Why study philosophy?

We have an urgent need for the study of the major ancient, modern and contemporary philosophers for two main reasons.

The first reason derives from the character of the modern world. The central characteristics of modernity are the results of a project launched by the early modern or enlightenment philosophers. The understanding of science as instrumental technology and the understanding of justice as human rights are only the two most prominent institutions that emerged from the writings of the philosophers of the 15th to 17th centuries. These thinkers were the first to proclaim that society could live in the light of the truth, a truth furnished by the newly re-founded natural and human sciences. Our present dilemmas are all demonstrations of the great but partial success of this movement. Our greatly increased powers over non-human nature, and over human nature itself, has not been accompanied by an increased wisdom about the fundamental question of what makes human beings happy and excellent. To understand the problems and paradoxes of the present age (including its dependent offshoot, post-modernism) we need to understand their roots in the teaching of modern philosophers such as Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and others. But these thinkers cannot be fully understood without recovering the teachings of the classical philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, whose thought they intended to supersede.

The second reason emerges from this recovery of the classics of philosophy. The classics taught that the ability to speak intelligibly or to reason is the distinctive mark of the human being and that the discovery of the truth is the key to our happiness and excellence. By contrast, the moderns as a whole make such activity instrumental and they tend to subordinate happiness and excellence to other goals of the state or society. Our School is intended to provide a place where the fundamental principles of human existence can be examined with the assistance of the necessary texts in order to put our leisure to its proper use, to cultivate our minds. As Aristotle puts it, if the activity of the intellect is only a part of us, “it exceeds everything else in power and dignity. And this activity would seem to be what each person is, since it’s the authoritative and better [part]. It would be strange, therefore, if someone were to choose to live not their own life, but the life of someone else.” (Nicomachean Ethics 1177b34-1178a4). The School is designed to provide an opportunity for participants to come to their own mind about the fundamental questions.