The Motivation for Philosophy

Wonder and refusal. Those I think are the (or at any rate my) chief motivations to philosophize. 

Wonder is accounted for by the sheer miraculousness of the universe as we know it. Indeed, its very existence – and, note, even if all that existed were a single hydrogen atom; but how much more so, the universe whose components have given rise to the complexity we see, including us – is a mystery I do not expect us ever to comprehend. 

But notice, then, that I do not refer here to mere curiosity as the motivation, which I certainly also have as an enduring trait, and which inspires science but can also be plain annoying with its unending “Why?”s. For curiosity is concerned with answering questions, whereas philosophy as I appreciate it is more about indulging in possibilities. That is the wonder. But philosophizing can thereby also be useful to the pursuit of answers by suggesting new candidates; I would then assign as a division of labor the task of deciding which candidate is the correct answer to science (and everyday investigations). 

By refusal, the other chief philosophical motivation, I refer to the nonacceptance of things that are intolerable. In my case – but I doubt I am far from alone in this – that would include (refusing) the denial of happiness. I must be fundamentally happy. Since for most of my life I have not, I have been on a perennial quest. 

I have been quite specific in what I sought, namely, a mate. But perhaps had I not been so otherwise fortunate in life, my quest would have been for something else, for example, relief from chronic illness, disability, or pain, or reunion with a lost one, or justice. I have also quested for things less salient to me personally but, in quantitative terms, of vastly greater importance, such as an end to the exploitation of nonhuman animals, to hunger and poverty, to war, and so on in this vale of tears. 

But underlying these quests and even the “refusal” that motivates them have been yet deeper forces, such as dread of some awful condition of myself or others (the latter perhaps fueled by strong empathy). To put this is very concrete terms: It is unacceptable to me that I, or another, could be tortured. The image and experience are a horror for me, which I therefore refuse to allow the possibility of. “Surely, when that poor fox is being skinned alive, some automatic analgesic chips in.” “Surely, when the fire fighter falls through the roof into the burning building, their screams are not expressing any actual feeling, which they have thereby miraculously lost.” “Surely, the gruesome rape and murder of your child was not painful to them.” And so forth. 

This kind of thinking is magical and a direct source of religious mania. But I am suggesting that it is also a main source of philosophizing. Confronted by an especially acute and intelligent awareness of the awfulness of life, philosophers, who cannot accept fairy tales as the solution, seek some “secular” way to reconcile to seemingly unavoidable horrors. 

True, some philosophers refuse to accept any even possible answer to the horrors they refuse to accept, and thereupon embark on some practical course of action (or relative inaction, such as tending one’s garden) intended to address but not solve them. For example, Wayne Pacelle once told me that what kept him sane in his efforts to end animal suffering, in the face of the impossibility of the task, was to take satisfaction in local successes. But in the end, as in the beginning, the whole pursuit has been motivated by a sense of there being some things that are simply unacceptable. 

My own balm has been the mental effort to deny the reality of objective unacceptability. But this still leaves me with strong senses of personal dread and empathetic distress, which, although recognized as purely subjective, still impede happiness. A Buddhist or Stoic might go further by arguing that taking subjective happiness so seriously is a way of giving it objective significance; and so it is a contradiction – and therefore something to be dispelled -- that happiness even matters. But even this extreme skepticism is a constant struggle against the original motivating refusal. (I am reminded of a Rabbi I once heard claim that even Jewish atheists believe in God since they are putting so much effort into denying Him.) 

And truth be told, even my mind retains the fantastical belief that suffering must be some kind of dream, which we are capable of waking up from.