Finding the Ancient Way: Part Two

For the previous article in this series – Finding the Ancient Way: Part One

Socrates famously said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. He said this while facing a death sentence. He was on trial because his pursuit of wisdom had begun to upset the sensibilities of the Athenian upper class. The worthies of Athens didn’t really want to put Socrates to death; they simply wanted to stop his philosophical inquiry because it threatened their beliefs and upset the self-made order of their lives. Consequently Socrates was offered the option of exile. He could live, but it would effectively put an end to his philosophical quest. As the opening quote makes clear, Socrates chose the pursuit of wisdom over life itself.

There are several themes or images in history and in fiction that I have always found particularly moving, and attractive. The knights and monks of medieval Europe, the Samurai of Japan, and even the Jedi of Star Wars, they all exemplify the ideas of discipline, the pursuit of excellence, and self-sacrifice. One of the central ideas present in all of these is purpose. They all recognize that life has a purpose.

One of the great problems of the modern world is that most of us tend to live by default. We don’t have a real sense of purpose, we don’t have clear goals, we just sort of meander from day to day, trying as much as possible to avoid pain. It is tempting to think that we also try to maximize pleasure, but I tend to think that our attempts to maximize pleasure have more to do with avoiding the pain of boredom, or other emotional types of pain, than they really do with the pleasures themselves.

Part of the affliction of this problem is that we, ourselves, are so keenly aware of it. The entire self-development industry exists because people know that they are wallowing in mediocrity. They are falling far short of what and who they ought to be.  They crave purpose. The irony of the self-development industry is that, for the most part, we use its products not to actually achieve anything of value, but to fool ourselves into feeling like we have.

This problem is so endemic in our society that many aspects of our culture exist primarily to distract people from their lack of purpose or to feed people a false sense of accomplishment. Drugs, alcohol, social media, TV shows, movies, games, all serve these purposes. It is no coincidence that all of these things are major sources of addiction. It’s not that all these things are bad in and of themselves, most of them aren’t. The problem is that we use them to escape from the reality of our directionless lives.

In my last article I mentioned how J.R.R. Tolkien responded to charges of escapism that were leveled against The Lord of the Rings, but here we see the wrong kind of escapism. Pain is meant to tell us that something is out of order. It is a prompt to put things right. This kind of escapism seeks to distract from, or dull the pain without doing the hard work of putting things back in order. We have been poisoned and the answer of our culture is to choose anesthetic instead of antidote.

We settle for the illusion because it is easier to bear than reality. In the end, this is deadly.

In the ancient school of philosophy that began with Socrates and his student Plato, everything that exists is believed to have an ideal form, known as its “Telos”. The telos of a thing is its ideal self, its end, the goal towards which it strives, in a word, its purpose.

As Socrates’ famous quote elucidates, self-knowledge is essential to purpose. How can you hope to become who you are meant to be if you know neither yourself as you are, nor yourself as you are meant to be? This is why the unexamined life is not worth living. The unexamined life is a life lived by default. A life ignorant of purpose. It is tempting to say that this is a life without meaning, but there is no such thing. All life has meaning. The question is, will you discover it? Will you pursue it? Will you attain it?

Our awareness of this problem is witnessed by the multitude of pop-psychology and self-help books written about knowing yourself and self-actualization.  Despite the mountainous pile of literature on this topic, our efforts have resulted in abject failure for one simple reason. The only thing in the world that you can’t see is yourself.

The Self cannot be objectively known. Personal identity is not a collection of attributes or a list of character traits. It is possible to know all about a person, and still not know that person.  The Self can only be known in relationship.

This profound truth reveals why our modern attempts at self-knowledge have been such miserable failures. We have attempted to turn the world into a series of mirrors in which we look to see ourselves endlessly reflected. You cannot have a relationship with the image in a mirror. The more we seek to see ourselves by imposing our image upon the world around us, the less chance we have of ever truly finding out who we are, and who we are meant to be.

The self can only be known subjectively by another subject. The question, asked by Tom Bombadil, ‘who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?’ is unanswerable. The closest you can ever get is to give your name. What is a name but a call to relationship? A name is that thing by which others know you and only in being known may you know something of yourself.

It is also of vital importance to realize that like your name, your identity, your self, and your very being and existence, are all given to you. They are not self-created. You can as much create your own identity as you can give birth to yourself. Everything you have, even your very self, is a gift.

Knowing yourself as you are is an important step, but it is not the end goal. It is not your purpose. To find our true purpose we must know our Telos, our ideal self. We must know who we are meant to be. Just as we can only find knowledge of ourselves through relationship with other persons, we can only find knowledge of our ideal self through relationship with the Transcendent.

You can gain some knowledge of yourself through honest relationship with the world around you, but most especially you are known through relationship with another person. Only another knower can know you. In the same way you may gain some knowledge of your ideal self through honest relationship with the truths of Transcendent Reality, but most especially your ideal self is known only through relationship with the transcendent Person.

At first glance, to the modern reader, it might seem almost like a contradiction that Socrates could say “The unexamined life is not worth living.” For if you search the Socratic dialogues Socrates spends relatively little time looking at himself. His quest is always outward and upward. He does not go in search of himself, he goes in search of the true nature of Beauty, Justice, Friendship, and so on. His purpose in all his endeavors is to know The Good. By this he does not mean specific goods, or individual goods, but transcendent Goodness itself. The Good from which all specific goods and individual goods receive their goodness.

This is also why Aristotle places the highest value in life on the contemplation of the Divine Mind. This is the path to our purpose. Only here can we discover our Telos. If you seek the self, you will lose yourself utterly. Only in relationship with God can you ever truly find and become yourself.

For the next article in this series – Finding the Ancient Way: Part Three