The Pursuit of Wisdom and Happiness in Education: Historical Sources and Contemplative Practices

12. A Brief Statement on the Unity between the Philosophic and Contemplative Traditions

231 12 A Brief Statement on the Unity between the Philosophic and Contemplative Traditions Thus far in this book, we have come to see that the sophistic education with which we are so familiar is hostile to the “pursuit of wisdom” (philosophia), and that our modern emphasis on “total work” serves to undermine (with the intent of eradicating) the possibility for schole and its concomitant activity of theoria, or contemplation. However, the practice of philosophy encounters enemies not just from one side of the fence, as it were; within the contemplative tradition itself, philosophy is often held up to ridicule as less than genuine contemplation, and as an impotent means of approaching the true object of its love in Wisdom. For instance, it was quite common among some of the Fathers and apologists of the Early Church—even among the mystical “Desert Fathers”—to berate Socrates and “pagan” philosophy. We have already seen how, to a certain extent, this belittling of philosophy is present in the works of Thomas Aquinas, where the “intellectual virtue” of wisdom—ostensibly the highest concern of the pagan philosopher— is distinguished from the “gift” of Wisdom that can only be accessed through Christian practice and Christian faith. A similar attack on philosophy can also be found in the remarks of Albertus Magnus, who contrasts the contemplation of the philosopher with the contemplation of the saints: Even in this one should bear in mind the difference between the con‑ templation of faithful Catholics and that of pagan philosophers, for the contemplation of the philosophers is for the perfection of the contem‑ plator himself, and consequently it is confined to the intellect and their aim in it is intellectual knowledge. But the contemplation of the Saints, and of Catholics, is for the love of Him—that is, of the God they are contemplating. As a result, it is not confined in the final analysis to the intellect in knowledge, but crosses over into the will through love.1 Similarly, Thomas Merton writes derisively of “the contemplation of philoso‑ phers” as “merely intellectual speculation on the divine nature as it is reflected in 232 The Pursuit of Wisdom and Happiness in Education­ creatures,” and he uses the rather phallic image of “a skyrocket that soared into the sky but never went off” to describe the philosopher’s impotence.2 Throughout this book, we have taken great pains to show how these polemical assessments of genuine philosophy are quite unfair and unwarranted; rather than seeing philosophic inquiry (zetesis) as a fundamentally impotent form of contemplation (theoria), I have consistently suggested that there is a basic unity—if not an identity—between the genuine practice of philosophy on the one hand, and practices such as meditative prayer, Buddhist meditation, Hindu yoga, or Christian contemplation on the other. As an alternative to our West‑ ern traditions, which very often juxtapose philosophy and contemplative practice antagonistically, we might turn instead to Eastern traditions where philosophy and meditative practice are generally seen as working in concert with one another. For instance, the premise behind the dialectics of Indian Samkhya philosophy is that ignorance (avidya) is at the heart of all suffering. Avidya consists in confus‑ ing the motionless and eternal purusa with the flux of psycho‑mental life, and Samkhya posits metaphysical knowledge of the Truth or wisdom (prajna) as the means to liberation (mukti) from avidya. As we have already seen, such knowl‑ edge is construed as a simple “awakening” that unveils the essence of the Self, of Spirit. It is a knowledge that does not “produce” anything; instead, it reveals reality immediately to one who sees. Eliade writes that “[t]his true and absolute knowledge—which must not be confused with intellectual activity, which is psy‑ chological in essence—is not obtained by experience but by a revelation.” Classic Yoga takes up the stress in Samkhya concerning the prime importance of prajna; it offers one who pursues wisdom a means to implement this search through the adoption of a formal practice, or a “way of life”—much as genuine philosophy from the classical Greek perspective must be conceived of also as a way of life. From Patanjali’s perspective, however, the liberation afforded through wisdom’s pursuit “must, so to speak, be conquered by sheer force, specifically by means of an ascetic technique and a method of contemplation, which, taken together, constitute nothing less than the yoga‑darsana.”3 Similarly, in the dialectical Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna the objec‑ tive is...