Ideas worth sharing
03/06/16 05:11
Philosophers know that when it comes to quotes from ancient Greeks, it is a bit difficult to discern which came from specific individuals and which came from schools of thought. We often quote Socrates, for example, but Socrates wasn’t a writer. It isn’t as if we have volumes of Socratic writings from which to draw quotes for translation. Most of what we know of Socrates comes from the writings of Plato. Plato’s Apology describes the trial and death of Socrates. The charges were impiety and corrupting youth. The sentence was death. It is from that Apology that we gained the famous Socratic quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates believed that the love and pursuit of wisdom was the highest value of life. He believed that wisdom could be pursued through questioning logical arguments, examining every thought and idea and by thinking deeply not only about actions but also about motivations. His influence was fairly widespread. Even after his death there were many others who attempted to follow the Socratic examination of life. From a Socratic perspective, philosophy - the love of wisdom - is the discipline of examining life.
Socrates, I believe, would be dismayed at the state of education in the United States today. Primarily vocation-oriented, the so-called “hard” sciences have taken precedence over less technical subjects such as languages, liberal arts, psychology, sociology, philosophy and theology. This stands in contrast to the founding days of American higher education, when philosophy was a discipline applied to all studies. The philosophy of science, for example was required to be studied by those pursuing degrees in biology or chemistry of physics. Things have changed. The rush to create more engineers for the rapidly growing computer industry has resulted with graduates who have excellent technical skills, but who rarely ask questions about why they do a particular job or the meaning of their contributions to society or the ethics of business practices. When those questions arise they discover that there was little in their college education to provide them resources for wrestling with those questions. It seems that unexamined lives abound in today’s world.
Of course, although I have studied philosophy and theology and the history of philosophy, it is presumptuous and perhaps inaccurate to claim knowledge of the thoughts of Socrates. And even if I am correct in my speculation about Socratic thought, the question of the relevance of such to today’s educational scene remains. Still there is great value in ideas and concepts that have been around for thousands of years. Ancient thoughts have endured the test of time and been refined by generations. Despite the rapid advance of the technical sciences, it remains true that there are a few great ideas that require multiple thinkers and generations of careful analysis. There are a few great ideas that cannot be fully examined by a single individual in a single lifetime.
Socrates’ ideas about death, then, become quite interesting, because his death became the impetus for a new generation of Socratic thinkers. His ideas endured beyond his death and were refined by subsequent generations of thinkers.
The Quaker educator, Parker Palmer, took that Socratic notion and turned it inside out in a 2015 graduation address at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He said, “If the unexamined life is not worth living, it’s equally true that the unloved life is not worth examining.” His challenge to those young adults was clear. He was inviting them to open themselves to the grandeur and glory of life: to pursue their passions and chase their curiosities and risk dangers in order to be fully alive. The philosopher Sam Keene put it differently, “The goal is to die only at the end of your life,” by which he meant that one needs to have been fully alive in order to make death meaningful.
I have become convinced that it is an important task for all human beings, regardless of their ages, to become aware of our mortality. Our lives do not go on forever. Our time is limited. The choices we make about how we invest that time are critical. Hope, generosity, and gratitude are possible only when we open our lives and refuse to take the gifts of life for granted. An awareness that each of us will one day die is key to understanding the precious value of being alive.
Unlike famous thinkers like Palmer and Keene, I am unlikely to be invited to deliver a graduation address. I doubt that many graduates are in a position to focus intently and deeply learn from a graduation speech anyway. In my encounters with young adults who are graduating and facing other significant moments of their lives, however, I have become convinced that one role I can play is to remind them that suffering and death are realities in this life. Their journey will be deeper and more meaningful if they learn to accept suffering and develop ways of dealing with it rather than avoiding it and directing it at others when it arises. Similarly, their lives will be richer and their contributions to the world more significant if they live with an awareness of the reality of death and the precious value of life.
I’m not exactly sure how to best communicate these ideas to young people. Most of the youth with whom I work these days are headed to college in the pursuit of technical degrees and won’t be registering for the few philosophy courses that remain in contemporary Universities. Many of them won’t engage religious thinking on a level even as deep as their confirmation classes for decades. So I look for moments that occur naturally in the course of their lives. The death of a grandparent, a tragic accident, an unexpected illness - these become moments of informal teaching and invitations to engage deeper thinking. The role of the pastor in such events is to bring comfort, to be sure, but I believe it reaches deeper as well. We have been called to teach in all settings and occasions. As a teacher I can at least point out and give words to the realities of their experiences in critical moments.
In each generation there are a few lives that are both examined and fully lived. I trust that will be true of those who are coming into adulthood in the present. We may not be the most skilled at sharing wisdom with those who are younger. But there are a few great ideas and a few great concepts that are worth passing on. The truly great ideas belong not only to the past, but to the future as well.
Socrates believed that the love and pursuit of wisdom was the highest value of life. He believed that wisdom could be pursued through questioning logical arguments, examining every thought and idea and by thinking deeply not only about actions but also about motivations. His influence was fairly widespread. Even after his death there were many others who attempted to follow the Socratic examination of life. From a Socratic perspective, philosophy - the love of wisdom - is the discipline of examining life.
Socrates, I believe, would be dismayed at the state of education in the United States today. Primarily vocation-oriented, the so-called “hard” sciences have taken precedence over less technical subjects such as languages, liberal arts, psychology, sociology, philosophy and theology. This stands in contrast to the founding days of American higher education, when philosophy was a discipline applied to all studies. The philosophy of science, for example was required to be studied by those pursuing degrees in biology or chemistry of physics. Things have changed. The rush to create more engineers for the rapidly growing computer industry has resulted with graduates who have excellent technical skills, but who rarely ask questions about why they do a particular job or the meaning of their contributions to society or the ethics of business practices. When those questions arise they discover that there was little in their college education to provide them resources for wrestling with those questions. It seems that unexamined lives abound in today’s world.
Of course, although I have studied philosophy and theology and the history of philosophy, it is presumptuous and perhaps inaccurate to claim knowledge of the thoughts of Socrates. And even if I am correct in my speculation about Socratic thought, the question of the relevance of such to today’s educational scene remains. Still there is great value in ideas and concepts that have been around for thousands of years. Ancient thoughts have endured the test of time and been refined by generations. Despite the rapid advance of the technical sciences, it remains true that there are a few great ideas that require multiple thinkers and generations of careful analysis. There are a few great ideas that cannot be fully examined by a single individual in a single lifetime.
Socrates’ ideas about death, then, become quite interesting, because his death became the impetus for a new generation of Socratic thinkers. His ideas endured beyond his death and were refined by subsequent generations of thinkers.
The Quaker educator, Parker Palmer, took that Socratic notion and turned it inside out in a 2015 graduation address at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He said, “If the unexamined life is not worth living, it’s equally true that the unloved life is not worth examining.” His challenge to those young adults was clear. He was inviting them to open themselves to the grandeur and glory of life: to pursue their passions and chase their curiosities and risk dangers in order to be fully alive. The philosopher Sam Keene put it differently, “The goal is to die only at the end of your life,” by which he meant that one needs to have been fully alive in order to make death meaningful.
I have become convinced that it is an important task for all human beings, regardless of their ages, to become aware of our mortality. Our lives do not go on forever. Our time is limited. The choices we make about how we invest that time are critical. Hope, generosity, and gratitude are possible only when we open our lives and refuse to take the gifts of life for granted. An awareness that each of us will one day die is key to understanding the precious value of being alive.
Unlike famous thinkers like Palmer and Keene, I am unlikely to be invited to deliver a graduation address. I doubt that many graduates are in a position to focus intently and deeply learn from a graduation speech anyway. In my encounters with young adults who are graduating and facing other significant moments of their lives, however, I have become convinced that one role I can play is to remind them that suffering and death are realities in this life. Their journey will be deeper and more meaningful if they learn to accept suffering and develop ways of dealing with it rather than avoiding it and directing it at others when it arises. Similarly, their lives will be richer and their contributions to the world more significant if they live with an awareness of the reality of death and the precious value of life.
I’m not exactly sure how to best communicate these ideas to young people. Most of the youth with whom I work these days are headed to college in the pursuit of technical degrees and won’t be registering for the few philosophy courses that remain in contemporary Universities. Many of them won’t engage religious thinking on a level even as deep as their confirmation classes for decades. So I look for moments that occur naturally in the course of their lives. The death of a grandparent, a tragic accident, an unexpected illness - these become moments of informal teaching and invitations to engage deeper thinking. The role of the pastor in such events is to bring comfort, to be sure, but I believe it reaches deeper as well. We have been called to teach in all settings and occasions. As a teacher I can at least point out and give words to the realities of their experiences in critical moments.
In each generation there are a few lives that are both examined and fully lived. I trust that will be true of those who are coming into adulthood in the present. We may not be the most skilled at sharing wisdom with those who are younger. But there are a few great ideas and a few great concepts that are worth passing on. The truly great ideas belong not only to the past, but to the future as well.