Why Philosophy Makes Us Wince

Aren't We A Bit Like Them?

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They’re annoying, selfish, horrible even. But aren’t they a bit like you and me?

If we’re honest, when we study philosophy we should wince from time to time, because we’ve all been the immoderate, self-centered, overconfident people Socrates spared with, and which Marcus Aurelius struggled to love. 

Plutarch tells us that everyone “ought to be ready ever to repeat to himself, as he observes the faults of others, the utterance of Plato, ‘Am I not possibly like them?’”

Because we are like them, or at least have faults we’re struggling to overcome ourselves. 

Either help people get better, or let their faults go. 

“A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient,” the Stoic philosopher Seneca says, “nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.”