From my youngest days, I have pursued philosophy. Along the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico, in company of sand, sky, sun, and sea, I contemplated the Infinite. I have always enjoyed romping in the limitless field of ideas, ever pondering the great question: what is the essence of life? I don't know how much closer I am today to knowing many answers, but I still enjoy exploring the depths of the question.
Henry David Thoreau in his time commented that there was an excess of philosophy teachers and a paucity of actual philosophers. Perhaps a person might feel pretentious identifying himself as a philosopher. On the one hand, he might feel dwarfed by such philosophic luminaries as Socrates, Aristotle and the Buddha. On the other hand, he might feel defeated by the cliché, "Everybody's a philosopher." Nevertheless, we all indeed qualify as philosophers if we but avidly pursue philosophy.
And what is it to pursue philosophy? Simply: to love wisdom. The very word itself, philosophy, teaches us. It is composed of the two Greek words "love" (philo) and "wisdom" (sophos). If we truly love wisdom and seek to grow in it, we are philosophers. This doesn't require that we open our own schools, but it does put us in the company - if perhaps not quite at the level -- of great philosophical luminaries whose very existence tends to intimidate us. Yet we can greater appreciate their ideas if we ourselves are active participants in the love of wisdom.
If to know is to love, then we must know wisdom in order to love it. At least we should come to terms with a valid conception of it to guide our thought. The word wisdom is derived from the root word "weid," meaning "to see." It is related to other meanings such as "to look after, show the way, guard, guide." Mythological characters reinforce the meaning in story form. Odin, All-Father of the Norse gods, traded one of his eyes in order to be able to drink one draught from the Fountain of Wisdom. A synonym for a wise person is a "seer" and a well-used mythological archetype is the blind seer, such as Tiresias of the ancient Greeks, who is dark to the outer world of appearances but bright to the inner world of reality.
It is the business of the wise to look in order to see. Not to turn away from reality but to face it directly. To love truth as the accurate representation of reality. Not to be carried away by the illusion of false appearances, but to dwell firmly with the real.
Though wisdom is associated with the learning of knowledge, it is not the accumulation of an abundance of facts. It is the development of understanding. Understanding depends on one's humility to be objective in viewing a situation. Understanding requires one to disengage the ego, the sense of separate self that sees all things as merely its servants. Indeed, the dissolution of the ego is promoted by many philosophers of the East as the very goal of wisdom.
Often the pursuit of philosophy begins in the contemplation of our mortality, the dissolution of our bodily form into whose identification the self, or ego, is so thoroughly tied. The thought surfaces that if our form -- our self-- passes, what shall remain? More importantly, if our sojourn on this planet in this form is to be so brief, what is the best use of our time here? This is a question each of us must answer for ourselves. It is contained in the special philosophical category of ethics, but I find it the most universally significant question to ponder. Ultimately, philosophy, the love of wisdom and the pursuit of understanding, is everyone's business.
Bob Gonzalez is a freelance writer who also, with his family, manages Ansley's Natural Marketplaces in Tampa, Florida. (813) 239-2700.