Category: Philosophy

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Meaning, significance, purpose, and “sonder”

More than a decade ago, I admitted something out loud in a conversation that I knew to be true to how I felt but that I was embarrassed to articulate. I was in my early-30s and I was disillusioned with much of my life. Things weren’t going as I had imagined they’d go. And I said, “I thought I would live the type of life that someone would write a biography about.” As I said the words, I knew they sounded foolish. They sounded narcissistic. It’s likely that they were narcissistic and foolish. But these delusions of grandeur had come from a sincere place. While I can’t unpack all that went into this misguided vision, I can summarize things this way: I had embraced a bad theology that led me to think that if I dedicated my life to certain higher spiritual ideals (“seek first the kingdom of God”) and forsook debased, “worldly”, selfish pursuits (“and his righteousness”), I would be rewarded with a life that was full of significance and meaning (“and all of these things shall be added unto you”). When I say “significance and meaning” I mean divinely given significance and meaning (see the Gospel of Matthew 6:3). The kind of significance and meaning that you “know” comes “from above” because other people recognize it.

There’s a little prosperity Gospel in there. There’s a lot of problematic theology around “calling” as well. (In religious circles, this is sometimes referred to as “discernment” where other people who have been called “confirm” that you have been called as well.) But at the time, I couldn’t get my head around why I was just another face in the crowd. I thought I had made a covenant (as in Matthew 19:27: “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”). Why had I committed myself to the path that I was walking if it led me obscurity? But not just obscurity, since this wasn’t about fame. Purposelessness. Meaninglessness. I felt unneeded. I wasn’t contributing to anything. Why didn’t I focus on a career path that would’ve let me pursue my own “selfish” goals, like wealth?! The exchange (as I imagined it) was for a life that would make an impact on the world. I wasn’t making an impact.

Thankfully, I got therapy. My therapist suggested, gently, that there may be a lot of meaning and significance in the world but that it wasn’t to be “found” or (divinely) “gifted”. She had me read Viktor E. Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. I remember coming away with a new sense that significance and meaning could be created. The universe wasn’t meaningless. It was full of meaning. But that meaning isn’t necessarily inherit or objective. You don’t have to go on a quest to find it. You don’t have to pray, fast, and wait for it to be announced to you by an angel from heaven. You have to create it.

This places a lot of responsibility on the individual. As John Paul Sarte said in “Existentialism Is a Humanism”: “…man is condemned to be free.” But theologies that tell you that there’s a (single) divine will for your life that you must find is a greater condemnation. You’re responsible but powerless. It’s almost like you have to get lucky. You have to follow the divine calling the “right way” without knowing what that way is! The existential thinking of Frankl and Sarte is freeing in that while you’re responsible, there’s no “wrong” life for you to create. The condemnation is that there are many possibilities. But I’ve come to embrace “possibilities” as superior to the idea of a single, divine plan for one’s life. (If this needs theological rescuing for some readers, then consider this: we may be “creators” with a small “c” created by our “Creator” with a big “C” for a purpose of co-creating. I don’t know if that’s good theology but if theology is needed, then it’s better theology than the alternative!)

In my formative years, I heard preachers talk about “the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2, KJV). These were framed as “three types” of divine will. Your life would fulfill it’s purpose only if you happened to discover the “perfect will of God” which is superior to the “good…will of God” or the “acceptable…will of God”. In retrospect, I don’t know how this exegesis worked but it stuck in my brain, tormenting me for years, even when I was shown that this isn’t the meaning of the quoted passage from the Bible’s Epistle to the Romans.

Eventually, I got a job teaching high school. I found it meaningful. It took me a little while longer to come to terms with the reality that my life could have meaning, significance, and purpose without approval by institutions ecclesial or academic. (Honestly, I think I may be arriving at that realization in its fullness only this year.) It took time to accept that I might be “only a high school teacher” and not a scholar, or a frequently published author, or a “thought leader”, or whatever else the previous generations’ equivalent to an “influencer” is! It’s unlikely that I’ll make a great contribution to theology, philosophy, or history. Instead, I’ll do my best to contribute to the formation of young people, some who will bluntly tell you things like “your class doesn’t matter” or “no one takes this [subject] seriously”. You smile and remind yourself that you said a lot of mean things as a teenager too!

I think the fear of my 20s and most of my 30s was that I would live an insignificant life. In a vast universe, there seemed to be nothing more horrifying than being just another person, a statistic, a name that future generations would forget. To be forgotten seemed like a form of eternal damnation. In my religious circles, I was told that I needed to create a “legacy”. In broader American Evangelical circles, people speak of a “purpose-driven life”. It was preached that God put us on this earth “for a reason” and to “make a difference”. It was as if living a normal, peaceful life would be a disappointment to God. That terrified me.

In my mid-30s, as I was deconstructing and recovering from this theology, a colleague shared a concept created by the author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He called the concept “sonder”. Here’s his definition:

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

This word captured my fear but simultaneously empowered me with a realization. Even the most well-known people in the world whose lives seem more significant than the rest of ours have moments when they are background characters to other people’s stories. They may be a wealthy CEO but merely an insignificant person in their own child’s life. They could be a powerful politician who eventually becomes a rambling, tired old face on television. The fact of the matter is that no matter how “objectively” “significant” you try to be, the most important person in everyone’s life is themselves. We’re the “main character” in our own minds and even wealthy and powerful people are merely background characters in the lives of others.

For a few years now, off and on, I’ve pondered this word “sonder” and what it represents. And I’ve thought about how meaningful it is that we get to be mere “extras” that create the elaborate tapestry of someone else’s life. Think of this. In our individual insignificance (“an extra sipping coffee in the background”) we contribute to the greater, collective significance of what it means to be alive and to share in this life in this world. Even as the person who does nothing but turn on our kitchen light creating texture for someone walking through the neighborhood, we add to the lives of others. We’re significant in our insignificance. I think the Buddhists would call this “interdependence”. “Sonder” has the potential to infuse our own lives with meaning, significance, and purpose but in a way that is counterintuitive. It is an antidote to narcissism. It can prevent us from obsessing over how much we do and accomplish. It allows us to live lives that we enjoy knowing that in some small sense, even if we’re not “great”, even if we don’t “change the world”, no one can remove us from being part of the world as long as we’re alive.

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Two forms of thinking: problem-solving and meaning generating

A couple of weeks ago, I finished Svend Brinkmann‘s brilliant little book, Think: In Defence of a Thoughtful Life. In the first chapter (“What do you think?”) he argues that there are two forms of thinking: (1) problem-solving and (2) meaning generating (p. 18). I found this helpful as someone who teaches religion and philosophy in a society that continues to devalue the humanities in favor of STEM. STEM focused on Brinkmann’s “problem-solving” form of thinking. He describes it as “instrumental and intrinsic thinking” that “can either be a tool in service to something else, or an end in itself with (intrinsic) value per se.” He gives examples of the “instrumental” and “intrinsic” form of “problem-solving” style thinking (p. 19). For “instrumental” he says, “For example, choosing the right recruit after a job interview”. For intrinsic, he says, “For example, doing a crossword”.

The “instrumental” approach to “problem-solving” thinking solves a problem in service to something else. This style of thinking is done in order to choose the right person for the job for the benefit of the company that’s doing the hiring. On the other hand, the “intrinsic” approach would include, as with the example, doing a crossword or another puzzle. I have a colleague who plays the New York Times’ game “Wordle” almost religiously. He is solving a problem for the pure enjoyment of solving the problem. There’s no other end.

My colleagues who teach math, science, and for the most part, Innovation and Design, are helping students learn to value instrumental thinking. This is a valuable skill. And it’s a skill our society values. But it’s not the only style of thinking nor is it the only style of thinking that’s valuable.

Brinkmann’s second style is “meaning generation”. He uses the example of when we “think back” on a situation that was formative in our lives in order to better understand it. This approach to thinking “is related to daydreaming and reverie” (p. 18). This means it can be “proactive” as much as “retroactive” thinking.

Brinkmann writes (p. 18):

“Thinking as meaning generation doesn’t need to be about our life, but can be about more general existential or cosmological questions: Is there a God? Is the universe infinite? Is there life after death? What would the ideal society look like? From where does the experience of beauty stem? Do we have a duty to forgive? What is love?”

When we think on these things, “the point is not to ‘solve the problem’ and move on, but to let our minds wander and mull them over.” The examples Brinkmann gives for “meaning generation” style thinking include “instrumental” and “intrinsic” examples as well (p. 19). For “instrumental” he says, “For example, writing an exam essay about your future”. For “intrinsic” he says, “For example, reflecting freely on the meaning of life”. We may write the essay in order to help us think clearly about what we want to do to shape the life we want to live. But we may reflect on the meaning of life for the sole purpose that we want to consider what all of this means. Meaning is inherently valuable just like the joy of solving problems can be.

Brinkmann argues that “children tend to learn—and master—problem-solving before meaning generation”. His claim is that meaning generation “requires maturity and depth beyond the reach of children” and that “Philosophical thoughtfulness calls for a more mature intellect” (p. 20). I want to say “yes” and “no” to this because I do think children can begin participating in meaning generation though I get what he’s saying.

While both styles are important, it makes me wonder: what does it say about our society that we’ve placed such heavy emphasis only on one style. The humanities are dying. Fewer college students are majoring in humanities related fields. I’m convinced that this is good for capitalism but detrimental to democracy. We need a society that can invent and make and fix. We need a society that can solve problems like climate change and cancer. But for our own mental health, collective well-being, and the common good, we need people to think about why we do what we do, why we want what we want, where we want to go and what we want to become. If a society can do things but they can’t explain why any of it is meaningful outside of capitalist terms such as wealth and employment, I fear we’re headed for ruin. I get it: before someone commits to student loans and majoring in a field of study for four to six years, they want to know that there will be a paycheck on the other side. This is practical and wise. But our lives can’t be just about our work. It can’t be just about our careers. Honestly, that benefits only those at the highest point of our economic class system. The rest of us better learn to ask what it is that gives meaning to our lives outside the 9-5.

I worry that there’s reason why cultural forces want us to participate in only one form of thinking as a society; why our government, universities, wealthy elite, and others tell us that we need to do something “practical” that’s a “real job” and my hunch is that they don’t want us to stop and ask ourselves “why” we are doing what we’re doing; why we’re pouring our energies into “problem-solving” while ignoring “meaning generation”. I think that if more of us stopped to participate in “meaning generation” it may lead us to reevaluate how we spend the several short decades of our life on this planet.

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Anthropomorphic speech about “God”, animals, and inanimate objects

I don’t know much about “God”. In fact, it would be better if I wrote “God” as God using the tradition of sous rature, or “under erasure”, developed by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, where the strikethrough functions to retain a “necessary” word while acknowledging that it doesn’t represent the traditional metaphysics often associated with the word. I’m a theist, maybe more in the Spinozist sense than would make most of my coreligionist comfortable but not so much that I claim to have any lasting insights into what it is that the word God references. Christianity has made room for apophatic theology from the beginning, so it’s to the negative that I appeal if pressed to explain my own theology. Whatever ideas are floating in my head today may not be the same ones tomorrow, so you won’t find me being all that dogmatic in my “God-talk”. There is “God-talk” with which I’m increasingly uncomfortable though. More often than not, it’s anthropomorphic in nature.

Anthropomorphic speech about God
I was raised around Pentecostalism. Pentecostals find the divine presence everywhere and everywhere active, not in the aforementioned Spinozist sense that the divine animates everything, or according to some is one with everything (a type of monism, if you will). Pentecostals retain a stark natural/supernatural divide that fits within the very Enlightenment modes of thought that they reject. For Pentecostals, the supernatural breaks through the restraints of the natural. It does this frequently. You should expect it. But it’s still supernatural.

I was raised, in part, to expect to see divine activity in the world. I won’t say whether I have or not. I will say that I haven’t seen anything that I would say is clearly divine in distinction from nature—nothing clearly supernatural. I’ve had this or that pointed out to me. I may be unable to see it due to skepticism but I would presume that if it were evidently supernatural, my skepticism wouldn’t matter. If God were to part the Red Sea in front of me, I should be able to recognize this as something clearly unnatural.

My discomfort has to do primarily with what it means to claim that we’ve seen something supernatural happen and that we know it was so. For example, if I say that God gave me a job, this implies that God prevented someone else from getting it. We’re seeing terrible hurricanes hitting Florida this fall. If I claim that God spared one home from destruction, then this implies that God chose not to do the same for all the other homes. When we deconstruct language about an interventionist deity, it leaves us with something more troubling than encouraging.

One might reply that “God’s ways are mysterious!” This may be true. I don’t know. I do know that if we are going use this type of agnostic language about the people God doesn’t heal, or protect, or rescue, or feed, or house, or bless, etc., then we should retain the same agnosticism about whether God is actively healing, protecting, rescuing, feeding, housing, blessing, etc.

I think that some fear that such agnosticism will leave us with a lack of gratitude. Maybe. On the other hand, as I’ve discussed, in Plato’s Republic, Socrates says  (Lee’s translation, p. 71), “…while god must be held to be the sole cause of good, we must look for some factors other than god as a cause of evil.” Similarly, in the Epistle of James in the Christian New Testament, we read the claim, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” Both “Socrates” and “James” claim that goodness is from a divine source. This leaves us silent on the source of badness. We can affirm this if we want without saying that God actively gave me a parking spot near the front of the store while ignoring people starving due to a famine somewhere else in the world. In this sense, God is like the sun that shines down on us without intention or aim. It’s just the nature of the sun to do this. There are things that block the sun’s rays from us but this isn’t the sun judging us or withholding light from us. It’s just the nature of our reality.

In this vein, Jesus himself said (Matthew 5:44-46), “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” I’m not saying that Jesus would agree with my God-talk, per se. I’m saying that when Jesus encouraged his followers to do good and show love to even those who do not love them, his example was the generousness of the Father which is available to the just and the unjust alike.

This is where things get tricky for me. I see what Jesus was doing when he called God “Father”. While the anthropomorphic language can lead to all sorts of theological absurdities—e.g. if God exists, “he’s” “male” or he’s a “father” in the same sense of whatever that words means in your culture—we risk an opposite danger when our God-talk begins to sound like we’re talking about the Force in Star Wars or even the Tao of Chinese philosophy like Taoism. There’s part of me that’s more comfortable with these impersonal presentations of ultimate reality. I don’t mind speaking of the “Universe” but the minute I say the “Universe” did this or that, I’ve personified it and I’ve drifted into anthropomorphic language. This is a flaw but maybe a necessary one because I think we humans know our world only through what it means to be human. Therefore, as non-human as God would be, if there are aspects of the divine nature that are anything like our own (e.g. God is/has “mind”), we risk misunderstanding God further by choosing to speak of God as “Force” or something completely impersonal.

For this reason, as uncomfortable as I may be with anthropomorphic God-talk, I don’t know if there’s a better solution. Do we speak of God as a mathematical formula? It seems like this would make God irrelevant to most of us. Anthropomorphic ways of thinking have their strengths and weaknesses, no matter the context, including God-talk.

Anthropomorphic speech about animals
For example, I’m the type of person who doesn’t even speak of myself as a dog “owner”. Yes, I’m one of those who says that I’m “my dog’s human”. There’s a strength to this. When I anthropomorphize my dog, I see her as a being with emotions/feelings, motivations, and wants. Whether or not we can say she has a “will” or “thoughts” may depend on how we’re using those words. But when I think of her this way, it’s unlikely that I’ll mistreat her. In fact, she’s quite spoiled. My wife and I love her as a member of the family.

But this can be dangerous. If I interpret behaviors that I dislike as being done with “intention” like a human might do, then I’ll be holding her to a standard that’s unfair to her as a dog. As a dog, I need to value her “dogness”. This may mean seeing her dogness through an anthropomorphic lens at times. But she’s not like me in the same way other humans are. As Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in Philosophy of Psychology, 327 (or Philosophical Investigations II, 190), “If a lion could talk, we wouldn’t be able to understand it.” Lions live in a different embodiment than we humans. They see the world differently. If we could find a way to “translate” lion “speech” into human language, we may be lost still and unable to understand them. At least, Wittgenstein thought this was so. (Also, we could reference Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”)

Anthropomorphic speech about inanimate objects
A similar pro-/con- scenario can be applied even to inanimate objects. We’re a wasteful bunch, we humans. We throw away so many things. We create trash. Now, I’m not saying we should be unsanitary or hoard purposelessly. But maybe we can learn from say Japanese culture with the art of kintsugi. There are inanimate objects that we anthropomorphize which infuses those things with added value. We may think of stuffed animals or robots. Admittedly, it’s easier to do this when the inanimate object has been given humanish characteristics by its creator. But we do this with far from human things too. How many people name their cars?

On the flip side, if you treat your car better than your spouse or children, then you may have taken things a bit too far. Materialism (in the economic sense of the word) can lead us to dehumanize humans in favor of attributing excessive value to objects. With each category—God, animals, and objects—anthropomorphic thoughts can be positive or negative. They can lead us to undervalue or overvalue the reality about which we speak. This can lead to good theology (God loves me and God cares about me personally) and bad theology (“I’m favored by God which is why ‘he’ gave me this big house and nice car”). It can lead us to the better treatment of animals or it could drive us to expect things from them that are unfair. It can lead us to value objects, to be thrifty and grateful, and it can lead us to hoard.

We can’t escape anthropomorphic language, usually. We don’t have to. But we should be reflective when using it. We should have a mental asterisks next to each thought that attributes human characteristics to non-human realities. I try to do this with my dog but also with God. Whenever I hear a passage from the Bible read that makes God sound like a giant human, I try to abstract it. When I show gratitude toward God, it may be quite similar to how I’m grateful to the sun for its light. Yes, this may lead me to miss this or that divine reality, if God exists, but I’d rather miss in the negative than miss in the positive of wrongly attributing intention to God where such attribution would have to bring to question the goodness/justness of God.

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“I, too, seek an unreadable book”

The philosopher Robert Nozick begins his book Philosophical Explanations with this wonderful line (p. 1): “I, too, seek an unreadable book: urgent thoughts to grapple with in agitation and excitement, revelations to be transformed by or to transform, a book incapable of being read straight through, a book, even, to bring reading to a stop.” There’s something about this statement that resonates with me as I think on the books that I’ve read. Now, if I happen to finish a book by reading it straight through for a day, or a few days, or a week, while this is rare, I don’t think it says anything negative about the book. In fact, often I would consider this to be a sign that it was a good book. If I begin a book and it finds its way to my bookshelf, it would seem to follow that it was a bad book. But is this the case? Are good books easy to finish and bad ones difficult?

I don’t know why I’ve never thought about this before but when I stop and reflect, I think some of the best books I’ve read are those that I had to stop, though not permanently. I had to stop for a time. On my shelves sit books like John Rawls A Theory of Justice or Benedict Spinoza’s Ethics. These books are partially read but I stopped with the intent of reengaging later. Why? Because I had to stop. I had to reflect. I had to read other authors on similar topics to help me move forward. I needed to consult the history of some idea or the history of some debate in order to have a great context for what I was reading. I was forced into a hermeneutical spiral of sorts.

I learned from Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book that it’s my responsibility to find out whether a book is worth my time and attention. Not all books need to be finished. I think this is why I sometimes look at unfinished books in a negative light. But the “unreadable” book that makes you stop, walk away, and think, may be more valuable in the long haul than the book through which you can breeze quickly! This reframes many of the books on my shelves that are waiting for the day that I reunite with them. They’re good books; they’re just not books for which I was ready when we first met.

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Whose opinions matter?

In reference to the opinions of others, there are two pitfalls we need to avoid:

  1. We shouldn’t concern ourselves with everyone’s opinions. This will lead to severe anxiety. It will freeze us because we’ll be afraid to act. Yes, people have their views about the actions of others, and people will have their thoughts about your actions, but eventually people will forget about what you did because they’re in their own head most of the time. This means they’re not thinking about you all that much. It doesn’t take very long for most people to forget why they were celebrating or denouncing you!
  2. We shouldn’t edge toward sociopathic behavior. (If someone is a diagnosed sociopath, that’s a different conversation to be had…with a psychologist.) The “only God can judge me” mindset forgets that we humans are communal. Our actions and decisions impact others. We don’t live in a bubble. We depend on others, no matter how individualistic we may be. If our words or deeds are harming others, and they tell us, we should listen to what they have to say. If we’re working with others in any capacity, and we’re taking for granted their contributions thinking ourselves to be more important than we are, we need a reality check.

The tricky thing is to know when someone’s opinions should matter to us and to what degree. I think that the opinions of strangers should be of least importance. The opinions of those who are invested in your life on the day-to-day should matter more. But there’s a caveat as it could be a stranger who offers you a message of hope and it can be our loved ones who are most harmful toward us. That’s with regard to personal matters. When it comes to broader scientific questions, the source of expertise changes.

In Plato’s Crito, Socrates sits in jail awaiting his execution with a friend named Crito who arrived before Socrates awoke in order to convince him that he should escape prison because his sentencing was unjust (see the video above for a great overview). Crito throws several arguments against the wall to see if any of them will stick, convincing Socrates to flee with his help. One of Crito’s arguments is that if Socrates dies, people will judge his friends for being cowards who didn’t help him: “it [will] appear that we have let you slip out of our hands through some lack of courage and enterprise on our part” (Tredennick and Tarrant translation, p. 83 [46a]).

Socrates responds to this concern a number of ways. First, he comments that it has never been his way to “accept advice from any of my ‘friends’ except the argument that seems best on reflection” (p. 84 [46b]). In other words, just because a friend says something doesn’t mean we must agree. We should be thoughtful and discerning about even what our friends say. The opposite must be true: our enemies aren’t wrong just because they’re our enemies.

Second, we should give certain people standing and not others: “Was it always right to argue that some opinions should be taken seriously but not others?” Socrates asks the question with the assumption is that yes, we should accept the opinions of some as worth more than others (p. 84 [46d]).

Third, we should choose the opinions we entertain based on their soundness: “one should regard the sound ones and not the flawed”. By this Socrates means, “The opinions of the wise being sound, and the opinions of the foolish flawed” (p. 85 [47a]). The “wise” here are reintroduced a few sentences later as “the one qualified person” (p. 85 [47b]). This may be the greatest challenge because if we’re seeking wisdom, then it may be difficult for us to know who to listen to. There’s no easy solution to this problem. It must be determined on a case-by-case basis. But we’re better off trusting our doctor’s medical advice than someone random person on Reddit. We’re safer trusting the credentialed experts in their field than influencers on TikTok. As Socrates says about ignoring the experts, “…if he disobeys the one man and disregard his opinions and commendations, and prefers the advice of the many who have no expert knowledge, surely he will suffer some bad effect?” Crito affirms (p. 85 [47c]): “Certainly.”

Not everything has to do with objective realities “out there” though. If your significant other or kids questions how you use your time, they may know you better than you know yourself because they’re stating that how you use your time isn’t showing that you value them and they’re assuming that you want to value them, so put down the Xbox controller for the evening.

In Socrates’ situation, he reminds Crito (p. 86 [48a]), “…what we ought to worry about is not so much what people in general will say about us but what the expert in justice and injustice says, the single authority and with him the truth itself.” Again, this doesn’t guarantee rightness. The expert can be wrong and the novice right though the odds are against it. But Socrates’ mindset is the right one. We should try to discern which voices are the most likely to give us the best guidance. This avoids the error of caring about what everyone thinks but also it avoids the equally dangerous mistake of thinking we are our only guide so we shouldn’t care about what anyone thinks. Both errors are black-and-white, dogmatic stances. The right way is the far more complicated, contextual way that asks us to think through the advice we’re receiving and from whom that advice is derived.

If TL;DR, consider instead:

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Socrates ponders his death

I teach religious studies. This means that I get the following question with some frequency: “What happens when we die?” My response is rarely satisfying: “I don’t know. I haven’t died yet.” I don’t say this to brush off a serious question or to be coy. This is the response that is most authentic. To claim to know anything more than this would be to lie, at least for me. Maybe someone out there knows what happens.

Answering with Socrates
I was asked the aforementioned question both this week and last. Incidentally, over the past few days, I reread Plato’s Apology. This is Socrates’ defense of himself before the Athenians who would vote that he was guilty of corrupting the young men of Athens and denying the commonly received gods. When it comes time for sentencing, we find Socrates rejecting an opportunity to be ostracized: “But surely, Socrates, after you have left us you can spend the rest of your life in quietly minding your own business” (Tredennick and Tarrant translation, p. 66 [37e]). But Socrates believes he has been doing what is right and what is good when he goes around challenging commonly held assumptions. He speaks of it as if it was a divine calling. To accept a form of exile would be to abandon this mandate and to fail to do what is right and good.

Here we get Socrates’ famous line about the unexamined life (p. 66 [38a]):

“If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and other is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me”

So, rather than save his life and undermine his own message and mission, Socrates accepts the sentence of the death penalty. He states that unlike the sophists who argue to win, “I would rather die as a result of this defense than live as the result of the other sort.” Also, “…the difficulty is not so much to escape death; the real difficulty is to escape wickedness, which is far more fleet of foot.” These statements (p. 67 [38d-e]) turn into a warning to the Athenians that he being slow will be caught by death but escape wickedness while they being fast will escape death but be caught by wickedness, which is far worse.

But what I want to highlight is what he says about death that is relevant to the questions I’ve received about the afterlife. Socrates warns that to assume that death is an evil is to make a mistaken claim because we don’t know (p. 69 [40 b-c]). Then he states (p. 69 [40c]):

“We should reflect that there is much reason to hope for a good result on other grounds as well. Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another.”

Socrates proposes it might be like the deepest, dreamless sleep you’ve experienced. How refreshing! “If death is like this, then, I call it gain: because the whole of time, if you look at it in this way, can be regarded as no more than a single night.” In other words, death puts us into a peaceful, everlasting state of rest (p. 69 [40e]). Or, “…on the other hand death is a removal from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be than this, gentlemen of the jury?” He imagines he might spend time philosophizing with the greats, like Hesiod and Homer (p. 69 [40e-41a]).

What About Scary Visions of the Afterlife?
Notably, he entertains no scary or torturous visions of the afterlife. I imagine that this may have something to do with his assumption that goodness is from the gods and that depictions of badness or wickedness coming from the gods should be rejected (see “Euthyphro and Goodness” and  “Would Plato approve of children reading the story of ‘Noah’s Ark’?”). Or, it may (also) be that he recognizes himself as a good man. He says (p. 70 [41d]), “…nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death, and his fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods.” If we entertain theories of divine evil or divine goodness that looks nothing like what we can recognize as goodness, then we must entertain horrific visions of the afterlife. Or we must be confident that we were good people, all things considered. Materialist visions of death, or certain Buddhist ones, or even something like Calvinistic ones seem to be a different discussion altogether.

Socrates and Christ?
I have hope that death isn’t final but I’m aware that it could be. I hope that there’s some sort of continuation of personality after death. But I don’t know what happens. I hope that I can reunite with those I love. I’m not sure how it would work though. Frankly, I don’t even have the faintest idea about what happens. I know what different theologians and religious systems have suggested but I can’t tell you who’s right and who’s wrong.

This confuses some because I claim to be a Christian but I’m a Christian who has drawn a bold line between what I want to happen and what I think I can say will happen. And I’m a Christian in the sense that I try to ask myself, “Do I want to see a world that looks something like what Jesus imagined when he spoke of the ‘Kingdom of God’?” As long as my answer is “yes”, then I’ll try to be a Christian. All veneration/worship of Jesus is an attempt to recenter my affections in a world that tries to draw our eyes to power, influence, wealth, etc. That said, the theology and metaphysics of my religion are to me what poetry is: (potentially) beautiful, symbolic speech about things we sense, feel, experience, seek, hope for, etc., but that we can’t explain concretely or logically or scientifically. It’s a categorical error to turn our poetic theology into something scientific and systematic, in my view. If you read about the resurrection of Jesus across the four canonical Gospels—ignoring non-canonical Gospels for this exercise—you’ll find an evolving narration of what can be categorized at best as an “apocalyptic” events. (To call it a “historical” event seems both misaligned with what historians are doing and underwhelming in light of what Christianity has been claiming.) On Easter, I’ll say “he is risen!” but what I think I mean is “I hope what Jesus’ followers experienced after his death is a small window into what might await us after death!” I hope but I don’t know. In other words, I feel greater kinship with Socrates on this matter than St. Paul. My hopes aren’t the same as epistemic claims. I’ve come to accept that I’ll live with the doubts of Good Friday until the day death comes for me.

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Euthyphro and Goodness

This past week, I reread Plato’s Euthyphro. This is the source of the famous “Euthyphro Dilemma” or “Euthyphro Problem”:

In Euthyphro, the question is whether the gods command what is good/holy because those commands are right/just or whether what the gods command are right/just, and therefore good/holy, because the gods command it. If the former, then it would seem that the gods are responsible to submit to a higher standard meaning that there is something greater than the gods, namely goodness, or justice, etc. If the latter, then what we call good/holy/right is merely a matter of power: we have to do what the gods tell us and this can be arbitrary; this can change over time. The gods could say “don’t murder” today but then “murder!” tomorrow and the rightness of it all would be determined by their divine positionality.

According to the polytheist Euthyphro, “…what’s holy is whatever all the gods approve of” (Tredennick and Tarrant translation, p. 20). For the monotheist, agreement isn’t needed about the number of gods. For monotheist, this uniformity is accomplished with the one god. As the video above presented it though, monotheism doesn’t escape the question: Is something right because God commands it or does God command it because it’s right. If the former, it seems arbitrary; if the latter, it seems that God is held to a standard greater than God. Most monotheists that I know respond with an argument that goes something like this: “What God commands is good because God’s commands are based on God’s nature which is inherently good.”

I’m not opposed to this argument but I think it closes the door on more fundamentalist readings of sacred texts. Let me turn to something Socrates says to Euthyphro to explain. Euthyphro is prosecuting his father for murder. Euthyrphro claims that what his is doing follows divine commands. He gives the example of how Zeus himself castrated his father Cronus because Cronus “had unjustly swallowed his sons”. In other words, Cronus had done an evil, so Zeus was justified in harming his own father.

The point I want to make has nothing to do with whether in the context of the myth, Zeus was justified. Instead, it’s Socrates’ response that interests me, as I noted above. Socrates says, “whenever someone talks like this about the gods, I find it very difficult to accept” (he says it in the form of a question but it implies his view, p. 14). Socrates finds this depiction of Zeus and Cronus problematic. Recall that recently I wrote a post titled “Would Plato approve of children reading the story of ‘Noah’s Ark’?” where I shared how in The Republic, Socrates says that God must be presented as “good”. Returning to Euthyphro, in response to the story of Zeus and Cronus, Socrates asks, “…do you really believe that these things happened like this?”

I find that if anyone is going to respond to the Euthyphro Dilemma with the claim that God’s commands are good because they come from God’s good nature, then they have to reject many of the Bible’s stories’ theologies (as well as the similar stories of other sacred texts). The response of the apologetically inclined will be to say that God’s goodness is different than ours. Maybe but to what degree? Humanicide? Or if we are to speak of doctrines like eternal damnation? If God’s goodness includes these horrid acts—acts that none of us would call good if God wasn’t attached to them—then the word “goodness” becomes meaningless. We should abandon any theologizing.

Socrates pushes Euthyphro to consider whether he understands holiness and divine justice. Euthyphro’s appeal to stories like Zeus castrating Cronus are unconvincing to Socrates because they present an inferior depiction of the divine. Socrates’ main goal is to help Euthyphro realize that he doesn’t know what the gods want because he doesn’t understand holiness and its relationship to justice. He needs epistemic humility. Likewise, modern religious people that speak of a good God doing things that we’d clearly define as bad in any other context seem to not understand divine goodness, if such a thing exists. They need epistemic humility. And they should be hesitant to appeal to sacred myths that depict the divine as having a lower standard of good than our own. Our own standard of good may not meet divine standards (because God is so extremely good) but surely they shouldn’t be clearly superior to them either. I would never exterminate almost all of humanity nor would I burn anyone for an extended period of time, let alone for an eternity. Such theologies make God wicked by any standard. And the only recourse is to retreat into arguing that what God says is good is good because God’s more powerful than us and God declared it. If this is so, then the dilemma hasn’t be addressed at all.

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Can a religious studies class be a philosophy class?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my ideal list of classes for high school freshmen (see “If I could select the courses high school freshmen take”). More precisely, I wrote about the classes that I wish students at the school where I teach had to take. One key idea is that we would offer a class that helps students think deeply about what it means to live a good life, what human flourishing looks like, and how we should treat ourselves and others. I don’t have interest in teaching something preachy. The goal is to help our students learn to think about these types of things, important as they are. But it must be done in a way that encourages them to take ownership of the questions and what they might mean for their futures.

Now, I won’t say that my idea has the green light just yet. But we are having important discussions. Something like what I pondered could become a reality as early as next year, at least with a soft launch. I’m busy outlining this potential class while reading everything that I can to help me prepare the lessons I would teach if we decide to move forward with my proposal.

The class as I’m outing it is basically a philosophy class. The tentative title is “Philosophy of Human Flourishing” which takes its inspiration from “The Human Flourishing Program” at Harvard University. Today, I mentioned the possibility of this class to some of my students. You see, I have two rituals to start each class: (1) a “Song of the Day” that ties into the lesson and (2) a “Question of the Day” that sometimes is connected but at other times can be contextual (e.g. “favorite Halloween candy?” near Halloween) or frivolous (e.g. “what’s your favorite fruit?”). Today, for my “Religion in Global Context” students, I asked, “What’s one ‘big question’ that you would like to have answered some day?” They shared some excellent questions (e.g. “Is there a God?”; “What’s true success?”). This is why I told them about the possible class we may offer. Some students seemed quite excited. A couple of seniors in the class expressed disappointment that they’ll graduate before it’s offered (not that they’ll be graduated but that we didn’t offer it earlier).

Then one student asked a good question, one I’ve been asking myself: “And this is a religion credit?” He didn’t say it in a negative way. He sounded excited that such a class would count toward his religious studies requirement if he chose to take it next year. But it’s a question that I need to answer, whether it’s asked positively or negatively. Can a philosophy course be a religious studies course?

Let me provide a couple of reasons why my answer is “yes”.

(1) Paul Tillich’s definition of religion.
(2) Religion asks us to consider how we should live.

The Protestant Christian theologian Paul Tillich, wrote in his book Theology of Culture, pp. 7-8:

“Religion, in the most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern.”

A philosophy of “the good life” or of “human flourishing” (A) is about ultimate concern as well, both in how we live for ourselves and how we live for others, and (B) religious answers can be explored philosophically. By this second statement I mean this: a religious answer doesn’t need to be mindlessly considered or submitted to because it’s “revelation” (if such a concept applies to a particular religious claim). All religious answers come from humans. Yes, the approach is often different when we come at things religiously rather than philosophically but that doesn’t mean that we can’t consider from a philosophical vantage point what religions claim. Religion exists, in part, because people have had questions about our existence. If Siddhartha Gautama thought that our primary problem was dukkha, i.e. “suffering” or “disease” or “dissatisfaction” we don’t have to dismiss his diagnosis just because it has been understood religiously. In fact, we don’t have to dismiss his prescription for healing, namely his Four Noble Truth and his Noble Eightfold Path, either.

Philosophy is a mindset that requires us to be reasonable, logical, open, critical in the best way. It asks us to question the traditions we’ve inherited not to ignore them. This means that even as a class is structured around asking students to think reasonably and critically and to be logical and sound in their arguments, not appealing to divine revelation or tradition as an easy escape from tough questions about how we should live, we can include the insights of the world’s great traditions and some of the most prominent minds like Jesus of Nazareth and the Prophet Muhammad. If they had opinions on how to live, and those opinions have shaped humanity, then we should consider them! Religion can be mixed throughout a philosophy-first course so that students are thinking about religious matters especially when ethics, morals, and values are involved.

This doesn’t depart from how we’ve taught religion at my school. Even in classes that are primarily “religious studies” there’s no side-stepping the rigorous demands of studying religion in an academic setting. For this reason, the dichotomy between religion and philosophy, at least when considered through a Tillichian definition, appears to be a methodological difference at best, and a false dichotomy at worst.

A final word on this from the perspective of someone teaching in an Episcopal school. The reason-revelation divide isn’t a strong one in my context. All texts, traditions, etc., that claim the status of “revelation” are engaged with “reason”. Anglicanism has the three-legged stool of (1) the Bible; (2) Tradition; and (3) Reason. Wesleyanism added a fourth: (4) Experience. Now, I’m aware that for many Anglicans and Wesleyans, these legs aren’t equal. The Bible and Tradition take precedent. But there’s an argument to be made that they’re equal because they’re mutually interdependent. The Bible contains reasoning about which we must reason. Tradition contains reasoning about which we must reason.

Episcopal schools face a unique double challenge. First, they serve as private religious schools that promote academics, scholarship, reason, science, and the Enlightenment values in a market where many religious schools don’t. Second, they serve as private religious schools in an increasingly—for better or worse—secular society. In all likelihood, the Episcopal Church must be prepared to represent an increasingly minority position both culturally, as the denomination shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, but also ideologically, as less and less space is made for those who value the benefits of a secular society, and who share a commitment to many Enlightenment ideals regarding rationality, science, and technology, but who remain drawn to religion/spirituality and what it offers us. Our culture is sometimes pulled between extremes like exclusivist Christian Nationalism on one side and religiously disaffiliated, even anti-religious, secularism on the other side. For those who don’t want to give up their Christianity, or maybe I should say their religiosity, but who also embrace what it means to be a modern person, what survives of the Episcopal Church will (hopefully) carve out this small space that will be an essential space for many. It must be a space that embraces pluralism and openness but also welcomes people to discuss, think, and practice spirituality and value-formation. For this reason, I don’t see a contradiction between offering a class that counts toward one’s religious studies in a private religious school that happens to be heavy on philosophy and that introduces and explores religious concepts from a philosophical perspective. It’s what I’ve been doing for over eight years now!

(Of course, there’s nothing that says we can’t reframe the requirement as “Religion and Philosophy” which would be something you might see in many Catholic schools where theology and philosophy have been in dialogue from the beginning; where Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest and most influential thinker within Catholicism, was shaped by Aristotle as much as he was the Bible and Catholic Tradition.)

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“If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself.”

Major in the Being an Influencer?
Texas Public Radio reported this week that, “The University of Texas at San Antonio is launching a college degree program in becoming a digital social media influencer.” When I saw this news on my Facebook feed, I had to check to make sure that it wasn’t April 1st. It wasn’t. The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) received “Carnegie R1 classification,” so it’s a good university but this didn’t sound like the type of degree program that a good university would launch. I presume that the people putting together this program know better than I do whether there’s a market for it and whether or not such a program will enhance or harm their brand. So, the only thing I know to say about this is what I said on Threads last night:

I’m old enough to remember when blogs, and then social media like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, was fun. It was fun because it allowed you to connect and reconnect. It helped you find people with similar interests. It could turn ugly at times—especially blog comments—but most of the time it seemed like Internet 2.0 was constructive. Something changed with the ability to “Like” this or that. And when Twitter shifted away from calling connections “Friends” to calling them “Followers,” it felt like we entered an era where social media was performative, theatrical.

We’re constantly tempted to “build an audience”; to turn ourselves into a “brand”. I won’t lie, it would be nicer to get more than 2-3 responses on Threads. I would like to have more people reading my blog. But I don’t have in me what it takes to turn one’s self into something marketable; into a product. This may be why I don’t understand what people at UTSA appear to understand.

Plato’s Warning
In Book I of The Republic, Plato’s Socrates says the following of “good men” who will consent to lead others (Lee’s translation, p. 29):

“So good men will not consent to govern for cash or honors. They do not want to be called mercenary for exacting cash payments for the work of government, or thieves for making money on the side; and they will not work for honors, for they aren’t ambitious. We must therefore bring compulsion to bear and punish them if they refuse—perhaps that’s why it’s commonly considered improper to accept authority except with reluctance or under pressure; and the worst penalty for refusal is to be governed by someone worse than themselves. That is what, I believe, frightens honest men into accepting power, and they approach it not as if it were something desirable out of which they were going to do well, but as if it were something unavoidable, which they cannot find anyone better or equally qualified to undertake.”

I don’t think it’s true that people who want to lead should be completely adverse to pay, or honor, or even power. I do think there remains something to Plato’s/Socrates’ observation though. Many misguided people are drawn to leadership, politics, power, influence, etc., for the worst of reasons. Many good people have found themselves in the mud of politics for the sole reason that their opponent, if not defeated, would wreak havoc. As Socrates quips, “That is what…frightens honest men into accepting power”. They know that if they don’t do it, someone who shouldn’t do it will. They would be happy not leading, not influencing, but they lead/influence to prevent those who shouldn’t lead/influence from doing so.

I thought of this when I heard of UTSA’s program. Who will it draw? What kind of person wants to be an influencer for the sake of being an influencer? What kind of culture creates what has become, in essence, the job “influencer”? Have we lost the necessary fear of misleading people? Do I want people to spend money on a product just because it was given to me for free, or to take up a trend because by encouraging others to do so, I gain more attention? This seems unhealthy. It may be that it isn’t. I can’t know for sure. But if it’s to be done in a healthy way, there needs to be a lot more self-reflection from the students than we see from your average influencer.

Epictetus’ Warning
I’ve increasingly been thinking about what it means to live a good life—a genuinely good life. I presume that the nearness of fatherhood has intensified this for me. So, tonight, as I was reading excerpts from Epictetus’ Encheiridion (translated by Nicholas White) found in The Good Life edited by Charles Guignon, I came across these lines (pp. 57-58):

“If you want to make progress, let people think you are a mindless fool about externals, and do not desire a reputation for knowing about them. If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself. Certainly it is not easy to be on guard both for one’s choices to be in accord with nature and also for externals, and a person who concerns himself with the one will be bound to neglect the other.”

A footnote explains, “‘Making progress; (prokoptein) os the Stoic expression for movement in the direction of the ideal condition for a human being…” It’s implied that this saying suggests that those who truly want to experience full human flourishing can’t be concerned with how one is perceived. In fact, flattery and praise should give pause: “If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself.”

“
18th-century portrait of Epictetus, including his crutch” via Wikimedia

Again: “distrust yourself”.

I read in this the reminder to not let one’s ego become inflated by the praise of other. You can’t buy into your own brand. You must maintain a healthy sense of skepticism toward your own ideas, accomplishments, successes, and especially when others praise you. Distrust the part of you that, in the words of St. Paul (Romans 12:3), “think of yourself more highly than you ought”. As he said in the next part of that statement, “think of yourself with sober judgment”. Remain self-aware. Remain transparent to yourself. Remain honest about your flaws.

Our world is full of people who never second guess themselves when they should—the Andrew Tate’s, the Jake Paul’s of this world. And we’re becoming a culture that increasingly celebrates that stubborn narcissism. But I presume that such lives have dark, hidden areas that none of us would want to live with on a day to day basis and I predict that they’re untenable. Self-destruction awaits those who show no concern for wisdom. We need more of what Plato, Epictetus, and St. Paul offer us, so I hope students applying to UTSA will consider programs in higher education that cultivate their humanity

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Would Plato approve of children reading the story of “Noah’s Ark”?

I’ve been rereading through Plato’s The Republic recently. In Book II, as he has his characters Adeimantus and Socrates imagine the ideal society, they begin discussing what kind of books they would want the youth of their society to read as part of their education. They agree that education should focus on “mind and character”. And that this education should “include stories” of “two kinds, true stories and fiction” (Lee’s translation, p. 68).

But then Socrates asks:

“Shall we therefore readily allow our children to listen to any stories made up by anyone, and to form opinions that are for the most part the opposite of those we think they should have when they grow up.”

Adeimantus replies, “We certainly shall not.” Socrates goes on to say that the ideal society would have to supervise what books are read (p. 69). Now, at a time where our country is debating the banning of books in libraries and schools, this may sound a little fascist. I don’t know if Plato should be read as saying he wants this to happen, or just that this is what it would take to create an ideal society even if he’s not committed to the actions that Socrates floats. Either way, Socrates says, “The greater part of the stories current today we shall have to reject.”

For Socrates, this includes Hesiod (e.g. the Theogony) and Homer (The Iliad; The Odyssey). Adeimantus asks, “What sort of stories do you mean and what fault do you find in them?” To which Socrates responds, “The worst fault possible…especially if the fiction is an ugly one.” He explains this as “Misrepresenting the nature of gods and heroes…” (p. 69).

The Gods Aren’t Good
Anyone who is familiar with Greek mythology knows that the gods aren’t moral exemplars. They’re powerful but often they’re not nice, or honest, etc. Of these stories, Socrates says, they are “not fit as it is to be lightly repeated to the young and foolish” even if these stories were true! He believes only a small select group should be trusted with these stories and their memorization. But this would never include youth.

Socrates says, “Nor shall any young audience be told that anyone who commits horrible crimes, or punished his father unmercifully, is doing nothing out of the ordinary but merely what the first and greatest of gods have done before.” Additionally, “Nor can we permit stories of wars and plots and battles among the gods; they are quite untrue.” For Socrates, young, impressionable minds can’t discern how to interpret these texts. The gods are important. This is how they live. Shouldn’t they be mimicked?

Teaching Children Healthy Theology
A few years ago, I had a friend who said they were generally comfortable with the church they were attending because they knew that their kids were being taught things like “God is love” and “God loves everyone”. Like Socrates, this friend didn’t think his children should learn stories from the Bible where the theology is suspect; where God is violent or behaves in such a way that if humans mimicked the Bible’s God, we’d have problems! Socrates ays, “…we should therefore surely regard it as of the utmost importance that the first stories they hear shall aim at encouraging the highest excellence of character”. In other words, choose good and uplifting theology if you’re going to teach any theology at all (p. 70).

Later, Socrates argues that good theology takes precedent over stories about the divine (p. 71). He says, “God must surely always be represented as he really is…in reality of course god is good, and he must be so described.” Socrates’ god is the source of good and not evil: “…while god must be held to be the sole cause of good, we must look for some factors other than god as a cause of evil.”

What about Noah’s Ark?
A few years ago, I wondered aloud how old a child or adolescent must be to read, say, the story of “Noah’s Ark” with maturity. As I read Plato, this thought crossed my mind again. I agree with my friend, and Socrates, that if you’re going to participate in god-talk with children then your theology better be about love and goodness and all that nurtures, uplifts, and provided security to a child. Some of the trash theology that I heard when I was young—like the idea that the “Rapture” could happen leaving me on earth during the “Great Tribulation” to suffer divine wrath—shouldn’t be taught period but especially to young children. That can be traumatizing! And I know from experience that it harms adolescents as well.

In spite of these concerns, many parents read books like this:

The animals are so happy. Noah is so happy. Yet humanicide occurred and most of the animals are dead underneath those waters. I see no reason to sanitize this story just to share it with children. We can wait until they’re older. As Socrates said about the stories of Hesiod and Homer: even if they’re true, indelible minds shouldn’t encounter them during formative years.

How Old is Old Enough?
Four years ago, I asked these questions in the aforementioned post:

“So, when should children read the story of Noah and the Ark? When are they mature enough? Is it ok to introduce it to them as a happy story about God saving animals when they’re young and then return to it later to discuss some of the more complex, even disturbing aspects of the story later?”

When I consider the kind of media my students consume through YouTube and TikTok, I presume their readiness to read and critically engage stories like this one. But I’m not sure the middle schoolers at my school should be learning about stories like these. Maybe they’re ready. Maybe they’re mature enough. But we must remember that many people who read religious texts presume that the presentation of god in those texts is prescriptive to our theology in some way. If this is so, then maybe they should wait until high school to read Hesiod, Homer, and “Moses”. Until then, we should emphasize positive theology.