Hans Jonas wrote: ‘the common secular culture was increasingly affected by a mental polarization in religious terms, leading finally to a breaking up of the former unity into exclusive camps.’ Do his words strike a chord? Do they seem to be describing the times that we are currently living in?

Actually he was writing not about our time but about conditions in Western Civilization that lasted throughout that period of time that saw the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It all started with the conquest of Alexander the Great, when the culture of Greece was exported to the entire Western world. One culture became the dominant worldview; Greek cultural influences were all-pervasive. This was a time of large urbanization and pouring into those urban settings were the displaced millions, due to war and conquest. So many people were uprooted from their place of birth, physically and spiritually. The old ways were failing or so it seemed, since old nations and old religions failed to protect. People felt a need for a new sense of meaning to fill the void that once was filled by their prior lives that had been shattered.

What happened back then was called the Hellenization of the Western World. What has been happening in our times is a comparable set of circumstances. We are experiencing the ‘conquest’ of our planet by one culture and this is resulting in a Corporate-Market-Driven-Americanization of the world. The response to this cultural conquest in our times is similar to the response people had in their time to the conquest of Alexander the Great.

Jonas states in his book that the turmoil caused by the Hellenistic conquest gave rise to the Gnostic answer: the Gnostic religions that were prevalent across the Western Hellenized World.

The word Gnostic is from the Greek word for knowledge. In this context it is being used to describe a special kind of knowledge concerning a view of the world. This special knowledge is of a secretive revelation that brings salvation. The gnostic map described the world as one filled with chaos, confusion, uncertainty, despair, pain and unrelenting suffering in large and small ways; a world that did not feel right, a world in which those values and beliefs of childhood that once made sense and felt right, no longer did. A world without the feeling of certainty and the comfort of one’s childhood beliefs and values was a world without meaning. The Gnostic view of life described the world as being a place of Hell, a place of entrapment that one has been thrown into.

The Gnostics believed they saw ‘life as it is’ and called it a Hell that they were trapped in. They did not believe that one could conceive of a ‘life as it should be’ – there was no hope for the ‘reality’ of life as they believe it to be. They could only imagine one alternative to the life they envisioned. They wished for release from this life through abandonment and escape from this Earthly and material coil.

I wish to offer an alternative to these ideas of withdrawal, escape and abandonment.

"The value of philosophy is… to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find…that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect." Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy, p. 157

 

What is a philosopher?  A ‘true’ philosopher is not a seeker of wisdom, is not a thinker about wisdom, is not an expert in wisdom, is not a writer about the subject of wisdom, is not one who analyzes data – a true philosopher may be involved in all of these tasks but that is not her true essence.  To understand what it means to truly be a philosopher we must consider the words origin.

The word itself is of Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), a compound of φίλος (phílos: friend, or lover) and σοφία (sophía: wisdom).  The term has been considered to be one coined by the ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras.  Although Socrates did not coin the term he is who I associate with as embodying the meaning of the word – he is and was a lover of wisdom.

A philosopher is first and foremost a lover.  A lover is someone who is passionate about her beloved, and in this case the beloved is wisdom.  Wisdom is imagined as and is personified in human form as: Sophia.  The word philosopher metaphorically ascribes the relationship of love between two human beings to that of the relationship of a person with wisdom.

A true philosopher is one who loves with both the mind and a body consumed with the passion and desire to be with, understand, share, know, touch, taste, join with and be consumed by her beloved.  For Socrates, as Plato presents his thoughts, love, the Greek word he uses is Eros, is a continuum of emotions and responses.  According to Socrates one could be passionately in love with someone and yet not desire to physically / sexually consummate that relationship, a love of a friend or comrade could be a non-physical / non sexual but passionate loving relationship.  For Plato’s Socrates Eros is in its underlying essence the attraction of and the desire for Beauty.  Through the pursuit of and the finding of Beauty one discovers also the True and the Good.  The passionate and physical consummation of that Eros can give birth to the beautiful in the form of a child, and that passion can also give birth to a metaphoric child in the form of the artful expression and manifestation of beauty.

To know if you are in the presence of a true philosopher listen to her metaphors – do you hear therein the metaphors of love – sexual and the non-sexual language of love?  Another way to know if you are in the presence of a true philosopher is to inquire into her sex and love life.  Does she even have a lover?  How does she treat him/her?  A true lover, honors, cherishes, respects, cares for, shares with, longs for, desires, etc., their beloved.  A true lover listens to their beloved and learns to see the world through their eyes, and very soul.  A true lover is a unity of two people in the most intimate and most profound manner possible between human beings, although as Plato/Socrates noted, this Eros need not be physically consummated, but it will be physically expressed.

A thinker, whose metaphors are those of the mind alone, detached from and devoid of references to the body can not be a lover.  One can not truly love another without a body.  A lover is one who joyfully and fully embraces their body and the feelings and emotions it stirs.  Lovers connect through their bodies with their beloved – that contact is a continuum from the chaste touch, holding, embrace and kiss, to the more ardent touching, holding embracing, kissing, suckle, caress, fondle, gaze upon, and ultimate joining with the other in that bliss of full intimate physical union.

One can be a lover and be celibate.  For example, there are nuns and monks who have been labeled mystics – their love and passion posses them – but they do not and have not consummated that love and passion.  Their words speak out with the metaphors of love and passion – they feel it to the depths of their soul – these are rare individuals who manage to be lovers without the physical consummation of that love.

But, there have been many who claimed to be, or are said to be philosophers – but these are passionless and disembodied beings, men and women cut off from their bodies, their feelings and emotions - those who are mere pretenders.  They are thus not truly capable of being passionate lovers and thus are not truly philosophers.  Be wary of the words and teachings of passionless thinkers.