. Whoever philosophises closes her eyes and takes a step back in order to gather her thoughts, to avoid distraction.

      Yet philosophy is not characterised by this marvelled turn toward some thing. Rather, what characterises it is the conversion of a gaze directed toward some theme which is at the basis of the disconcertment. Thus, the philosopher remains faithful to her wonder – which is radical, just like the question she poses. This consternation runs through all the Platonic dialogues and culminates, so to speak, in the embarrassment of not even knowing what is this I who does not know. Philosophy springs precisely from this embarrassment, which shakes whoever philosophises.

      Science follows a straight path – one which, leaving behind it the surprising, the strange and the disconcerting, proceeds toward the disenchantment of the world. One obstacle after another falls down, while the understanding grows. Such is the progress of science. Philosophy does not follow this course. Still less does it settle – as some would claim – for providing a justification for science’s approach. Therefore, anyone who suggests that philosophy’s task lies in an accumulation of understanding, in the endeavour to justify scientific concepts, methods and aims or to offer some ‘ultimate foundation’ for them, misses the target.

Philosophy does not come after science – it precedes it. It is already there, at the beginning. It has a much vaster dominion – a varied, blurry, jagged landscape of arduous ascents, of a series of turning points and switchbacks, where paths can suddenly break off. Even if she does make it to the top, whoever philosophises finds no satisfaction in the understanding she did not have before, in the solution to the problem. Rather, she is even more troubled and tormented, because from atop that promontory, which she imagined to be a lofty summit, she more clearly sees everything that is in the dark. And yet she continues on, troubled and perturbed. The philosopher’s wonder is not naive. It is not satisfied by seeing some previously unknown thing which she finally seems able to grasp. Hers is an intensified wonder, almost another passion. Why is there something and not nothing?

      Thus, the philosopher’s path is anything but a straight line. On closer inspection, it is not even an outward journey, but a return home. Once the gaze has turned away from things which it leaves up to science, it curves, turns, folds in a different direction, to focus in on questions which are and will remain both ultimate and primary. This veering move can be called reflection, a change of course which reawakens from dreamlike sleep.

      This path of return proceeds from the aporia of non-knowledge and heads toward clarity. But it never truly arrives at this destination, since whatever is sought hides and draws further away. It is on the philosopher’s path that there comes into view the limit proper to human finitude, the limit of a mortal existence unable to tie the end to the beginning. Understanding the whole is precluded. How, then, can one not aspire to clarity, not desire it, love it? Hence why the Greek phileîn assumes such a decisive role in Plato, in indicating philosophy (see Symposium, 203b-204b). Love is a passion far more overwhelming than wonder, and it ends up supplanting it. Or rather, sophía itself is subordinated to philía. For what matters is the outburst of desire, the unstoppable restlessness, the misery, which together make philosophy into a vocation.

Notes

      1 1. See Plato, Lysis 218a-b; Symposium, 204a; Phaedrus, 278d.

      2 2. In Thomas Hobbes’s translation.

      3 3. See Plato, Theaetetus, 155d; Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a 21–982a 3. On this theme, see Jeanne Hersch, L’étonnement philosophique: une histoire de la philosophie, Paris: Gallimard, 2017.

6 Between heavens and abysses

      On a night when the face of the heavens seemed brighter than ever, an astronomer who ventured out to watch the stars each night ended up falling into a well. Such was the story as Aesop told it in one of his Fables (65). But there are also other versions of this anecdote. The most famous is that offered by Plato, who has Thales of Miletus instead of the astronomer.

The doxography has only scant knowledge of Thales. The founder of the Ionian school and a citizen of Miletus, ‘after politics’ – Diogenes Laërtius writes – he dedicated himself to the study of natural phenomena (I, 23-A1). He discovered new constellations, inspected the movements of the stars, calculated solstices and equinoxes; he must have been a talented geometrist, indeed, if he really managed to measure the height of a pyramid on the basis of the shadow it cast. He was perhaps the first to consider the soul immortal. Obscure – and controversial – is his connection with the hylozoistic doctrines that saw ‘life’, zoé, in all ‘matter’, húle. It seems that, when he observed a piece of amber or a magnet, Thales recognised a certain ‘soul’ СКАЧАТЬ