Pizza and philosophy make for a good combination.
You might want to try it sometimes. I occasionally
have these evenings of food for the brain and
the stomach with a few friends, some of them actual
philosophers, some simply willing to explore and
question whatever topic was chosen for the gathering.
These discussions occasionally offer me the launching
point for one of these columns, as in the case
of the “Red or Blue?” one on the rationality
of preferring harsh truths to pleasant lies (Rationally
Speaking n. 9, April 2001). Recently our group
met again to discuss what one could refer to as
“the dark side of philosophy.” The starting
question is simple: if philosophy is, as the ancient
Greeks called it, the “love of wisdom,”
should we expect practicing philosophers to be—on
average—more wise than the layperson?
While the question smacks of intellectualism
of the worst sort, it does make sense. After all,
we do expect medical doctors to know more about
medicine and scientists to know more about the
natural world than the average Jane, so why not
philosophers? Ah, but of course this is the crux
of the problem: does philosophy yield knowledge
in a sense comparable to the one that we associate
with medicine or science?
While most people would be skeptical of the claim
that there is such thing as philosophical knowledge,
many philosophers (and some well-informed outsiders)
seem convinced that the notion is not entirely
ludicrous. For example, it is common to encounter
ethicists who believe that not only philosophy
as a discipline, but humanity at large have actually
made progress in their view of morality, with
the current “advanced” notions being
virtue ethics (derived from Aristotle), utilitarianism
and some neo-Kantian version of deontology (“duty
ethics”).
Since this is not the focus, but the premise,
of this column, let us assume for the time being
that in fact philosophy provides at least in some
sense knowledge of a variety of subject matters,
and let us spotlight ethics in particular. Then
we can proceed to ask if philosophers—on
average—are more ethical than the rest of
us. When I asked the question to my philosopher
friends they couldn’t avoid a sarcastic smile,
as if the answer were clearly negative. Was it
just modesty, or can we find factual evidence
for this startling result?
If we look at modern biographies of some major
philosophers, we do not find much to rejoice.
Bertrand Russell was known to write love letters
to one mistress immediately after getting out
of the bed of another one. Then again, Russell
did defend a very liberal conception of love and
human relationships, so at least he was not being
incoherent. Wittgenstein had a bad temper and
once hit a young girl until her nose bled because
she didn’t understand logic. Such teaching
methods would not be condoned today, but Wittgenstein
was a logician, not a moral philosopher. Even
if one is willing to condemn this sort of actions,
this hardly amounts to an indictment of the teachings
of philosophy, not any more than discovering that
your doctor smokes or eats triple cheeseburgers
can be used as an excuse for dismissing his counsel
on diet.
And yet there is worse. Examples of philosophers
who have broken friendships over ideological differences
(like Camus and Sartre), or actively supported
evil political systems (like Heidegger and Nazism)
are not that difficult to find. On the other hand,
it is also true that these cases certainly do
not characterize the profession as a whole, and
that surely equally misguided choices can be abundantly
found among non philosophers. Furthermore, counter-examples
of virtuous (or at least coherent) philosophers
are also not rare. In modern times, the behavior
of ethicist Peter Singer comes to mind. Singer
is one of the founding fathers of the animal liberation
movement and, accordingly, is a vegetarian. He
also maintains that we are ethically bound to
share our wealth with the less fortunate, and
puts his money were his mouth is by giving away
to charities 30% of his academic salary. I am
not suggesting that Singer’s ideas are to
be embraced wholesale, but surely he cannot be
accused of not trying to live by his own philosophy.
Indeed, the philosopher par excellence, Socrates,
died at the hand of the Athenian state in order
to remain coherent with his view of justice. It
would certainly be interesting to conduct a sociological
study among philosophers to see how many actually
try to put into practice their own teachings or
those ideas that they consider as the best that
philosophical inquiry has afforded humanity.
The real dark side of philosophy, as is the case
for science, is largely outside the control of
philosophers (or scientists). I am referring to
the inappropriate use that ideologues and demagogues
make of philosophical doctrines (or scientific
discoveries) largely, though not necessarily entirely,
without the help of the philosophers themselves.
Perhaps the best example is the association between
the Nazi political movement and the German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche. While the latter’s ideas
about individualism and the power of the “super
man” may hint at a superficial relationship
with Hitler’s madness, it turns out that
even a cursory reading of the philosopher shows
that he was adamantly opposed to militarism, nationalism
and dictatorships—nothing could be further
from the structure of the Third Reich.
Along similar lines, of course, it is common
knowledge that most prominent communists have
been more Marxists than Marx (just as some evolutionary
biologists are more Darwinists than Darwin). Very
few philosophers have ever attempted to translate
their theories into political realities, Aristotle’s
nurturing of the young Alexander the Great and
Plato’s plans of influencing the tyrant of
Syracuse being among the scarce examples, and
little or no harm has ever derived from such utopian
attempts.
If there is a dark side to philosophy, therefore,
it is the same dark side of science and possibly
of other human endeavors: it consists in the misappropriation
by shrewd politicians of whatever can help their
own aims, and in the fact that the rest of us
let them get away with it for some time out of
ignorance and apathy. That is why it is so important
for everybody to learn about philosophy and science:
their consequences are too grave for being left
in the hands of the experts or in those of the
dishonest.
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