Introduction to Philosophy, Lecture 4: Writing the Midterm

Here's a short lecture I gave introducing the midterm. Hope you enjoy.

So. I've assigned a strange midterm. I want you to take one of the philosophical positions we've mentioned and make it your own. I want you to address arguments against the hybrid position (your thought + whatever you pick) you create. Then I want a conclusion which looks to the future, which thinks about what your adopted philosophical position may spawn.

That doesn't sound too strange? Well, consider all we've covered:

• the importance of the imagination (Ursula K. Le Guin reading)
• the inevitability of disability (Porochista Khakpour reading)
• what is philosophy? (2nd lecture: how do we distinguish philosophy from myth?)
• what if everything is water? (Thales, 2nd lecture)
• what is family? how do we know who is family? (2nd lecture)
• what if change is an illusion -- what if everything is one (Parmenides, 3rd lecture)
• what if everything is change? (Heraclitus, 3rd lecture)
• the Platonic forms (3rd lecture)
• the rational animal (3rd lecture)

For some, this might feel like too much to pick from. I know I'd feel like my professor was a lunatic if I saw a list like this. So I'd better give you a sample midterm. I'm going to try to talk through Thales' famous (or infamous) "everything is water." What could a statement like that possibly mean? Why would anyone make it?

We encountered the proposition "everything is water" and wondered if it was an attempt at doing science by one of the first philosophers, Thales. Aristotle explains what he thinks was Thales' reasoning: maybe he observed that the "nutriment of everything is moist" or that "the seeds of everything have a moist nature" and then deduced "the permanent entity is water." (1)

However, Aristotle also notes that many before him held the gods to be water-related. Did Thales mean to inquire how water works in the world, or did he reassert mythological ideas? It's impossible to tell.

For me, the question is why anyone would say "everything is water" in the first place. I can imagine someone living on an island or by the coast and thinking where they live is nothing. There are untold civilizations and treasures out there, but you have to be brave enough to cross what looks endless. If you're an artisan who makes things for a people you've never even encountered, wonder might spark. Who and where needs what I provide? My work depends on a reception I don't fully understand, let alone see.

But I can believe that "everything is water" from my own life. So many things that I thought were lasting fell apart the most curious way. Not like a house collapsing, with its constituent parts turning into rubble. More like a solid becoming fluid, becoming water. It was a falling apart more like a flood–friendships and relationships ending; jobs accelerating into vast regions of unreasonableness; a realization that I have overestimated my capabilities–a lot of grief and anxiety. What's most curious is how that watered a seed that I didn't realize was there, a growth of which I wasn't conscious.

In that sense, yes, everything is water. Everything meaningful, that is. The strains, failures, and tears do not necessarily destroy. They create the ground for a second act.

You might say that this does not do justice to the sheer power of an ocean or hurricane. What about those times water washes everything away? Floods no less than Biblical? There are damages water causes we cannot recover from. If I'm tying "everything is water" to growth, I need to admit that water destroys so much that it can be the only thing left. On a lesser note, I do believe some people have lives not unlike primordial chaos. Jumping from place to place, relationship to relationship, few friends and no community. All events, all moments. Experiences which don't become experience.

I do think it's worth meditating on the power of hidden growth, though. If "everything is water" leads us there, then it is a powerful proposition for that alone. Not everyone can talk about hidden growth–they either haven't grown or taken the time to recognize what has happened to them. It's strange how "everything is water" leads to the idea of looking into the element and seeing yourself. That the water is a mirror, that everything is a mirror, and to not recognize this is to lack knowledge.

Notes

(1) Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 1 Section 938b-c.