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Show Chapter I. General Introduction to the Project: The Enterprise of Socratic Metaethics 6 The ignorant man's position and character is this: he never looks to himself for benefit or harm, but to the world outside him. The philosopher's position and character is that he always looks to himself for benefit and harm. The signs of one who is making progress are: he blames none, praises none, complains of none, accuses none, never speaks of himself as if he were somebody, or as if he knew anything. When he is hindered, he blames himself. ... He has got rid of desire, and his aversion is directed no longer to what is beyond our power [i.e. the body, property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything that is not our own doing] but only to what is in our power [i.e. thought, impulse, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing] and contrary to nature. In all things he exercises his will temperately.3 The philosopher, according to Epictetus, foregoes the egocentric gratification of desire and acquisition of external goods and power for the sake of cultivating the character dispositions of transpersonal rationality. Seeing that these two alternatives frequently conflict, she "atten[ds] to nothing but reason in all that [she] encounter[s]." The centrality and universality of the character dispositions of transpersonal rationality to the discipline of philosophy, enduring over nineteen centuries, may explain why almost all philosophers, regardless of their express philosophical views on the value of rationality, try to muster the resources of rational argumentation, analysis, and criticism to defend those views. The consistency and sincerity with which they try to live up to the Socratic ideal bespeaks the seriousness of their intent to avoid the dormant alternatives. 2. Transpersonal Rationality as Philosophical Virtue The priority accorded to the character dispositions of transpersonal rationality in the practice of philosophy receives a more contemporary formulation in the following Anglo-American analytic version of the Socratic ideal: [G. E.] Moore ... invented and propagated a style of philosophical talking which has become one of the most useful and attractive models of rationality that we have, and which is still a prop to liberal values, having penetrated far beyond philosophical circles and far beyond Bloomsbury circles; it is also a source of continuing enjoyment, once one has acquired the habit among friends who have a passion for slow argument on both abstract and personal topics. When I look back to the Thirties and call on memories, it even seems that Moore invented a new moral virtue, a virtue of high civilization admittedly, which has its ancestor in Socrates' famous following of an argument wherever it may lead, but still with a quite distinctive modern and Moorean accent. Openop. cit. Note 1, XLVIII; also see I. 3 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
