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 “chrystomos” “with the golden mounth” (ca. 40-115 AD), was a traveling rhetorician, a sort 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, and several discuss Socrates as the philosophical role model. Discourse 70 is a dialogue wherein Dio reflects on the nature of philosophy itself. It is a simple text written in an elegant, but relatable style, modeling a typical argumentative approach central to Plato’s early dialogue, namely the Socratic induction. The discourse itself is a form of exercise - a training in how to write philosophical dialogue. At first sight, it might not seem of much value at all. However, inside this formal, seemingly random writing exercise, the reader can find a deeper message.

The text opens up out of nothing 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. “Suppose you should hear some one 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 to know the life of a person. Of course, this 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. At this stage, Dio introduces a novel idea, namely that philosophy is not just a profession, something one does to make a living, like hunting, farming or trading. Philosophy entails a completely different kind of life. Now, the dialogue effectively ends and Dio explains 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. Dio closes the discourse with an interesting afterthought: given philosophy’s special nature, one can always keep up the pretense of being a philosopher. 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 are 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 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 words, and he is talking of philosophy - the text itself is a rhetorical exercise in writing philosophical dialogue using a Socratic induction. 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 extra layer: one can be a philosopher, attending to the highest good in the soul, even if the external signs do not tell this. 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.

Above all, this discourse is evidence of a completely different way of thinking about philosophy than we find in the 21st century. Today, we no longer associate philosophy with a way of living. If we ask ourselves the question “is this person a philosopher?”, then we will inquire after the subject of their investigations, or the specific philosophical approach they use, we will figure out what texts they have already written. Domain, method and status are the markers we naturally associate with philosophy. Understanding philosophical activity in terms of 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 are not much concerned with the care for their souls.

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? This question finds no straightforward answer. Arguably, this is one of the greatest puzzles in the history of philosophy. One possible route to take is to inquiry 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: it was more akin to a way of life that anyone in principle could take up in the management of their life independently of their profession. 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, 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. 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. What these two avenues to answer the above puzzle have in common is the 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.