My Philosophical influences

In the long conversation between Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Plotinus, and various others, we find richness for both secular and spiritual people to create a life of deeper meaning and flourishing. I will set out some aspects of what these philosophers offer to us all, and hopefully you can see how most of them can be helpful guides to you in life. These are mere gestures at one or two elements in each philosopher, whose work is much deeper, wider, and richer than suggested here. I will proceed in historical order. I mention only ancient philosophers, though there are many modern ones who have greatly influenced me, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, as well the Australians Christopher Cordner and Raimond Gaita.

Socrates

​Socrates taught us how to examine ourselves and our lives using reason, in order to make both better. His form of examination is based on conversation and questions. "You say you are doing this because it makes you happy, but what do you mean by happiness?" "Does it really follow from your definition of happiness, that you should do that?" That is a dialogue between two people, but it is also a dialogue with oneself. 

Plato

Plato was Socrates' student. He elaborated and developed Socrates' insights and took them further. Plato's philosophy is the art of the discernment of the true, the good, the beautiful, through reason, contemplation, imagination. Plato developed a powerful psychology as a part of his philosophy, which is in significant ways the basis of modern psychotherapy. He also developed a powerful conception of wisdom and the virtues, which shows us how to cultivate a wise, good, happy life in its deepest, most inward sense.

Aristotle

If Plotinus (below) is the height of classical philosophy as rational spirituality, Aristotle gives us our best vision of what a good life looks like, and how to cultivate it, from a more secular point of view. Based on observation, Aristotle develops a detailed description of the nature of:

• wisdom, as both contemplative wisdom (the big picture) and practical wisdom (knowing what to do, and why, and how, in any situation)
• the virtues, which amount to any quality that leads to a flourishing life, and which specifically are emotions, desires, and actions that have been reshaped, re-habituated, according to wisdom
• human flourishing, which is partly given to chance, but also deeply a consequence of a life of wisdom and virtue

In short, Aristotle shows us how to cultivate an intelligent, wise, strong, good, happy, meaningful, successful, flourishing life in this world. 

Epictetus

Moving from ancient Greece to ancient Rome, Epictetus was born a slave and is perhaps the greatest of the Stoics. When I discuss him, I am also discussing Stoicism more broadly, including people like Marcus Aurelius. Like most of the philosophers discussed here, Epictetus has much to say both to secular and spiritual individuals. If you are secular and follow Socrates's life of rational self-examination and Aristotle's cultivation of wisdom, virtue, and flourishing, then Stoicism offers daily coaching on the path. You simply ignore his references to the divine, or rather, take it symbolically. If, on the other hand, you are drawn by the spirituality of Plotinus, you are also in luck, because again Stoicism offers daily coaching on living this path in a challenging, distracting world.

Epictetus trains us to hone in on what truly matters and is truly in our control: our interpretation, our choice, our attitude, our character. He guides us to create a pause between stimulus and response, between events and our reactions to them, to examine the space in between, where a lack of wisdom can lead to harmful reactions, and where an injection of wisdom can lead to peace, dignity, strength, freedom....

Plotinus

Plotinus' philosophy is the Buddhism or Advaita-Vedanta of the West. "Pagan" philosophy was made illegal by Christian Imperial Rome, so Plotinus disappeared from the West until his rediscovery during the Renaissance. He provides a compelling spirituality, which can speak to many modern-minded Westerners today.

Plotinus saw himself as an exegete of Plato, as articulating Plato's tradition, though his humility should not blind us to his great genius, which makes of him the capstone of ancient philosophy. Plotinus synthesised much that had come before: Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics. The essence of his philosophy was gestured at above, when I discussed philosophy as a rational spirituality. He suggests that we need to work on everything I have discussed so gat, with respect to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. There is no "spiritual by-passing" here. Based on that work, however, he goes further with his philosophy of the divine and its emanation which includes us. Plotinus is a rational mystic.

Phenomenology
 
Leaping now to the 20th century, we have phenomenology. Phenomenology is something of a return to the insight of classical metaphysics--the equivalence of thought and being, or what phenomenologists call intentionality and giveness--and so a return to meaning contra nihilism.
 
Phenomenology prioritises the direct investigation and description of conscious experience, without recourse to theories, causal explanations, or other assumptions. It examines the structures of experience, such as perception, memory, and imagination, from the first-person point of view. Phenomenology seeks to uncover the essential, universal structures of consciousness and intentionality, revealing how meaning and phenomena are constituted in subjective experience. This makes it a vital practice for psychotherapy, and philosophical counselling, insofar as those attempt to explore the inner life. Indeed, phenomenology has not only radically reshaped and improved philosophy across the last century, it has become central to modern psychotherapy, it has vastly improved the nature and practice of psychotherapy.
 
I will add here, without saying much, that I have been deeply influenced in my academic philosophical education by Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose method of philosophy is outwardly different to phenomenology, but which resonates deeply with it. Phenomenology represents a philosophical movement in Germany and France, which had its correlate in Wittgenstein in England.
 
Simone Weil
 
Simone Weil, who died aged 34 during the second world war, is an enigma. A Communist soldier in Spain, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, a Catholic mystic who railed against the force and tribalism of religion and praised atheism, and a philosophical genius all rolled into one. Weil wrote much about goodness, love, beauty, and the things that nourish the inner life and make it worthwhile, but it was her articulation of the depths of our vulnerability, and the nature of force in this world, which rightly astonishes most readers. Weil's mind cut like a knife into the depths of our inwardness. She manages to articulate things for which, without her, find cannot seem to find proper words. For example, what are we trying to say when we use the incoherent language of human rights? Weil: "At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being." To read Weil is not necessarily to agree with her vision of the world in toto--certainly, I do not--but it is to be struck again and again by her insights, which change what and how we see. Indeed, the idea of attention, its ethical power and its transformative nature, is at the heart of her reflection.
 
Iris Mudoch
 
Murdoch, who is better known as a novelist, was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. Murdoch wrote the first book-length study of Sartre in English, and she immediately recognised the central errors of existentialism, even as she articulated what was so attractive about it. In many ways, Murdoch is a Platonic alternative to existentialism, for people trying to find meaning and goodness within a secular, atheistic world. She teaches us how to look at life, and each other, in ways that reveal meaning and value.
 
Christopher Cordner and Raimond Gaita
 
Christopher Cordner was my lecturer and then post-graduate superviser at The University of Melbourne. Raimond Gaita is one of our greatest public philosophers, one of the world's leading moral philosophers alive today, and a great influence on me. Both these philosophers represent a kind of Platonism, shot through with something distinctly Australian, that speaks to the modern, secular mind, but which also greatly challenges us to see beyond a scientistic understanding of ourselves, to the implicit forms of meaning and value in which our lives are actually awash. You may have encountered Raimond Gaita without realising it, for he wrote a powerful memoir of his childhood in central Victoria (perchance close to my home) called Romulus, My Father, which was made into a film some years back. Often I recommend people start with that memoir, before reading his popular philosophy such as in books like The Philosopher's Dog. I do so because the former captures what philosophy truly comes out of: life as it is lived. Philosophy is thinking that comes out of living, and then feeds back into that living. This is the spirit in which Cordner and Gaita do philosophy. It is fundamental to my vision of philosophy.

Pierre Hadot