Why study philosophy?

We have an urgent need for the study of the major ancient, modern and contemporary philosophers for two main reasons.

The first reason derives from the character of the modern world. The central characteristics of the world we now inhabit are the results of a project launched by the early modern or enlightenment philosophers. The understanding of science as instrumental technology and the understanding of justice as human rights are only the two most prominent institutions that emerged from the writings of the philosophers of the 15th to 17th centuries. These thinkers were the first to proclaim that a society could live in the light of the truth, and that this truth would be furnished by the newly re-founded natural and human sciences. Our present dilemmas are all demonstrations of the great but narrow and partial success of this movement. There have been inarguable advances in, for example, medicine, or the extension of civil rights to more people. But our greatly increased powers over non-human nature, and over human nature itself, have not been accompanied by an increased wisdom about the fundamental question of how to best use that power. This is obvious from continued political and military conflict, from degradation of the natural environment, and so on, but even importantly from our continued inability to understand what makes human beings excellent and happy.

To understand the problems and paradoxes of modernity (including its offshoot, post-modernism) we need to understand its roots in the teaching of philosophers such as Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and others. But these thinkers cannot be fully understood without recovering the teachings of the classical philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, whose thought they intended to supersede.

The second reason emerges from this recovery of classical philosophy. The classics taught that the ability to speak intelligibly or to reason is the distinctive mark of the human being and that the discovery of the truth is the key to our happiness and excellence. By contrast, the moderns as a whole make such activity instrumental and they tend to subordinate happiness and excellence to other goals of the state or of society.

Our School is intended to provide a place where the basic principles of human existence can be examined with the assistance of the fundamental texts in order to put our leisure to its proper use, to cultivate our minds. As Aristotle puts it, if the activity of the intellect is only a part of us, “it exceeds everything else in power and importance. And this activity would seem to be what each person is, since it’s the authoritative and better [part]. It would be strange, therefore, if someone were to choose to live not their own life, but the life of someone else.” (Nicomachean Ethics 1177b34-1178a4). The School is designed to provide an opportunity for participants to come to their own mind about the fundamental questions.