Confession of a Reluctant Philosopher

	One of the trends in today's culture, which can be spotted best (like most cultural trends) in coffee shops, is the infatuation with self-analysis. In the absence of universal, objective means of identifying good and evil, virtue and vice, we (I include myself) quickly default to biographical and emotional descriptions of what we are, and these descriptions masquerade as explanations. This or that is simply my personality, my experience––and the only response one can give to such analysis is listening and then, when the exposition is over, taking one's turn on the floor with an equally inscrutable self-portrait. The profile-and-comment format of social media reinforces the trend. We can respond, but the original self-portrait can only be accepted or rejected, not criticized or judged by universal standards. 
	I am as prone as anyone to the fascination with self-portraits, so I'll consciously avoid such a thing, though it's tempting in the context of what I want to discuss, namely, a personal struggle.
	Aristotle famously asserted that philosophy is not for young men, and the dictum resonates with me the older I get, though perhaps not for the reasons Aristotle intended. He thought (he was right) that young men are typically controlled by their passions and appetites, which bind us to particulars when we should be interested in forms. Forms lead us back to particulars, but the particular viewed formally, as expressing a universal identity, is not the particular viewed materially, as a series of shifting movements and impressions. When we are trained to concentrate on change, change is all we see ("change and decay in all around I see," as the hymn goes), but the expectation of unity and purpose shows us a world that is whole and meaningful. Young men struggle to see this world when we are tempted to concentrate on our mercurial feelings. 
	Nevertheless, there's a different, subtler reason why philosophy isn't for young men, which involves less the formal and material than the "inner" and "outer," that is, the balance of understanding personal growth as both an interior life of the soul and a set of outward expressions. Pre-Socratic Greeks like Thales posited the soul (psyche) because living things seemed to behave in a basically different way from non-living things. A rock can chip, smoothen, injure and change color, depending on what impacts it, but a rock cannot initiate a movement. There is no distinction between what a rock does and what happens to it. Both the aggregative and atomic properties of a rock can be ascribed to its smaller parts. A rock is not more than the sum of its pieces. A living thing, by contrast, can perform photosynthesis or walk or even make unnecessary decisions. Metaphorically, we describe these initiations as "internal," because they originate with nothing "outside" and around the organism. Sunlight, soil, water and carbon dioxide are merely ingredients in a process that can only be performed by the whole functioning plant. Note that we don't describe a rock as "broken," in the sense of malfunctioning, or "sick," because it has no complex function that depends on co-ordinated parts. Ethics––which is simply the study of how rational creatures function––has this internal aspect. We do things, poorly or well, which call for an image of the healthy soul, and therefore ethics has an indispensable "internal" side.
	On the other hand, the things the soul does obviously involve an environment: a sphere of surrounding objects that necessarily determine the shape and scope of our actions. I can easily speak of the human soul in terms of bodily and mental needs: food and drink, objects of thought, people to make us and people who help us make sense of reality. There must be a reality in the first place. In other words, it is impossible to imagine the soul as purely "internal," like a puzzle piece without a puzzle, because what we are not is just as definitive as what we are, and what we are is designed to exist in relation to a prepared reality, namely, to know, love and serve God, loving creation for the sake of God. 
	Unlike Aristotle and most of the ancient thinkers, even Socrates and Plato, Catholics consider the terminus of human excellence to be something beyond the human being. Reflection, or theoretical contemplation, is a means to discovering God and establishing a relationship with Him, just as music theory is a means to making music. It is humiliating but true, both for the Christian philosopher and for the academic musician, that these means are not always necessary. 
	Philosophers suffer the temptation of over-internalization, just as much as other people commit over-externalization. Both are fallacies. The pursuit of excellence is necessarily social, because it is directed to God. What we call the "contemplative life" is, paradoxically, the most active in absolute terms, because it tries to dispense as much as possible with the physical mediators between us and our best activity, which is supernatural. Spiritual contemplation, then, is distinct from the academic contemplation that seeks minimal "outside" interference in the "internal." Spiritual contemplation is an end; academic contemplation, only a method. There is plenty of wisdom, of course, in quieting our environment, so long as we are not expecting to hear ourselves in the silence. There is no resonant Self, only the echo of a divine reality, and that echo augments only in proportion to our attention to what is above us.
	I have found many things co-conducive with philosophy to that attention. Music and poetry and theater express the dependency of the human condition to a degree that is frequently lost on academic silence; but, more importantly, these forms of art––which are, all the same, heavily philosophical––have a persuasive, communicative power that speaks to me as a young man. Truth, goodness and beauty are discovered in silence, but they are not silent. They sing and dance and call attention to themselves, as young people do. Music and poetry, for all their vanities, have the capacity to inform (to give form to) those parts of human nature––the passions and appetites––that strike young men so acutely. Moreover, the completeness of a successful marriage of reason, appetite and passion––of a successful representation of the human experience––by virtue of its wholeness, points to God in a way that no isolated faculty can. What is whole is to that extent divine.
	I confess I am a reluctant philosopher, because the quiet I cultivate to better hear and understand the music, and I am impatient to hear it. I know that noise is not music and activity not action, but I have a young man's impatience to be a part of things, and a Catholic's to see the world in tune with God. When my Catholic friends produce real music, and the Heavenly Choir seems close at hand, it is with heavy reluctance that I settle back into the recesses of study, the better to train my ears for the right kind of concert.