From Isolation to Ignorance: My Life in Philosophy

I was required to include this in one of my applications. I figured it would be nice to share it here.
Kierkegaard, or maybe Socrates, taught me that the pursuit of wisdom is a fundamentally tragic pursuit. Since my exposure to ancient philosophy, I have progressively sought to clear the calculative grime from my mind and articulate this tragedy within myself. Before this, I only had a disinterested and propositional understanding of the human person. In all my years as a philosophy student, I have never found a sufficient answer to the question of “why philosophy?” Philosophers are aware of truth precisely because they are aware of their ignorance. “I know nothing” is not a proposition; it is a condition. A philosophical vocation is a recognized condition born out of the mind’s essential awareness of itself. This is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom begins with a self awareness which begs the assertion: “I know nothing.” The vulgar do not recognize their ignorance, because truth is not any larger than themselves. Truth is their craft. They are truth, and this is their neglect of a life of wisdom.

My life in philosophical studies has ranged anywhere from petty focuses of in-house theological debates to the existentially unsettling questions more native to ancient and Continental thought. When I first attended Lindenwood University, my pursued interests were still largely influenced by an attempt to philosophically articulate and defend my Reformed beliefs in the moral arena of the world. Wanting to maintain my identity as a Reformed Evangelical, I chose to explore my options within the Calvinist culture of theology. For many years, I busied my philosophical studies with the background of a cultural conflict between Kuyperian theology and re-packaged versions of “Presuppositional” apologetics lingering in my mind. It took a very long time for me to get over this hump. Much of my time was spent confronting theological debates and dilemmas strictly within the Protestant sect of Christianity.

While my philosophical inquiries expanded, concerns about post-enlightenment and pre-enlightenment metaphysics began to demand a new consideration of how I could and should define myself as a citizen of the western world. My failure to first see myself within a western context was the cause of much directionless searching. As many philosophy historians have pointed out, the Reformation presented a paradigmatic shift in the way individuals historically defined themselves. Simply put, the post-Reformation definition of a western identity was now undertaken as an individual project rather than a communal enterprise. This social phenomenon set the platform for a new definition of human freedom to take form.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s more modernized approach to Aristotelian metaphysics helped me respond to this troublesome condition. His portrait of humans as inter-dependent co-authors of their own narrative was a depiction more feasible than many fragmented perspectives I was previously exposed to. This illuminated a deep intuited concern I had with modern depictions of human autonomy and faulty missteps in modern epistemology. Since the Enlightenment, modern intellectuals have continuously sought an autonomous definition of themselves without a presupposed end for their existence. I neither see this as a good or bad approach but a new beginning point we can not avoid in our human narrative.

I do not believe we will ever universally restore the old way of assuming an identity with a cosmologically evident telos (e.g. “eternal communion with God” or “the contemplative life” etc.). Yet, we can still open avenues for individuals to define themselves in such ways. Our human freedom is understood without this assumed horizon, but this horizon can still be offered as an alternative context to articulate our human freedom. This has given me hope that the quest for a religious identity is still not a lost cause. Augustine’s famous principle, fides quarum intellectum, may not be a condition in which we currently find ourselves anymore. The Post-enlightenment rejection of a cosmologically evident human telos has left us with a new creative beginning point.. We can not “believe in order to understand” in the way we once did, because our metaphysical ends are no longer “evident”; they are options in need of analytical exploration and definition. In Charles Taylor’s words, they are no longer “unproblematic”.

People have often suggested that my conversion to Catholicism was due to a loss of identity after my parents’ divorce. I can not deny this personal isolation was often echoed in my frustrations with many modern portraits of the Self. Yet, I also can not deny this personal dilemma revealed a new and tangible landscape of human isolation. As I mentioned above, the first step to wisdom begins with recognizing our condition. My parents’ divorce allowed me to identify that condition in a way many others have not. The best way to interpret a cry is to first recognize that we ourselves are crying. The mourned isolation of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Kafka, Sartre, and Camus is undoubtedly real, and I can not reject this as a universal cry. Divorce is a fundamental expression of this estrangement. It is a cry I fundamentally sympathize with. I have gradually adopted Wittgenstein’s argument that philosophical language is a way of projecting a picture on to our world. The ambiguity of the image we present is often the cause of our modern anxiety. The first misstep of some modern thinkers is their autonomous attempt to paint their identity without first objectively situating themselves within a metaphysical horizon and heritage. There is no landscape to the image in which they see themselves, because they have divorced themselves from this landscape. Hence, they have lost their location.

My conversion to Catholicism contained this very practical consideration. I felt my duty to the West was a recovery of a lost narrative. Before I was ever going to be a Protestant, I was first going to define myself as a Roman Catholic. Since my conversion, the rift and estrangement between the non-Catholic world and the Catholic world has been too strong for me to ignore. I have delved more into the philosophy of language and dialogue in hopes of improving conversation among various cultures. Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger have played a significant role in my understanding of the revelatory aspects of language. Language has a potency that discovers and articulates a problem which is previously unidentifiable. The tragedy is that along with this new articulation comes a new set of problems. It is a very unique condition we find ourselves in, but I do not believe we can ignore it. My interest in cultural dialogue and linguistic concerns is fed by a desire to translate these new problematic concepts.

I have been through many intellectual transitions in my life - from adherence to Calvinist theology as a younger Protestant, to a much larger belief in post-Vatican II cultural dialogue as a current Catholic. Above all, my pursuit of wisdom began after recognition of my ignorance. From the beginning of my philosophical pursuits until now, I have sought to retain and pursue all that has been good and true in my formation as a human being. I am now at the fore of a much longer academic road ahead of me. This same fundamental belief in the Good still drives my search for everything in all things and the contemplation of all these things to be passed on to the universal community.