How to Think Like a Philosopher - Softcover

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Daniel Smith is a non-fiction author and editor who has written across a range of subjects, including politics, economics and social history. He is the author of The Little Book of Big Ideas: 150 Concepts and Breakthroughs that Transformed History and the 'How to Think Like ...' series for Michael O'Mara Books, which has been published in 25 languages and sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. He is also a scriptwriter for the award-winning podcast series, Real Dictators and A Short History of . . . He lives in London with his wife and two children.

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The Oxford English Dictionary has no fewer than nine major definitions of what philosophy is. If nothing else, that fact highlights just how vast and complex the discipline is. What, for example, marks out a philosopher from any other person with a stream of ideas flowing around their head? 

Would you rather fight a lion or a shark? It’s one of those questions that people sometimes like to pose, knowing that there is neither a ‘right’ nor ‘wrong’ answer. Usually, it is asked with little more intention than to fill the time, or perhaps to show off some specialist knowledge about the fighting capabilities of one species over the other. Maybe there’ll be the chance to explore some pop culture references – why, say, Jaws is an infinitely more unsettling film than The Lion King. More often than not, there is no great desire to reach some new truth or wisdom. Yet what if you take the question seriously: ruminating on one’s own mortality, the role of humanity within the natural order, why man might feel the need to test himself against other species, or what might be regarded as a fair and just result, or indeed whether the contest would even be a material reality? You might end up with some serious insights into yourself and the world around you. Then, dear reader, you might start to consider yourself a philosopher.

In certain respects, it is easier to say what philosophy is not. It is not ‘art’, in which one’s imagination is allowed to run its course free from the restraints of having to justify itself on any basis other than how pleasing the results are. It is not ‘science’, since although a philosophical thesis needs to be rooted in some sort of rational basis, it is held to a different level of ‘proof’ than science generally demands. Nor is it ‘religion’, for religions customarily expect a level of inherent faith beyond that which we are prepared to allow philosophy. Yet philosophy overlaps with art, science and religion. They are, after all, fields united in a desire to make sense of the world.

We all, to some degree, deal in philosophy every day. Even an act as commonplace as how we cross the road reflects an attitude to life. Do you step out without looking, or wait for a stream of traffic expressly to dart in between the vehicles, or are you cautious, waiting for the green man to flash even when you can see the road is clear? Each method speaks of an attitude to life, to risk, to what we deem to be important and reasonable, and perhaps even reveals what we think about death and God.

We are all, then, a little bit philosopher. It is just that the professional (as it were) philosopher spends more time consciously contemplating life in search of greater knowledge and wisdom. It is a slow process, too. If we date the formal discipline of philosophy back to ancient Greece 2,500 or more years ago, we remain pilgrims on the pathway, the goals of complete knowledge and wisdom still far over the horizon (if they are there at all). But, as Bertrand Russell’s quotation above suggests, the path travelled is really rather more important than the destination being reached. (In his mischievous Devil’s Dictionary of 1911, Ambrose Bierce defined philosophy as ‘A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.’) Although we may not arrive at all the right answers, what we learn from the process of investigation is valuable in itself. 

As this book illustrates, philosophy is notable less for its consensus than for the divergence of opinions. Some of the greatest thinkers in the history of the field had utterly opposing views. (William James, a key figure in philosophical pragmatism, said: ‘There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.’) Yet each of their outlooks makes an utterly valid contribution to increasing human understanding. The idea, though, that we can train ourselves up to think as an ideal, composite philosopher is wrong-headed. Instead, this volume aims to do three things:

• Explore ways in which the philosopher approaches the quandary of how best to expand knowledge and wisdom.
• Investigate some of the contrasting intellectual strategies adopted.
• Drill down into specific theories that have, over millennia, influenced philosophy’s progress.

In order to facilitate the navigation of this monumental subject, I have divided the book into three broad areas: Metaphysics (the nature of existence), Epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge itself) and Ethics (what it is to behave morally). Clearly, no single volume could begin to provide anything approaching a comprehensive overview of all philosophy. Instead, I hope this one will give you a broad-brushstroke impression of many of the issues that a philosopher must keep in mind, as well as several of the most important strands of thought. 

Along the way, we will encounter a wide and varied assortment of some of the most celebrated philosophers to have ever lived and take a peep at a few of the ideas that have inspired, intrigued and sometimes even confounded them. (As G. W. F. Hegel is apocryphally said to have observed: ‘Only one man ever understood me, and he didn’t understand me.’) We shall also explore great schools of philosophical thought, from idealism and materialism to epicureanism and absurdism. Yes, best prepare now for a lot of ‘-isms’!

To become a philosopher is not about passing exams, or even about being able to talk the hind legs off your friends and acquaintances as to whether, say, we are all figments of a giant’s dream or else living on the back of a cosmic turtle. It is about a desire to understand more than we already do, aware that we might actually end up feeling like we understand less. It is a long road and the progress is incremental. The great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein summed up the struggle neatly: ‘Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.’

The word philosophy is derived from the ancient Greek for the ‘love of wisdom’. That seems appropriate. It is something to be embraced, undertaken with love. And when the love affair gets a little bumpy and you wonder whether philosophy is the one for you after all, stick with it, show some patience and kindness, and you’ll likely find that what you put into the relationship is paid back with interest. Sometimes philosophy can be arduous, frustrating and disappointing, but in the end it is magnificent. In the words of Henri de Saint-Simon’s Mémoire sur la science de l’homme (‘Essay on the Science of Man’, 1813):
  Before embarking on our journey, there is a philosophical elephant in the room that needs to be discussed. So, let’s do it now.

This book attempts to fit a lot into a manageable number of pages. It strives to encapsulate a good deal of philosophical thought that was established over two and a half millennia. It is ‘Philosophy’s Greatest Hits’, if you like (and apologies if your favourite track has not made it onto the final listing).  

In doing so, however, something is inescapable: the vast majority of the voices who have reverberated over this lengthy timescale belong to men. It too often feels as if philosophy is a boys’ club. To a large extent, it has been. For much of history, women were excluded from those academic and social institutions that governed the discipline and decided whose voices would be heard.

This is undoubtedly philosophy’s loss. Had more women been encouraged to bring their experiences of the world, how much richer the philosophical landscape would be. Instead, philosophy has mostly been filtered by a single sex that, by and large, has made little effort to understand how a world view may alter when viewed through the prism of womanhood, with its distinct social, biological and psychological features.

Remarkably, given the barriers to entry, a few women broke through, even in ancient times. Among the notable exceptions are Maitreyi, the eight-century BC Indian philosopher; Hipparchia of Maroneia, a Cynic philosopher of the fourth century BC; and her close contemporary, Arete of Cyrene, who reputedly succeeded her father to lead the School of Cyrene. Then there is Hypatia, who lived in fourth- and fifth-century AD Egypt, a celebrated polymath and exponent of Neoplatonic thought who, tellingly, was murdered by a mob amid a climate of interreligious conflict. ‘Reserve your right to think,’ she is said to have observed, ‘for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.’ Come forward to the twelfth century and we find the German Benedictine abbess – and an early champion of scientific approaches to natural history – Hildegard of Bingen. To her are attributed these words:
 
These women, however, are outliers, and things did not improve much even with the Enlightenment. In the 1740s, for instance, Immanuel Kant dedicated one of his earliest works to the female philosopher Émilie du Châtelet, yet she is virtually lost to history now. By the end of the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft was forging convincing arguments for greater female inclusion in education, predicated on the idea that ‘knowledge’ cannot be considered complete when it ignores the experiences of half the population. But progress was painfully slow. Only since the middle of the last century has there been anything like a pronounced integration of female practitioners into mainstream philosophy. Even to this day, ‘feminist philosophy’ (which is not an entirely satisfactory banner for the disparate range of ideas that women philosophers represent) can seem sidelined, an offshoot of the discipline where it should be an integral and routine component. Simone de Beauvoir, for example, is far too often regarded in the context of an addendum to her partner, Jean-Paul Sartre.

But at least de Beauvoir is as near to a household name as philosophy gets. In addition, she helped pave the way for other women to gain some of the attention and respect they deserve. The likes of Hannah Arendt, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, G. E. M. Anscombe and Susan Haack have all achieved a previously unprecedented level of mainstream acceptance as women philosophers, seeking a path through to a promised land in which they are seen simply as philosophers who just happen to be women.
 
Over the grand sweep of philosophy such as this book represents, these trailblazers may seem relegated to bit-part roles. This is a story several thousand years in the making, and it is only over the last seventy years or so that the social conditions have opened up to women who have started to scale ivory towers and smash glass ceilings. Hurray for that. Now seek out the works of some of the women mentioned here, for they are a gateway to a treasury. And if you are a female reader with an interest in philosophy, know now that philosophy needs you.