Philosophy as Prayer

Socrates, Heidegger, and Exodus

Before we jump in, I wanted to share the premiere episode of my new podcast, Meditations with Zohar. I spoke to the polymath economist Tyler Cowen about life in the internet age, what we can learn from empty restaurants and the philosophy of Leo Strauss. If you like what you hear, and want to support, please subscribe, rate the show (5 stars), review it, and share it.

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We don’t typically think of philosophy as prayer. But both are expressions of yearning. To pray, especially as a supplicant, one must feel that something is missing. Even a prayer of gratitude presumes that something is missing, namely the admission of gratitude itself. Philosophy begins in wonder. It is a search for answers. But to engage in philosophy requires that the world be amiss in some way, that the given answers be unsatisfying.

Socrates asks questions that annoy others, because he does not assume what they assume. He is bothered. His society experiences his being bothered as bothersome to them. Can’t they just live in peace? Prayer, too, surfaces angst, and angst is threatening to those intent on saying that the world is good enough, that things make sense, that little can or should change.

Jewish tradition teaches that the Israelites could not leave Egypt until they cried out. The beginning of liberation is the acknowledgment of suffering. Until you see slavery as bad, you can’t leave it. But it’s scary to do this, because it means accepting that something must change. It means accepting the unknown.

Philosophy is not typically thought of as a kind of cry. The straight-laced thinkers are people of calm and repose. Stoicism is a philosophy, in particular, about finding one’s center no matter the external chaos; it’s a philosophy of control. How is philosophy a cry?

The essence of philosophy is “love of wisdom.” But you can’t love wisdom unless you yearn for it. Hegel thought philosophy should end with the end of history, with the writing of his own work. Then, there would be wisdom itself, and thus no need for the love of wisdom.

Heidegger begins Being and Time with the claim that everybody talks about Being, but nobody experiences the meaning of Being as a question. Nobody is perplexed by Being. Being is either a) universal and therefore empty of meaning b) ineffable, mysterious and therefore abstract, a non-issue or c) an obvious and self-evident part of life and language that is so obvious as to require no further inquiry.