Choosing the Best Life
Recently, a student who got started on the philosophic path a little later than is ideal, and who, in spite of her endless enthusiasm and inquisitiveness, is still occasionally beset — as indeed we all are at times — with belittling self-doubts in the face of the vastness of all there is to know, and the undeniably daunting wisdom of the men who comprise the great conversation of history, raised two related questions concerning such self-doubts. I will paraphrase the two questions from memory here. The first: “What should a person do if he realizes that he is not good enough for the philosophic life?” The second: “Is it better to choose an ordinary life if one lacks the ability to achieve philosophic wisdom?”
These questions, though raised by my student hypothetically rather than self-critically — that is, as inquiries into human nature rather than as expressions of present fear — give me an excellent opportunity to address an aspect of the philosophic life that is not often discussed directly even by the great thinkers (particularly not by the moderns), namely who is properly suited to pursue this socially difficult and somewhat alienating life, and whether it might in some circumstances be reasonable for someone who has sincerely embarked on this path to give it up. I will reply to each of the two interrelated questions in turn.
“What should a person do if he realizes that he is not good enough for the philosophic life?”
The standard for judging whether someone is capable of living a philosophic life has nothing to do with whether the person has the talent to become “the next Plato.” That would be ridiculous on several levels. First of all, since philosophy is a way of life rather than a specific skill, it would be almost impossible to say for sure who might become equal to whom in this regard. That is, even if it seems highly unlikely that anyone could be as great a thinker as Plato or Aristotle, we know that there really was a Plato, and there really was an Aristotle, which proves that human beings can, in principle, be that great. Furthermore, it is impossible to say for sure what a person is capable of with regard to the highest things until the person has lived an entire life immersed in those activities. Therefore, we cannot know that a person who is sincerely dedicated to living a philosophic life will not become equal to Plato or Aristotle in wisdom or external achievement, until that person has completed his entire journey, and perhaps even until enough time has passed to see what ultimate effects or merit his theoretical achievements might have.
My point here is not to say that it is not worth living a philosophic life unless you can convince yourself that you might be able to match the intellectual achievements of the greatest thinkers of history. After all, that would contradict the conclusion of Socrates’ argument in his trial, namely that the unexamined life is not worth living for a man, and hence, by implication, that the examined life is the only life worth living. On the contrary, my point is simply that even on the most absurd standard of personal comparison, we sell ourselves short if we give up on our philosophical pursuits upon concluding prematurely that we could never live up to the greatest thinkers, since by giving up this way, we are artificially guaranteeing that we never will live up to them. Giving up has the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, is it not better to die trying to achieve your highest aspiration than to run away from it and live a less meaningful life simply because your highest aspiration seems hard? That is to say, is not the worth of one’s life ultimately measured by what one was trying to live up to, and to become, rather than by any concrete result, let alone anything as trivial as a public reputation?
To take an example ready to hand, consider my personal motto, “What would Socrates do?” This is my way of encouraging myself to look at each important situation, relationship, and decision in my life from the highest vantage point. It does not have anything to do with imagining I can be as great as Socrates. I never even think of such a comparison at all. I am simply trying, to the best of my ability, to hold myself to the highest standard of philosophic seriousness, and challenging myself to try to live as the most inspiring historical examples have lived. Whether I am always good enough to live up to that standard is an outcome I cannot control. Nor am I in a position to judge whether I am good enough or not, since I am seeing my life from the inside, and in an incomplete state. But what I can control is my motivations and intentions, which I hope will always be as true and rational as I can reach. And that is what I am reminding myself to aim for when I ask, “What would Socrates do?”
In sum, we might ask ourselves, “What does ‘good enough for the philosophic life’ even mean?” If you are capable of reading the most serious books, listening to (and gradually joining) discussions of the most important questions, and investigating the most profound answers to those questions that have come down to us from the millennia — and furthermore, if you enjoy those books and questions, and feel excited when you are learning about them — then you are evidently capable of living in a philosophic way. If that is true, then the issues that determine what you will ultimately do with your life are: (a) whether you have the strength of character to persevere with those thoughts and questions even when lower, easier, and more immediately gratifying temptations are singing to you in your weak or tired moments, like Satan tempting Jesus in the desert; (b) whether you are able to find your way onto the philosophic path in a secure and consistent way, with the help of a true guide or teacher (whether in person or, if that is sadly unavailable, as it often is in our time, then with the great teachers we find in books) who can awaken your innate wonder and enliven your noblest desires; and (c) whether you can overcome the melancholic urge (all philosophic souls are of a melancholic nature) to self-belittlement or self-hatred which often causes talented people to give up on themselves in self-destructive fear.
Which leads to our second question.
“Is it better to choose an ordinary life if one lacks the ability to achieve philosophic wisdom?”
To choose a so-called ordinary life — that is, a life that is decent, socially respectable, but not very deep or serious — is the best possible outcome for most human beings, always and everywhere. These days, very few people choose this decent path, unfortunately, but it is certainly a proper life for most people, which more would choose if we had better education, better moral standards, and a general sense of purpose in modern life. Sadly, we have lost those good conditions, and the result is that we are losing this vision of the ordinary good life. Today’s version of “ordinary life” is a pretty low and petty life indeed, certainly not any kind of “second best option” for human beings, but rather a wasteful deflation of the soul’s potential.
However, while that proper and decent sense of an ordinary life is truly the best choice and goal available to most people, this does not apply to those few individuals who have the natural ability to pursue a thinking life, by which I mean the life of contemplating the whole — in other words, to live philosophically. Anyone who has been introduced to the philosophic questions and the great historical conversation, who has been excited by these ideas, and who has proved over time to be full of curiosity to learn more about them and to participate in this conversation to the best of his ability, is a person who has deeply felt, and gradually come to understand, the inadequacy of ordinary goals. This person has come to realize that there is something fundamentally unsatisfying (to him) about the life that is merely decent and socially respectable. For this is a soul that has already intuited, to some extent, that ordinary life is essentially shadows on the wall of a cave, and that such a life is designed, and well-suited, for people who are most comfortable tied to their chairs in that cave, staring at the shadows on the wall. But if one has already realized this, and discovered something tantalizing and mysterious in that hint of light shining from the distant cave entrance, then there is really only one natural choice. To the person who has been set free from his chair, and learned to turn around and see that hint of light, to sit back down in that chair and live the rest of his life in the world of shadows is to willingly choose comforting opinions over truth, and illusory goods over the real good. What could be unhappier than that? It is far better to live in uncertainty and struggle with feeling misunderstood and incomplete, than to get along in the cave of society (even if it were a healthy and reasonable society) by denying everything you have seen, and ignoring everything you know to be truer.
In Socrates’ prison cell, we meet many men, young and old. Some of them are highly philosophical and serious. A few of them are somewhat philosophical but seem to lack the deepest ability. And a few others, such as Crito, are not really philosophical at all, but sincerely appreciate and admire the philosophic way of life even though they do not fully understand it. All of these men were radically changed by Socrates, and would never, at least as long as they continued to know themselves, betray or forsake the life they had learned to live through him. There is simply no reasonable justification for ignoring or rejecting what you have seen as the best way of life. You live it to the best of your ability, and sincerely, or else you have lost your way by following the weakness for easy social success, material advantage, or trivial comfort. There are certainly variations on how one may live that best life, depending on one’s ultimate intellectual capacity and strength of soul, along with one’s particular practical conditions. But unless one is simply giving up on one’s soul completely, one will make one’s choices in life, whatever they may be, by considering whether those choices are going to help one stay as close as possible to the best life one has found, or whether they will interrupt or contradict that best life. One will choose the path that is consistent with the good, and reject the path that is inconsistent with it, regardless of one’s “level of ability.” This is the minimum standard of taking one’s life seriously, for anyone who has been exposed to the higher things, and has recognized why they are higher.
Those men who were with Socrates on the day of his death, along with the most brilliant of them all, who was unable to be present that day, chose a prison cell with the richest philosophic conversation — the truest friendship — over the comforts and rewards of normal social life. That is the perfect metaphor of the choice every person capable of philosophy must make, if he wishes to be true to himself. That month, waiting for Socrates’ execution, a dank Athenian prison cell was the best place in the world, in the minds of a band of good men, young and old, whose souls had discovered the beauty of the highest friendship and the excitement of rational investigation. From the weeping Apollodorus, one of Socrates’ youngest and most melancholic and self-loathing followers, to Crito the gentleman, Socrates’ stalwart companion since childhood; from our narrator Phaedo, who fondly recounts the memory of Socrates affectionately squeezing his hair one last time, to the Theban visitors Simmias and Cebes, who enthusiastically press Socrates, in the final hours before the hemlock, with counterarguments and doubts about the immortality of the soul; these men, cloistered in that cramped cell amid the chains and bars, and awaiting the execution of their best friend, were the happiest souls in the world that day, and that month.
What must they have looked like to the “decent” men on the outside, those ordinary people living their comfortable lives and enjoying their partial pleasures? Who cares! That band of men huddled together within those uncomfortable walls, conversing about the most profound matters as though their lives depended on it, enjoying, in that prison cell, hours and days of a spiritual freedom and intimacy that most human beings could never even imagine, let alone experience, certainly did not care. And that fact alone, if you think about it, proves that they chose well.
