14 September 2005

What's the Use?

I like to begin lectures in ancient philosophy with something I learned from Aristotle, namely, I give some of the reasons why someone might want to study the subject.

I'm interested in whether others do the same and, if so, what you say. I've had a longer and a shorter list. This year, I mentioned three things:

1. The study of ancient philosophy helps us to know ourselves better, and this in two ways: (i) where we are like the ancients, because we have inherited something from them (and this will be frequent), then, by becoming aware of that inheritance, we can deal with it critically, and either accept it deliberately or reject it, accordingly; (ii) where we are unlike and differ from the ancients, then we are faced with the usually fruitful problematic of 'ancient vs. modern' (which Strauss rightly took to be important); this challenges us to see things in a new way, a way which very often proves to be intelligent, but which we could not have anticipated or conceived of beforehand; also it helps us to transcend the tyranny or bias of the present moment, by which we take what is recent to be ipso facto better.

2. The study of ancient philosophy helps us to develop those habits of thought, argument and speech which constitute civility. The ancients, and especially Plato, with the example he sets in his dialogues, and his explicit remarks on 'refuting and being willing to be refuted', teach us how to examine difficult and important matters, together--and with reasonability, tact, and a sense of humor.

3. Finally, it just might happen (shockingly) that the ancients are worth studying because they at times say something that is importantly true--and that we would likely not find this truth any other way.

But what would you add? What, perhaps, do you add?


Sam Rickless said...

4. Ancient philosophers thought about the most important questions, ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical (What makes for a good life? What is justice? What can we know, and how do we know it? What is the world made of? Why do things have the properties they do?) with a distinctive methodology, involving deductive arguments of remarkable rigor. To think like the ancients is to think that questions of fundamental philosophical importance can be solved by using logic, rather than by following superstition or authority.

Michael Pakaluk said...


I agree with the first part of your statement, about their embracing rigorous arguments, but not with the second, viz. that this went along with a wholesale rejection of 'superstition' or 'authority'. I'll try to explain this in a post.