My (evolving) philosophy of life, and why it may help you too

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My (evolving) philosophy of life, and why it may help you too
Philosophy as a Way of Life14-17 minutes %published-time%


[image: Thales of Miletus, left, and Socrates of Athens, right, representing the two ways of doing philosophy]
I practice philosophy in two very different ways. On the one hand, I’m a professional, academic philosopher. I have a PhD in the field and write very technical articles on philosophy of science (here is a complete list), aimed at a narrow audience of similarly trained colleagues. There is nothing unusual about this, it’s just what academics, not only philosophers, do.

On the other hand, since a midlife crisis-triggered awakening back in 2014, I also practice philosophy as a way of life, particularly inspired by the Greco-Roman Hellenistic philosophies, especially Stoicism and Skepticism. In this sense, anyone can (and arguably should!) be a philosopher, no PhD required.

As it turns out, this dual way of philosophizing is as ancient as philosophy itself. We find the practice of philosophy as a type of inquiry into the nature of the world in Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher of the western tradition. Philosophy as a way of life, by contrast, is epitomized by Socrates, the gadfly of Athens. In the rest of this essay I wish to talk about my Socratic side, leaving my Thales-inspired one for another time.

For the first several years of my attempt at living philosophically I have practiced Stoicism. I needed the structure that it provides, as well as the feeling of working within a coherent system that includes specific doctrines and precepts. More recently I graduated (or so I look at it) to Skepticism, especially the type practiced by the Greek Carneades of Cyrene and the Roman Marcus Tullius Cicero. Their basic idea was that, following Socrates, we don’t really know much, if anything. At best we can make educated guesses about what appears more likely or persuasive. It follows that we should live life with an open mind, ready to change opinion if new arguments or evidence point in a different direction.

Practicing Skepticism for me is turning out to be even more difficult than practicing Stoicism. Think cold showers and fasting are challenging? Try being a naturally opinionated person who has to admit that his opinion could be, gasp!, wrong. And yet, I keep trying my best.

One of the disorienting, but at the same liberating, things about moving from a philosophical system, like Stoicism, to what can be more accurately described as a philosophical attitude, like Skepticism, is that suddenly one doesn’t have firm principles to hold on to or practical exercises to carry out any more. What then?

Eclecticism has the advantage of flexibility, but too much flexibility easily leads to rationalize whatever the hell one wishes to believe. That wouldn’t be philosophy anymore, it would be sophistry. Then again, Simone de Beauvoir [1] famously characterized the whole idea of philosophical systems as “lunacy,” which is hardly something to aspire to. So, how do I steer the course between the Scylla of sophistry and the Charybdis of lunacy?

What follows is a sketch not of my philosophical system, because I’m trying to pay heed to de Beauvoir, but rather of the tentative positions I currently hold in the spirit of Carneades and Cicero. Following the valuable approach of the Greco-Romans, I’m going to organize my exposition according to the classical three divisions of philosophy, as explained by Cicero while speaking specifically of Peripatetic education, but referring to a common feature shared by the Socratic schools (including Stoicism):

“Its arrangement, like that of most other systems, is threefold: one part deals with nature, the second with discourse, and the third with conduct.” (V.9)

The idea is that in order to learn how to live a good life (ethics), we need to understand how nature works (science), and we need to reason correctly (logic). I will treat the three disciplines in inverse order, which seems to me the most informative one.

I. Logic (i.e., sound reasoning)

As far as I can tell, in order to live a good life we don’t need access to sophisticated logic, but we are certainly helped by a bit of familiarity with the basics of what is called zero-order logic, also known as propositional calculus.

This may sound daunting, but what we are talking about is just knowledge of how true and false propositions can be related to each other, which includes understanding the construction of arguments. Now you may wonder why on earth someone would contend that logic is instrumental to the practice of the art of living. Here is how Epictetus put it:

“When one of his audience said, ‘Convince me that logic is useful,’ he said, Would you have me demonstrate it? ‘Yes.’ Well, then, must I not use a demonstrative argument? And, when the other agreed, he said, How then shall you know if I impose upon you? And when the man had no answer, he said, You see how you yourself admit that logic is necessary, if without it you are not even able to learn this much — whether it is necessary or not. (Discourses II, 25)

Besides propositional logic, I think it’s good to acquaint ourselves with the most common logical fallacies, both formal and informal, so called, as well as with the cognitive biases that underlie them. Not convinced? Consider that people literally die when they “reason” fallaciously, as we have been seeing, for instance, throughout the ongoing covid pandemic. Good thinking can save your life!

Part of logic in the broad sense of sound reasoning is also what philosophers call epistemology, i.e., a theory of knowledge. Epistemologically speaking, then, I think the two basic sources of all human knowledge are our senses and our reasoning faculty, both of which can be fallible.

From this observation follows the Skeptical position: since the way we gain knowledge is fallible we ought to consider all our knowledge as potentially fallible, and therefore not become too attached to any opinion, because we may sooner or later be compelled (by better reasoning or new empirical data) to change it.

In modern parlance, this is very similar to Bayesianism, the notion that our beliefs should vary in strength in proportion to the available evidence (a point already made by David Hume in the 18th century). Such beliefs then ought to be constantly updated on the basis of new evidence without ever reach either of the two walls of zero or one hundred percent. Why? Because belief touches either extreme it becomes impervious to further evidence. If you have absolute faith (100% belief) or absolute skepticism (zero belief) in any given notion, you will never change your mind, no matter what. You’ve become a bigot.

II. Science (i.e., how the world works)

The second thing a good practical philosopher needs to pay attention to is what the Greco-Romans called “physics,” from the Greek term for nature. Today we refer to it as science. (It helps me in particular that I am a professional scientist, but again, a PhD is certainly not needed for the level of understanding we are talking about here.)

In general, I’m inclined to believe that the world likely works in more or less the way science tells us it does. Of course, scientific knowledge is itself fallible and revisable — because it is simply a particular subset of human knowledge. Still, if science tells me that getting a vaccine is a good idea, I’ll do it, knowing of course that there is a (unequal) risk in both following and not following such advice.

At a broader level, I think the nature of reality is what fundamental physics says it is (no need for metaphysical speculation, thank you). Which means that we live in a universe governed by regularities that we somewhat pompously call laws of nature, that the cosmos is a set of dynamic processes connected by cause and effect, and that, again likely, there are no gods or supernatural phenomena.

Oh, and when we die that’s the end of our consciousness. And since our consciousness is how we experience things, there won’t be any more experiences. In other words, there won’t be any more me. As the Epicurean epitaph puts it:

I was not
I have been
I am not
I do not mind

III. Ethics (how to behave in the world)

Now let us get to the crux of the matter: the ethics. Sound reasoning and a basic understanding of reality are preliminary to the important question of how to live our lives.

The first thing to ponder is what makes a human life meaningful, stipulating that meaning is not to be found out there, at the cosmic (or even less so, supernatural) level. Meaning is constructed by human beings and can take many forms, which means that there is no single way to live a good life (though there are many bad ones). Nevertheless, I think that what counts as a life worth living is constrained by the general parameters of human nature, which means that I practice a form of ethical naturalism.

Moreover, with modern philosopher Philippa Foot, I believe that ethical principles are not only tentative (of course) but always the the form of hypothetical, or if … then statements. There are, that is, no universal moral rules or commandments, pace contemporary utilitarianism, deontology, and various theologies. To the question “why should I be good,” which Glaucon’s famously poses to Socrates in Plato’s Republic, the only sensible answer is: because I am a social animal and I thrive only in a harmonious social group. That is, IF I wish to thrive (given the sort of animal that I am) THEN I need to play nice with other people. That’s it. And that’s more than enough.

Getting more to the nuts and bolts, both ancient philosophy and modern psychology teach us that a good human life has, broadly speaking, three components: eudaimonic (meaning, purpose), relationships (with our partners, children, other relatives, friends), and hedonic (material wellbeing, pleasure).

The eudaimonic component (pursuing projects one finds meaningful, especially if they benefit others) is primary in the sense that by itself it makes life worth living. I reached this conclusion because it seems to me that life may be worth living even without the other two components, under certain circumstances (e.g., Nelson Mandela spending decades in prison for a good cause). Hedonism is the least important of the three components, being neither necessary nor sufficient for a good life, though it does enhance it.

How broad should our sphere of concern be? Although the best of the Greco-Roman philosophies, like Stoicism and Cynicism, were cosmopolitan, I think that taking onboard modern science requires an expanded cosmopolitanism. We should value and respect all sentient life because sentience makes it possible for a living organism to suffer. As Jeremy Bentham put it:

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” [2]

A good philosophy of life, however, cannot be limited to just personal ethics. It has to include some thoughts about social and political philosophy. The lack of this component is one of the chief limitations of Stoicism, I think, and one of the main reason I got attracted to the work of Cicero who, as a statesman and lawyer, was keenly aware of the social and political dimensions of human existence.

Echoing Churchill, and despite a number of good criticisms that can be moved to democratic forms of government, I still can’t think of anything better than a constitutional republic with a representational democratic system as a framework to run things. This, however, may be instantiated in many possible ways, some more viable than others. My preference, again tentative and with all due caveats, is for a European-style (especially Scandinavian) social democracy with a more or less heavily regulated form of capitalism. But I’m open to better suggestions, if any come along!

Again, as in the case of personal ethics, human nature constraints the sort of social life arrangements that are conducive to human flourishing, which in my mind means that the two opposites of tyranny (rule by one) and anarchy (no rule) are out.

In this context, we have to remember that the raison d’être of a polis is to safeguard its members, provide them at least with minimal material means, and allow them as much freedom to flourish as it is compatible with living in a social group. Which, among a number of other consequences, also means that no form of discrimination is acceptable with respect to any biological or social category, including ethnicity, sex, gender, age, religion, political affiliation, and so forth.

Finally, I need to address how to practice all of the above. The Stoics had come up with a large number of spiritual exercises, as the French scholar Pierre Hadot called them. Other philosophies (Buddhism) and religions (Christianity) also feature something similar, from different kinds of meditations to prayers, from social gatherings (going to temple, church) to reading of scriptures.

I have distilled my own practices to three that I find very, very useful:

(i) Gnothi seauton, know thyself in the Delphic sense. This can be done by engaging in Socratic dialogue with others, with the objective not to “win” arguments, but to arrive at (tentative!) truths. I do this both in person, with friends, family, and students, and online on various social media. Also, keep your own philosophical diary, a la Marcus Aurelius. It is an excellent tool of critical self-discovery, as validated by modern cognitive science.

(ii) Keep in mind the four cardinal virtues (practical wisdom, courage, justice, temperance [3]) and use them as a reliable moral compass for everyday living. Every time you are about to do something of consequence, ask yourself: is this pragmatically wise, courageous, just, and temperate? If the answer is no to any of these questions, don’t do it.

(iii) Practice the dichotomy of control, the distinction between what Epictetus (Enchiridion 1.1) says is and is not up to us. This is something that other traditions (8th century Buddhism, 11th century Judaism, 20th century Christianity) have also discovered: focus where your agency is maximized and work toward accepting the rest with equanimity.

One last word of caution: do not take the above as a worked out “system” (remember De Beauvoir!), nor as anything written in stone. As Cicero says:

“We should not be too confident in our belief of anything.” (Tusculan Disputations, I.32)

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P.S.: what should we call a philosophy like the above? My preferred term so far is Neoskepticism, but I sometimes call it Probabilism. Thoughts? Do we even need a name?

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Notes

[1] De Beauvoir, S. (1960) The Prime of Life, Lowe and Brydone, p. 178.

[2] Bentham, J. (1780) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, T. Payne and Sons, pp. 307–335.

[3] Plato, Republic, Book IV, 426–435.