Why Do We Study Philosophy? — Continued, Part Two

We are free in our becoming. We can choose to learn and to become realised, or to end our lives unrealised.

But no one knows what would happen if all of us chose realisation, because only a small number of us have ever taken that path.

Is this not perhaps the very choice for which the world carries us towards the future?

The darkness of refusing consciousness, of not taking the path of knowing, and of fearing the realisation of what it means to be human stands before us. We see it continually—every day, staring into our eyes—as a bitter reminder of the splendour we could become but have not become.

All the ugliness and suffering we see in the world is the result of the lives of countless generations of our parents and ancestors, and of ourselves today. We die unrealised and leave behind in the world suffering and darkness that arise from nothing other than the accumulation of the dark side within each of us.

Every human being who undertakes the journey of consciousness, passes through inner darkness and the darkness of the external world, awakens the brighter side of the self and the more beautiful possibilities of the world, and stands courageously, honestly and freely for the realisation of “everything that both self and world could become but have not become,” shakes the silence of the world and the pillars of darkness.

Every paradise realised within a human being develops the image of the world and of consciousness. From the fingertips of every heart that is no longer a hell, the splendour of humanity can grow.

The truth is that philosophy can help us become better human beings.

In Plato's dialogues Socrates repeatedly appears through questions about life:
What is courage?
What is justice?

These questions were as important in Socrates' time as they are today, and they will not lose their importance tomorrow. Such questions do not become obsolete with time.

It is this same Socrates who, at his trial, addresses the Athenians who want his death and emphasises the importance of translating philosophy into living. In the source's rendering, he tells them:
“You will not easily find another person like me among you—someone who with his whole being and in honesty respects truth, loves it, and tries to live the truth in which he believes.”

These questions have practical meaning in life, and this is why the Socratic voice says to us:
“Even if I cannot express the meaning of justice in words, I will live it.”

Philosophy has never been separated from the world, from action or from changing the world. We see this beautifully in a statement attributed to the nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine:
“Thought strives to become action and the word strives to become embodied. Thus a human being shapes the world through thought. The world is nothing other than the external manifestation of thought.”

In Plato's view, the philosopher is not a scholar of theological and philosophical knowledge. The philosopher is one who leaves Plato's cave, symbol of the sensible world, apprehends the world of Forms and ideals, and then returns to liberate others with a deeper understanding of freedom, justice, humanity and the ideal of each idea.

The philosopher's purpose is not simply to explain the world and the human being, but to transform the inner world of every person: to guide the human being towards light and out of the cave and ultimately to elevate the world towards its final Form and perfection.

At the heart of Platonic philosophy lies the refusal to forget truth and the light of the world—the Logos—because remaining in the cave is equivalent to forgetting the world of ideals.

Philosophy is the remembrance that a sun exists outside the dark cave of our lives, and that our task is to leave the cave and find the light that gives illumination and purpose to the whole world.

In this understanding, philosophy is awakening: awakening in knowledge, consciousness and light. In the cave of our world we are alone, bound within separate bodies, and we take the shadows on the cave wall for truth. Our life is filled with fear, darkness and solitude.

Philosophy asks each of us to free ourselves from the chains of the cave and to leave it; then, on returning, through liberating others, to realise the world of possibility in its highest light and radiance. For the darkness in which we live is itself evidence of a world filled with beauty and light that could be realised, but remains unrealised because we have forgotten the Ideas and ideals of life, freedom from chains, and the return to light.