What does it mean to live “in philosophy”? It does not mean leaving reality behind to escape it, taking refuge in concepts that isolate us from the world and others… it is a journey through life. Perhaps a little apart, it’s true, in which doubt and questions about what seemed obvious often arise and challenge us. But this is so that we can ultimately be closer to people, to things, to ourselves. Living with a sense of philosophical unease is perhaps living better.

Where does this strange thing called philosophy come from, and these strange people called philosophers? And why should they have any value in our lives? And why should we love them?

I believe that the origin lies, of course, in what characterizes us as human beings: the symbolic function, the ability to name things, to conceptualize them, and above all… to love doing so. It is a vital need linked to human relationships, coming just after the need to drink, eat, and keep warm. Look at how it works with children: they love words, they thirst for them. Without them, it would be impossible to grow up. The world opens up to them as they learn from others to name it and, at the same time, to give it meaning. We see this clearly in the extraordinary story of Helen Keller in Alabama in the late 19th century. Blind, deaf, and mute, she was isolated in a thick darkness until the age of seven. Then a new teacher came into her life and introduced her to the manual alphabet. After a few weeks, a miracle occurred: she understood not how to ask for water when she was thirsty (she already knew how to do that very well), but how to name it, how to evoke it mentally, how to think it. The vast landscape of the mind opened up to her forever, never to close again. Amazement, joy, a second birth… Welcome to the world, Helen1 !

Philosophy is simply the adult development of this brilliant human capacity, as brilliant and necessary as breathing, walking, seeing, singing… Musicians, dancers, painters, athletes, each develops a specific capacity, and we feed on what they have made of it. Philosophers are those who conceptualize reality in order to better understand it, live it, and seek the truth. That’s how it works with humans, otherwise we suffocate and lose ourselves, as under dictatorships for whom the prohibition of thought is an indispensable foundation for their desire for absolute power.

Philosophers, then. I see their philosophies as countries they have drawn and mapped out with their concepts, which we can explore in turn. They have understood something about human existence like no one before them, and they spend their lives expressing it. In this, they are precious to us. For perhaps we will be able to inhabit this country (Sartre draws the country of the absurd, St. Augustine that of faith, Kant that of Reason…), recognize our own life experience, more fulfilled, clearer. Or, on the contrary, say to ourselves, “No, for me it’s very different, I don’t understand this way of thinking, why does he say that?” Let’s try to see… Thus, thanks to philosophy, we are more aware of ourselves, more coherent, but also more capable of understanding others, those who love a country that is inhospitable to us, but which nevertheless represents another way of seeing reality, of analyzing it; and we would be cutting ourselves off from a whole world by rejecting it.

If the founder of philosophy walked the streets of Athens saying, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing,” it is because the truth about reality is never fully revealed, never absolute, never definitive. For we are not God, who is beyond all concepts, and we can never think perfectly about reality. But if I learn to explore all these philosophical planets, I will be more open to my fellow human beings, I will be a better person. Gide said, “Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it.” What a magnificent Socratic injunction!

I am a special needs teacher for students with motor disabilities or serious illnesses, and at the school where I taught, we held philosophy cafés. We debated classic philosophical problems: freedom, God, other people, happiness… I had students whose lives were sometimes very short, just the time of their youth, sadly. But despite the practical difficulties (getting around, speaking, moving…), they came to the philosophy café, they felt it was their natural place, just to freely express this vital capacity: the joy of thinking, the joy of reflecting together, of exchanging ideas, of listening and being listened to. And I loved bringing the corresponding philosophical echo to their debates: what you think is what Aristotle shows, what Epicurus or Sartre says. It has value; for them, it is the truth. Because thought is both particular and universal.

I remember, during a philosophy café on freedom, a young girl in a wheelchair who couldn’t walk or speak loudly and could only move very slightly. She said in a weak voice: “I find my freedom in writing (she could operate a digital keyboard), which is why I say that my freedom is not something to come: I am already completely free… Because when I write that I walk, I walk.”

These young people were not only students to me, but also teachers, because they placed the life of the mind and the authenticity of the person in their rightful place. If philosophy enabled them to experience the joy of reflection, I in turn was able to experience the joy of being a philosophy teacher.

I wish you all this joy of thought!

Footnotes

  1. See R. Ruyer, L’homme l’animal, la fonction symbolique. See also Arthur Penn’s film, The Miracle Worker (1962).[↩]