Philosophers Should Pray

A Modest Proposal For Saving Philosophy From Irrelevance

May writing and hitting send on this post help me a better, more loving, more attentive, more motivated, more appreciative person today. And may your opening it and reading it make you a better, more loving, more attentive, more motivated, more appreciative person today. May our small efforts at questioning and contemplating contribute to making the world a more peaceful, more meaningful, and more hospitable place.

Many of the great philosophers were also religious seekers and theologians and many of the great seekers were students of philosophy, seekers of wisdom. Think of Augustine and Abelard, Philo and Maimonides, Al-Farabi and Boethius. But the posture of prayer and devotion is often missing from philosophy. Why?

Before studying Torah, Jews recite the blessing, “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, who obligates us to immerse in words of Torah.” Before meditating, Buddhists set an intention or dedicate their practice to the wellbeing of others. The goal in both Judaism and Buddhism is not simply insight, but insight in the service of something else. Yet in philosophy seminars, it would be awkward and strange to pray— “God of Socrates, God of Plato, God of Aristotle, reveal yourself to us.” Even to pray “Truth of Socrates, Truth of Plato, Truth of Aristotle—be our Truth” would likely be a kind of faux pas, a misunderstanding of philosophy. But why should it be this way? Why is philosophy historically considered at odds with piety (both Socrates and Aristotle were charged with impiety)?

If the task of philosophy is to only accept things which are known or proven then prayer is ruled out axiomatically, ritual is ruled out axiomatically. But how can a philosopher pursue knowledge at all without the hope that it exists, that it is attainable, and that it is worth pursuing—the philosopher can’t know these things in advance. The philosophical quest and the religious quest both require an attitude and temperament that precedes justification.

Even on secular grounds, I believe philosophers should pray before philosophizing. Philosophers should pray words that they believe to be true. They need not address those words to God. But there should be an addressee and there should be a vessel for the expression of wish and hope, gratitude, and yearning, joy, as well as atonement, aspiration, and grief.

May that which makes philosophy possible be with me now. May that which inspired my ancestors, Heraclitus, Leibniz, and Spinoza, show itself to me now, aid me and my contemporaries now.

I make no prescription about the specific prayer needed, but I maintain that a prayerful state before reading philosophy, before engaging in discursive battle (let me not injure or cause injury through harsh words, etc. ), before giving job talks— would go a long way to healing the divide between cloistered academia and everyone else.

Basically, philosophy needs to find its own authentic way to be religious, to make piety acceptable. There are many practical and political reasons why this is unlikely to happen at an institutional level, but the original philosophers ran small schools, not juggernauts for churning out professionals.

Leo Strauss argues for an esoteric teaching and method within philosophical tradition. I would add to (or revise) Strauss that perhaps the most esoteric and thus important part of philosophy is the ritual surrounding it, that which elevates it from a technique to something like a calling. In religion, we might call this “holiness.”

I understand that religious language is often abused, and often used to silence philosophical dissent, but that needn’t be the case. Even skeptics need a way to say, “May my deep resistance to falsehood help me be more wise, more compassionate, more my patient, more forgiving. May my refusal of pseudo-answers be in the service of waking up and living well. Amen.”

P.S.—I’m glad to share my latest conversation on the conflicting value systems at the heart of Western Civilization with Joe Lonsdale. Also, my Genesis seminar on Threadable is now live. Join 200+ thoughtful folk in weekly study over the next 3 months. (You’ll need an iPhone or iPad to do so.)