PHILOSOPHY AND THE MANY VOICES OF LIFE

Every day, Miranda takes a few minutes to contemplate on a philosophical text. This morning she contemplates on a text by the Swiss thinker Max Picard [See Agora’s “Topics” page, August 2015, PhiloPratice.org]. After a short centering exercise, she reads a couple of paragraphs very slowly, attentively, without judgement or opinions, opening herself to possible insights. Several words attract her attention, and she gently turns her attention to them:

“Speech came out of silence, out of the fullness of silence… Whenever a person begins to speak, the word comes from silence at each new beginning.”

She is intrigued by the idea of words that come from silence, and she reads these sentences several times and contemplates on them. And suddenly a deep understanding rises into her consciousness: “Deep words do not come from me, they are not invented by me, and they do not belong to me. They belong to something bigger. Big ideas express the bigger horizons of life.”

The idea amazes her. Logically, the idea seems strange, but at this moment she is not worried about logic. She is listening to her inner insights and savoring their power and inspiration.

“Deep ideas are not from me or about me,” she thinks. “They are expressed in my mouth and brain, but their origin is much bigger – from the people, the society, and life that surround me. I am a little molecule of water in the big river of human life, and the sounds of the river resonate in me.”

The idea touches her deeply, and for a long time she remains with it silently.

And now, another thought surfaces in her mind: “This is what philosophy is about: the voices of human life. Philosophy is not just a specific feeling, not just a personal thought, but the voice of human existence. This is why philosophy has so many different voices, because life has so many voices.”

The idea fills her with wonder, with inspiration, with gratefulness. For the rest of the day she remains thoughtful and quiet. A little pensive smile hovers on her face. Something in her inner depth has been awakened.