1 00:00:11,581 --> 00:00:14,077 When it comes to saving life, 2 00:00:14,077 --> 00:00:18,274 my guess is that you think of things like chemotherapy or CPR, 3 00:00:18,274 --> 00:00:21,274 things far removed from philosophy. 4 00:00:21,279 --> 00:00:24,596 But the title of my talk today, "How Philosophy Can Save Your Life," 5 00:00:24,596 --> 00:00:25,631 is in earnest. 6 00:00:25,631 --> 00:00:28,257 I actually think that when it comes to saving your life, 7 00:00:28,257 --> 00:00:30,671 you need something like philosophy. 8 00:00:30,671 --> 00:00:31,919 Think about it. 9 00:00:33,045 --> 00:00:37,321 CPR, chemotherapy and all the other marvelous medical techniques, 10 00:00:37,321 --> 00:00:40,802 as wonderful and precious as they can be, don't actually save your life. 11 00:00:40,802 --> 00:00:43,034 They really just put off your death. 12 00:00:43,370 --> 00:00:47,760 It's said that when Socrates, the great hero of Western philosophy, 13 00:00:48,037 --> 00:00:50,452 was sentenced to death by the Athenian court, 14 00:00:50,452 --> 00:00:54,590 he replied, "Technically you do not have the power to sentence me to death. 15 00:00:54,590 --> 00:00:59,067 Life has sentenced me to death. All you can do is give me a date." 16 00:00:59,098 --> 00:01:03,598 Handing down a death sentence or successfully administering chemotherapy 17 00:01:03,598 --> 00:01:07,537 is really just making an adjustment on the date of our inevitable death. 18 00:01:07,537 --> 00:01:11,328 If you want to save your life, you need to turn it from a humdrum thing 19 00:01:11,328 --> 00:01:13,835 into the precious thing that it's meant to be. 20 00:01:14,153 --> 00:01:17,602 And I don't think chemotherapy has a whole lot to offer on that score. 21 00:01:17,602 --> 00:01:20,341 Now, when I am talking about philosophy, 22 00:01:20,341 --> 00:01:22,832 I mean it in the ancient Greek sense of that word: 23 00:01:22,832 --> 00:01:26,609 The love of wisdom. The pursuit of wisdom. 24 00:01:26,609 --> 00:01:31,255 Sometimes, I worry that some of our contemporary practitioners 25 00:01:31,255 --> 00:01:35,345 can give you the sense that philosophy is really just for some big brain 26 00:01:35,345 --> 00:01:38,625 that's going to construct a perfect theory of the whole universe, 27 00:01:38,625 --> 00:01:40,084 or maybe even more likely, 28 00:01:40,084 --> 00:01:43,431 a big brain that's going to criticize what everyone else has to say. 29 00:01:43,432 --> 00:01:46,301 And while criticism and theorizing 30 00:01:46,304 --> 00:01:48,682 are important and even joyful parts of philosophy - 31 00:01:48,682 --> 00:01:50,168 I don't want to diminish them - 32 00:01:50,168 --> 00:01:52,592 really, philosophy is something much more than that. 33 00:01:52,592 --> 00:01:55,888 I guess I worry that people often feel like they don't have permission 34 00:01:55,888 --> 00:01:57,559 to study philosophy, 35 00:01:57,586 --> 00:01:59,470 that they feel intimidated by it, 36 00:01:59,470 --> 00:02:03,336 or they feel social pressures that steer them away from studying it. 37 00:02:03,336 --> 00:02:07,597 That's too bad because I think philosophy is something that we can all engage in, 38 00:02:07,597 --> 00:02:10,837 and I think it's something that we often should engage in. 39 00:02:11,165 --> 00:02:14,015 Philosophy begins in the wonder that we all feel 40 00:02:14,015 --> 00:02:17,299 about what's true and really valuable. 41 00:02:17,311 --> 00:02:22,855 It takes us on a fascinating, sometimes perilous journey of speculation and doubt. 42 00:02:22,875 --> 00:02:25,776 But it ends by returning us to our lives 43 00:02:25,776 --> 00:02:28,660 and helping to know them for the first time. 44 00:02:28,660 --> 00:02:31,789 To explain what I am talking about, let me tell a few stories. 45 00:02:32,584 --> 00:02:35,697 Sometime toward the end of the fifth century B.C., 46 00:02:35,701 --> 00:02:40,230 a man by the name of Chaerephon went into the Delphi Oracle and asked, 47 00:02:40,230 --> 00:02:44,281 "Is my friend Socrates the wisest person around?" 48 00:02:44,769 --> 00:02:49,632 The Oracle came back: "No one is wiser than Socrates." 49 00:02:49,995 --> 00:02:53,802 Now, when Socrates himself got wind of this pronouncement, 50 00:02:53,808 --> 00:02:54,988 he was puzzled. 51 00:02:54,988 --> 00:02:57,406 He thought, "I can't be the wisest person. 52 00:02:57,406 --> 00:02:59,523 I actually have no wisdom at all." 53 00:02:59,645 --> 00:03:03,586 So he set out to disprove the Oracle with a very simple strategy: 54 00:03:03,586 --> 00:03:07,010 Just find one person with a little bit of wisdom, 55 00:03:07,010 --> 00:03:10,324 which would clearly beat him, whose wisdom level was at zero. 56 00:03:10,926 --> 00:03:12,805 So he wandered around Athens, 57 00:03:12,805 --> 00:03:15,852 critically interviewing the religious authorities, 58 00:03:15,873 --> 00:03:17,469 the political authorities, 59 00:03:17,469 --> 00:03:19,729 the workers, the entertainers. 60 00:03:20,112 --> 00:03:22,927 And what he found was that the Oracle had spoken the truth: 61 00:03:22,927 --> 00:03:24,372 he was the wisest. 62 00:03:24,372 --> 00:03:26,373 Not because he possessed any great wisdom, 63 00:03:26,373 --> 00:03:29,894 but he possessed one little piece of priceless wisdom. 64 00:03:29,904 --> 00:03:31,999 Namely, he knew he knew nothing. 65 00:03:31,999 --> 00:03:35,917 Everyone else claimed to have special knowledge about their various pursuits 66 00:03:35,917 --> 00:03:37,235 when in fact they did not, 67 00:03:37,235 --> 00:03:40,355 putting them in the hole, wisdom-wise. 68 00:03:40,735 --> 00:03:43,775 Now, I've always been fascinated by that story of Socrates, 69 00:03:43,775 --> 00:03:46,290 but I've also always been a little puzzled by it. 70 00:03:46,290 --> 00:03:50,367 What does it mean to have wisdom when you don't possess wisdom? 71 00:03:50,367 --> 00:03:54,987 How can searching after answers be a form of wisdom? 72 00:03:54,987 --> 00:03:58,723 What good is it not to have the answers but to be looking for them? 73 00:03:58,789 --> 00:04:00,937 It took a student of mine, actually, 74 00:04:00,937 --> 00:04:05,490 to really help me understand that story in a much deeper way. 75 00:04:05,624 --> 00:04:10,328 She reenacted, unaware of Plato's writings about Socrates, 76 00:04:10,328 --> 00:04:12,512 that very story. 77 00:04:12,512 --> 00:04:16,025 And, I think, she shows both how philosophy can help save your life, 78 00:04:16,032 --> 00:04:19,972 but also how we can all move in the greatness of philosophy. 79 00:04:20,635 --> 00:04:22,391 Her name was Jillian, 80 00:04:22,709 --> 00:04:26,446 and she was a nurse's aide when she took my ethics class, 81 00:04:26,446 --> 00:04:29,423 I think because it probably helped to fulfill some requirement. 82 00:04:29,423 --> 00:04:32,670 She was studying to eventually become a full-fledged nurse. 83 00:04:32,841 --> 00:04:38,638 One of the most interesting conversations was sparked 84 00:04:38,639 --> 00:04:41,195 when I casually asked the drooping class, 85 00:04:41,952 --> 00:04:44,637 "What's a hospital for, anyway?" 86 00:04:45,102 --> 00:04:48,254 I challenged the expected answers as they came out. 87 00:04:48,658 --> 00:04:50,091 "To fix people." 88 00:04:50,290 --> 00:04:52,724 "What about those with a terminal case?" 89 00:04:53,596 --> 00:04:55,251 "To ease people's pain?" 90 00:04:55,611 --> 00:04:58,111 "What about those people whose pain cannot be eased?" 91 00:04:58,854 --> 00:05:01,250 "To ease people's pain whose pain can be eased?" 92 00:05:01,250 --> 00:05:03,873 "Is there no obligation to healthy people?" 93 00:05:03,873 --> 00:05:06,140 I was trying to open up their minds a little bit 94 00:05:06,140 --> 00:05:09,484 for some articles I was assigning on the purpose of a hospital. 95 00:05:09,484 --> 00:05:11,942 Well, the conversation sparked something in Jillian, 96 00:05:11,942 --> 00:05:16,232 and she asked my permission if she could write on this for her next paper. 97 00:05:16,727 --> 00:05:18,514 Well, a couple of weeks later, 98 00:05:18,514 --> 00:05:21,694 as students were filing out, turning in their papers, 99 00:05:21,694 --> 00:05:24,754 I called her aside to ask how the project had gone. 100 00:05:25,246 --> 00:05:27,764 Well, our conversation in class, she told me, 101 00:05:27,764 --> 00:05:30,388 had really perplexed her, even kind of disturbed her. 102 00:05:30,388 --> 00:05:33,481 She worked in a hospital, she felt she had a good sense of things, 103 00:05:33,481 --> 00:05:35,756 but after our conversation, she realized 104 00:05:35,756 --> 00:05:39,278 that she didn't really have any great wisdom about the point of a hospital. 105 00:05:39,576 --> 00:05:43,181 To help her formulate a thesis for her paper, 106 00:05:43,181 --> 00:05:47,034 she lit on the idea of going around the hospital 107 00:05:47,150 --> 00:05:49,333 and questioning various people there - 108 00:05:49,333 --> 00:05:52,799 the doctors, the administrators, the nurses, the nurse's' aides. 109 00:05:52,799 --> 00:05:55,997 She said, "I figured someone there surely had to have some wisdom 110 00:05:55,997 --> 00:05:58,528 about what the point of a hospital was." 111 00:05:58,577 --> 00:06:02,232 But what she found was that when she critically interviewed them, 112 00:06:02,377 --> 00:06:06,969 that they often gave the same pat answers as the students did in class, 113 00:06:06,969 --> 00:06:09,673 which, with a little criticism, 114 00:06:09,673 --> 00:06:13,993 she was able to show to be not really totally adequate. 115 00:06:14,853 --> 00:06:18,892 She said that the best answer she got was from some doctor who said to her - 116 00:06:18,892 --> 00:06:22,453 after having had his first couple of attempts shot down by a nurse's aide - 117 00:06:23,077 --> 00:06:25,703 "Well, maybe you're supposed to do all of the above." 118 00:06:25,973 --> 00:06:28,853 But she realized that that too was kind of inadequate. 119 00:06:28,853 --> 00:06:31,041 Should they always give people what they want? 120 00:06:31,041 --> 00:06:33,280 Should they always give people what they need? 121 00:06:33,280 --> 00:06:36,138 What should govern the variety of services that they provide? 122 00:06:36,138 --> 00:06:37,868 And why were they there? 123 00:06:38,108 --> 00:06:41,238 The problem, Jillian said to me, was she thought that too often, 124 00:06:41,238 --> 00:06:46,211 the hospital subordinated its whole purpose to fixing broken bodies. 125 00:06:46,855 --> 00:06:50,473 She said, "Too often pregnant women are treated like they are sick, 126 00:06:50,473 --> 00:06:53,923 mourners are dealt with like psychological cases. 127 00:06:54,143 --> 00:06:57,385 Folks clearly dying are pointlessly fixed. 128 00:06:57,653 --> 00:07:01,063 If the hospital is no more than a mechanical body shop, 129 00:07:01,354 --> 00:07:04,752 we live in a less than fully human world." 130 00:07:05,600 --> 00:07:07,810 "Imagine," she said, "Doctors, nurses, 131 00:07:07,810 --> 00:07:10,965 people who have devoted decades to studying and practicing medicine 132 00:07:10,965 --> 00:07:14,432 who've never given really serious thought to why they were doing it." 133 00:07:14,605 --> 00:07:16,240 Imagine, I thought, 134 00:07:16,240 --> 00:07:20,573 the people of Athens being unable to answer Socrates' question successfully. 135 00:07:20,573 --> 00:07:24,139 Imagine, I also thought, people, maybe especially people in a hospital, 136 00:07:24,139 --> 00:07:26,246 forgetting to save their own lives. 137 00:07:26,533 --> 00:07:30,595 Now, she also said she figured that many of her coworkers did pretty decent jobs 138 00:07:30,595 --> 00:07:33,259 going on their feel for what they ought to be doing, 139 00:07:33,259 --> 00:07:36,828 but she wondered if they wouldn't be better off opening their minds 140 00:07:36,828 --> 00:07:38,903 to the full truth of it. 141 00:07:38,919 --> 00:07:42,006 She was echoing a famous claim of Socrates: 142 00:07:42,006 --> 00:07:45,768 "The unexamined life is not worth living." 143 00:07:46,549 --> 00:07:50,194 In her paper, Jillian explained that the philosophers I had assigned 144 00:07:50,194 --> 00:07:52,632 helped her to see matters a little more clearly. 145 00:07:52,632 --> 00:07:56,702 That sickness, pain, can alienate us from those around us, 146 00:07:56,702 --> 00:07:59,936 that they threaten to exile us from the human community. 147 00:08:00,197 --> 00:08:03,854 The closest she could come to formulating the purpose of the hospital 148 00:08:03,854 --> 00:08:06,684 was, "To be there for people." 149 00:08:07,421 --> 00:08:10,736 "To be there when they're sick, to be there when they're dying, 150 00:08:10,801 --> 00:08:12,806 to be there when they're mourning." 151 00:08:12,830 --> 00:08:16,007 "To help people when you could, and to aid people when they wanted, 152 00:08:16,019 --> 00:08:17,079 of course, 153 00:08:17,079 --> 00:08:20,745 but most of all, to be there for them, human to human." 154 00:08:21,004 --> 00:08:25,009 The point of medicine, she said, was care. 155 00:08:25,343 --> 00:08:27,896 "Doctors are there," she marvelously concluded, 156 00:08:28,183 --> 00:08:29,774 "to help the nurses." 157 00:08:29,986 --> 00:08:32,864 But doctors, she feared, sometimes overrate their wisdom 158 00:08:32,864 --> 00:08:36,576 on the basis of their technical proficiency and science. 159 00:08:37,095 --> 00:08:40,464 She also admitted that she didn't necessarily have all the answers 160 00:08:40,469 --> 00:08:43,315 and that even what she was saying she had some doubts about, 161 00:08:43,475 --> 00:08:48,705 but she said that her pursuit of wisdom about what she was doing 162 00:08:48,705 --> 00:08:50,395 had helped her to really understand 163 00:08:50,395 --> 00:08:53,594 the full meaning and significance of what she was training to do, 164 00:08:53,691 --> 00:08:58,206 that philosophy had helped plug her into her vocation. 165 00:08:59,476 --> 00:09:03,076 Jillian has been a full-fledged nurse now for over a decade, 166 00:09:03,221 --> 00:09:07,551 and I contacted her recently, and she said to me, 167 00:09:07,660 --> 00:09:09,762 "You know, I kept that paper I wrote for you, 168 00:09:09,762 --> 00:09:13,792 and I still define my goals and my purposes in those terms." 169 00:09:13,792 --> 00:09:18,252 In being there for people, she's been saving her own life. 170 00:09:19,349 --> 00:09:21,610 In the wake of Socrates, 171 00:09:21,610 --> 00:09:23,706 philosophy in the ancient world 172 00:09:23,706 --> 00:09:28,306 really became focused on the question of how to live a good life. 173 00:09:28,506 --> 00:09:32,521 It was all about the pursuit of what they called "eudaimonia," 174 00:09:32,524 --> 00:09:33,650 in ancient Greek, 175 00:09:33,650 --> 00:09:36,926 which we often translate as happiness, the pursuit of happiness. 176 00:09:37,288 --> 00:09:39,321 And happiness is a pretty good translation, 177 00:09:39,321 --> 00:09:41,671 but really, eudaimonia means something more like 178 00:09:41,671 --> 00:09:43,933 "Flourishing over the course of your whole life" 179 00:09:43,946 --> 00:09:47,472 or "Living up to the full potential of being human." 180 00:09:47,472 --> 00:09:50,773 Philosophy was not just some intellectual game, 181 00:09:50,773 --> 00:09:53,714 it was very much about trying to understand those principles 182 00:09:53,714 --> 00:09:57,923 that are going to bring happiness and practice them in our lives. 183 00:09:58,515 --> 00:10:03,348 I have to admit that I am guilty of sometimes asking my students in class, 184 00:10:03,348 --> 00:10:05,667 "If the doctor gave you only one year to live, 185 00:10:05,667 --> 00:10:08,477 how would you spend your remaining days?" 186 00:10:08,893 --> 00:10:14,493 Generally, I get kind of cliched, bucket-list sort of answers, 187 00:10:14,584 --> 00:10:17,827 which show how unexamined our lives often are. 188 00:10:17,827 --> 00:10:21,881 For bucket lists make a really bad assumption 189 00:10:21,881 --> 00:10:27,337 that the good life is just a parade of splashy, disconnected experiences. 190 00:10:28,402 --> 00:10:31,503 One time, as I was fielding answers 191 00:10:31,503 --> 00:10:35,973 about skydiving and visiting the Pyramids, 192 00:10:35,973 --> 00:10:39,204 I noticed a twinkle in the eye of Kimberly, 193 00:10:39,228 --> 00:10:42,227 one of my great nontraditional students. 194 00:10:42,227 --> 00:10:44,583 After class, I called her up and I said, 195 00:10:44,583 --> 00:10:47,214 "I noticed you were kind of smiling when we were talking 196 00:10:47,214 --> 00:10:50,038 about how people would spend their last year of life. 197 00:10:50,038 --> 00:10:51,529 What was on your mind?" 198 00:10:52,382 --> 00:10:53,458 She explained to me 199 00:10:53,458 --> 00:10:58,418 that fairly recently she'd been in exactly that situation. 200 00:10:58,828 --> 00:11:03,716 She had been diagnosed with a rare neuromuscular disorder, 201 00:11:03,716 --> 00:11:06,663 "The most aggressive case seen," the doctor said, 202 00:11:06,665 --> 00:11:10,151 and they told her that she did not have long to live. 203 00:11:12,377 --> 00:11:14,503 Well, after some dark nights of the soul, 204 00:11:14,503 --> 00:11:17,695 Kimberly made up her mind to take matters into her own hands, 205 00:11:17,695 --> 00:11:22,423 seeking out some additional therapies to the ones the doctors prescribed. 206 00:11:22,423 --> 00:11:26,223 But she realized she did not have all the time in the world, 207 00:11:26,364 --> 00:11:28,095 and so, she said to me, 208 00:11:28,095 --> 00:11:32,493 she decided to engage in philosophy in that ancient sense. 209 00:11:32,493 --> 00:11:34,451 She was going to try to figure out 210 00:11:34,451 --> 00:11:38,578 what, really, happiness was and how to practice it. 211 00:11:39,928 --> 00:11:41,367 She loved wine, 212 00:11:41,405 --> 00:11:45,619 so she got in the habit of really savoring a couple of glasses every night. 213 00:11:45,619 --> 00:11:47,710 She loved bicycling, 214 00:11:47,717 --> 00:11:51,041 so she threw herself into the world of cycling. 215 00:11:51,589 --> 00:11:54,988 She loved learning more, and she never finished college, 216 00:11:54,988 --> 00:11:56,484 so she went back to school 217 00:11:56,484 --> 00:11:59,864 to study the kinds of subjects she was most interested in, 218 00:11:59,884 --> 00:12:02,117 including philosophy, 219 00:12:02,117 --> 00:12:07,998 where she studied, with me, thinkers like Plato and Epicurus and Epictetus. 220 00:12:07,998 --> 00:12:13,289 She said these thinkers helped to sharpen her sense of the logic of living. 221 00:12:14,006 --> 00:12:16,433 You come to terms with your death. 222 00:12:16,433 --> 00:12:20,496 You confront the limitations of bodily existence. 223 00:12:20,496 --> 00:12:22,372 You pursue virtue. 224 00:12:22,372 --> 00:12:25,682 You try to figure out what's really pleasurable. 225 00:12:25,682 --> 00:12:28,199 You pursue knowledge to deepen yourself 226 00:12:28,199 --> 00:12:31,404 and to use this unique human brain of ours. 227 00:12:31,819 --> 00:12:37,929 I find a life like Kimberly's utterly marvelous and also utterly philosophical. 228 00:12:38,644 --> 00:12:44,037 Students that I have had, like Kimberly and Jillian and many others, 229 00:12:44,037 --> 00:12:45,405 have shown me that, 230 00:12:45,405 --> 00:12:49,995 in the words of one of my heroes, William James, an American philosopher, 231 00:12:50,365 --> 00:12:54,067 "The deepest human life is everywhere." 232 00:12:55,057 --> 00:12:58,429 The philosophical odyssey is open to all of us; 233 00:12:58,441 --> 00:13:02,491 the books of the great philosophers are there to help us, 234 00:13:02,491 --> 00:13:06,881 but of course, ultimately it's a journey that we have to go on for ourselves. 235 00:13:07,468 --> 00:13:09,935 Now, maybe you happen to be living 236 00:13:09,935 --> 00:13:15,532 according to absolutely brilliant, beautiful principles and ideals. 237 00:13:16,017 --> 00:13:18,985 If that's true, philosophy can still be a help; 238 00:13:18,985 --> 00:13:20,869 it can help take you off autopilot 239 00:13:20,869 --> 00:13:24,781 and put your hands on the wheel of your beautiful life. 240 00:13:25,264 --> 00:13:31,534 But what if some of the ideas structuring your life are less than ideal? 241 00:13:32,125 --> 00:13:36,402 What if some of the ideas you have about how to be a nurse, 242 00:13:36,402 --> 00:13:37,616 or a doctor, 243 00:13:37,616 --> 00:13:39,460 or a teacher, or a student, 244 00:13:39,468 --> 00:13:41,317 or a citizen, or a parent, 245 00:13:41,332 --> 00:13:44,844 or a man, or a woman, or a human being 246 00:13:44,969 --> 00:13:47,139 are a little out of whack? 247 00:13:48,451 --> 00:13:52,283 Well then, philosophy has the power to cut through the crap 248 00:13:52,283 --> 00:13:57,084 and help bring us closer to what really is meaningful and valuable. 249 00:13:57,488 --> 00:13:59,171 I hate to break it to you today, 250 00:13:59,171 --> 00:14:01,941 but you are going to die. 251 00:14:01,941 --> 00:14:04,171 We all have a death sentence, 252 00:14:04,171 --> 00:14:09,206 and there is no cosmic contract that says it can't happen in the upcoming year. 253 00:14:09,506 --> 00:14:11,674 So why not make up your mind 254 00:14:11,674 --> 00:14:16,311 to devote yourself to philosophy in that ancient sense? 255 00:14:16,311 --> 00:14:20,300 Like Kimberly, like Jillian, like all the other great philosophers. 256 00:14:21,313 --> 00:14:24,391 The books of the great philosophers are there to help us, 257 00:14:24,391 --> 00:14:28,854 and you don't need my permission for you to study them. 258 00:14:29,011 --> 00:14:30,100 In fact, I would say, 259 00:14:30,100 --> 00:14:34,200 freedom is the one thing you should never ask permission for. 260 00:14:35,920 --> 00:14:40,974 About a year ago, I contacted Kimberly to see how she was doing, 261 00:14:40,974 --> 00:14:44,859 and she explained to me that she had to take a break 262 00:14:44,859 --> 00:14:49,383 from her dream job with the women's cycling developing program. 263 00:14:50,505 --> 00:14:53,168 She was having to undergo chemotherapy. 264 00:14:54,153 --> 00:14:55,588 "But," she said, "don't worry. 265 00:14:55,598 --> 00:14:58,188 Things are looking up. Not that they ever looked down. 266 00:14:58,188 --> 00:14:59,577 I'm still pursuing happiness. 267 00:14:59,577 --> 00:15:02,357 I'm still pursuing philosophy," she said. 268 00:15:02,357 --> 00:15:05,650 "And it's better than last summer; I was on hospice care for a while. 269 00:15:05,650 --> 00:15:09,190 I think I'm on the fast track to racing my bike again." 270 00:15:09,923 --> 00:15:12,702 She was still saving her own life. 271 00:15:13,679 --> 00:15:15,496 I haven't heard from her since. 272 00:15:15,992 --> 00:15:17,602 Thank you very much. 273 00:15:17,602 --> 00:15:20,125 (Applause)