Taking protrepsis seriously

If a text doesn’t fit into my way of life, my first reaction isn’t to change my way of life, it’s to discard the text. This is particularly easy for texts from other times and other places. Ancient thought is embedded in its time and circumstances, I tell myself, and therefore irrelevant in my, very different, time and circumstances.

In a moment I will consider whether this argument is plausible. But first I would like to ask, what motivates me to make the argument in the first place? A technique used by Marx, Nietzsche and Freud is what Paul Ricoeur calls “the hermeneutics of suspicion,” where, in addition to questioning the plausibility of an argument, we question the motives of the person making the argument. Ricoeur contrasts this hermeneutic approach with what he calls a “hermeneutics of faith,” where we assume that the person making the argument makes it with the sole motive of discovering and bearing witness to the truth. When I make an argument, particularly one whose consequence is avoidance of intellectual and moral effort, one of my responsibilities to myself as an intellectually disciplined mind is to question my own motives.

Kierkegaard points out that distancing ourselves from historical figures by calling attention to the time elapsed between us and them is often merely a way for us to excuse ourselves for failing to live up to the greatness they represent and demand from us. “It goes against the grain for me,” says Kierkegaard, “to speak inhumanly about the great as if a few millennia were an immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance.” When I read ancient philosophy, I am often confronted with minds wholeheartedly devoted to truth, virtue and wisdom. In contrast my life seems to be devoted to wealth, comfort and convenience. Is this merely because I live in a different era? Or is it because I fail to live up to the greatness the ancients demand of me?

We moderns have tools like telescopes and microscopes that arguably allow us to understand the cosmos far better than the ancients could. But ancient philosophy doesn’t just consist of cosmological theories. It also contains exhortations. A philosopher doesn’t just instruct us about facts. He also calls us to a way of life. When we’re dealing with protreptic and parenetic elements of ancient philosophy, there’s no reason to suppose modern inventions make them obsolete. Ancient texts confirm what we might have suspected, that in the ancient world, just as in today’s world, the vast majority of free men were interested only in the pursuit of wealth and pleasure. Only a tiny minority took an interest in truth, virtue and wisdom. If I’m honest with myself, I will have to admit that the reason I dismiss the ancients’ exhortations to become part of this small minority have nothing to do with time or progress, and everything to do with cowardice and indolence.

Some innovations of ancient philosophy have exerted so much influence on the historical course of thought that they no longer seem innovative to us. It’s useful to study these innovations in order to help us understand the genealogy of our ideas. Other innovative thoughts, however, have never had the influence their argumentative force merits. These thoughts remain innovative no matter how many millennia have elapsed between us and them. As Nietzsche points out, we moderns have a tendency to dismiss the ideas of “disturbing innovators” by telling ourselves they are part of an “epigone age” and therefore no longer relevant. Smug modern philistines, Nietzsche explains, in order to dismiss the threat ancient wisdom posed to their torpid tranquility, “sought to transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into branches of history.”

Classics have attained their classic status because they have demonstrated their ability to break out from the confines of their time and place and influence later generations. By studying classics as if they were merely products of their time and place, we remove from them precisely the thing that makes them classics. “Coming to life as classics,” Herbert Marcuse explains, “they come to life as other than themselves; they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth.”

The pernicious consequences of sequestering ourselves from the past are aptly described by Russell Berman in his 2007 book, Fiction Sets You Free. The unquestioned supposition that the modes of thought and criticism dominant in the present are the best modes of thought and criticism not only deprives us of the past, Berman explains, but also of the future:

Presentism implies not only a shift toward contemporary material (older material is denounced polemically as tied to dead authors), but an implicit structuring of time as always only a present, without a recollection of its past, without an aspiration to a future.

In order to continue “business as usual” in the present, we need an intellectual dumping ground where we can dispose of ideas incompatible with business as usual. The past serves this function admirably. Ideas from the past that are useful for business as usual are carried forward into the future. Ideas that challenge present practices are dismissed as of “merely historical interest.”

Loving kindness as pathology

“Let us not become conceited, competing against one another,” says Paul (Galatians 5:26). Students compete with one another for attention and admission to schools. Such competition is, to some extent, unavoidable. It only becomes conceited when the reward is something more than the opportunity to further perfect the mind.

“To rank the effort above the prize may be called love,” says Confucius. When we begin to covet the reward more than the effort, we have left behind the love Confucius praises and fallen into the conceit Paul condemns.

When I was eight years old I took little interest in the competitive games other boys played. In fact, at one point I began running around at recess kissing all the other boys. Boys take rough play in good humor. But caress them with kindness and they are offended. Just as the Pharisees rejected the logic of the Sermon on the Mount, scorning loving kindness and continuing to live lives of competition and strife, so my young classmates rejected me, a budding little Christian.

It saddens me to this day that the psychiatrist my parents quickly brought in to “fix” my embarrassing behavior failed to even consider a religious interpretation of the situation. Tragically, the psychiatrist did indeed “fix” me, and took away from me a germ of loving kindness, a germ that would not until three decades later begin to recognize itself as virtue rather than pathology, and finally begin to grow.

My mentors wanted me to survive in a brutal world. So they taught me to be as brutal as the rest. If only they had taught me instead to patiently endure suffering, to take up my cross and follow Christ! Of what use is survival if we must banish loving kindness from our hearts to achieve it?

I desperately wish I could go back and talk to the sad young boy I was. I wish I could tell him kindness was a virtue, not a pathology. I wish I could tell him there were many others in the past who had suffered on account of their kindness. I wish I could teach him to turn the other cheek, to bless those that cursed him, and all the other lessons I had to wait three decades to learn.

“Live by the spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh,” says Paul (Galatians 5:16). One of the desires of the flesh is the desire, particularly prevalent in male animals, to compete for territory. The competitive behavior of human males, from football players to corporate CEOs, seems to me no more than a glorified form of this animal behavior.

In my quixotic attempts to show other boys the way of loving kindness, I was accused of disrupting their games. Now, as I and other evangelists of kindness take fine young minds off the labor market, changing them from slaves of mammon into slaves of Christ, we stand accused of disrupting the games of corporate CEOs. Men driven by ambition and greed want to be seen as role models. When we dare to show any nobler sentiment, any sentiment that might cast their brutal games in a bad light or give their savage cruelty a bad conscience, they're eager to have us cured of this pathology as quickly as possible.

Invest in the mind

Learning proceeds until death and only then does it stop. ... Its purpose cannot be given up for even a moment. To pursue it is to be human, to give it up to be a beast.
Xun Zi

The more effort you invest in perfecting your mind, the more efficacious your mind will become. The more efficacious your mind becomes, the faster it will progress on its path to perfection.

Effort you expend on fulfilling the demands of the flesh is effort subtracted from perfection of the mind. The mind that seeks to perfect itself must turn its efforts inward toward mind, and waste as little intellectual energy as possible on matter.

I’m ashamed that my intellect is hindered in its quest for perfection by the demands of the flesh. In order to satisfy the demands of the flesh I must use the same currency as those who are indifferent to intellect. I’m ashamed that my need for this currency makes my mind resemble those for whom the quest for this currency has become their sole aspiration.

Every mind that seeks to perfect itself is worthy of my devotion. But one does not help a mind dissipated with distractions by assisting it in procuring more distractions. When the cynic philosopher Diogenes was kidnapped and offered for sale in the slave market, a potential buyer asked him what his skills were. “Ruling men,” he replied. Diogenes refused to obey distracted minds. In obeying them he knew he would merely be accessory to the crime they commit against themselves. Instead, Diogenes offered to teach his buyers the self-discipline they would need to turn their attention inward.

I learned in Economics 101 that if interest is reinvested, principal will grow exponentially. “Exponentially” means “at an ever increasing rate.” In the case of mind the phenomenon is similar. If the skills you acquire in your attempts to improve your mind are reinvested in your mind, your mind will grow more perfect at an ever increasing rate. The worst mistake you can make is to squander on matter what you might have invested in mind.

Investing in mind has great prospects for the future. But what about the present? In my own experience, I can truly say, I have experienced no greater joy than the joy I feel when I wholeheartedly devote myself to perfecting my mind, and helping others do the same. Sensory pleasures are trivial in comparison.

The fence around the Torah

The Torah was central to the symbolic world of first century Jews. Because the Torah was written under circumstances quite different from those in which it was applied, however, interpretation was necessary to understand its relevance for contemporary Jewish life. While the Essenes sought to recreate the isolated, rural self-ruled community of the early Jews, and the Zealots sought to fight for self-rule, the Pharisees sought instead to create a body of scholarship, called the Midrash, that would derive symbolic meaning and rules of conduct for a Jewish community. These rules would allow Jews living in urban environments under the rule of an occupying power to live in accordance with the Torah.

One of the important principles of midrashic interpretation was the idea of “building a fence around the Torah.” In order to ensure that the Torah would be obeyed, it was necessary to keep behavior at a safe distance so it would not accidentally veer into prohibited territory. For example, the Torah prohibits boiling a calf in its mother’s milk. The halakhic interpretation is that meat and dairy may not be prepared or eaten together.

When Jesus encounters the practices of the Pharisees, they immediately strike him as hypocritical. The Pharisees make their virtue very conspicuous, wearing long robes and praying long prayers in public to show their righteousness. And they demand to be respected, always taking the best seats at banquets and ceremonies. They show great concern for what they put in their mouths, but, Jesus objects, “It is what comes out of a person’s mouth, not what goes in the mouth, that makes a person righteous” (Matthew 15:11). What we eat goes down the sewer. But what we say comes from the heart. Rather than trying to purify the “outside of the chalice”—the robes, the foods, and all the external, material trappings of religion—shouldn’t we be trying, Jesus asks, to make the inside pure?

The contrast between inside and outside is apparent in the antitheses Jesus draws between law and faith (Matthew 5:21-48). It is not only murder, the external act, but also anger, the internal disposition, that is sinful. It is not only adultery, but also lust. Jesus also wants to build a fence around the Torah. But he believes the Pharisees have gone about it the wrong way. Rather than proscribing acts that, by some sophistical reasoning, seem to resemble the prohibited acts, we must, Jesus tells the Pharisees, cultivate a spiritual disposition that is as far as possible from the sinful spiritual disposition that leads to the acts prohibited by the Torah.

Those who have read the New Testament will be all too familiar with the failure of religious institutions to live up to the righteousness it demands of them. A large part of this failure, as I see it, comes as a consequence of the tendency of religious authorities to make elaborate interpretations of texts rather than seeking to proclaim and live in accordance with what they perceive to be the spirit that gave rise to the texts in the first place.

Within two centuries of the death of its founder, the Church had already begun to engage in precisely the same legalistic word-spinning for which Jesus criticized the Pharisees. And those who criticized the Church met the same persecution Jesus faced. Every doctrine has a tendency to evolve over time into a doctrine diametrically opposed to the spirit of the original. Christianity in this regard is no exception.

Is the mind a house of trade or a house of God?

Do not make the house of my father a house of trade.
John 2:16

But it is not only of the space in the Church which we ought to be jealous, but also of the interiors of the house of God in us, so that it might not become a house of merchandise, or a den of robbers.
Ambrose

What Ambrose objects to is precisely what the corporation demands of us, to place mammon at the apex of our souls and allow it to rule mind as well as body. The fact that our age finds it necessary to use so many words—mind, soul, intellect, genius, spirit—for what really ought to be one thing shows how fragmented this one thing has become. The mind in its entirety—not just a tiny Sunday morning corner—is the house of God. And at no time is lust for mammon worthy of entry into it. This doesn’t mean we can’t work. It means we work for the benefit of our neighbors, not for our own personal enrichment. It means we put ourselves last when it comes time to decide what is owed to us, and first when it comes time to decide what we owe to others.

The inner voice

The inner voice is relentlessly critical. “You only get one chance to live this life. Are you going to goof off and have a good time, or are you going to concentrate on achieving what you and you alone are capable of achieving?”

“I am achieving something! I work hard!”

The relentless inner voice continues its attack. “Yes, and what are you doing with the resources you obtain from your work? Goofing off and having a good time. If you were honest with yourself, you’d have to admit the sole purpose of your work is to obtain resources to goof off and have a good time. I see no striving for something higher. I see no attempt to contrive a serious purpose for your life. It’s all about entertainment. Work is merely a way to obtain resources to entertain yourself.”

“You’re so pretentious,” I petulantly tell the inner voice, “Who are you to say what you demand is higher than entertainment?”

“I’m not telling you what the purpose of your life must be.” The voice adopted a kinder tone. “But you must have some purpose. At work you allow your purpose to be set by your employer. At home you seek only to relax and to be entertained. At no point are you striving to define a purpose for your life, to give some meaning to your life.”

“Life has no meaning.”

“It’s true that at present your life has no meaning. It’s not necessarily true that it can’t have a meaning. It is up to you to give it meaning, to set a goal for yourself and strive with all your effort to achieve it.”

“I have a goal. I want to be a successful engineer.”

“Are you directing all your resources toward that goal? It certainly doesn’t seem like it. I see you spending time watching television. I see you spending money on theater tickets. If being a successful engineer is really the goal of your life, why aren’t you putting all your time and resources into it? I think you’re deceiving yourself. You say your goal is to be a successful engineer. But this is only a means. Engineering is all about means. What is the end? To entertain yourself. To make yourself comfortable. You devote your life to making your life comfortable, and nothing more.”

“What’s wrong with comfort?”

“Do you sometimes work longer hours than is comfortable?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is that because being a successful engineer is a higher goal than comfort?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“And yet the goal of being a successful engineer is merely to make yourself comfortable. Why sacrifice comfort to obtain comfort?”

“Because I gain more comfort than I sacrifice.”

“If you can dispense with comfort half the day while you work, why not dispense with it for the other half too?”

“Why?”

“Yes, precisely. Why? That would force you to ask why. That would compel you to decide on a purpose for your life. Your concern with comfort is merely a way of procrastinating, of evading the question. What is the purpose of your life, Peter?”

“This is all so stupid. Life has no purpose. The Earth will be swallowed by the Sun in a few billion years, and all life will perish, leaving no trace.”

“As I see it, Peter, your life consists of cycles of purposeful and purposeless behavior. Why are episodes of purposeless necessary? Why can’t you devote yourself entirely to your purpose? It must be because you haven't yet found a purpose worth devoting yourself to. The fact that the Sun will swallow up the Earth in a few billion years makes it harder to find a purpose, that’s true. But it’s unlike you to give up at the first sign of difficulty.”

“That’s true.” At least the inner voice had finally said something nice.

“If engineering is a worthwhile purpose, why aren’t you devoting all your time and resources to it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your employer rewards you for it.”

“Yes.”

“So he must think it serves a worthwhile purpose.”

“Yes,” I said, feeling somewhat relieved.

“But what do you think, Peter?”

“I think I can trust my employer.”

“Why? How does he know?”

I had never really thought about that before. How does my employer know if my work is worthwhile. “He gauges the worth of our results by the response of the marketplace.”

“By putting your trust in the marketplace, you let others decide for you what is a worthwhile activity. Are these others more competent than you in choosing a purpose and direction for your life?”

“No, I guess not.”

“By allowing the purpose of your life to be decided by the marketplace, you're procrastinating, evading the question. What is the purpose of your life, Peter?”

At this point I’m beginning to feel trapped. “Do I really have to have a purpose? What’s wrong with a purposeless life?”

“What’s wrong with a purposeless part in one of your engineering designs?”

“It’s costly to manufacture and maintain.”

“Is that all?”

“A design with superfluous parts is a less elegant design.”

“Yes, that’s very good. I would argue that your daily cycle of work and entertainment is a superfluous part of your life. It is costing intellectual effort. It’s accomplishing nothing. Stop wasting time and resources entertaining yourself. Devote this intellectual energy to finding a purpose for your life.”

“I have to eat.”

“Yes. But do you need to waste time and resources trying to get gratification from food? True gratification doesn't come from sensory pleasure. It comes from living a purposeful life.”

“What if I have no purpose? Then I should do nothing?”

“You should do nothing but strive to find a purpose. Empty your life and your mind of superfluous, purposeless activity. Leave some room for a purpose to emerge.”

“And what if none emerges?”

“Once you free your life and your mind from purposeless action, you will think about purposeful action. And this thinking about purposeful action in itself is purposeful. Even at times when you find no reasons to act, your discipline has saved you from purposeless action.”

There was some truth to what the inner voice was saying. “Purposeless action produces carbon dioxide,” I conceded. “If it can be eliminated, this does at least improve the prospects of generations that live between now and the time when the planet is swallowed by the Sun.”

“Yes, eliminating purposeless action prevents the waste of resources, both your own intellectual resources and the resources of the planet.”