The Light of Unknowing
One of the first characters one meets when taking a philosophy class or simply googling “philosophy” is Socrates. At his trial, as told to us by his student Plato, he demurs at the oracle’s claim that he was the wisest person. Ironically, he denies that he is anything like that. Of course, anyone who knows those ancient Greeks also knows that the Oracle is NEVER wrong, just riddle-ish. Socrates regales the huge jury of skeptical and antagonist fellow citizens with his encounters with politicians, professionals, artists. Each claims to know… what in fact they do not. Well, he makes short shrift of the politicians and much like us today, you can easily imagine the audience rolling their eyes at the mere suggestion that such a crew was wise. He admits that professionals often know quite a bit about their respective specialties but the problem is that they quickly assume an air of knowing beyond their limits. And artists? Well, they seem to have a shortcut to important truths but often fail to understand them themselves. The muses work through them and they simply convey the truth without really comprehending it. In the end, Socrates has to admit he IS the wisest man… simply because he knows that he knows nothing, or very little at least. The trial goes on and — spoiler alert — it does not end well for Socrates although he is blissfully not bothered by the sentence of death handled down by the enraged jury.
In this famous painting by David we see Socrates lecturing on the nature of the soul as he reaches for the hemlock, slightly bemused by his friends’ apparent distraught attitudes.
My point, and yes, I do have one, is that wisdom — if we are to try to gain it — begins in realizing we do not know. Philosophy is really about being four years old again. You look around the world and you have… questions… lots of them. “Why” comes often out of your tiny mouth and while sometimes, yes, it is a ploy for attention, more likely it captures your intense and genuine desire to know. For adults, jaded by years of pretending to get it, this can be either annoying, or a call to realize how little they themselves really understand. The philosophical attitude pushes the person to retain that curiosity and not settle for lame responses or declarations based simply on authority of some random person(s). Of course philosophy can get dogmatic as well but good philosophers work very hard at not letting that happen.
I would like to suggest that religion is closely allied with philosophy. Both start in wonder with the question, Why. While philosophy turns to logic and conceptual constructs to find reasons, religion turns to stories and mystery. Both are powered by the same impulse — that inner four year old curious gaze at the puzzling, contradictory, beautiful and at times tragic world around them.
The medieval philosophers and theologians struggled with this as well and worked so very hard to pull them together, religion and philosophy. Augustine and Anselm: faith seeking understanding. Thomas Aquinas and Averroes: charting out their separate and overlapping spheres. If one’s religious beliefs are true, how can secular knowledge be a threat? Alas, not all agreed but it was a great project. Of course this was not one big happy family as the Crusades were raging and the Jews were being persecuted. But in philosophical circles, knowledge was knowledge, whether from a Muslim, Jew, or Christian.
This synergy did not last long.
Religion begins in story but rather quickly it becomes The Story and all others are labeled wrong, dangerous, heretical. It tends to go downhill from there. This might happen in philosophy but (a) the stakes do not seem quite as high, and (b) they are all academics, so — do we care?
What interests me is the potential for a religion to retain its porous openness to metaphor, multiple variations on a common theme. Can one be, say, a Christian, and experience the gospel stories as truths that parallel and reverberate in other religious traditions? The answer to that question at the Council of Nicea was a resounding NO. The resulting Nicene Creed, recited in many Roman Catholic and Anglican churches to this day, spells out the orthodoxy. The Eastern arm of Christianity parted on the infamous filioque clause. But maybe that is a bit more theological debate than anyone wants. Anyone, being… me.
But as the centuries role on, and as religion seems to become more and more about excluding others who do not buy into our particular Story, I have to wonder: Would Jesus of Nazareth, Buddha, or Mohammad, if they were to pop into the world today recognize the religions associated with their names? I am going to go with a resounding no on that one. In my own country, Christianity seems to be hellbent (intentional use of that phrase) on condemning anyone who veers from a given sect’s declared moral rulebook. You know — the rules that they are absolutely positive are the true and only ones — and that happen to be theirs and about which they have apodictic certainty. Gays, women, people of color, anyone who disagrees is treated as the enemy and as such fair game for inhumane treatment. Was that Jesus’ message in the gospels? Actually, no; not at all. He spent most of his time with precisely those people that everyone else rejected. What we see here is exactly the same mistake humans make all the time: we claim to know what in fact we do not know at all.
Recall that Socrates admitted artists are often on to the truth, even if they themselves do not fully grasp the meaning of their own creations. I am going to end this with a recommendation. Recently I completed a seven volume masterpiece called Septology by Jon Foss. It follows a man, an artist, throughout a week in Advent, leading up to Christmas. The character reflects on identity, time, art, and religion and God. Here we find a profoundly devout believer in God who uses Christianity, in his case Roman Catholicism, as a lens to refract the experience of the divine all around and within him. He introduces Meister Eckhart as his muse and guide in navigating the mysteries of being alive in world of terrifying beauty and tragedy. A world where Why finds itself echoed from every corner. As the main character deals kindly with the lost souls he encounters throughout that week, those before him and those in his memory, he connects art, light, truth, and God into a seamless philosophical vision that captures Christ, or Buddha, or… — If we could but listen for it and accept that we do not know. We can only question and seek. But that may be precisely our destiny.
