During Athens’s Golden Age, Pericles said of Athenians, their lifestyles and their values, “We philosophize, but not to excess.” That is, “we combine hard thinking with other things as well.”

And what of us? Our nation’s dogged pursuit of innovation, truth in action and domination of environment is led by at best two or three percent of Americans. The hard, unique thinking called philosophizing, searching rationally for deepest truths, is systematically done by perhaps 1 in 10,000 of all serious truth-seekers. Stereotypical America is not a land of philosophers. But we are, through early education, becoming a nation of soccer devotees and chess players. We can be taught.

A scholar extrapolated first world data to the whole planet regarding incidences of genius I.Q.s. His conclusion was that as many as one in every thousand live births very likely produces a genius--anywhere in the world. That means that at least 2/3 of our planet’s greatest talents are born in the developing world and at least 1/2 are female. Such children are, however, only “potential” geniuses. Had Mozart never heard a note of music, could he have composed “Don Giovanni?” What baby girl born today in war-torn southern Sudan will grow into a Marie Curie, an Elizabeth Cady Stanton or an Ethel Barrymore? The poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771) sensed this waste: 

Exposure to stimuli and to technical training must  happen early or genius wilts. In my last column (Asheville TRIBUNE 08/13/98), I told how German schoolchildren are introduced to God, through both study of religion in all grades and through philosophy and theology in higher grades.

American children can also be taught to philosophize. They need only meet one great philosopher at work and then say to themselves: “Now that is  cool,  and I can do it, too.” College freshmen have an “Aha!” experience when they encounter Pericles’s younger contemporary, Socrates. Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was not the first Greek to philosophize. He was preceded by Thales, Pythagoras,Anaximander and others. But he was lucky. For Socrates was  described in some detail by three  contemporaries: by his student Plato, by his friend the comic playwright Aristophanes, and by Xenophon, a general and historian. Socrates said, “I know only one thing: that I know nothing.” But how he set about learning! Wandering the streets of  Athens, often with a student in tow, he stopped youngsters, artisans and politicians and piled question upon question until they clarified their ideas about the topic at hand. He thus demonstrated “the Socratic method” of teaching. Generations have wept over his tragic execution through taking hemlock. Socrates believed that philosophizing begins from awe and wonder. He judged that “the uncriticized life is not worth living.”  Why should not Americans read him at 15 or 13?

There have been many philosophers since Socrates and Plato. Like poets, philosophers are brilliant or obtuse, wordy or laconic, clear (Aquinas) or murky (Hegel). We teach children arithmetic and elementary science without expecting  all to become great. But if all are not taught, how many will ever express their genius?

Philosophy has several fields, each with a name reflecting the different questions thinkers ask. What is knowledge or truth: (epistemology)? What is good and bad behavior: (ethics)? What is the difference between being and not-being: (metaphysics)? Can only the infinite explain changing, limited beings (natural theology or theodicy)? And there are other specialties and related disciplines such as logic, philosophy of politics, philosophy of science, philosophy of history and philosophy of beauty (aesthetics).

Teens love being taught as Socrates taught.Their teacher presents problems and guides them as they reach for solutions calling upon their personal inner resources. Teens can also be taught to organize their completed thoughts into the lucid syllogistic forms which were codified by Aristotle and flourished in Europe’s High Middle Ages. 

A teen takes her first step on the philosophical road from herself to God when she wrestles with questions from metaphysics. “Almost everything I have ever heard of or know of changes. But can change explain itself?” 

Teens ask themselves: “Does everything which changes have a cause?” Teen philosophers run up against Leibnitz’s principle: “everything has its sufficient reason (for being).” Must they believe that? Or may they doubt it? 

Do they or you and I proceed further into metaphysics  because the rationality embedded within things around me seems obvious? Or do we just frantically  demand that the world has just got to be reasonable? Do we postulate that all things must have an explanation? Do we cautiously try out that hypothesis to launch and test more advanced thinking? Is not our belief in an intelligible universe the basis of the physical sciences? Good philosophizing is as rational, as experience-based and as self-critical and self-correcting as the scientific thinking which postulated the roundness of the earth or the existence of Pluto or electrons.

When teens first examine and then apply philosophical assumptions and draw upon ordinary non-laboratory human experience, they are on the road to God. Maybe the world has an ultimate explanation. Perhaps it does not. But let us assume that the world has its reason, that there is a sufficient reason for everything. (And where are we left without that belief?) What must the ultimate explanation of our experiences then be like? Thinkers from many cultures have concluded that the ultimate explanation must be one unmoved mover, one uncaused cause, one infinitely wise, powerful and loving being who is creator of all that is limited in being, in intelligence, in will power and in love.  St. Thomas Aquinas concluded, “And this we call God.”

Maybe philosophizing is not taught in American public schools because it might lead youth to God. But philosophizing is only thinking. It is not worship. It is not based on sacred books or revelation. Should that not make philosophizing a “secular enough” skill  to be constitutionally permissible in  North Carolina public schools? 

-000-
=======

for Asheville TRIBUNE