Philosophy

(part three of three)

Most of what I need to know in life was taught to me in elementary school. I learned the general outlines of American and world history; I learned the basic facts and principles of biology and physics; I learned enough math to make whatever calculations were likely to be required in my day-to-day life. I learned how to think critically, write clearly, and use the resources of a library. All in all, what I’d learned by the time I reached adolescence seemed perfectly adequate to prepare me for adulthood. The only useful knowledge that high school added was learning how to type and how to drive.

When I started out at Princeton, it was with the assumption that I’d develop an affinity for something, and I trusted that at some point I would know what that “something” was. In the meantime, I nibbled from a buffet of introductory courses, hoping to be exposed to a maximum of new perspectives with a minimum of frustration.

Over the years, I saw the students around me get swept up by one intellectual passion or another. When I took Architecture 101, I found the course to be trivial and pointless. My friend Sarah, who took the very same course from the same professor, found it so inspiring that she decided to pursue architecture as her life’s work. My roommate Krishna, who took introductory Latin and ignominiously failed the course, fought to be allowed to take the same course again, because he really wanted to learn Latin. A biology major named Jenny planned to spend the summer doing field work in Peru, not because she was required to, but because she was particularly interested in learning about a particular species.

I waited in vain for my own inspiration to appear. Though I enviously watched the bolt of lightning strike everyone around me, it always managed to pass me by. It’s not that I lacked passion, but the real questions that concerned me were those that scholarship seemed ill equipped to pursue: Why do I exist on this planet, and what is the meaning and purpose of my life?

All Princeton had to offer in response to such questions was to tell me what people thought. Johann Sebastian Bach thought that the role of music was to glorify God. Thomas Jefferson thought that architecture ought to uplift the citizenry and inspire civic virtue. Bertolt Brecht thought that drama ought to keep audiences at an emotional distance so they could make rational judgments about the morality of the characters’ actions. The library was filled with famous people’s thoughts. But were they right? If they weren’t, who cares what these people thought?

I ended up majoring in philosophy, not because I seriously held out hope of finding definitive answers to life’s mysteries, but because philosophy at least addressed those questions straightforwardly. Unlike writers and artists, philosophers were not permitted to make things up, or to spout mere ideas and impressions; they had to justify their assertions by means of logical argument. Plus — in a tradition that began as far back as Socrates — prior learning, and the assumptions that came with it, were considered by philosophers to be a liability rather than an asset. When people asked my why I’d chosen to study philosophy, I said — sincerely — that it was because philosophy is the only field where I wouldn’t have to claim to know anything.

It quickly became clear, as I’d suspected, that there was no universal truth to be found in the philosophy department. Basically, what philosophers do (and therefore, what philosophy students do) is write papers. A philosophy paper — or journal article, or book — consists of the following elements, though not always in the same order:

Summarize an argument that another philosopher has made
Point out flaws in the argument
Propose a variation on that argument, or a different argument altogether, that eliminates those flaws
Point out possible objections to the newly proposed argument
Explain why those objections are wrong

Since no philosophical argument is ever perfect, this cycle can go on continuously — and it has. So far as I know, in more than two thousand years of Western philosophy, no undisputed fact has ever been established. Philosophers are still debating arguments made by Plato in ancient Greece.

I got through Princeton, as I’d gotten through all my previous years of school, by my ability to write convincingly. Writing philosophy papers — not to mention a senior thesis — probably even improved my writing, since it trained me to be precise when I might otherwise be tempted to fudge. (Later in life, when I tried my hand at writing marketing materials, clients criticized my work for being “too clear.”) But I can’t truthfully say that studying philosophy taught me anything useful about the world.

I still value my college experience, and I’m sure my Princeton degree has opened doors for me. But I can’t say confidently that I earned that degree, or that my spot at the school might not have been made better use of by someone else. I still don’t have any answers to life’s big questions, and I’m still not convinced that institutions of higher learning are the place to find them. Perhaps the world is meant to be experienced rather than analyzed. Speaking for myself, I still get as much pleasure from a glass of good whiskey as I do from a good book.

It was late summer of 1993, and my father was dying of cancer in a Florida hospital. My sister, my wife, and I had flown in to see him for what we knew would be the last time. We spent the morning gathered around his hospital bed, talking with him about the weather.

In the mid-afternoon, the nurse informed us that he needed to rest. My mother — always a practical woman — took us aside. “We ought to pick out a coffin,” she said.

So it was that we found ourselves in the showroom of a nearby funeral home, surrounded by sample caskets. Though they varied in shape and color, all were exquisitely crafted, lovingly detailed, and polished to a high gleam. “What do you think of this one?” my mother said. She gestured toward a breathtaking work of mahogany, lined with billowing satin.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Nicer than any piece of furniture I’ve ever owned.”

“The lining seems thin,” she said.

“I’m sure he’ll be comfortable,” I said, only half hoping she wouldn’t hear me. I glanced at the small, elegant placard that quoted a “before need” price of $28,000. “You’re going to put this in the ground?” I said.

“Well, which one would you choose?” my mother asked.

I pointed to a casket in the corner of the room. It was a plain, unfinished pine box, simple but competently constructed. It was priced — still a bit exorbitantly, I thought — at $500. It seemed eminently suited to its purpose, which would be to hold a body and then to decompose.

“What about that one?” I said.

My mother turned to me, her eyes daggers in wet pools. “Mark,” she said, “this is your father we’re talking about.”

My father, I’m reasonably sure, would have been satisfied with the pine box, which was actually in keeping with Orthodox Jewish tradition. My mother’s attitude was clearly not unusual, however. It seems that many people would rather see their loved ones depart in a Rolls Royce than a Hyundai, even though the destination is the same.

I’m not sure why this is. It can’t just be about appearances — if it were, I’m sure that funeral homes would be falling over themselves to offer coffin rental services, where the deceased is displayed in an antique Chippendale during the funeral and gets swapped into a sturdy cardboard carton before burial.

My guess is that it has more to do with the desire for immortality. People seem to be comforted by the idea that they and their loved ones will live on, in one way or another, after death. Providing the deceased with a congenial environment helps us hold on to the idea that the person we loved is still there, somehow.

My wife likes to say, “You remain alive for as long as people still remember you.” It’s a beautiful sentiment, but even if it’s true, that condition merely postpones mortality; it doesn’t eliminate it. People’s memories of you will not last more than a few generations. The things you touched will decay or be thrown away. The passage of time will wear your granite headstone smooth. More than 100 billion people have lived on this earth; most of them have left no trace.

Personally, I feel no need to believe that any part of me will remain after I’m gone. People will remember me as long as they wish to, and then they won’t; the life I lived will have been the same either way. After discussing it with my wife, who is the one who will be most affected, I decided to donate my body to science, where I hope it will benefit someone. Whether or not my life ultimately has any meaning, I can at least have it end with my being useful.

Think (3)

Boxing Day

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