It is something of a curious fact about the human mind that we spend terribly unjustified amounts of time thinking about the future: the remote and/or largely abstract future (‘I’d like to travel to Australia sometime’), or the near future (‘I have to take care of this phone bill that’s been sitting on my desk for so long’), or else the immediate future (‘I am going to the fridge to get a beer’). In those rare moments when we think about the present -- not the present in the loose sense, spreading from 2 minutes ago to 5 minutes from now, but the present in the strict sense, the present of the right-now -- we are struck by its magnificent banality. Nothing happens in the present of the right-now: the present moment exists, and that’s it. The sequence of right-now moments is, in itself, vacuity reified. The present just subsists there, one and the same self-identical hollowness. This is perhaps the source of the problematicity of life: the present is banal.

It is worth pausing here to reflect on this problematicity of life. In itself, it is a surprising fact indeed that life should be problematic. Why should it be a difficult thing just to be? Anyone who reads these lines has no real material problems but those they fabricate. The only real material problem is the problem of surviving, perhaps surviving with a minimal degree of comfort. Arguably, the material problems that we have -- problem like how to finance a new car -- are problems we fabricate precisely to make sense out of this inexplicable problematicity of life. But the problematicity of life is not so contingent as material problems would suggest -- there is something inherently difficult about being. How come? It is our opinion that this is a logical artifact of the banality of the present.

Why are we running around so much and trying to achieve and succeed, if the future, when it will become present, will just stand there in its banality and meaninglessness anyhow? If the present is just hovering here, so naked and goddamn real, what point is there to advance the prospects of a future present?

The future can be very exciting in its myriad of possibilities. Where will you be on this date ten years from now? Where would I be on Nov. 17, 2010? I might be a philosopher in some small university in Seattle or Miami; I might be a bar-tender in some far-off bar in Prague or Hong Kong; I might be laying on the beach in Australia, smoking and feeling the sun caressing my face. The future is as full as a rainbow with colorful possibilities.

Now think of what you were doing on this date ten years ago. What was I doing on Nov. 17, 1990? Probably laying on the grass at school and surreptitiously smoking. And now think of all you have been through since. How long and dense it’s been! How packed with content, like a too-sweet jam, the past now appears. And now the question arises: where did all this content come from? How come the future is so expansively full and the past is so solidly dense, if at every moment of the past and the future, when they had been or will be present, there was or will be nothing there except bare existence?

The present never contributes anything to the content of one’s life, but one’s life is full and dense with content. The inevitable consequence is that the content of one’s life is one’s own creation. We create this content -- invent it, if you will -- with some non-cognitive psychological power, psychological powers that are not directed to the present real or the real present, but to the irreal, the already-out-of-existence and the not-yet-in-existence. This is the poetics of life: the way we actively create the rainbow jam that is our life. Rainbow jams, as everybody knows, do not exist -- they have to be invented.

This is perhaps why we appear to ourselves so intimately to own our life. This sense of ownership of one’s life would be a mystery if life comprised of a prolonged conflict with the reality outside. But if the contents of one’s life are in the deepest but simplest sense of one’s own making, then it would make sense that it should feel so.

The Philosopher’s Apology: Philosophy, Being, and Subversion

Although according to Aristotle, Thales of Miletus was the first philosopher, Socrates is usually considered the father of philosophy. He lived in Athens in the fifth century BCE, roughly a contemporary of Buddha in India and Confucius in China. He spent his days wondering about in Athens, stopping people on the street - people who were minding their own business - and interrogating them on matters philosophical. The general purpose of these interrogation was to prove to these innocent souls that they don’t know much about anything and that, really, they all live their lives in the dark. You can see that these exercises were rather irritating to the laypersons of ancient Greece.

Socrates’ arrogant and irritating practice, which he dared calling the love of wisdom (=philosophy), came to a stop, however, in 399 BCE, when Socrates was convicted for not believing in the gods and sentenced to death. The death sentence may strike the reader as a tad exaggerated. Sure, Socrates was irritating. But you don’t put to death someone for being irritating - you find a gentler way to block the irritation. This raises the following question: what was so terrible about what Socrates was up to, as to deserve nothing less than the death penalty? What is it that the Athenians considered so fundamentally dangerous about practicing philosophy?

This question is not without modern relevance. Anyone who majored in philosophy, or pursued a Ph.D. in philosophy, must have had the experience of saying so to a layperson and consequently confronting a certain unpleasant reaction - a resentment of sorts. Majoring in chemistry is a cause for respect, but philosophy is another matter. People react with more than just practical disagreement. They consider it vain and conceitful. There is something of an angry dismissal in their reaction. They seem to feel somehow threatened. What is it about philosophy that continues to trigger widespread resentment?

Socrates’ defense speech at his trial is brought to us by his student Plato, in a dialogue called the Apology. This is the only dialogue, by the way, which carries some historical pretense. Here is how Socrates puts the charges against him: “It goes a bit like this: Socrates is guilty of corrupting the young and of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things…” (24b). The striking thing about these charges is that the Athenians seem to have considered Socrates’ practice of philosophy a subversive activity. This is a formidable accusation indeed. To some extent, it answers our first question: what is so fundamentally dangerous about practicing philosophy is that it is subversive. But this in turn raises a new question. What is it about what Socrates was up to that the Athenians interpreted as undermining the very foundations of civil society? How the hell did they get from ‘philosophy’ to ‘subversion’? We will address this question in a moment. But first let us look at what is involved in this ‘subversion’ Socrates was allegedly engaged in.

Note first that he is not just accused of not believing in the gods, but of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes in. Socrates brings up the difference himself, when he presents his prosecutor, Meletus, with the following dilemma. “I am not sure whether you mean that I teach the belief that there are some gods - and therefore I myself believe that there are gods… - not, however, the gods in whom the city believes in, but others, and that this is the charge against me, that they are others. Or whether you mean that I do not believe in gods at all…” (26c). Socrates proceeds to argue at length against the possibility that he does not believe in gods at all. But he never addresses the issue of believing in gods that are not recognized by the city - the philosopher’s gods. This cannot be mere inadvertence on the part of a man so meticulously analytic as Socrates. Rather, it is an implicit confession that his values are not the same as those of the city, that is, as those of mainstream culture.

In this sense, Socrates considers himself a heretic outsider. He is more explicit on that after he was found guilty. Then he says: “what do I deserve to suffer or to pay because I have deliberately not led a quiet life but have neglected what occupies most people: wealth, household affairs, the position of general or public orator or the other offices, the political clubs and factions that exist in the city? I thought myself too honest to survive if I occupied myself with those things” (36b). The last comment is significant, as it declares that this sort of mainstream life is simply not worth living. More specifically, Socrates says shortly afterwards that “the unexamined life is not worth living” (38a). It is believed that Socrates could have escaped the death penalty if he only expressed regret. But for Socrates, to regret the way he lived most of his life would have been to settle for the unexamined life, the a-philosophical life - but the a-philosophical life is not worth living.

Again, Socrates’ condemnation of the unexamined life is remarkably relevant. We are living today in a culture of doing over being. We rush from one thing to the next, from one achievement to another - often not so much enjoying our achievements as registering them and hopping to the next task - never stopping to take a step back, look at our life as a whole; examine it; reflect on the general shape and direction we would like to give it; take a deep breath and be. This obsession with doing is something of a cultural neurosis: by doing and doing and doing, we escape from being - we do our lives away. It is this meaningless rushing about, without any thought given to any final ends or general purpose, that Socrates condemns, and his condemnation is still chillingly effective: “… you could easily kill me, and then you could sleep on for the rest of your days, unless the god, in his care for you, sent you someone else” (31a).

So what was it that was so terribly subversive about Socrates’ activity? What was he doing, anyway? Here is how a typical dialogue between Socrates and the author of these lines would proceed.

Renatus: What’s up Socrates. Nice shirt, man.
Socrates: I’m surprised at you, my dear Renatus.
Renatus: Why is that?
Socrates: You are a smart man, Renatus, aren’t you? The other day I was walking in the marketplace with my friend Critoboulus, and I couldn’t help overhearing a couple of merchants praising the wisdom of Renatus. I was thinking it was a shame I never got to talk to you seriously, and savor your wisdom, learning about things below and above the moon and all the other wonderful things you must know about. But here you are claiming to know that this is a nice shirt.

Renatus: Well ain’t it, Socrates?
Socrates: But tell me this, my dear Renatus, being a man of such reputed wisdom. What do you mean by ‘shirt’?

Renatus: By ‘shirt’, Socrates, I mean an article of clothing designed to cover the upper body.

Socrates: very well, Renatus. I see these merchants knew what they were talking about. You are clearly a knowledgeable person, at least as far as knowledge of shirts is concerned. But one thing still perplexes me, Renatus. Are you claiming that every article of clothing designed to cover the upper body is a shirt?

Renatus: This is what I am claiming, Socrates.
Socrates: But that is very odd. I hear that last year women’s robes were very much in fashion in Sparta. Are you claiming that I am wearing a nice women’s robe, Renatus? A man of such well-known virtues as yourself is unlikely to insult an old man like me, though. This is what perplexes me, Renatus, that your virtues should fail you when you talk with old folks.

Renatus: Sorry, Socrates, I didn’t mean to offend you. What I really meant is that a shirt is an article of clothing that men use to cover their upper body.
Socrates: I am shocked, Renatus.
Renatus: Why, Socrates? Why are you shocked?
Socrates: The other day my wife Xantippe came back from the grocery store wearing what I thought was a shirt. But if shirts are what men use to cover their upper bodies, she couldn’t have been wearing a shirt. Are you claiming, my dear wise friend, that my wife went shopping naked? Quite improper, at her age. And quite improper of you to suggest so.

And so the conversation would go on until I was forced to admit that I had no satisfactory definition of ‘shirt’, and therefore I didn’t know what I was talking about - in a very literal sense, since I would be exposed as not knowing how the word ‘shirt’ gets to pick out just those items in the world that it does. But seriously, how is any of this supposed to amount to subversion?

For Socrates, everything in life should be subject to examination. Even our understanding of simple things such as what a shirt is could and should be questioned. The willingness to put to question everything is perhaps the cornerstone of subversion. In Socrates’ world, nothing is accepted or rejected without argument. For sure, nothing is accepted or rejected by deferring to the authorities, or the morals of the time. This is related to the following point. There is a reason why our culture pushes the doing over the being, and it is a simple reason indeed: it’s good for the economy. Thus our culture rips off the individual of his or her life by subjecting its value to the curious cause of the good economy. To restore a meaningful life is thereby to harm the ‘general good’. And this is subversion right there.

There is a more important point, though. Ordinarily, we have great certainty about simple things such as shirts. Socrates exposes this feeling of certainty as a self-deceptive hoax. We don’t know anything, even about shirts, with any decent degree of certainty. There is perhaps nothing mankind has a greater distaste for than uncertainty, and this probably leads us to institute false certainties. Socrates made it his life mission to overthrow these false certainties. Dignity requires, he thinks, that we look for real certainty. But in the process, he deprived the Athenians he interrogated of what he considered to be their petty consolation; hence, perhaps, their intense resentment.

Now, imagine you have lived your entire life in this unexamined mode, and before you know it, your life has passed by you and is now gone, when Socrates suddenly shows up and puts all of this clearly and loudly before your eyes. Right then and there you realize that in your own two hands, you have wasted irrecoverably the only thing you ever had - your life. I predict you would do anything in your power to keep the lie going a little further - all the way to the end - rather than face this simple truth, more horrific and cruel than any. This is no minor irritation, it is the worst experience that could be imagined. The prospects of such an experience could, perhaps, lead the city to put someone to death. This, at any rate, is the only sense I can make of this odd episode in western history.

The purpose of Socrates’ practice, however, was constructive as well as destructive. First he wants to expose our false certainties, but ultimately he would like us to pursue true certainty. How this is supposed to be pursued, and how it has been pursued by philosophers for centuries, we would have to pick up in later columns. In one of the better known passages in the Apology, Socrates claims that he is the wisest man because he knows that he does not know. Here is how he puts it. “If I were to claim that I am wiser than anyone in anything, it would be in this, that, as I have no adequate knowledge of things in the underworld, so I do not think I have” (29b). That is, Socrates says: ‘if I don’t know, then I don’t think I know’. The quick witted reader will observe that this claim is equivalent (by what philosophers call contraposition) to the claim ‘if I think I know, then I know’. This is the mark of certainty: the obtaining of an internal guarantee for the truth of what one believes in - a guarantee that the way things seem to one is the way they really are. The modern British philosopher A.J. Ayer, in a paper entitled “Knowledge as the Right to be Sure”, claimed that (surprise!) knowledge is the right to be sure. Socrates seem to have thought the same, but put particularly strong restrictions on what will count as having the relevant ‘right’.

The resentment facing the outsider and the resentment facing the philosopher are not unrelated. The philosopher is, by the sheer nature of his or her occupation, an outsider. The outsider is a living example of an alternative to mainstream culture and the way of living one’s life it entails. His or her very existence remind us that we cannot hide behind a ‘this is what everybody does’, conducting our lives mindlessly, hopping from one pursuit of a local goal to the next and never truly examining our own life. Now, the philosopher is a particularly embarrassing kind of outsider, in that she or he doesn’t just exemplify this point, but - on top of that - brings up the issue explicitly, and so demands us to confront it head-on. Socrates wants to remind us of this simple truth: your life is all you got. The philosopher demands us to take control over our life. Socrates took this demand to its outer limits - to the point where taking control over his life meant prescribing his death.