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4. ON THE SAYING THATPHILOSOPHY BEGINS IN WONDER
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55 ON THE SAYING THAT PHILOSOPHY BEGINS IN WONDER greek greeks ‘‘Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy,’’ Plato has Socrates say at 155d of the Theaetetus. And at 982b of the Metaphysics Aristotle says, ‘‘it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophise.’’ ‘‘Wonder,’’ thaumazein, is one of those wonderful words that face in opposite directions at one and the same time, like Janus and the androgynous creature of whom Aristophanes tells in the Symposium. It seems possible to use it in opposite senses at once; thaumazein both opens our eyes wide and plunges us into the dark. It is both startled start and flinching in bewilderment . Reflection on it might well have made Theaetetus’s head swim as much as do the aporias Socrates leads him into in the pages culminating at 155 in Theaetetus’s exclamation: ‘‘By the gods, Socrates, I am lost in wonder (thaumazō) when I think of all these things. It sometimes makes me quite dizzy.’’ His condition would be well described by analogy with the stunning effect of the stingray to which Meno likens the effect Socrates has on those he approaches. Theaetetus and Meno—and, according to the response he 56 seeing through god makes to Meno’s comparison, Socrates himself—are perplexed by aporias. Theaetetus, for example, is puzzled at the suggestion that six dice can be both fewer than twelve and more than four. And Meno is paralyzed by the less readily solved problem of how to define virtue. Despite the greater depth of Meno’s problem, he too suspects Socrates of performing conjuring tricks, thaumato-poios being puppetry, juggling, and suchlike acts of prestidigitation that dumbfound. Likewise, at the beginning of the Meditations Descartes is so stupefied at not being able to identify any sure mark by which to distinguish waking from dreaming that he can almost persuade himself that he may be then and there asleep. Obstupescam, he says. His Latin also speaks of stupor, for which the French gives étonnement, astonishment. Thaumazein, astonishment, Aristotle says, is provoked by aporias. According to him the difficulties that arose for the early philosophers were first to do with matters close at hand but later concerned remoter questions, questions about the solstices, for example, and the genesis of the universe, peri tēs tou pantos geneseōs (982b 17). As with Plato, the aporias often have the form of apparent contradictions, such as the prospect of dolls at a puppet show behaving as though they were alive, and the idea that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the side. When the cause of the puppet’s movements has been revealed and when we have learned a little geometry our astonishment disappears. What would astonish us then is the suggestion that what we now believe to be possible is not. These are two cases that Aristotle regards as ones that might give rise to astonishment with anyone at some stage. He mentions them immediately after stating that ‘‘all men begin , as we said, by wondering that all things are as they are,’’ archontai men gar, hōsper eipomen, apo tou thaumazein pantes ei autōs echei (983a 12). The ‘‘as we said’’ refers back to a passage that attributes wonder to any beginning philosopher. It appears to follow that any puzzled person is a philosopher provided that he seeks to remove that puzzlement and that his desire to achieve the knowledge that will remove it is a desire for knowledge for its own sake, not just for the sake of removing the puzzlement and not as a means to some further end. As support for his analysis Aristotle appeals to what he sees as the historical fact that it is only when man’s economic needs are secured that he begins to seek knowledge for its own sake, to indulge in what we have found Bacon describing as the prostitution of science. Given the triviality of some of the aporias Aristotle has in mind, it might seem that a further condition would be required to distinguish knowledge from the specific kind of knowledge called sophia for which philosophy is the philia. Such a further condition is stipulated. It is that the knowledge sought should be of the universal, knowledge ultimately of the first cause. This condition is compatible with philosophy’s beginning with perplexity over ‘‘obvious difficulties,’’ that is to say, over aporias that can be...