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Philosophy18 min read
How to Think Like a Philosopher
by Peter Cave
Scholars, Dreamers and Sages Who Can Teach Us How to Live
Published: August 9, 2023
4.2 (264 ratings)
Table of Contents
1
what’s in it for me? discover the poets, sages, and provocateurs who engaged with life’s biggest questions.2
thinking in contradiction: lao tsu and spinoza3
earthy thoughts, from aristotle and epicurus4
thoughts on alienation, with marx and nietzsche5
thinking about love and sex, with sappho and de beauvoir6
final summaryBook Summary
This is a comprehensive summary of “How to Think Like a Philosopher” by Peter Cave. The book explores scholars, dreamers and sages who can teach us how to live.
what’s in it for me? discover the poets, sages, and provocateurs who engaged with life’s biggest questions.#
Introduction
peter cave, how to think like a philosopher.
scholars, dreamers and sages who can teach us how to live.
at its core, philosophy has always been about the big questions in life, like why is there something instead of nothing, or how can i know what is true?
while our modern lives are vastly different from, say, the life of socrates in ancient greece, in some ways the questions humans face about the universe and our place in it haven't changed much for thousands of years.
but that doesn't mean the answers to those questions haven't changed radically across time and cultures.
philosophy has never been the stuff of dusty old books.
it's an ever-evolving, eternally challenging conversation about the nature of reality.
not everyone who philosophises calls themselves a philosopher either.
poets, mathematicians, novelists, economists, psychologists and historians have all engaged in thinking about thinking, and discovered profound truths along the way.
from ancient china to post-war paris, the art of pondering life has influenced music and art, forced painful questions and galvanised revolutions.
even more, it has inspired countless people to live with more purpose, awareness and intention.
this chapter will ditch the dry treatises and dive into some of the ideas and personalities that have shaped civilisations.
and a few that sent shockwaves through them too.
you'll also learn to think like these philosophers, and to bring the richness of their perspectives into your life.
thinking in contradiction: lao tsu and spinoza#
thinking in contradiction lao tzu and spinoza imagine starting a book by saying that you can't possibly speak about its subject.
pretty strange, right?
but that's precisely how the tao te ching of lao tzu begins.
it declares that words can't express the full meaning of tao, loosely translated to mean the way.
since its emergence in china in the 6th century bce, this enigmatic and poetic text has confused many with its contradictions and puzzles.
it declares that tao or true reality is unknowable and beyond description.
so when humans try to grasp it, it slips through their fingers.
its author too slips through our fingers if we try to grasp for a historical person.
lao tzu translates simply to old master and was likely not a single author.
like tao, the author is unknowable and unnamed, but that doesn't lessen their impact.
this ancient text uses enigmas and strange metaphors as a way to point at things beyond understanding.
it's full of strange comparisons, like saying that governing a large country is like cooking a small fish, in that it's easy to overdo things, or that the tao is like water because it flows into the deepest crevices and nourishes everything equally.
these cryptic verses point to a particular way of being, one where nature is the true window into reality.
a certain quietness of mind and spirit is needed to truly observe though.
freeing yourself from desire, like in buddhism, is necessary to observe the mysteries of reality.
because of its focus on the way, the book has often been viewed as a religious text, despite it noting that religion only arises when humans lose sight of tao.
if the true nature of reality is so ungraspable and unknowable, then philosophy is bound to run into religion in more places than just ancient china.
let's consider the experience of 17th century philosopher baruch or bento spinoza.
born in amsterdam in 1632 to jewish immigrants from portugal, spinoza's philosophy was radically different from that of his family and the jewish community.
he believed that any idea of god couldn't be separate from the natural world.
like lao tzu long before him, nature and the universe itself were true reality for spinoza, and he paid a steep price for it.
excommunicated from the jewish faith at the age of just 23, after his publication of deus siwei natura or god or nature, he became a total outcast.
his jewish heritage already excluded him from dutch society and his excommunication from judaism left him without any community.
spinoza's response in the face of this suffering was to become kind.
his personal experience of suffering grew his compassion for others.
his outcast status helped further his philosophical work in some ways.
freed from outside influences, he developed a view of reality that was almost pantheistic.
everything around him was a part of god, even those who rejected him.
for this he was vehemently declared both a godless atheist and a religious zealot.
he anonymously published a treatise in 1670 called tractatus theologico-politicus, but everyone who read it immediately knew it was spinoza.
in it he argued for things like freedom of speech and a secular society.
it was then that he was labelled blasphemous, quite an accomplishment for an author formerly rejected from religion.
so how can you think like lao tzu or spinoza?
open your eyes to nature and the world around you with wonder and quiet your mind so you can take it all in.
earthy thoughts, from aristotle and epicurus#
earthy thoughts from aristotle and epicurus ancient greek philosophy is probably some of the best known around the world, with names like socrates, plato and aristotle still inscribed in stone above universities and centres of learning more than two thousand years after their deaths.
while we might think of their philosophy as belonging high in the ivory tower, some actually wanted to be much more grounded down here on earth.
take aristotle.
a devoted student of plato, he spent his early years at plato's academy learning from the master who had presented the work of socrates to the world.
with such an august lineage, it's not surprising that aristotle's writings are vast and cover topics as broad as medicine, astronomy, chemistry, biology and much more.
at the very dawn of organised research and observation, aristotle left athens in 347 bce to travel and collect data before returning in the mid-330s to establish his own school of philosophy.
with his peripatetic school, he'd essentially wander around athens lecturing publicly to anyone who would listen.
instead of plato's very formal academy, aristotle's school made itself relevant to the common people and met them on their own turf.
unlike plato, who believed that true forms of human beings existed outside the physical realm in the form of a soul or spirit, aristotle wasn't so quick to dismiss physical reality.
he was fascinated by all the different types of beings he saw around him and gave them equal weight.
how was being a horse different from being a man, he wondered, or from being an object like a gold ring?
aristotle challenged plato's spiritual explanation of true reality with a far earthier one.
what if, instead of being spirits or souls in search of reality, we were simply reality itself?
this led aristotle to value ethics, being good to others and to the natural world, alongside health or living in harmony with your physical body.
this mindset resembles that of another greek philosopher with a very different reputation in the modern world.
when we think about the word epicurean, we might be tempted to think of someone who regularly indulges in excess of wine, rich food, or sensual pleasures.
that's quite far from the ideals of epicurus, who inspired the term.
epicurus settled in athens in his mid-thirties after a youth spent in colophon, a city in modern-day turkey.
he is now considered an atomist, meaning he believed that everything in the world, including the spirit or soul, was made up of fine particles.
of course, the soul was made of finer particles than the body, which explained how difficult it was to find.
a profoundly materialist thinker, he observed that children are driven by seeking pleasure, and so pleasure must be, at its root, the impulse for life and the basis of good living.
but what is pleasure for epicurus?
it would appear that his definition is simply the absence of pain, pursuit of excess pleasure, like too much wine, often leads to pain, so for epicurus, it's something to avoid.
what emerges in his philosophy is not a recipe for indulgence, but a call to simplicity.
life can be full of contentment if you strive for less.
striving for more brings pain to the self and others, so why not plant a garden instead?
its simple beauty will nourish both body and soul.
how can you think like aristotle or epicurus?
be as grounded as you are curious about everything around you.
and be kind to others and yourself along the way to alleviate all the suffering you can.
thoughts on alienation, with marx and nietzsche#
thoughts on alienation with marx and nietzsche if philosophy often looked to an examination of the natural world for answers, other, more modern souls looked to the workings of human society to grasp the true nature of reality.
they analysed systems like mathematics and language, or turned to history for the meaning of life.
for karl marx and his collaborator friedrich engels, it was industrial capitalism that represented the true reality of modern life.
while his writings were largely classified as economics, karl marx had a profound impact on modern philosophy.
and his ideas were co-opted by countless revolutions around the globe from which marx himself would be quick to distance himself.
marx critiqued philosophers like spinoza, whose arguments considered mankind to be a sort of fixed category instead of evolving being.
for marx, reality was determined by the conditions of living in the here and now.
material conditions, like how people work and what they get in return for it, were the underlying reality for industrial society.
but it's in his concept of alienation that marx perhaps crosses fully into the realm of philosophy.
he points out that if the aim of industry is profit, then workers must be paid less than the products they make are worth.
the surplus is pocketed by the capitalist as profit.
so workers are alienated from the fruits of their own labour.
worse, they have no control over what they do or when they do it.
in competitive workplaces, they are even pitted against one another, alienating them from their fellow workers.
in the late 19th century, workers weren't the only ones who were alienated.
with friedrich nietzsche's declaration, god is dead, it seemed like everything was alienated.
incredibly provocative and grandiose, his semi-autobiography, ecce homo, which translates to behold the man, included chapter titles like why i am so clever and why i write such excellent books.
a philosopher of aphorisms or pithy short statements, nietzsche was as famous for sayings like some men are born posthumously, that displayed both a cutting wit and a certain irony when it came to western philosophy.
indeed, god is dead was written in all capital letters as if shouted from the pages of thus spoke zarathustra.
this book inspired richard strauss to compose his 1896 tone poem of the same name, probably best known from the opening of stanley kubrick's 2001 a space odyssey.
such a bold philosophy needed some equally dramatic music.
for nietzsche, this pronouncement had nothing to do with the life or death of a supernatural being, it was a commentary on the current state of society.
he was essentially warning that once religion subsides as the basis for social morals, society is at risk of going down in flames without some unifying ethics.
so how can you think like marx and nietzsche?
first, embrace the idea that every system, be it religion or language or industrial capitalism, can be analysed to reveal an underlying reality.
but keep your sense of humour while you do it, because humans behave pretty ironically.
thinking about love and sex with sappho and de beauvoir while the greek poet sappho might not spring to mind when you think of philosophers, her poetry demonstrates a fine philosophical mind.
thinking about love and sex, with sappho and de beauvoir#
she was praised by socrates and plato as the tenth muse, so fine was her writing.
her descriptions of desire, full of finely painted imagery, imbue notions of love and beauty into philosophy with powerful presence.
sappho uses terms like bittersweet to describe feelings of attraction and desire.
her poetic references to fluttering in her breast, subtle fire running over her skin, or her ears buzzing when seeing her beloved connect readers across the centuries with a deeply personal account of the felt experience of love.
if love and beauty were aspects of the gods, their nature was an important part of true reality.
she describes the loss of love with similar breathless clarity.
as true physical pain, one that can rob all joy of living in a desperate grief.
that sappho sees love and loss as profoundly linked, even twins, is a timeless truth.
her unchaptering observations of the vulnerability of love and the irrationality of humans under the influence of powerful emotions continues to resonate.
similarly, novelist and philosopher simone de beauvoir made a life's work of carefully observing the reality of the lives of women, and her unchaptering accounts of systemic oppression published in the second sex had her labelled an early feminist icon.
but she resisted the label, as her concerns were not just about the conditions of women's lives, but of men's as well.
her relationship to fellow philosopher jean-paul sartre placed her firmly at the centre of the french existentialists, a group of philosophers who took nietzsche's declaration that god was dead quite seriously, but this left a fundamental crisis.
if god was dead, then anyone could do anything, right?
the answer for de beauvoir, like nietzsche before her, was a resounding no.
with no god, it was up to individuals to behave ethically and morally, for no other reason than that everyone deserves freedom.
this may seem paradoxical, but if everything is permitted, the freedom of some to live and thrive might be lost.
a moral society preserves the freedom of everyone and empowers them to make choices about their lives.
she was particularly well known for her idea of the appeal, meaning that freedom also requires getting others to align with common ideals.
no man is an island, and de beauvoir forcefully pointed out that no woman is either.
her call to mutual recognition of the other alongside the self remains a resonant appeal for equality and diversity.
so how can you think like sappho and de beauvoir?
first, remember that humans aren't as rational as we like to think, and all of us can be irrational under the influence of emotions.
then seek to recognise the experience of others as fully as you recognise your own, so everyone can be free.
final summary#
Conclusion
the main takeaway of this chapter to how to think like a philosopher by peter cave is that philosophy is a constantly changing, ever-challenging conversation about the big questions in life.
you too can think like a philosopher if you're willing to open your mind to nature and all its wonders like spinoza or lao tzu, or stay grounded and curious in conversations with everyday people like aristotle or epicurus.
you can empower yourself by pondering alienation and choosing alliance over anarchy like nietzsche and marx, or you can find meaning in your relationship to others with all the accompanying joys and pain like sappho and de beauvoir.
thanks so much for listening.
please leave us a rating or a comment, we always appreciate your feedback.
see you in the next chapter.
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