In further reflecting on my recent post about criticism vs. cultivation, I've been pondering the all-too-common phenomenon of philosophical hubris: the attitude among some philosophers that they can pronounce intelligently on any topic or situation presented to them. To such thinkers (parodied as long ago as Plato's Gorgias), humility might be an intellectual virtue for others, but it isn't one for them.
As I see it, philosophical hubris is one of the dangers inherent in the proliferation of various isms as "ways of life" - Stoicism, Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism, even (if Alexandre Lefebvre is to be believed) political ideologies like liberalism. As Abraham Maslow is reputed to have said, "if all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail" - and you feel free to whack it accordingly. Poor Pierre Hadot, who resurrected the conception of philosophy as a way life: loving and pursuing wisdom is very different from believing and adhering to a particular worldview that provides the answers to all questions.
Yet the true believer is not the only intellectual type who is prone to pontificating. Sophists ancient and modern (e.g., all too many analytic philosophers) have felt confident that their logical and rhetorical training qualifies them to argue successfully about everything under the sun.
I freely admit that in my youth I epitomized this kind of arrogance. In college, when I was considering psychotherapy as a career, a friend of mine reacted by saying "you just want to tell people what to do"; although I was taken aback, at that time there was much truth in the accusation. Having worked at character improvement over many years, hopefully I've mostly outgrown it by now!
To counteract this tendency, I find it helpful to recall the words of Lao Tzu in the final chapter of the Tao Te Ching:
The wise man doesn't know it all
The know-it-all is far from wise
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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