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

11. What Philosophy Is Not

211 11 What Philosophy Is Not Philosophy is Neither Metacognition Nor Critical Thinking In P4C literature, philosophy is characterized as “thinking about thinking,” or metacognition. Although philosophy certainly involves “thinking about thinking,” philosophy is not simply metacognition. Rather, philosophy, as the love of wisdom, has knowledge of “reality as such” as its object. Hence, true philosophy concerns not only thoughts—which are certainly part of what is real, for we really do think—but everything that is given, within as well as without. Although wisdom’s pursuit requires that we attend to what we think, as “reflection on reality as such,” philosophy is broader than merely thinking about our thinking; it demands a wider “openness for the whole.” Pieper puts the matter succinctly: To philosophize means to reflect on the totality of that which is encountered with regard to its ultimate meaning, and this act of philosophizing, so construed, is a meaningful, even necessary activity, from which the spiritually existing person can absolutely not desist.1 Pursuant to its status as metacognition—as thinking about thinking in order to improve thinking—the “selling point” of P4C programming is that it demon‑ strably improves the critical thinking skills of students; indeed, Lipman portrays philosophy as having the development of critical thinking as its primary focus. However, as the genuine “pursuit of wisdom,” philosophy is irreconcilable with a certain understanding of critical thinking that Lipman occasionally seems to accept. In order to distinguish the sort of critical thinking that is associated with genuine philosophy from its false image, we must recall what was learned about philosophy from our ancient and medieval sources; namely, that when we concern ourselves exclusively with the development of critical‑analytic thinking—that is, solely with adept reasoning, or with honing the movements of the ratio alone—we do so to the detriment of the intellectus, which does not move laboriously through a chain of reasoning toward its object, but rather grasps the object of its gaze immediately in a union of seer with what is seen. Lipman’s focus on selling philosophy as a 212 The Pursuit of Wisdom and Happiness in Education means to build critical thinking skills at times seems to fall prey to this notion of thinking as an exclusively dianoetic operation of the ratio. Philosophy, it must be remembered, is not to be associated primarily with reasoning, or even with reasoning about reasoning. Indeed, all the disciplines, all the arts, and all the sciences involve reasoning; philosophy is not special in this regard. Rather, the preeminent activity of philosophy is the heightening of contem‑ plative seeing, or theoria, through noetic activity. Whereas the discursive reasoning associated with critical‑analytic thought is a form of mental labor, theoria is not properly understood as work, but as an activity of leisure or schole inasmuch as theoria is a simple beholding and enjoyment of what is seen. This is not to say that seeing, as the activity of the intellectus, is not part of the other disciplines; certainly any time that any understanding (intellectus) is garnered through the application of reasoning, the activity of the intellectus, as a kind of seeing (theoria) must be present. However, whereas the various arts and sciences cultivate a kind of theoretic activity by seeking out a precise seeing or understanding of a specific instance of reality within a particular field of study, philosophy is not content with this sort of seeing; rather, its desire is not simply to know a part of what is real, but to know reality as such. Philosophy is resolved to “take up” (anairein) whatever is seen toward its true beginning (Arche) noetically; it therefore aspires toward a vision of what is Best (Ariston). Critical thinking may be said to be integral to academic performance in the various disciplines; careful dianoetic reasoning, for instance, is required in the appli‑ cation of the principles (archai) of the various arts and sciences in their respective fields of investigation. But philosophy is the quintessential noetic activity; it is not simply the masterful application of dianoetic thought, and we must therefore be cautious not to allow philosophy to be too closely identified with a certain notion of critical thinking, inasmuch as such identification might simply feed into the current fixation with the cultivation of the dianoetic powers as opposed to noesis, and with the ratio as opposed to the intellectus. In her thoughtful book Children as Philosophers, Joanna Haynes offers a similar warning against conceiving of philosophy as “critical thinking...