About a year ago in a post entitled A New Philosophy I wrote the following:
Though the rites of passage have been available to anyone who feels called to them through my philosophical guidance website, my philosophical process did not get revealed. This and more, changes from today onwards. New FeaturesThe new chat feature recently introduced by Substack, now available for both iOS and Android mobile devices, offers a solution to a concern I had, which was that the potentially daily and real time updates revealing and documenting my philosophical life might prove too much for anyone’s email inbox and create subscriber fatigue. Thankfully, with Substack chat this is no longer an issue since chat updates and newsletter posts are different and subscribers have full control over what notifications they get and where they get them (e.g. email inbox, mobile device push notifications). You can learn how to participate in a Substack chat here. That was not the only concern that kept me from sharing my process. The truth is that the profound transformations of the past few years have shifted not just my process but my own worldview so far off the Overton window that I am concerned with the overall consequences of being more open about it, especially when it comes to writing as opposed to oral discourse, as I share Plato’s aversion to written discourse for the same reasons. As I have written elsewhere¹:
Thankfully modern technology has enabled hybrid environments that I hope will overcome some of the limitations of written discourse outlined above. For example, even the chat feature mentioned earlier is a mixture containing elements of both written and oral discourse given that though it is in writing, it could be said that one is often responding to particular subscribers in speeds approximating real time oral discourse. Moreover, with mobile devices and high speed internet availability increasing globally, I could simply drop an impromptu video conference link in the chat and we could switch to oral discourse on the fly, which could help personalize the experience seamlessly. So if you want to participate in any upcoming chats make sure you add the Substack app in your mobile device and follow the instructions necessary to participate. For a limited time I’ll post all my chats for both free and paid subscribers so everyone can get a taste of what kind of content I will be sharing, but after that some chat posts will start being for paid subscribers only. The result is as important as the process
Though I believe there is value in sharing philosophical theories and processes, the fruit of philosophy is ultimately its effect on the quality of one’s life, its direction, and the legacy it leaves behind for oneself and others. Thus, a true evaluation of a philosopher’s work entails an understanding of how their process is applied in life and what fruits it generates by that application. To share the fruits that are generated practically means sharing more concrete details about how my philosophical investigations and experiments affect the quality, direction, and work of my life. Since philosophy is not merely designing instruments of the soul but learning how to play them in service to the art of living, demonstrating the music your life makes through the playing of a philosophical symphony can serve as an enticement and protreptic for others to learn too. The relation between one’s philosophical process, the quality, and direction of one’s life is not, however, a simple one. For some philosophers may create instruments of the soul to play philosophical flamenco while their students use the same instruments to play philosophical jazz. Moreover, the quality of the philosophical flamenco or jazz may change depending on who is playing the instrument, and those who came up with some genre will not necessarily be the best ones in it. In short, one philosopher can come up with brilliant methodologies and insights that countless people find useful yet fail to apply them skillfully in their own life heading in one direction, while another may invent nothing new, yet apply old tools he didn’t invent to create a wonderful life heading to a completely different direction. No matter the choices any particular philosopher makes, the point I’m making is that we can learn something from everyone, it being wise to judiciously apply the Delphic Maxim Ἄκουε πάντα (translation: Listen to everything/everyone) but of course not in isolation from the application of the others. That being said, my heritage, by birth and orientation, is nevertheless Greek, and follows an understanding of philosophy that embodies what Kierkegaard astutely singled out as the Greek principle:
This is why starting to share more concrete details of my life, is not an unconscious surrender to the current of widespread narcissism in our midst but a conscious attempt to demonstrate what it looks like to live the philosophically abstract concretely, and what kind of fruits grow out of this exercise. This orientation aligns with the original ancient Greek conception of philosophy, as I’ve shown elsewhere⁹. However, such a start cannot begin without a preliminary acknowledgement of a significant development. From Philosopher to MysticRecent posts¹⁰ have already mentioned that the past few years have been a prolonged dive into mysticism. This was not the result of my academic education but a result of my own initiative. In fact, nowhere in my undergraduate or graduate studies in philosophy was the role of the Mysteries ever emphasized. And yet it was only after my mystical experiences that I finally started truly understanding Plato for the first time. Ironically enough, Plato has Socrates explicitly say in Phaedo that in order to practice philosophy the right way, one needs to become a genuine mystic:
The thyrsus was a ceremonial staff associated with Bacchus. I will go deeper into its meaning in later posts. What Socrates is saying here is that many can merely carry it¹² without being true initiates (Bacchants). However, those who practice philosophy the right way become true initiates. Thus, good philosophers become genuine mystics; or to put it another way, philosophers who have not become mystics are basically guilty of philosophical malpractice. It’s time we gather our grapes from the vine instead of the bramble bush. Only then can we make and distribute the wine. It is time. But to understand what this means, I have to share, in the next posts, some of what has happened. For sometimes the past has a future we don’t expect. 1 See “Doing Philosophy: A Breakdown”, especially part C. 2 Ibid. 3 P. Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, p.71-72, Harvard University Press, 2004. 4 See for example, J.H. Collins, Exhortations to Philosophy, Part 1: Platonic Protreptic. 5 P. Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, p.72, Harvard University Press, 2004. 6 Luke 6:44 in the original Greek. English Translation below it is from the New King James version. 7 Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson, completed after his death with introduction and notes by Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p, 315. 8 Last quote from ibid. but entire quote from David K. Naugle’s Worldview: The History of a Concept, chapter 4. Italics and words in brackets mine. 9 See my series What is Philosophy? starting with part 1. 10 From Revealing the Sacred, to The Last Metamorphosis, Selves are the Mirrors of God, and the Cosmic Game series make it quite clear. 11 12 Notice that the ancient Greek text does not say thyrsus/θυρσός but ναρθηκοφόροι. That word literally means those who carry the wooden rods that make part of the thyrsus which was made from a species called νάρθηξ (the giant fennel) but it is not equivalent to the thyrsus itself given the thyrsus also included ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and topped with a pine cone. Knowing this, the passage is easier to understand, because what Socrates is saying is that many can carry the incomplete thyrsus, but the Bacchants (who can carry the complete thyrsus because only votaries of Dionysus could do so) are few. I think the English translator took some liberties in translating this for what he thought was easier comprehension, at the price of the loss of nuance. His translation would have been accurate if the Greek text had the word θυρσοφόροι instead of ναρθηκοφόροι. You're currently a free subscriber to Numinous Quest. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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The Time of the Vine
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