In Chapter 11 of his book What Is Philosophy?, José Ortega y Gasset writes as follows:
[T]he Greeks, having no books which could properly be called philosophic, when asked by someone like Plato, "What is philosophy?" - thought of man, of the philosopher, of life. For them, philosophizing was first of all βίος θεωρητικός, a theory of life. Strictly speaking, the first philosophic books which they had were books of the lives of the seven sakes, biographies. All that which does not define philosophy as philosophizing, and philosophizing as an essential type of life, is neither sufficient nor basic.
This passage corroborates my thesis that the unit of greatness in philosophy is not a book but a life. Socrates is often thought to be the greatest philosopher in the Western tradition - at the very least, the thinker who (despite his predecessors) kicked off the entire tradition - yet he wrote nothing. What comes before philosophy is the philosopher, who philosophically speaking is the primary reality. And we can all be philosophers, we can all philosophize, we can all strive after wisdom and sagacity in our own lives. That is the promise of philosophy not merely as an academic career but as a joyous, passionate way of life.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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