A recent communication with a colleague prompted a little meditation on the role of the perennial tradition of philosophy that has its roots with the Greek philosophers. They too had a keen sense of the human drama and the importance of philosophical wisdom. The early Christian thinkers gradually came to see a conjoining with the best of this philosophical tradition as providential. We can imagine a summary exchange as follows that pertains to the important social implications of how we use our reason and philosophy’s role in cultivating its proper use.
Background Note: the Sophists and their skepticism create a way of thinking that leads to the view that “might makes right” or “truth is subordinate to power” … this then has been a perennial problem for the human species.
Protagoras begins by arguing that we cannot distinguish appearance from reality, knowledge is relative to how things appear to each person. Truth is relative. Thus in a sense every view is true … (example: three blind persons and the elephant). We are all blind no one sees the whole elephant. We are closed off from the real amidst appearances.
Socrates asks, “But then … what about different points of view? How then should we behave, or how is it we raise our children to behave? Does everyone decide for him/herself?”
Protagoras: “No! We are to obey the conventions/rules of our society.”
Socrates: “Why? Because they are true?”
Protagoras: “No! Because of the need of civil order.”
Gorgias moves the argument from “every view is true” because no one knows the absolute truth, to “no view is true” because there is no truth. And if there was such, he says, no one could grasp it; and if we grasped it we couldn’t communicate it (with words).
Thrasymachus asserts that actually it is might that makes things right. The might (superiority) of rulers acting in their own interest makes them right and the authors of right.
Socrates asks, “Can they be wrong?”
Thrasymachus answers, “Well … yes. But then they are not acting as superior nor are they then acting in their own best interest.”
Socrates follows with the question, “But then by what ‘standard’ (measure) do we know whether we are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, or the author of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’?”
Comment: If one does not close oneself off from rational enquiry by way of skepticism or nihilism, this question naturally draws one further into the philosophical enquiry of Socrates and the Socratic tradition of philosophy, which of course leads into the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. This is the origin of the perennial tradition I have referred to.
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