Lecture 9: The Uses of Philosophy

The Uses of Philosophy....................................................................

Lecture 9

Gentile Christians in the early Church are hanging on to their Jewish

roots. But they’re also profoundly attracted to higher spirituality, to a

spiritual rather than literal reading of the scriptures. The fundamental

place that this attraction of spirituality comes from, it turns out,

is philosophy.

A

ncient philosophy was a form of spirituality that was often

attractive to early Christian intellectuals. As the highpoint of

ancient education, philosophy offered an understanding of human

life and the world that no intellectual could simply reject or ignore—like

science today. The main themes of ancient philosophy were wisdom and

happiness. For ancient philosophers the term “happiness” designated the

ultimate goal of human life; it meant something like “true success in life—

whatever that is.” The fundamental debate in ancient philosophy was about

what happiness really is. Most ancient philosophers rejected the notion that

happiness was a feeling, which is the hedonist position of the Epicureans.

The most widely-accepted view of happiness among ancient philosophers,

shared by Stoics, Platonists, and Aristotelians was that it consisted in a life of

wisdom. Christians gave biblical answers to philosophical questions. What

is happiness? Everlasting life. What is wisdom? The Wisdom of God is Jesus

Christ, God’s Word.

The Stoics were the most inÀ uential moral philosophers of the ancient world.

They articulated in uncompromising form the ancient moralistic conviction

that our passions are what lead us astray from virtue and wisdom. Ancient

moralism saw passion, not sel¿ shness, as the primary obstacle to virtue.

Passion was a form of passivity, even pathology, that made us like beasts. A

wise man is free from passions, and therefore endures suffering “stoically.”

However, Stoics were materialists, thinking that both God and the soul were

made of heavenly ¿ re. Materialism means thinking that things are made up

of some kind of stuff—the material out of which they are made. The basic

material of the world were the four elements: earth, water, air, and ¿ re—