Philosophy Begins in Wonder

SOCRATES: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher; for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d).

     Well, it depends on what a person means by philosophy. Socrates and Plato were at the beginning of a particular conception of philosophy, reflected in the very word they chose to express it: philosophy means “love of wisdom.” The word “philosophy” is still applied to frameworks used to interpret the world that originated with Descartes and Bacon, and the frameworks that originated with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Foucault. And there are the modes of interpreting the world that have grown out of the Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist, and Zoroastrian traditions – and many others. Those frameworks are so radically different from philosophy in its origin that they don’t really share the same concept – except perhaps all the frameworks involve interpretations of being as such (even the skeptical frameworks, for which Being is transcendent and unknowable). New words need to be coined for those other frameworks to avoid confusion. 

       But philosophy – the love of wisdom – is for me one distinct framework, one particular way to live and understand the world. Not one among others. It is more accurate to say these frameworks represent incompatible interpretations of life and the world than to say they represent different forms of loving wisdom, since many do not love wisdom; others believe it unobtainable and go off on other projects; still others believe that own wisdom, and thus have no need to seek it.

     Philosophy begins in wonder. Not in the knowledge that life is suffering, as does Buddhism. Not in an purported proof that knowledge of the most important things is impossible, as does empiricist thought (culminating in Kant and the early Wittgenstein). Not in the dogma that the material world is evil, as in Gnosticism. Not in the brave facing of the alleged truth that the universe is meaningless and violent, and the life of man, or of most men, would have been better not to have existed, as in Nietzsche. In wonder.

    Wonder over what? Mostly that which is beautiful and loveable. Children. Great art. The wonders of nature. Existence itself. The good and just person or the sublime act.

     Life is full of suffering and ugliness; of evil and dying – Buddha sure is right about that. Who but a fool can be blind to it? If this is all you can see, then, if you think it through, you will end up with Tolstoy, who wrote: “The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”

    But joy and wonder are also possible because with a little bit of luck it is not all suffering and ugliness, evil and death. Ugliness and suffering, evil and death are then only properly understood in the light of goodness, beauty, love, joy, and wonder. Philosophy begins in the faith (trust) that the latter are more revealing of Being than the former, and that evil, death, and suffering must be understood in light of what is good, true, and beautiful. How what human beings do to one another challenges that faith!

    To wonder leads to the desire to know (in a certain way). When you fall in love with someone, and are in the grip of that joy, you want to spend all your time with them and learn everything you can about them. The least detail seems full of significance. Not the kind of knowledge that science or the pseudo-science of psychology can give. Not even the “theoretical” knowledge that in some readings Plato and Aristotle sought – an outside kind of knowledge, a bloodless kind of knowledge; at worst, the kind of knowledge to need to have to gain power over what is known (as science gives certain individuals and organizations power over nature through engineering and technology). It is a very different kind of knowing, one that can never be ended because any object that inspires wonder by definition explodes the categories of finite understanding.

    What is loved is like a great book that we can read over and over again, and generations can read over and over again, and always find fresh new insights. Nature is experienced like that great book, but it exceeds by far the book that is but a small part of it in complexity and wonder.

    Wonder inspires love, and love reveals the Good and the Real. The wisdom that philosophy sought in its origin – Socrates himself is the main object of wonder in Plato, the reality and the wisdom that Plato seeks as a lover – is an ever-deepening, never-ending quest to get to know that which inspires love.