Requiem for Philosophy

✍ Scribed by David Glidden

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 165 KB
• Volume: 28
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-721X
• DOI: 10.1006/reli.1997.0079

✦ Synopsis

Composing his obituary for Rome's antiquity, in his City of God Augustine proclaimed that ancient philosophy had perished, too. In casting history in this fashion, Augustine's funereal obloquy helped bury philosophy, as the ancients once had lived it from Socrates to Stoicism. In this essay, Augustine's requiem for philosophy is examined, with a view toward suggesting what philosophy would have to become in order to meet the spiritual requirements Augustine found it sorely lacked.

1998 Academic Press Limited But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Revelation 21.8

History has its moments. Culture, context, circumstance notwithstanding, sometimes events defy the times. Then interpreters begin to tell their stories, to stay the moment and re-construct its situating context. The moment yields to narrative placement. Happenstance defers to portraiture and reconstruction. Interpreters angle for perspective and vie with one another to define the times. Even the ancient history of philosophy is a never-ending story.

Sometimes stories told on the spur of the moment affect subsequent history. The sack of the eternal city in 410 brought an end to Rome's antiquity. Composing his obituary for that earthly empire, Augustine welcomed the death of a civilization he loathed so eloquently. In his City of God, Augustine proclaimed that ancient philosophy had perished too, along with false gods and pornographic circuses. In casting history in this fashion, Augustine's funereal narration helped bury philosophy, as the ancients once had lived it from Socrates to Stoicism.

The ancient sages had insisted that philosophy requires personal commitment. According to Augustine's reading of the sack of Rome, the demise of antiquity discredited the philosophical life. Displaced by Judaeo-Christianity, ancient philosophy was no longer viable as a living practice. Its superannuated corpse became, instead, a reliquary of arguments and theses. Augustine welcomed its demise and welcomed in scholasticism.

This self-fulfilling death notice is worth considering, since what little that remains of philosophy as a practiced way of life has nearly vanished in the West. Even history's relics of philosophy's heroes have been primarily contained in memorialized remains relegated to mausoleums housed in assorted colleges and universities. There are few Western philosophers who practice their profession outside education's havens, not to mention pursue philosophy as a way of life, as Socrates once did and as Confucians continue to do. 1 Augustine's requiem for philosophy continues in effect, especially in the aftermath of a Renaissance that tried and failed to revive philosophy as a way of life. Faced with premillennial anxieties, respected cynics like Richard Rorty have written fresh obituaries of the philosophical profession 2 Postmodern Miltonists like Stanley Fish invoke the Manichaean specter of chthonic, inchoate Evil at war with forces of the Lite, in a battle of faith and slogans, wars of words. 3 Philosophy is dead again.

Unlike its ancient history and unlike its Renaissance revival, today's professors of philosophy are not players anymore wherever issues really matter.