Who is the philosopher?

Dio of Prusa’s discourse 70, On Philosophy, is one of the most underrated texts in the history of philosophy. Dio, also known as “chrysostomos”, “with the golden mounth” (ca. 40-115 AD), was a traveling rhetorician, a type of sophist in the Roman first century, who could bring together thousands of listeners for his spectacle orations. Much like the sophists of classical Greece, Dio made a living out of his capacity to argue well, play with words and generate wonder through his multifarious knowledge. His extant discourses touch on a great variety of topics. Several discuss Socrates as a philosophical role model. On Philosophy is a dialogue wherein Dio reflects on the nature of philosophy itself. It is a simple text written in an elegant, but relatable style. It functions as a form of exercise, a training model for how to write philosophical dialogue, specifically a typical argumentative approach that was central to Plato’s early dialogues, namely the Socratic induction. At first sight, given this exemplary rhetorical function, it might not seem of much value at all. However, inside this formal, seemingly random writing sample, the reader can find a deeper message, hidden within.

Johannes Morseele, Heraclitus - in the 17th century, people in Europe still associated philosophy somewhat with a practice that orients the soul and governs one's life.

The text opens up without any context with Dio addressing the anonymous interlocutor with the idiomatic “phere” - “come now” or “come on” or “let’s start”, as though Dio is initiating a wrestling match. It is a generic opening for a "Socratic" dialogue. "Suppose you should hear someone say that he wants to be a farmer", but this person does not do anything related to farming and instead spends most of his time at drinking parties in the company of courtesans. Surely, we would not say that he is a farmer? Likewise, we can imagine a person claiming to be an astronomer, but who does not chart the position of the planets, has no interest for the heavenly bodies, and sits out his days in the gambling dens. Surely, we would not say such a person actually is an astronomer? Analogously, one cannot be a hunter or a sea captain without attending to things relevant to hunting and trading overseas, without engaging in the activities relevant to that kind of life. From these examples, Dio concludes that “it is absurd that we should know and judge every person’s life (bios) based on their words (logoon) rather than their actions (ergoon).” After some additional similar cases, Dio forces the interlocutor to agree  “that the act alone is both trustworthy and true, even if no word precedes it.” And so, every life (bios) has its own actions and certain equipment associated with it, which one must recognize in order to know the life of a person. Of course, this general rule should apply to the philosopher as well. There are certain theories (mathèmata) which philosophers must understand and certain regimens (diaitai) to which they must adhere. However, at this stage, Dio introduces a novel idea, namely that philosophy is not just like any profession, something one does to make a living, like hunting, farming or trading. Philosophy entails a completely different kind of life. Here, the writing exercise effectively ends and Dio expands his ideas on philosophy as distinct from other forms of life.

As Dio sees it, philosophers must, in every area of their life, care for the Gods and for their own soul. They must aim themselves at truth and prudence (fronèsis). They must always attend to the supreme good (beltistoon), and so cannot perform shameful behavior. They must banish certain desires from their soul, namely those desires that focus purely on bodily pleasure. To be a philosopher is to attune your inner self. This sets it apart from other professions, for which one can exercise the appropriate skills some times, even though such exercise does not encompass one's whole life. Philosophy, however, cannot be exercised only temporarily; it must permeate one's entire life. Dio closes the discourse with an interesting afterthought: given philosophy’s special nature, one can always keep up the pretense of being a philosopher to others. Nobody can tell what goes on inside the soul of another, one can only tend to their own soul. Although Dio does not make this explicit, he clearly does not think that the performance of certain actions is sufficient to be a philosopher, to live the philosophical life - and this sets it apart from other lives, like that of the hunter or the trader or even the astronomer. The measure of the philosophical life is not actions and equipment. It is what goes on within the soul, and this necessarily cannot be manifested in the external world.

Discourse 70 is paradoxical. Dio is a man of words, he makes his living through the manipulation of language, and he is talking of philosophy. The text itself is a rhetorical exercise in writing philosophical dialogue using a Socratic induction. As such, it is Dio's way of making a living: it stands for the action/equipment appropriate to the traveling rhetorician. Anyone who knows the life of the author and knows the nature of the text, understands that Dio in the text is placing his kind of life outside of philosophy. However, given the last remark of the discourse, there is an additional layer of suspense: one can be a philosopher, attending to the highest good in the soul, even if the external signs do not tell this, even if one is making a living through rhetorical teaching. The philosopher has no true external sign for his form of life. At first, the dialogue presented the philosophical life on a par with other lives, but then it shifted philosophy to a unique kind of life, one of self-care, one that obviously is rare and difficult, and one that takes over every aspect of living, but cannot be measured through external actions or signs. The philosophical life is silent. As such, Dio could be a philosopher after all, while also externally doing things appropriate to a farmer, or a hunter or astronomer, or - in his case - a traveling rhetorician.

Within the Socratic tradition, there is nothing unique to Dio's ideas about the philosophical life as an internal orientation of the soul for which outward actions are only poor signs. What makes Dio's text especially interesting is its reflection on the nature of philosophy as a form of life distinct from regular professions. The text is a crystal clear window on a completely different conception of philosophy from what we find in the 21st century. Today, we no longer associate philosophy with a way of living, with a direction of the soul. If we ask ourselves the question “is this person a philosopher?”, then we will inquire after the subject of their investigations (e.g. philosophy of mind), or the specific philosophical method they use (e.g. formal explication), we will figure out what texts they have already written (e.g. an academic paper). Nowadays domain, method and academic status are the markers we naturally associate with philosophy. Understanding philosophical activity in terms of a care for the soul, in terms of an all-encompassing way of life (or diet as the Greeks would call it), this is lost on us. For Dio, and for most of his contemporaries, it would be obvious that most living “philosophers” today are not actually philosophers, but frauds who got stuck in words, in theories, in shallow discussion and exchange, who write to get paid by their institution, who teach for a living, and obviously have little concern over the care for their souls. From the perspective of Dio's dialogue, a contemporary philosopher would be like the person claiming to be farmer without doing anything related to farming.

What makes Dio’s discourse so interesting for a 21st century reader is the question why Dio’s discourse is wrong, or at least obviously impoverished, given our modern conception of philosophy. What is it about our modern conception of philosophy that allows us to find what Dio takes for granted to be misguided? Why are we not alarmed that most self-professed philosophers are unconcerned about the management of their souls and the shaping of their desires? Of course, I am taking for granted here that we are unconcerned over this, and that, upon some reflection, we can only find ourselves puzzled to give reasons why we ought to be concerned over this. This puzzlement signifies that Dio's conception of philosophy just is foreign to us in the 21st century. The question how we have come to our own conception of philosophy distinct from Dio's finds no straightforward answer. Arguably, this is one of the greatest puzzles in the history of philosophy.

One possible route to take is to inquire into the social carrier of philosophy. In the time of Dio, philosophy did not have a stable social institution maintaining it as a separate sphere of thought or action: it was a way of life that anyone in principle could take up in the management of their life independently of their profession. Philosophy was there for the slave and the master alike. It was a style of living, and not a career path. From the 19th century onward, however, philosophy became socially entrenched in the institution of the university, as an academic discipline, on a par with other disciplines. From that point onward, one could be a philosopher in virtue of the profession that one had. With the rise of the public media sphere at the end of the 18th century, one could also be a philosopher in virtue of the textual interventions in that sphere - this is the philosopher as the public intellectual (a dying philosopher-type about to be reshaped by the (v/b)logging philosopher). Both the philosopher as academic and as public intellectual are mostly defined by their textual production and this is obviously at odds with Dio’s conception: ironically, the text-producing sophist of today (i.e. the academic) is now conceived as the archetype of the philosopher.

Another avenue to begin answering the puzzle is to look at our modern notion of lifestyle. Clearly, we are all still much concerned with how we live, what we value in life, how we express those values in our actions. We also produce much discourse on it, we influence each other. However, we have stopped calling the concern for lifestyle philosophy, and lifestyle itself has been mostly recuperated within a consumption-oriented society. Being a certain kind of person is mostly conceived of and expressed in terms of buying certain things. Overall, lifestyle is now more a product of influencers on social media and associated networks of control. It is no longer the product of an active care for the self, but the by-product of a profit driven economical structure. The all-encompassing way of life, aimed at truth and prudence, has lost almost all meaning to us in the 21st century - when we can even barely distinguish anymore between a person's actual capacities and their public advertisement of those capacities on the internet. The gap between the image of oneself and one's actual self is rapidly disappearing.

What these two avenues to answer the above puzzle have in common is the complete alienation of philosophy from the regimentation of our daily lives. Philosophy - in terms of its discourse, its concerns, its interests - has become an autonomous sphere, sustaining itself, but equally separating itself from other social spheres. And so in asking who the philosopher is, we no longer think of the life that person is living, but of the ideas that person has produced and their reception, which is the exact opposite of the answer in Dio’s paradoxical 70th discourse. Should one feel something once one has noticed this radical shift in the conception of philosophy that has occurred over the last 2000 years? A worry perhaps? Or satisfaction? A sense of loss? Or, should one feel nothing at all, as though one has walked into a room filled with art from a glorious past for which one has no sense of recognition at all? By gauging one's emotional response, one can find a glimpse in one's own soul; the philosophical life may be silent, but history has a tendency to make it ring.

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A Link to my Dutch translation of the discourse - work from a bygone age.