Living Philosophy: The Philosophical Tradition & S.F. Bay Area Secular Humanist Communities
by Jason Smick - lecturer, Santa Clara University
Last month I discussed some of the reasons that I think philosophy and humanist communities need one another. This week I would like to amplify one aspect of that discussion. More specifically, I want to discuss why it is that I think the academic philosophical community could benefit from a closer involvement with humanist communities.
From the beginning, philosophy was indeed a distinct way of thinking. Yet in the ancient period, this way of thinking was related to and served a distinct way of life. To paraphrase a point made in different but complementary ways by the French philosopher and historian of philosophy, Pierre Hadot, one might say that most contemporary philosophers regard philosophy as a theoretical discourse, one not bound necessarily to a lived community that includes, in addition to philosophical theoreticians, persons devoted to the ways and cause of philosophy but who are themselves not philosophical theorists as such. This is to say that philosophical theorists today ordinarily do not see, let alone enact, philosophy as a way of life and type of community. The consequence would seem to be that philosophical communities in the ancient sense have disappeared.
But is this the case? Can one show that, contrary to appearances, there remain philosophical communities analogous to the ancient Greek and Roman schools such as Epicureanism and Stoicism, or, even more recently, to the Enlightenment-era Philosophes or the Marxist revolutionary movements of the 20th century?
I would like to suggest that the philosophical communities associated with academia do not exhaust the reality of philosophical society at present. There continue to exist philosophical communities, which, like their ancient and modern antecedents, include philosophers who are not philosophical theorists. There are communities that use the language of philosophy, see the world in a philosophical way, enact philosophical practices, and structure their self-understanding and understanding of others with the help of distinctly philosophical ideas. These communities are constituted by lawyers, doctors, computer programmers, and schoolteachers who are philosophers not because they write treatises or give papers at conferences, but because they think and live a philosophical life.
What communities do I have in mind? In my view, contemporary secular humanist associations are living examples of philosophical community in the broader, deeper, and more inclusive sense. Take as an example, and one that is close to home, the Humanist Community (HC). Most of HC‘s members are not professional philosophers, though some are. Rarely, if ever, is the term ―philosophy‖ used by its community members to describe the kind of community to which they belong. Yet every week, its membership gathers and repeats one of the most ancient of philosophical practices – dialogue. The weekly ―Sunday Forum‖ ‖ is less akin to Sunday church services than it might seem, though the comparison is sometimes made. More so, these forums are philosophical dialogues informed, ideally, by reasoned presentations and discussions carried out in a spirit that is generally charitable and open-minded. In this way, and perhaps without realizing it, HC does on a weekly basis what philosophers have done on a regular basis for the last 2,600 years in both formal and informal contexts. Where the two differ is in their practical life. The HC‘s collective advocacy on social justice issues and its children‘s program are two examples of the way that humanist groups continue to preserve and cultivate the practical dimensions of a philosophical life, that is, one oriented primarily to the world and worldly concerns. The very fact that HC is understood to be a community, and is carried out as a community, is another example.
These observations reveal an at least implicit, and, at times, explicit commitment on the part of humanist groups both to a philosophical account of life – a philosophical worldview – and to a philosophical approach to the project of life that necessitates acts that found and/or perpetuate a community. The aforementioned HC practices of dialogue, social action, and children‘s educational programs not only serve as means for fleshing out ideas and issues, or addressing social issues, or caring for the young. They are also practices that draw its membership into community with one another so as to renew their commitment to the community itself.
That few, if any, professional philosophers see humanist communities as philosophical communities is perhaps partly due to the complex historical relation of philosophy to Christianity. This is Hadot‘s claim, and it is one that I would accept as a provisional, working hypothesis. The same complex relation might also help to account for why it is that humanist communities ordinarily do not see themselves as philosophical communities. Hadot argues that one consequence of the Christian tradition‘s efforts to consolidate its intellectual, social, and political influence and to comprehend its own meaning and goals, was the reduction of philosophy to a theoretical activity directed toward the formalization and rationalization of the Christian faith. Christianity recognized in philosophical thinking a resource that could and did provide a good deal of the conceptual language for articulating and expressing the Christian worldview and way of life. The practical dimensions of philosophy – its various communities, ethical codes, and ways of dealing with loss and death – offered an alternative to the Christian life. It quite rightly, therefore, saw philosophy as one of its competitors. It thus suppressed existing philosophical forms of life while retaining and further developing philosophical theory and its methods and concepts within the context of Christianity. But it also incorporated many of the non-theoretical practices philosophy such as ―examination of the conscience. As a consequence of this reduction and incorporation, over the course of the modern era, even as philosophy recovered itself as an autonomous tradition, it continued to see itself as a strictly theoretical activity. One might say it had forgotten that it was ever anything more than a community of theorists.
It is perhaps for this reason that a book Reginald White published in 1970 on the 18th century Enlightenment philosophers known as the Philosophes could be called The Anti-Philosophers. Why ―anti-philosophers‖? As White recounts, the Philosophes were considered such by some philosophers because they were interested in practical affairs like education and political reform and not just questions related to epistemology, metaphysics, or natural philosophy. Perhaps this is one reason that most philosophers, for their part, do not see humanist communities as philosophical communities. And the professional philosophical community is the poorer for it, I believe. This is why I would encourage members of the HC to explore the claims I have made here. And if you find that they can be substantiated, I would further encourage you to experiment with your assumptions about what humanism is. For example, do your studies of philosophy suggest that humanist communities can reasonably be redescribed as philosophical communities? If so, and if that led to a dialogue between philosophy and humanist communities, groups like the HC could serve as a living reminder to contemporary philosophical theorists that they too belong to a community as meaningful and real as their ancient and modern precursors; or at least that they once did, and perhaps could again.
This column was first printed in the Humanist Community Newsletter November 2010, vol.16, issue 11)
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(Jason Smick is a lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at Santa Clara University. A native of the Sacramento area, he holds degrees in philosophy, theology, and religious studies. His work focuses on the practical and communal dimensions of ancient and modern Western philosophical traditions, and the relation of secular cultures and traditions to both the religions and Western philosophy.)
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